Competition Time!

Ah man, usual problem. Weeks fly by, and no new blog posts from me. I just seem to be busy a lot. What am I doing? Sometimes I don't know - the time just seems to speed past me whilst I stand still. But hey, actually, now I come to think of it, I did do a few things these past few weeks, so let me tell you about them.
The first thing I did was a week's worth of workshops at Salford Museum and Art Gallery. This was an opportunity I had applied for a few months ago. It was an open tender for artists to apply for to get the work, and I was really pleased to hear I was selected over quite a few other applicants to deliver the workshops, which I also had to plan. The exhibition was about the history of a local blind charity, so my idea was to make "tactile art", pieces that have touch, sound and even smell as integral elements. Here are some pictures of my initial versions, that I made in the planning stage.

Sensory picture of Thomas Henshaw, founder of Henshaw's
Society for the Blind

Sensory rainmaker

The idea behind these pieces was to introduce as many senses apart from sight, as possible. So the picture of the charity's founder is made up of many different textured surfaces. The rainmaker, which produces a sound, is also covered in differently textured objects, and a bit of pot pourri can be put inside with the lentils that make the noise to introduce a third sense, that of smell. So, this is what I made with the children that came to see the exhibition over half term. Generally, everything went really well; the kids were all great and very creative and engaged with the idea, and the activity made people more curious about the exhibition and its themes, so I'm pretty sure that means it was a success! The only problem I had, to be thought about for next time I do an activity like this, is that I misjudged which activity of the two would be the most popular. Oh course, I now know, if you have a choice between an object that makes noise and one that doesn't, 9 kids out of 10 will choose the noisy one! Obvious when you think about it!

Here is some of the work that the participants made:

 

 

 

 

Overall it was a really great experience, and if I can only get a bit more work like this, I'll be all set for my career as a community artist/artist! Hopefully this will prove to be a good calling card when I try and get other commissions like this.

In other news... back on the other side of my "job", I may have mentioned before that I made the decision to stop doing markets for a while. I just wasn't making any money doing them, in fact, sometimes I was actually losing quite a lot of money. The annoying thing is, I kept having this nagging feeling that if I just got my product selection/pricing/marketing/you-name-it right, then the big bucks would come rolling in. So I may return to doing markets one day, when I have that all figured out.
In the meantime, I met this guy called Simon at many of the markets I went to, where he was selling loads of great quality fine art prints under the name of Wraptious. Now, he has a really good business model that works well at markets, as he works with lots of different artists that all produce work for him to sell as various things - prints, cards, mugs etc. So instead of just having one style of work on his stall, he has about 20. This is clearly a very good idea.
He is currently running a competition for someone to be the next artist that he works with, and I want to be it!! I had to submit 3 images of my work, and it had to be work that isn't currently for sale anywhere else, so that discounted a lot of my best shots. I have some new work based on pictures I have taken in Manchester, but I wasn't sure they were of the right type to have mass market appeal. I have a new photo series that I'm working on, but it's not quite ready to unveil (more on that in another post, I think). So that left me with some of my recent painting work that I have been doing in my studio, which has been going GREAT!! Again, this is a topic I might return to, as there's lots of images to share. So,  I took some close up shots of some of my recently completed painting work, played about on the computer a bit, and submitted it! I was really happy with all 3 of the finished pieces - now I just have to hope the general public likes them.
Now, dear blog reader, this is where you come in! The way I become the next Wraptious artists is if I generate lots of "Likes" of Facebook for my work, or if I sell any prints through the Wraptious website. So, what I'm going to to do post pictures of the three works I entered, with the link to where you can "like" it underneath, so if you do like it (let's be honest here!) and you feel like helping me out (pretty, pretty please?!) you can click on the link and it's a very simple job to then "like" it. We gotta deal??

"Diana's Dream" Click to like

"Minerva's Dream" Click to like

"Neptune's Dream" Click to like

So, there they are. If you liked any of those thanks very much. Please reward yourself with a cookie or some other delightful treat. If you REALLY like them, you can also buy them from Wraptious as high quality prints for the length of time the competition is on (until November 25th). Just go to the competition website page, HERE.

Ok, that's all from me for now, I'll be back with more, hopefully soon!

What are the chances?

Right! Time to roll up the sleeves this Autumn and blog! I've been really neglecting it lately, partly from busyness, then from being on holiday, and then simply from a bit of blogging inertia, but that's all going to change! Oh yes! Really!

Ok, so what have I been up to? Well, loads of stuff. The Geocaching project I mentioned in the last post has finished now, and I think it was pretty successful. As a side shoot from that I have got quite into going Geocaching as a hobby, so maybe more about that another time. As I mentioned, we set up a Geocache to go on the global network as part of the project, but having submitted it I haven't been given the OK by the official Geocaching organisation, so it's not live yet. Chasing that up is one of the things on my "to do" list, so I'll let you know if it does make it. Having found a few official Geocaches myself now, I have a feeling they may ask us to move it, as it's currently pretty easy to find.

Other than that, I've been away in Hungary for three weeks. Hungary is kind of my second home, as it's where my husband's from, and I lived there with him for five years in 2000-2005, and we still go back regularly to see family and friends. 

We were based in Budapest which was a great place to live, and was/is full of young creative people making waves at ground level, not least my friend Peti, aka Petyka, who's a super talented street artist. Check out his website for lots of examples of his work, but here's one of my favourites, featuring lots of Budapest's architectural landmarks both famous and everyday, mixed up and given a cool urban twist. We own this as a large print and it always reminds me of Budapest whenever I glance at it.

Anyway, what I was trying to say was, although there's a good creative energy in the place, one thing it was lacking was a really good art gallery that put on internationally important shows. I've seen lots of interesting smaller exhibitions in various places over the years, but the national collections don't have a lot of great art in them, and the bigger shows have also been a bit lacking in star quality. However, I've been to a couple of art shows in the Hungarian National Gallery in the last year or so that make me think they are really trying to up their game. The first was a show about Post-Impressionism that I saw back in October that was excellent, and on this trip I saw a show about Dada and Surrealism that was awesome. Read more about it at the museum's webpage. It was full of really great work by the big names of the movement(s), and it was particularly resonant for me as I have been reading a book lately about chance in art that talked about a lot of the artwork here, including Marcel's Duchamp's 3 Standard Stoppages

In this work, Duchamp took metre long lengths of thread, and let them fall onto a canvas covered in glue. He then made these wooden measuring tools based on these new "standard" shapes that he had randomly created. This really chimed with a lot of things I have been thinking about in my art lately, where I want to try and actively re-create the chance marks you can see in my photographs. But how to make "random" marks? This is the question I've been trying to solve. I'm not sure I've come up with the answer yet, but here was my first attempt...

Yeah, so it's a random video of me hitting tennis balls covered in paint against some old wallpaper. Pretty surrealist, huh? I actually did this a few months ago. I had the idea and just went for it. This again shows the benefit of having a studio, you can try these crazy things and not worry that you're going to get paint everywhere. I want to try again in a bigger space, and maybe with more people involved instead of just me. But in the meantime, I think it did produce some pretty interesting images. Not sure what I'm going to do with them, but they're interesting.

Ok, as usual, more to tell you about, but let's do it later, OK?

Art Fair Report

So, my first Art and Craft Fair appearance of the Pre-Christmas season, or indeed, ever, was on Saturday. It was at Padiham, which is a smallish town about 30 miles to the north of Manchester, which I had never been to before, and which seemed like a nice little town. The Market itself was in the concert hall of the town hall building, which was a lovely wood panelled, art deco style room, and apart from me I guess there was roughly 15 other stallholders, selling knitwear, ceramics, sewn goods, other photographers, some painters, jewellery makers and a woodworker. So, a good mix. And although there were other photographers, my work was very different from theirs, as it was largely landscape or nature photography, so we complimented each other without being competition.
After spending last week fretting a bit about how my stall would look, I was actually quite pleased with the final result, which you can see here:

The proud smallholder with her wares

So, once I was set up, all I could do was wait for the people to come in and see whether they would want to buy any of my stuff. The doors opened at 11am, and there was a pretty steady stream of people until they closed again at 4pm. Lots of people stopped to look and just for a chat, and then one lady bought a card. Yay! My first sale! There was a bit of a lull in trading for a while after that, but then things picked up again and I sold several more cards. I was "warming up" a bit now, and getting better at talking to the people that stopped at the stand, and explaining a little bit of what my work was about and what inspired me etc. People were really genuinely interested and receptive, and said lots of kind, encouraging things,which was really nice. And then I sold one of my more expensive, giclee prints, which I wasn't necessarily expecting to do, so that was a lovely surprise. Sales in cards and stickers were steady after that. Several people really liked Anna's lamps, but nobody "fell in love" enough to actually buy one. And then, right at the end of the day, I sold another print. I was kind of hoping to sell a few more prints, but overall I was really happy with how the day went.

 I spoke with several fellow stallholders and got some good contacts, advice and ideas out of that, and I gave out my "business card" (actually a postcard flyer from an old exhibition, which I happen to have loads of left over) to lots of people, so overall I'm really happy with how it went. It was the first ever event like this for Padiham too, so I think they must have been really pleased as well. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming, so I will definitely go there again when they do their next market.

 Ok, onto the next! That will be the MAKE Art and Design Fair in Wakefield, on Wednesday 27th and Friday and Saturday 29th and 30th of November. It looks like the emphasis will really be on the "Art" side, not so much on crafts, so I'm really hoping that I will be a big hit there. I have a few weeks to prepare for that, so I'll take the lessons I learned here, (mainly, sell work mounted but not necessarily framed, and have a rack to put the prints in, so I can fit lots more on my stand!) and hopefully have a lots of success there!

The Giclée print I sold

Welcome to my blog!

Well hello and welcome to my blog! I am an abstract photographer who has recently made a couple of big, scary changes to her life. I've packed in the day job and gone full time as a working artist, and I've moved from the relative quite life in Exeter, Devon to the hustle and bustle of the big city in Manchester.

This blog will therefore be a record of my journey of finding out about the art scene in the North West of England and beyond, and in seeing if I can really make it as an artist in these tough economic times. I hope to share with you lots of examples of my work, of which the picture above is a fairly typical example, as well as other aspects of my day to day arty experiences, plus share the work of other artists/exhibitions/resources etc. that may be interest to any arty minded folk out there! So, if any of that sounds like your cup of tea, then WELCOME! Pull up a comfy chair, grab a brew and a biscuit and please join me in the world of EVERYDAY ABSTRACTS.