A Toast to the Hosts!

This week I am enjoying the hospitality of Adele and Mike Yates, in their wonderful historic home ‘Mallards’. Their son Ben Yates has his studio there and we have taken over the barn and woodland for a week, with a fabulous art exhibition. We are open every day until Sunday 10th August. Click here for details

There are 5 artists showing their work in total (and I will post about the others later), but today I am going to focus on the magical world of Ben’s Electi-Cities and Photocubism.

The Electri-Cites are being displayed in a blacked out room! For good reason, they all light up with hundreds of LED lights and are made entirely from discarded electrical goods, from bits of old washing machines to DVD players. These are fascinating micro worlds, complete with tiny people and the dark room is like a big magical disco!

Photocubism it Ben’s other concept. Here he makes 3D pictures made up of many small square digital photos, to great effect. Keep up with Ben’s wonderful creations here

Small Town Vandals wont spoil our show!

Several of the sculptures in our TRAIL were vandalised last night, I think it is the first time we have really been affected in this way! My Do Do had been pushed over, thankfully no unrepairable damage done and its all intact. Liz Lockyear’s  Igloo was used as a party room by the local al fresco drinkers; which I found quite amusing until I realised they had also collapsed the structure by pulling it down, which is miserable for her and she had to do lots of repairing today, its back up, but not quite as sturdy as it was before. Several of the other sculptures had minor injuries, but mostly suffered shock. It is our 10th year and there has been so much good news for us with TRAIL being included in the United Nations Its Our World online art exhibition (a huge international event for young people aged between 4 and 19) so we will not let some thoughtless people bring us down!

I wish people would take Michelle Greenwood-Brown’s advice to Love your Planet!

recycled ceramic mosaic
Michelle Greenwood-Brown

In better news our Art in the Sun exhibition is looking glorious and open all week from 10-5pm. It is a lovely setting with a barn and woodland full of art. Its being held at  Ben Yates parents home and he has a fabulous darkened room with all of his light up sculptures making it a magical experience for young and old.

Aloha Teignmouth!

Having relocated 12 miles from Exeter to South Devon last winter it is amazing to have our first summer in our seaside house!  I am finally back into a good work routine (these things are so dependant on the delicate family/ life balance) and I am preparing for a packed summer of shows and exhibitions!

The new house and my exhibition schedule have crossed over in a serendipitous way and I am making some panels which just so happen to be the right size for windows in our house, so I can install them at home after they have been on tour.  Aloha Teignmouth has been designed for my kitchen door. We live in a 30’s semi with original internal doors and these doors have lovely proportions; but I cannot live with the existing frosted glass and view of the recycling boxes behind (what self respecting glass worker would) so I have made this homage to all things Hawaiian and tropical. This playful panel is intended to liven up our white and black kitchen scheme, obscure the less attractive aspects of modern life from indoors and is a great chance for me to work ‘off brief’. The view of the cliffs and beach huts in the background  of the panel is the view out of the main kitchen window; I do like it when I get to reference the settings of the windows in some way, windows after all are part of the houses architecture.

The outside world keeps on turning and Gloss Gallery summer show is already up and running, which I am pleased to be part of and as the summer holidays grow nearer I am feverishly working on my recycled sculpture for TRAIL 2014 and working towards my first Devon Open Studios in Teignmouth, I will be sharing the TAAG gallery with 3 very talented artist friends and we are all working on new pieces for that.

Anyway, the sun is shining and recycled washing machines do not turn themselves into sculptures, so I will head out into the Sunday sunshine.

Stormy Teignmouth

Its been so long since I have written on my blog and sooooo much has happened since September. We have moved to Teignmouth, about 14 miles from Exeter and we are loving it! I have a great new studio and we live right by the sea.
Here was my new home town about 30 minutes before high tide, the pier is in a bad way and the waves are full of boulders and debris, but it is brilliant to be able to be so close to the elements!

Teignmouth back beach

East Cliff Teignmouth

Skate Park Teignmouth Sea Front

Damaged PierBeach

Beach Comber Cafe

My husband is a weatherman

Ivy Lane

Ivy Lane

Sculpture Trail marks the start of the Summer Holidays

Recycled Crochet carrier bag sculpture

Every year I take part in TRAIL this is a sculpture trail along the sea front in Teignmouth, Devon with sculptures made entirely from recycled materials. Professional artists, community groups and local schools all take part and it is a fun and colourful display with a strong underlying environmental message.

I love taking part in this exhibition, I have exhibited yearly since 2009 and it really heralds the start of the summer holidays for me!

This year I have crocheted a giant squid out of recycled carrier bags (from supermarket recycling bins and friends cupboards), it stands 3m or so in the air suspended on the end of 2 old, broken fishing rods and has a couple of charity shop Barbie victims dangling from its tentacles, about to be eaten.

The trail is totally free and runs from 22nd July 2013 to 1st September 2013 along the beautiful Teignmouth seafront, please come and have a look if you are in the area, I am in the flower bed outside the Beachcomber cafe.

recycled sculpture

Under the Weather

Spent a blustery afternoon on Teignmouth Sea Front today putting up my entry into the annual TRAIL sculpture exhibition. Open to anyone TRAIL has one main rule- your sculpture has to be at least 70% from recycled materials and have some kind of environmental message. Unfortunately we did not receive any funding this year, to the usual grand opening, winners prizes, posters and postcards are absent, but there are still over 30 sculptures to be enjoyed on a free TRAIL from Shaldon Botanical Gardens to Dawlish via Teignmouth sea front.

Every year I make use of my scrap waste glass (a by product of my stained glass business) and this year was no exception, I pieced hundreds of pieces of waste glass (too small to do anything else with) together into rain drop shapes and fused them in my kiln. I have made around 140 in total and these were all strung from a frame made of old office shelving brackets my dad found for me with an old chicken wire cloud filled with empty paint pots and flower pots from a local decorator. I hope my piece symbolises how the weather is affected by our actions on the ground and how much waste we produce. The weather is always awful on the day I put my sculpture up and at least today it wasn’t raining………but gale force winds forecast for tomorrow, so fingers crossed it will still be there!

More of my raindrops will be hung over the river at Dawlish in the week and after the exhibition finishes all of the raindrops will be sold off individually for The Helen Foundation, a local charity working to encourage and enable young people to participate in the arts. Lets just hope the weather, seagulls and passers by are kind to it! I will also have lots of work on exhibition in the TRAIL Inside indoor exhibition at the TAAG Gallery, Teignmouth from August to September 2011

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Empty paint pot appeal!

Its the time of year when I start panicking about what to make for the TRAIL (Teignmouth Recycled ART In Landscape), which runs over the summer holidays from Shaldon to Dawlish. The exhibition is wonderfully inclusive, with submissions from local schools (pictured Sid the Seagull by Hazeldown School) and community groups to well known local artists and even international exhibits.

This year I am making a piece for which I need around 30 empty paint pots (or if its white or black paint they can still have paint in, I can use it on the sculpture)…keeping my idea under wraps for now so as to keep you all guessing what I am going to make (I bet you cant!). So if you are local and have some hanging about PLEASE contact me and I will

take them off your hands!

I was luck enough to win TRAIL last year with my boat sculpture and unfortunately I am the last winner to receive a prize as we have lost our funding this year, which is a shame. But the exhibition will go ahead anyway, thanks in so small part to the hard work and dedication of organiser, Liz Lockyear! Providing a wonderful free activity to get locals and holiday makers thinking about art and the environment in a fun way. Please come and have a look if you are in the area in the summer holidays.

The exhibition also uses the TAAG gallery for the indoor part of the exhibition, where the work changes from fun on the seafront to more serious art and some amazing pieces are available for sale, from small items of jewellery to large sculptures. It it not too late to submit a sculpture proposal to TRAIL, its a very friendly exhibition and you don’t have to be a professional artist to join in. Just click on the link to find out more

Launched my boat!

Despite a wild night I got my sculpture up last night, in its spot, just to the left of Teignmouth Pier. It was a truly wild night for weather, lashing rain and gales and I had to really battle with the elements. However, it was still there when I went to finish it off today and I have got the Kaleidoscope in place too, so I really have completely installed it! The clouds broke for a brief moment for me to take a couple of photos……….more bad weather on the way tonight, fingers crossed it lasts the summer!

My sculpture is part of the TRAIL summer exhibition, this is a free sculpture trail running from Teignmouth to Dawlish (South Devon) seafront for the whole summer! All the sculptures are made of at least 70% recycled materials and it is a great day out for all the family, especially keeping the kids walking with interesting things to look at!  You can also vote for your favourite installation and there is a a prize for the public vote!

Lets just hope no one tries to take it for its virgin trip, it is very heavy and has 2 wholes in the bottom and is totally rudderless! I got some very strange looks from the surfers riding the massive waves last night and even stranger ones from the elderly people walking their dogs this morning!

My house is full of milk cartons…….but I have finished my boat

I have 310 2 ltr milk cartons stuck together in groups of 3 wide and 5 long and I have stuck together the tricky bits of the letter K and M for my milk sculpture. There are literally bottles everywhere and if you try and move them before the glue is totally dry they fall apart, its a nightmare! But I have made good headway, I have made all the parts of the letters and tomorrow I will stick all the parts of the letters together. I then need to spray paint them and fashion a cow head and tail out of the remaining few milk cartons………..I have till the 27th July and it looks like it is going up in the Taunton Branch of Morrisons,  I know nothing more!

Really got down to work this week and in every available second I was sticking glass on my boat sculpture, grouting it and then doing it all again to the sails. Its a large structure and it took bloomin ages! But I think it is going to look fab. I now just need to make the kaleidoscope that you look through to have a fun view of the boat, mmmmmmmmmmm it has to be installed by Saturday this week, better get on with it. Oh, and you cant see the whole thing till it goes up at the weekend, on the left is the sails being  under way and me  grouting the bath tub.