Staffordshire Open Art Exhibition 2013

Memories by Mandy Billington, clay and mixed media

Not Another Soul- Coniston by Tracy Barlow, etching

Sketch Snapshots of Stafford by Keri Jayne, pen and ink

Seed Heads in Autumn by Rebecca Doyle, mixed media

Joyous days I have a goddamn phone! hooray! Above are photos taken (by my handy new 2 mega pixel phone camera) from the 2013 Staffordshire Open Art Exhibition at Shire Hall Gallery in Stafford. Exhibition is open til 14th July 2013.

Currently the only way I can get photos off said phone is by posting them on Facebook, so I had to spam folks with fuzzy mobile pictures, which I feel slightly guilty of. Speaking of which, I made a handy little failbook page for this happy little blog which whoever's interested or too polite to refuse my invitation is welcome to like. Who knows, maybe I can trick somebody into reading this shit on a regular basis.

http://dribbble.com/eristine
http://christinekawasakichan.com/

Just sharing the love, found a series of food pictures, turns out the lady who made them also has a super neat website. People should give her all of the money.

The last Links post for a while

Just got a few links left that I wasn't able to make into a nice shiney themed post. So I suppose this weeks links are all relatively unlinked links (hur hur hur!)

http://www.uva.co.uk/category/work

United Visual Artists. It's so...geometry and shiney lights. I love flicking through the stuff on their work page, gorgeous.

http://www.valentinatanni.com/

Art blog about internet culture, which is a super interesting read. It's been going on for over ten years! Christ I am way too late on this whole thing, bloody fascinating.

http://dappledsky.com/

This blog is about nurturing the artistic community in Stoke-on-Trent, which is currently something I'm really interested in. It kind of blows my mind that there even is an art community in Stoke, since there's not much else. It's like discovering an orchid growing out of a turd.

http://www.site.rachel-grant.com/Portfolio.html

Somehow I've only just come across the work of Rachel Grant because somebody brought up her name when I was making more glass with the Cultural Sisters and Percy the dog. What have I been doing with my life???

http://cargocollective.com/justyna_sarsari

Last but not least, Justyna's portfolio. She was in my class before I had to leave university and the photo above is of work from her degree show. The lady is a force of nature and her work is fucking fantastic. I'd tell somebody to give her a prize, but shit man, they already did.

Began mounting the glass work for my portfolio, just needs silicon-ing in place. Squared paper gives it a nice scrap-book feel. Blue felt-tip pen geometric drawings to make the thin blue glass strips melt in seamlessly. It's strange because I preferred the top drawing the most when it was in front of me, but I think the bottom image looks better now it's on the computer screen.

Can't help thinking that it's missing something though. Stitching? Inks? collage? Not quite sure yet so it might be one of those leave-it-for-a-few-days-and-come-back-to-it jobs. It's gonna drive me mad trying to think of what it needs. Letters? Might try dabbing water onto the lines in the top drawing (I always use washable felt tips for that exact purpose). Or maybe it just needs re-drawing completely.

It's so irritating knowing that there's just something not quite right about it.

Comic update post

Been thinking and working on ideas for comic project, this is its most recent incarnation. part of me feels like I need to make it into several pages instead of just one canvas. Considering making a long wall-hanging. The blank triangles are where I've stared placing my glass pieces to work them into the composition. 

I kinda have visions of black netting and hand-stitched writing and squares and glass, hand-generated typography that becomes part of the story instead of just telling the story. 

Starting to wonder if I even need to create an angel narrator. I might use the research I've got so far into angels as motifs and collage instead.

I feel really inspired by the people I've met and the techniques I've learned during my year away from university, and I feel like I should bring these feelings and ideas together. I started out months and months ago reading up on cosmology and visiting observatories, drawing churches and researching the stories and language I was brought up with.

When I started experimenting with materials in the beginning of January this year I stepped away from the ideologies and started creating my own visual language. Now I know how this piece is going to feel. Gothic, arts and crafts, cute with serious undertones.

Recently went back to the Cultural Sisters to make some more flat glass pieces. When I saw the glass from before, they looked like test pieces and I just wanted to make more and experiment with shapes and colours. Because of how much glass can change in firing, I'm not totally sure what to expect yet but I'm looking forward to seeing the finished results. They look bigger than the last few things I've made and use more bluey purpley colours with a hint of green, moving away from red completely. 

Also this is the dog I've been looking after this week, because this post has far too much writing in it and needs more pictures!

Detail from one of my portfolio pages

Le webcam

 Le Shiny Big camera <3

Le Not-so-great camera

 Le Big Shiney Camera <3 (painting now slightly damaged by cigarette smoke though, grandmother you fiend!)

oh my god the pixels.