Ed Sheeran - Wayfaring Stranger

I have just bought Ed's new album ... and it is an absolute must!!  He is a real storyteller and a great singer.  This song is not on the album so just kick back and enjoy.

Nic Webb

I love the simplicity and beauty in these spoons.

Nic is an artist based in Camberwell, South London and he comments:

‘I am passionate about working with wood. It is a natural material that is both ethical and sustainable to use. I work with a combination of traditional tools and modern methods to achieve hand crafted objects of contemporary art and design.’

cartolina app upgrade

I am loving the fact that i can now play with the cartolina app on my iPhone in my other camera apps and change the colour and feel of each picture.  I have said this is one of my favourite things on my phone ... and now it has got even better! 

I could waste hours playing!!

Denise Roberts

My friend has just given me a wonderful ceramic bowl by the artist Denise Roberts which she bought from at the gallery Cry of the Gulls in Fowey. It is absolutely wonderful and i found these images on the website of Beside the Wave gallery in Cornwall.  Denise has worked with Antony Gormley in the past and is now Head of Ceramics at Swindon College.

Not only do I love the quirkiness of the handles and the obviously handmade feel of the bowl ... i think the painterly decoration is wonderful.  It really is like the vessel is her canvas.  On her website she states that she works with a mix of stains and glazes.  To me each piece is infused with Denise's visual vocabulary and I would be intrigued to know if she also paints onto canvas.  She also mentions that each vessel is suitable to be used with food ... so I am thinking this must be the start of a new collection!

The Lightfoot Letters

I went to the artists talk accompanying this exhibition at the Brindley Arts Centre, Runcorn at the weekend by Maria Walker and Angela Topping.  The range and depth of the work created by Maria in response to the letters and Angela's poetry was fantastic.  It was a very enjoyable talk and when Angela read out her poems it was quite poignant.

Parasol Unit - Exposure 11 Award

This exhibition will be worth checking out!  13th September - 16th October 2011.
Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art is delighted to present the winners of theEXPOSURE 11 Award, Jack Friswell, Kate Shepherd and Rebecca Turner, all graduates of Wimbledon College of Art. Already in its third year, the EXPOSURE Award has gained ever increasing recognition and proved to be of great benefit to previous winners by giving the graduates from a UK art school an opportunity to exhibit work in a professional context. Showing alongside Yang Fudong, the main exhibition at Parasol unit, and coinciding with the Frieze Art Fair, their work will benefit from exposure to an international audience. For the 2011 EXPOSURE 11 Award, Parasol unit has collaborated with the Wimbledon College of Art.

Proscenium

 
Jack Friswell (BA Fine Art: Print and Time-based Media) explores notions of the cinematic and the artefact, working somewhere between documenting and oddity. Influenced by ethnographical studies and archetypes of architecture and landscape, he is interested in the anachronism of the projection screen as an object of visual and critical enquiry. Through introspective study, his images become the catalyst for critique via the geographical displacement of the screen and its construction.

Jennifer Collier : new work

Telephone

I am completely bowled over by Jennifer Collier's new work.  It is wonderfully original and fresh ... and the level of craftsmanship to achieve these mini 'sculptures' is fantastic.  I can't wait to see them in the flesh .. on her website she states she wil be at the Northern Contemporary Craft Fair in October so I will look forward to seeing them then.   There is a real vintage feel to the objects because of the materials that Jennifer has used coupled with a sense of quirkiness and fun in some the items that she has chosen to make.

Binoculars

Typewriter!!

Detail of milk jug

Roliflex camera

Bernina sewing machine

On her website Jennifer states:

My practice focuses on creating work from paper; by bonding, waxing, trapping and stitching I produce unusual paper ‘fabrics’, which are used to explore the ‘remaking’ of household objects.

The papers are treated as if cloth, with the main technique employed being stitch; a contemporary twist on traditional textiles.

The papers themselves serve as both the inspiration and the media for my work, with the narrative of the books and papers suggesting the forms.

I tend to find items then investigate a way in which they can be reused and transformed; giving new life to things that would otherwise go unloved or be thrown away.