Chair's Letter After the novelty of our first morning meeting at our new venue, reviewed elsewhere in this Newsletter by Julia Hayes, we now have the excitement of our first Sunday afternoon meeting! For those of you who work during the week, or have other weekday responsibilities, THIS IS FOR YOU. And, of course, it is for everyone else too. The venue is the Craft Room of Leamington Art Gallery and start time is 2.15, this coming Sunday 29th March. We have three speakers, each giving short talks, inviting feedback and comment from the audience. They are Fiona Meltcalfe, Sue O’Grady and Ruth Daly. In their own way, all three are painters, Ruth specialising in the human form and landscape in paint and mixed media and Fiona and Sue using dyes, stitching and applied fabrics on textile grounds producing work which ranges from the miniature to vast wall hangings. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Leamington, location and parking details for the Art Gallery can be found in this Newsletter. So far this year, we have not made any announcements about AMA exhibitions. It is a subject where I currently feel like a swan (much energetic paddling going on under water) or, as some may prefer, like an iceberg (considerable bulk not seen). I am exploring various options, including venues in Oxford and Coventry as well as a possibility in Leamington, but in all cases am waiting for people to get back to me and for confirmations of availability. As they say, watch this space! Katharine Barker Chair [email protected]NEWSLETTER March 2015 FORTHCOMING MEETINGS IN OUR NEW VENUE: Sunday 29th March, 2.15pm The Craft Room, Leamington Art Gallery Workshop: Fiona Metcalfe , Ruth Daly and Susan O'Grady will present recent work. Sunday 26th April, 2.15 The Craft Room, Leamington Art Gallery Speaker, Nancy Upshall, painter. In this issue Review of meeting of March 15th by Julia Hayes. Review of Jon Williams Exhibition, "Sensational Clay" Review by Sheila Graham. What's on Congratulations Easter Craft Market Editors; Katharine Barker & Len Mackin Diary Dates 1 www.associationofmidlandartists.org.uk "Silent Places" Fiona Metcalfe
Transcript
Chair's Letter
After the novelty of our first morning meeting at our new venue,reviewed elsewhere in this Newsletter by Julia Hayes, we nowhave the excitement of our first Sunday afternoon meeting! Forthose of you who work during the week, or have other weekdayresponsibilities, THIS IS FOR YOU. And, of course, it is foreveryone else too.
The venue is the Craft Room ofLeamington Art Gallery and starttime is 2.15, this coming Sunday29th March. We have threespeakers, each giving short talks,inviting feedback and commentfrom the audience. They areFiona Meltcalfe, Sue O’Grady andRuth Daly. In their own way, allthree are painters, Ruthspecialising in the human formand landscape in paint and mixed
media and Fiona and Sue using dyes, stitching and appliedfabrics on textile grounds producing work which ranges from theminiature to vast wall hangings.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Leamington, locationand parking details for the Art Gallery can be found in thisNewsletter.
So far this year, we have not made any announcements aboutAMA exhibitions. It is a subject where I currently feel like aswan (much energetic paddling going on under water) or, assome may prefer, like an iceberg (considerable bulk not seen).I am exploring various options, including venues in Oxford andCoventry as well as a possibility in Leamington, but in all casesam waiting for people to get back to me and for confirmations ofavailability. As they say, watch this space!
The March meeting was in the new setting of the Leamington Art Gallery and we had threeartists, who are brimming with new ideas to start us off.
VICTORIA SMITHVictoria uses collage, cutting outintricate images, to make up theparts of her beautiful finishedpieces of art. As an EnvironmentalScientist, Victoria likes the fact thatshe is reusing old materials,magazines and postcards for herwork. She tells her children that,“throwing things away, means theyare just, not here. It does notmean they do not exist”
Victoria divides her work in to threesections, commissions, web siteand postcard pictures:
Some 18 months ago, the AMA received a request from Flowers Brewery for work to be hung inthe newly refurbished White Swan Hotel in Stratford upon Avon. Victoria’s piece, an Art Decostyled Swan, was accepted and further commissions for hostelries followed.
Victoria also takes commissions for collages illustrating family histories. These take a great dealof work. She researches the family and then searches for cuttings exactly the right size and withthe light coming from the same direction on all the cuttings, for the finished picture to readproperly. We saw a slide of a beautiful piece, commissioned by a wife on her husband’s life. Inall there were over thirty personal references to tell his story included in this impeccably made,memorable piece of art. What a lovely present.
Victoria’s website www.victoriasmithartist.co.uk sells prints, many taken from the original designsfor the Brewery commissions. It works very simply. Victoria does not carry stock, images areprinted to order, in the size required. Purchasers seem happy to wait.
Postcard pictures are Victoria’s own work, for her creative fulfillment. They all include a setting,something living and a light source. She buys bundles of postcards, sold by families, dating from1900 – 1950. They are very nostalgic and some are extremely touching. We all felt sympathy forthe writer of a New Year’s message in 1914, who had had a poor year in 1913 and hoped for abetter year to come, little knowing that war would be starting in July. The images areimmaculately cut out and appear in evocative settings. They are fascinating and thoughtprovoking. ‘Just be good till I return’ was selected and hung at the R.A. Summer Exhibition andVictoria has also had work hung at the RBSA Open and Leamington Spa Open. She hasproduced a new piece for the Summer Exhibition this year and has also started taking paintinglessons! With great results!
SIAN LOVESian is a Textile Designer and as such she has a natural, well developed, knowledge of colour,texture and stitchery. She is inspired by a love of the Welsh landscape and the coloursthroughout the seasons. Sian enjoys sketching the landscape and then reduces the lines andcolours to more abstract shapes. We saw the lovely sketches she had done of National Trust
Victoria Smith, Sian Love and Sue Steward
March 3rd Speakers Review by Julia Hayes.woods in Wales and the abstract she had produced from it, heightening the colours, using oilpastels to produce a vibrant effect. Sian is inspired by the work of David Hockney and likes theway he simplifies the landscape and his quirky use of colour.
She works on canvas often giving it a dark red undercoat before layering with different types oftorn handmade paper and working in to it with paint, followed by embroidery and appliquedepending on the piece.
Her work as a textile designer was more obvious in the second section of work. These piecesfollowed a trip to the V&A Museum where Sian had spent time sketching in the ceramics andtextile rooms. This lead to a sumptuously coloured piece, more pictorial, with a lovely design offlowers and lines, painted in acrylic and worked in to with pastels and sewing. Sian made afurther piece to accompany this, again with rich colours, blues and gold. It had a patchworkeffect, being made up of small layered pieces, all painted, embroidered and stitched to thewhole, like a series of rich intricate little pictures. There is great beauty in her use of design andcolour.
Sian also showed us her felt pieces. Handmade felt is laid on a canvas background, as if it hasbeen float mounted, the bright colours of the felt forming a landscape effect with flowersembellished with embroidery. The results are modern and contemporary.
SUE STEWARDTen years ago, Sue would not have imagined herself standing talking about her photography norfor that matter Photography being accepted as Art.
Sue, whose favourite subjects at school were science and maths, worked as a ComputerProgrammer. She bought herself a decent beginner’s DSLR camera and inspired by thescenery of North Wales and the landscapes around her home produced some beautiful images.We saw seascapes in North Wales, mystical images of Oakley Woods, sunsets and a wonderfulpicture of Chesterton windmill. All were beautifully executed and taken by someone with anexcellent eye for composition. She produced greetings cards from them, but did not take itseriously or think of it as being art until Victoria persuaded her to do Open Studios.
An interest in photographing flowers resulted in the purchase of a macro lens (for close ups)and developed into under water flower photography. The flowers are weighted down and leftovernight in a glass vase of water. Bubbles appear on the surface of the flowers and Sue enjoysexperimenting, placing the vase against different backgrounds and with varied lighting set ups.
The resulting close up shots have an abstract beauty, some looking like wonderful crewelembroidery and others appearing to be covered in pearls of light. Words cannot really describethe beauty of the images, so do look at her website www.newleafimages.co.uk
Sue has books of her images produced by Photobox, who she uses for all her work. To get theintense detail of the images she uses manual focus with a tripod. At first she used some cheapscrew on filters for close ups, (Amazon) but has now invested in a macro lens and a wide angledlens for landscape. She uses “Lightroom” to load her work to the computer and enable her to‘keyword’ the images. She prefers to work on the camera to get the images correct but willoccasionally make basic adjustments to the contrast or colours of an image. Lastly we sawsome of her latest work, very interesting images of skeleton leaves and some excellent shotswhere she had used 3 D folded paper shapes and then photographed them, producing a verynew modern designed look. Sue has an artist’s eye and is producing some excellent imageswith a fresh appeal to them.
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Jon Williams Sensational Clay
6th March – 4th May
Jon Williams’ solo show, ‘Sensational Clay’, is on tour fromthe Bilston Craft Gallery and has opened at our LeamingtonSpa Art Gallery. He has developed an installation of multisensory pieces and acoustic sonic pots. This means thatyou can tap on a pyramid of varying sized pots with thesticks provided and get a good tune going or justexperiment with an earthy rhythm.
You can delve into a sand box and pick out shelllike formsas you might on some exotic beach. Or just wander rounda table of giant boiled eggs, clay slices of toast, cerealbowls and upturned mugs, among other things.
I went to his Friday Focus talk and was so struck by hishappy character and his wonderfully committed attitude tohis work.
He said that this exhibition is the result of many workshopsthat he has taken involving children of all ages. He has been enthralled by watching them andseeing how they used the clay. He said several times how they surprised him. He showed us apicture of a young boy who had been given lots of clay coils. Jon loved the fact that this boy putthem on the floor and twisted theminto a long snakelike trail of spaghetti.A pot never came into it.
So by building on this straightforwardand innocent attitude to clay, Jon hasbeen inspired to play with histerracotta clay himself.
More and more potters are showingus that clay isn’t just there to makefunctional objects for the kitchen or toadorn our windowsills with sculpturalpieces. Clay is fun; it’s rough andready and everyone can get theirhands in it.
Sheila Graham (Potter)
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Congratulations to AMA member,Heather Bailey on winning the firstprize, with her work, “Islands”, at theUK Artists annual exhibition at theUrban Coffee Company in Coventry.The exhibition continues until Sunday5th April.
www.urbancoffee.co.ukwww.ukartistsonline.com
Congratulations to Heather Bailey
Penelope Thomas of Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum writes:Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum will be hosting another craft market event this Easterfollowing on from the success of our 2014 Christmas market. Over Easter weekend we arehaving an Easter Egg Hunt event with art activities, family trails and face painting. On Saturday4th April we would also like to provide an Easter art and craft market for visitors to enjoy. This isan even more ambitious event than in previous years, which have attracted 350 visitors in thepast.The art and craft market will take place around the galleries and there are 10 spaces available tosellers. These include half a table (approx. 90cm) and a plinth, costing £5 to hire for the day(11am4pm). If any of your members would be interested in taking part please direct them myway!I was also wondering if any of your members would be interested in taking part in our FridayFocus programme? There are a couple of Fridays in May and June that I am currently lookingfor speakers to fill, so anyone interested would be very much appreciated.
What's On Future Programme of ActivitesSunday 29th March, 2.15pmThe Craft Room, Leamington Art GalleryWorkshop format, in which Fiona Metcalfe , Ruth Daly and Susan O’Grady will present recentwork.
Bank Holiday Monday 4th May, 3.00pmThe Conservatory of the Pump Rooms, Leamington SpaJane Williams will talk about her recent work, being shown as part of Leamington MusicFestival, which runs from 1st to 5th May.
Wednesday 13th May, 10.30amThe Craft Room, Leamington Art GallerySpeaker, Tamsin Abbott, stained glass artist and illustrator.
For up to date information on AMA events visit the website:
www.associationofmidlandartists.org.uk
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AMA DAY TIME MEETINGS ARE NOWBEING HELD IN THE CRAFT ROOM,LEAMINGTON ART GALLERY ANDMUSEUM,THE ROYAL PUMP ROOMS,LEAMINGTON SPA, CV32 4AA.
A map, showing the location of the ArtGallery, can be found here,
Information on parking in Leamington can be found here,
The nearest car parks are:P3 St Peter’s Multistorey, which is just across the Pump Room Gardens from the Art
Galleryand
P9 Bath Place, which is listed under “Old Town” car parks.
Helen Hills, Professor of Art History at York University, is organizing a daysymposium at Compton Verney on the subject of Naples and Baroque Art (June17th 2015). For further details, email: [email protected]
The symposium is FREE although there is the usual charge for entry to ComptonVerney itself and entry is on a "first come, first served" basis.
