The ever changing life of an artist

Oh boy, it ended up being soooo long since my last post! But really, the last six weeks or so have been absolutely non-stop so that's why. This is literally the first free day I've had in ages. Much of it has been really fun, some has been simple hard work, and some has been unexpected difficult personal stuff that this isn't the forum to discuss, but all in all it's added up to a hectic time!

S, let's talk arty stuff that's been going on! As usual there's lots of ongoing stuff that I need to mention. So first of all, there's the big Geocaching project that I have become involved with. For those of you that don't know about Geocaching, it's basically like a real world treasure hunt where you use a GPS device which is hooked up to a worldwide network of "caches" that can be anything from a tiny camera film tube (remember them?) up to a cleverly camouflaged hollow log. Inside is usually a log book to sign and in the bigger ones some treasure you can take as long as you put something else in its place. It's basically the best known way ever to get kids to go on walks, as it makes them a real adventure. I have some really good friends that do it all the time with their kids, and I sometimes tag along, which when I mentioned it to another arts officer that was involved in the emerging artists project I talked about in my last post, was enough to get me involved with the project! (that's how my luck goes lately!) So, for the last couple of months, and until the end of August we are doing Geocaching events with lots of local schools and community groups. As part of my job to make it awesome, I arranged a meeting with a professional games designer called Holly Gramazio, who I had heard talk at the Future Everything conference I mentioned before. She has been involved in designing all kinds of awesome, real world games activities that you can find out about on her website. So travelling down to London to have a meeting with her was one of the things that kept me busy in May! She was able to give us some really good ideas about how to get the actual "treasure hunt" aspect of the event to run smoothly. Aside from that, we work with the kids before hand to find good hiding places, make their containers and the treasure, and make clues for others to find them with. Here's some pictures of some of the things we've done so far:

Our first batch or containers and Easter egg treasure

Dragons and their eggs made for a Fantasy themed treasure hunt

A well hidden cache

A really well hidden cache 

Containers for a WW1 themed hunt

The treasure to go inside

There's still lots more of these to go, including two events in Princes Park in Irlam to commemorate the WW1 centenary, that will be open to the public, but at the half way stage I would say the project is going really well! With the school we are currently working with we are hoping to put up a permanent Geocache that can go onto the worldwide network for anyone to find. Watch this space!

Right, as usual I have to dash off soon, so just time to tell you about my mixed fortunes at getting some of my artwork out there for the general public to see and buy!

On the plus side, I have started becoming a semi-regular trader at the wonderful Levenshulme Market. If you live anywhere near Manchester I really recommend checking it out. It's on every Saturday, but I go once monthly when the theme is "Handmade and Home". There's always lots of great food stalls and a bar at all the events though, and it's a really fun day out! I've been for the last two months - the first was great, with awesome weather, the second a bit of a monsoon, and fingers crossed for the next time I'm there, which will be July 7th!

How my market stall looks these days; regular blog readers will notice a degree of improvement from my earlier efforts!

I have also managed to get my work into an exhibition and an art gallery! Yay! The exhibition was part of "Fringe Arts Bath", a big annual arts festival taking place in that gorgeous city. Unfortunately the actual exhibition was on when things were at their craziest for me last month, so I couldn't go and see the exhibition. The lady that organised it kindly sent me a few shots of my work in situ, so here they are:

  

I wish I could have got to see this exhibition, but Bath is a pretty long drive from Manchester, and I struggled to even find the time to drive the pieces down for the show, let alone go again for the exhibition! And they are currently in the spare room of my friends house waiting for me to go and pick them up, because I couldn't get down there to collect them yet! Life as an artist can be so hectic sometimes!

Finally, there's my work in a gallery! It's the Mill Bridge Gallery in Skipton, a gallery dedicated to photography and sculpture. I have actually been in negotiation with Carina, the lovely lady that runs the gallery for several months to have my work up there, but she only has very limited space so she had to wait until some was freed up. So now I have a couple big pieces up on the wall there, and I left a few smaller pieces with her in case some more room becomes available. I must admit, it was a pretty proud moment, hanging my work in a commercial gallery for the first time! Here I am with my work, looking pretty darn pleased with myself! (Excuse the quality, it was taken by my husband, who was also excited!)

The two pictures in context, next to the work of a photographer I really like. Note the distressed frame on the top piece, which is a new innovation.

Right, well that's all there's time for today. Still lots to mention as ever, including how I nearly got included in a pretty prestigious exhibition, but then didn't, plus other exciting moments in the ever changing life of an artist! I know I say it every time, but I really will try and make it not so long until the next post!

New Exhibition, New Camera, New Pics!

Lots of new developments to tell you about! The main one is of course, the ongoing exhibition at Eccles Community Art Gallery. The first day that was open to the public was the Saturday just gone, so I went down there for the whole day to go and meet people and chat about my work. The gallery was pretty busy, I think mainly because one of the other artists exhibiting was a local man whose family has posthumously put on an exhibition of his work and invited down many other relatives and family friends. I chatted to several of these people, and sold a few prints to one of them, which was great! I also had a steady stream of other people who came and looked at my work over the course of the day, so as usual I had lots of nice chats about art with people, which I always enjoy. I also got interviewed by a journalist from Salford Online. I've just checked the website and it doesn't appear to be up yet - I will of course post a link to it from here when it comes online.
Ok, here's some photos of the gallery and me and my work hung in it:

The gallery as seen from the outside

The proud artist trying(and failing) to strike a natural looking pose

The work

The exhibition will be up until the 8th of February, and the gallery is open Tuesdays (10am - 3pm) and Saturdays (10am - 4pm) during that period. I will be there most Saturdays, probably just for a two hour time slot, so if you're in the area, do please come on down and say hello!

In other news…. I finally have a new camera! I haven't really mentioned it here much before, but ever since I have gone full time as an art photographer, ironically, I haven't had a camera! I dropped my beloved and much used old Minolta back in June, and as it was badly in need of replacing anyway (I'd had it for about 8 years, which in technology terms is about a century I guess), I didn't even try to get it fixed. Instead, I was planning to buy a new one myself when the sale of our house went through and we released some of the equity tied up in that. But, as regular readers will know, that isn't exactly going to plan, so luckily for me my lovely family clubbed together and bought me one as a Christmas/Birthday/You Owe Us Big Time present.
 I wasn't sure what to go for, so I bought a photography mag and scanned all the reviews, and then with a little research I found the shop in Manchester that seems to cater to professional photographers; a place called Calumet. So I went there and they were really helpful and gave me pretty good advice I think, and in the end I plumped for a Canon EOS 70D

It's not like a real serious professional photographer's camera, but I would say it's probably at the top end of the fairly ambitious hobby photographer's range, and I think that's as good as I need for the type of images I take. Because the photographs I take are pretty up close I also splashed out and got a fancy new Macro lens as well, which will hopefully add another dimension to my photography, so I'm really excited about that. I've only had it just over a week, and I haven't taken it for a good long photography session outside yet (hopefully soon!), but just in playing around with it and learning it's basic functions I've already seen how much better it is than my old camera, so I'm really excited about the kind of shots I should be able to get with it!

One of the jobs I've been doing so far this week, is editing and photoshopping the huge backlog of images I have , from way back when I went to Hungary in October. I borrowed my mother-in-law's Nikon on that trip, and took about 300 of my "Photo Abstract" images there, which I've only slowly begun to process, partly because I knew I already had such a large back catalogue of images to use for launching myself on the art scene. But I'm a big believer in keeping things fresh and challenging yourself to do new things, and now I have my new camera I can do that. So, I've made a deal with myself that I have to get these "old" photos processed before I can fully move onto the new stuff.

You don't always know until you do the Photoshop magic on them, which shots are going to turn out to be your best, and I'm not sure whether any of the ones I've processed yet are up there with my very best work, but here are some of the highlights of the 100 or so pictures I've done so far:

Maybe slightly different colour palettes than usual for me; I've noticed blue is a colour that seems to dominate my work a lot, I guess because of the nautical subject matter of some of them. Anyway, these are in warmer, and more pastel shades than is typical for me, which I like about them.
Drop me a line and let me know what you think of them if you like!

OK, there's loads more news to share, but in the name of brevity lets leave it there for now, and I'll be back soon with the rest of the updates.

New Year, New Adventures!

Hello everyone, and welcome to Photo Abstracts in 2014! The start of a whole new year! I have lots of plans for the coming 12 months, although still no over-arching "master plan". I guess it's early days yet, still. But for now, I have lots of ideas and projects to keep me busy! And so far, 2014 is looking promising!

Well, I think I can safely tell you now about one of the exciting things I was hinting at before the new year. I am going to be one of the exhibiting artists at Eccles Community Art Gallery from January 18th until February 8th! As I mentioned several posts ago, the lovely Karen, who is one of the ladies who runs the gallery, and I kept in touch after meeting at the Salford Arts Development evening, and she has booked me in as one of the artists for their first show of 2014! Yay!

 The gallery is a not-for-profit run place, whose chief aim is to bring art to the local community and to give local artists a platform to exhibit their work. As such, I'm not predicting huge volumes of sales from this event (which is probably the way to approach any exhibition anyway, in my experience so far), but I do think it should be an excellent way for me to build a local audience for my work, so it's really exciting for me!
The gallery is open 10-4pm on Saturdays, and 10-3pm on Tuesdays, and I am planning to be there all day on the opening day, Saturday the 18th of January, and for at least a part of each of the other days that the gallery will be open whilst my work is exhibited there. (That's Jan 21st,25th,28th and Feb.1st, 4th and 8th). So, of course, if you are anywhere near Eccles on any of those dates, you MUST pop in and say hello!.

Other exciting things that may come from this; I popped into the gallery yesterday to talk to Karen and meet Elaine, the other lady who runs the gallery, and they were telling me that they have good links with the local online news outlet,Salford online, so it might be possible to get a profile, and maybe even an interview up on their web page to coincide with the exhibition! Exciting opportunities indeed! Of course, if and when these things appear I shall post links to them here, but for now, here is the gallery's webpage and Facebook page.

In other news…. another little job I had on my "to do" list for the start of the year, was enter a Postcard for the International Postcard Show 2014, which is an annual exhibition run by the Surface Gallery in Nottingham, which sounds really interesting. I was going to explain how it works, but then realised they had already done it far better than I could hope to on their website, so I shall simply quote them;

"Surface Gallery is delighted to present our first exhibition of 2014, the International Postcard Show. This exciting exhibition is a highly popular event at Surface Gallery, with all entries accepted and included in the show. It will feature hundreds of original creations in an array of different media by established artists, students and newcomers from all over the world. Hundreds of postcard-sized artworks will be on sale during the exhibition at £15 each, so this is a fantastic chance for budding art collectors to snap up an original work of art at an affordable price.
Once again all participating artists will have the opportunity to exchange their postcard with another artist selected at random at the end of the exhibition. The aim of this remote exchange is to foster new connections and encourage ongoing communication amongst artists from diverse backgrounds and different parts of the world."

So, even if my postcard doesn't sell, I'll get an artwork back from another artist - I suspect that this is what will actually happen anyway, and I'm fine with that, as it sounds pretty exciting!

Anyway, I have mentioned before how I always leave things to the last minute, and this was no exception. The deadline is this Friday, and of course entries have to be mailed, so I rushed to get my entry completed yesterday morning before dashing to the post office in the pouring rain to get it sent. I only started it yesterday as well, so it was done in a bit of a hurry, but I am quite pleased with the result nonetheless. This is something I've been sort of experimenting with for a while, and want to do more of; using my photos to create collages. Ok, so enough yapping, here's my finished postcard:

The show runs from January 15th to February 8th - pretty much exactly the same as my exhibition in Eccles. But, if I can find the time, I'd quite like to go and have a look at it, as it seems like a really fun idea, and I'm curious to see what the other artists managed to squeeze onto their relatively small canvas!