Saturday 14th June 2014

First Day of Free Art Drop-In Workshops at Fenners

Great day today at Fenners with drop-in workshops for people of all ages and abilities. Lizzie Lane  helped visitors to create beautiful wire sculptures, Helen Mason showed people how to work with texture using a wide variety of media, Louise Lahive helped people create large scale paintings of faces and Amanda Bloom introduced people to the art of felt making.

The workshops were in conjunction with an exhibition of work by Fenners artists, exploring mid-summer.  It was great to offer people the opportunity to engage with art and with the artists who made it, exploring techniques and ways of thinking.

Tomorrow is the last day of our free drop-in workshops.  Abu Jafar will be teaching the art of water colour painting.  Christine Harrison will be offering print making tasters.  Debbie Bent will be inviting people to explore their creativity with clay and I will be introducing simple book making techniques.

All these workshops were made possible with support from The Letchworth Heritage Foundation and North Herts District Council, as well as Digswell Arts Trust.

Please come along tomorrow (Sunday 14th) if you can.

Here are a few of the photographs from today:

Please drop in if you can, stay for a few minutes or for the whole day.  We would love to see you.

Saturday 7th June

Delighted that I have new work on show at two wonderful exhibitions:

The Longest Day, opening at Fenners tonight

and

Threads of Time, opening in Hertford on Tuesday

For both these exhibitions I'll be showing recent visual diaries about being outside, inspired by the three hundred year old weather diaries of Sir John Witterwronge, from Hertford Archives and Local Studies Collection.  I'm excited about all the work in both these exhibitions and very pleased to be part of them.

For the Longest Day artists were asked to respond to the theme "midsummer" and I am making a June diary with a dress picture created from a photograph of the sky at 9.00 every evening.  I'll also be showing my May diary (about my May experiences of looking at the built environment from outside) and my January diary (quick sketches created in response to a short sentence about my experiences of the weather each day). See the link above for information about work of the other artists.

For Threads of Time all participants responded to archive material about the Witterwronge family who lived in Hertfordshire.  I'll be showing three visual diaries (February, March and April) that respond to different aspects of the weather as I experienced it every day. Follow the link above to find out more and see work by the other artists.