Our Meraki Exhibition was a great success. Penny, Wendy, Nicki and I all sold at least one artwork, which was very exciting. I wondered if I would regret parting with my paintings, but when Wendy told me someone had liked one of my oil paintings enough to buy it, I was really pleased. I'm happy that someone wants to put one of my artworks on their wall. So that's all the pieces taken down and packed away (or in a couple of cases, back up on my wall!)
Would I do it again? Probably. It was certainly a great experience and a useful learning experience collaborating with others on an exhibition. Thanks Penny for the idea, and for making it happen.
0 Comments
The Meraki Art Exhibition has started! It has been months in the planning, and given that it was a collaboration between five people, if I'm honest, it's amazing that we've pulled it off! But though I say it myself, it's looking really good. We have a lovely mixture of styles, media, subjects - a truly eclectic display, as promised on our poster.
We all arrived at the Botanic Gardens with our artworks, and laid them on the floor. Our first decision was to allocate a section each, as opposed to mixing up everyone's work, and we set about hanging our drawings and paintings. It took a fair while, but by noon, our target opening time, we were all ready. Over the course of the afternoon we had a number of visitors, including the lovely Elizabeth Robb of the Embroider's Guild, some of my friends who had come along to support us, and members of the public who were interested to hear about the concept of Meraki and our exhibition. We got some lovely comments in our visitor's book, and all in all we've got off to a great start. My postcards arrived this morning, just in time for our exhibition at Dundee Botanic Gardens. Because of the adverse weather, we decided to install it tomorrow, Sunday, rather than today. The hope is it'll give us an extra day for the snow to clear, but who knows, we might get more. We weren't due to open until Sunday at 10am anyway, so it'll just mean we open a couple of hours later than advertised.
When I ordered my postcards I also bought a few mousemats and mugs featuring my Stones of Stenness pastel drawing. I'm wondering whether they might be of interest to people rather than buying an original painting. We'll have to wait and see. Saying that, within minutes of posting this image on Facebook, I got a request for a mousemat featuring one of my other creations. The bad weather resulted in the College closing for the second half of the week, so apart from when I was at work, I was able to get on creating work for my graded unit. My intention was to try out different media based on my theme of people working at Xplore, which I managed to do. Here is a felt pen sketch of one of the young Engineers, and a pen and watercolour painting of Graham in the workshop. I've also given you a sneaky peek of a mixed media piece, but I've still got work to do to finish it off. These are all colleagues working in the garage, so maybe I should paint some drivers next to get a spread of jobs and activities.
Sadly the extreme weather has meant that people weren't able to get around, including the exhibitors who would have taken part in the Fun a Day project. Although I managed to get my display up before the poor weather kicked in, there was understandable concern for those who hadn't made it in. We were also concerned that nobody would manage to get in to see the exhibition, so by mid-week it was decided to postpone the event. Absolutely the right decision. Watch this space for details of rearranged exhibition.
I shuffled my timetable a round a bit this week. Instead of working on my graded unit this morning I was putting up my display of photographic portraits as part of the Fun a Day project in Dundee. I was a great fun way to kick-start my creativity after Christmas, taking photos of friends and other 'significant others' over the course of January 2018. I produced a series of 8x10 black and white images, mounted them on foam board, and I've displayed them like a giant calendar on the wall of the studio in WASPS at Meadow Mill. The exhibition is on over the weekend from Friday to Sunday. I'm pleased with my display, but can't wait to see what everyone has produced. In the afternoon I did more experimenting for my graded unit. I mentioned I want to produced a Louise Nevelson style assemblage representing a bus engine - as you do! It will be made of recycled rubbish and I started pulling it together. When I was at WASPS this morning I called into Scrapantics, the wonderful social enterprise selling waste and used items for art projects. It's a real Aladin's Cave, and I picked up some bits and pieces to add the the recycling I've held onto at home for the project.
I also wanted to start my 'oil on aluminium' experiments. I've got the first layer down. I'm hoping the oil paint adheres to the aluminium okay. Only one way to find out! I finished off this drawing I started at the weekend. It's mainly charcoal, but with a touch of colour added using pastel, and is a close up of a tool box in the bus garage.
Yesterday, and overnight last night, loads of ideas have been filling my head around my theme and ideas for an final artwork. I wanted to explore some of my own experiences of work, and create a piece reflective of how I feel about work and people in the workplace. The job I am currently doing is based in a bus depot. I work with a great bunch of people. I am enjoying comparing my current work with experiences elsewhere, and have been exploring in my head, the concept of 'dirty work'. It would make sense to assume there would be more 'dirty work' done by the mechanics in a bus depot, but I have experienced more 'dirt' working previously in a professional position in a reputable firm. I'm going to focus my graded unit theme on different definitions of 'dirty work', exploring my feelings about my experiences, and translating concepts into my final piece. I'm still at the development stage of my graded unit, and need to do more experimenting, but I'm starting to get a much clearer idea of what my final piece might look like. It's getting exciting!
Meantime, this drawing of Davy is in charcoal and pastel. At the same time as experimenting with different dry media, I wanted to show that work in the garage can be very colourful! I took my camera to work today to collect some more photographs, as primary research for my graded unit. These included shots of bus engines, and a few more of the engineers working away. I had been looking at some of my previous shots including photos from the inspection pits, up towards the underside of a bus. It made me think of Louise Nevelson's work, and has inspired me to create a relief or assemblage representing the workings of a bus! I'll start collecting recycling and other items which might be suitable.
These photos of Nevelson's work were taken in the Tate Modern last year. I can't believe I'm getting excited at the sight of the underside of buses!! Last week I started building up experimental pieces on different surfaces, using mainly acrylic, soft pastel, ink, and image transfer. This week I developed these a bit further. I worked on the image transfers a bit more to clarify the images, then coated them with a variety of substances; gel medium, acrylic medium and PVA in particular. Some came out better than others.
I then started printing using the lino sheet I cut out last week. I printed some on plain paper, and experimented on other surfaces, including a sheet of wood I picked up from the Dundee and Angus Wood Recycling Centre last week and coated with watered down PVA. I printed some in black and then added some yellow and red ink to create a brown, rusty effect. Considering the image cut into the lino was drawn from a selection of rusty tools, I think this was quite appropriate, as well as effective. Once I was finished with the ink for lino printing, I drew a monoprint based on one of my Xplore photos, of bus tyres, which came out quite well. Finally, because I don't like waste, I used up the last of the ink with a negative monoprint. |