"Fancy that"
Maxine Sutton has just launched her new website! Maxine's work focus' on memories of home, childhood. She uses Irish machine, and hand embroidery and a combination of traditional techniques, such as applique, patchwork, needle-punch and screen print. Embroidered lines and richly embroidered areas create further layers of texture and tension.
"Conversation"
Maxine has recently played with imagery and ideas springing from our relationship with familiar domestic objects, everyday pastimes, the meaning of ‘home’ and home-making activities.
"Ethel" - tea cosy
The shops not up quite yet but it's great to have a browse through her new and old work including embroidered tea cosies, pictures, works on paper and lavender bags!.
"Marjory" - tea cosy
"Heart - lavender bag"
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
Maxine Sutton
Monday, 9 March 2009
Dragons Den
Have just received an email from Arts Council saying Dragons Den are looking for creative businesses to pitch at the next series of Dragons Den.
Good luck to anyone who's up for it. Although I do wonder whether the Dragons Den method - produce something unique and popular, reduce the cost and role it out in as many places across the country is quite in line with what the arts is about. Producing an individual vision irrespective of what the market demands, not cutting corners just to meet a price. Can a great artistic vision ever be mass-market in the first instance? Or does that logic condemn creative genius's to poverty?.
If you do try to get on the programme let me know and we'll follow your progress and shout for you!
Entrepreneurs wanting to apply can do so via email to dragonsden@bbc.co.uk or by visiting the website www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden
Friday, 6 March 2009
Bellis Gallery
I popped into the Bellis Gallery yesterday to see a mixed exhibition there which had opened the previous week.
It was a very good exhibition with a number of old names from Brighton Art Fair as well as quite a few craft makers on the ground floor. The Gallery itself is tucked behind the Seafront on Kings Road where it leaves the seafront by Dr Brighton's. The space itself is large - surprising as we are used to Brighton's rather pokey shops and galleries - the ground floor comprises a large double fronted shop with little rooms and nooks and crannies to display the art and makers work, displayed in very friendly and accessible way. Then upstairs is a large clear gallery space where larger exhibitions can be hung.
The present exhibition features painters - Patrick O'Donnell's new beautiful and powerful figurative work which still retails the atmosphere and intensity of his previous nature inspired paintings.
These are balanced by the smallerscale and more monocrome but equally intense collagraphs by Phillippa Karakashian and the ink landscape memoires of Angie Meaden.
In an upper room are Tony Owers Encaustic Paintings incorporating elements of found photographs and print.
Harriet Butler - printmaker and illustrator is exhibiting some of her humourous and lively illustrative etchings down-stairs and there are more in the browser.
Overall a great exhibition showcasing - in the main - great Brighton talent.
Do seek out the gallery, its well worth a visit and the exhibition will be on for a good while.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Online Shop of the Week - Loop
Loop is a 'knitters paradise'. A beautiful shop in Cross Street in Islington, London packed full with yarns, haberdashery, books, magazines and delightful craft items. The shop's knowledgeable staff are always on hand to guide you too so it really is worth visiting. Loop organises knitting classes for all levels as well as some wonderful workshops with makers such as Julie Arkell, Claire Montgomerie and Laura Long.
If you're a long way from the capital fear not. Loop's online shop is easily accesible, quick to use and delivery always very prompt. The shop stocks most items available in the shop so you don't miss out on a thing! Look out for Donna Wilson's beautiful creatures, the perfect combination of Ruth Cross knits with Linda Bloomfield ceramics and Maxine Sutton's embroidered artworks.
Loop
41 Cross Street
Islington, London
N1 2BB
email: info@loop.gb.com
Monday, 2 March 2009
Paintings in Hospitals Auction
The charity Paintings in Hospitals loans original artworks to NHS hospitals throughout the UK. They are holding a fundraising auction at Bonhams Auction House in London on Tuesday 17th March from 6.30pm. Wine and canapes will be served. Anita Klein's Dreaming of Swooping Birds (above) will be one of the lots. Anita and probably other artists have set the reserve prices low so as to be sure in these tough economic times to raise whatever possible for the charity.
Sightlines - Susan Laughton at Salford Museum & Art Gallery
Sightlines
Susan Laughton a popular exhibitor at Previous Brighton Art Fairs has a show opening this Wednesday at Salford Museum and Art Gallery.
The exhibition is inspired by the English Landscape, with paintings by Salford artist, Susan Laughton showing alongside rarely seen unconserved work (selected by Susan) from Salford Museum and Art Gallery’s permanent collection.
The English Landscape has inspired and challenged artists for centuries. Works displayed from Salford’s permanent collection demonstrate the artist’s traditional preoccupation with the picturesque or landscape as a ‘view’. This exhibition illustrates how one contemporary artist has responded to the challenge and created complex work of sensitive simplicity. Work that speaks as much about our changing relationship with the landscape, as it does about the times we live in.
Of her inspiration and painting, Susan Laughton, says:
‘The Northern landscape is one of dramatic, urban sprawl and volatile weather. There is a poetic beauty in rusting metal, distant horizons, time worn stone and changing light. Man made structures impose their presence on the sky: power lines, bridges and lamp posts disrupt the horizon. Sharp edges of construction window frame our perspectives. I capture remembered details observed when out walking or fleeting juxtapositions glimpsed whilst driving, abstract feelings elusive to photography.
Susan’s paintings contrast pared down marks with random scratches, washes of iridescent paint with textured plaster. Sometimes layers are washed away and reapplied many times to capture the essence of the moment. Structured and methodical approaches combined with intuitive reactions allow both careful planning and spontaneous risk taking. A unique combination of artistic control with a sense of, ‘let’s see what happens if’………
Susan worked in architecture for 12 years before returning to college to study art at Bolton University (graduating with a BA(Hons) first class in 2002. She now works full time from a studio at Valley Artists in Waterfoot, Rossendale, Lancashire.
Salford Museum and Art Gallery till 7 June 2009
www.susanlaughton.com
www.valleyartists.co.uk
Salford Museum and Art Gallery
Peel Park
Crescent
Salford
M5 4WU
Financial Meltdown and the end of the world - Is it all bad?
I wrote the below a few weeks ago before deciding that perhaps with the news of various small makers having the rug pulled from them by banks I was being bizarrely naive and so didn't post it. Not on the list? If you know any empty shop or scheme we haven't listed, please get in touch with the Revolutionary Arts Group who are co-ordinating the network (on a voluntary basis). 
(Halifax)
However the DIY squat shop movement seems to be gathering speed, helped this time round by local authorities who, not wanting empty shops on their High Streets are encouraging artists and makers to take over the premises.
Now a network of temporary spaces has been launched to help publicise opportunities and encourage others to utilise this opportunity. Newspapers, radio and TV have been championing this movement as an antidote to empty shops and the clone town feel of many High Streets
Shops that have popped up or are just in the planning stages include:
(delayed post below!)
The news about the British economy is not good. Unemployment is shooting up, shops are closing and it seems that recession is here for a bit.
(Brent)
It is probably not the best time to seem optimistic then and I may be being bizarrely naive...
but
The first thing to remember is that just as the sun will rise tomorrow - the economic sun will come up again, perhaps in a year or two but it will come up and when it does designers and artists will begin to thrive again as people will start to spend money.
(Limboarts - Margate)
The second thing is that historically great cultural originality has come during recession. Take for instance the Punk movement, the music seems to have come out of recession but also the associated industries of fashion and writing were able to thrive in a poor economic climate.
There are opportunities created by high street chain stores having difficulties.
For the last two decades to rent a prime shop in a major high street such as London or Manchester or Brighton has been almost impossible for a independent designer unless backed by either daddy or the industry, which doesn't necessarily mean that the best talent gets through. In the 70's and 80's independent talent had an outlet in places such as Kensington Market in London or Afflecks Palace in Manchester, out of these alternative venues developed original and independent designers such as Red or Dead, Sign of the Times, Boy, UK Today, Spirit, Pure Sex, Strip, Sweet Charity, Alphabet, Exotique, Outlaw, Rock Lobster, Review, Red, Wendy's, Flying down to Rio, Planet Alice, LA 1, American Retro etc etc etc
Every high street in the country now has at least one large well positioned shop standing empty (Woolworths) if just a few of these became designer markets , then raw talent can be incubated ready to hit the big time when the recovery starts and people want to start spending money.
With the collapse in the price of commercial property I see opportunities for small independent makers and designers to break the stranglehold of the chainstores on the highstreet and reinvigorate 'clonetowns'.
Likewise graduates are not being recruited by advertising firms or the city and won't be able to settle for well paid corporate life after college. More graduates may well decide to work for themselves doing work they are passionate about but isn't immediately well paid. This talent hitting streets over the next few years will need places to show their work and to work. This could give the makers and artists working today some competition but competition should improve the quality and originality, and create a vibe that will bennefit the whole independent design sector.
In praise of the enterprise allowance.
It has been said before that the 'enterprise allowance scheme' of the eighties - which paid a small wage for 6 months or a year to unemployed people wanting to set up their own business - really to get them off the unemployment figures - helped the boom in creativity during Thatchers recession. It became a sort of gap year for creative people. Makers could make without worrying too much about sales, artists could paint and shops had a safety net to survive the setting up period. Musicians on the enterprise allowance,could play for a year learning their trade before making it big. It would be great if this scheme was reintroduced.
Now is the time for artists and makers to be entrepreneurial, open the galleries the shops and studios, to take risks when the opportunities are there. It would help if the Arts Councils and Local Councils would help - subsidising shop leases perhaps, even reintroducing the enterprise allowance. But if they don't makers and artists such do something anyway, this could be our big chance to buy the big studio or shop in the best bit of the high street before the bland corporate chains decide they want to expand again.
