TinkeringTimes

Paper cut

Yesterday I ran away from home. I shirked family life and wandered off into Manchester.

Firstly I popped into the office to pick up something I needed, and ended up doing a bit of a spring clean to help work off a bad mood. It pretty much worked.

Then I spent far too long drinking a coffee and reading Selvedge, which is always a welcome distraction, and reminded me just how much, in a parallel life, I'd love to be making a living working with textiles.

And rounded the day off with the one thing I'd actually intended to do, visit the last day of the exhibition Procession at Cornerhouse. It was a wonderful, warming and though provoking celebration of English life, tradition, people, local heritage and the future. (More here)

And then, a lovely surprise. I stopped off in the small but perfectly formed shop on the way out of Cornerhouse, happened to pick up Creative Review which I haven't looked at for about 3 or 4 years, and opened it on a random page only to find my friend's work being featured.

Helen Musselwhite is a talented paper cut artist. It's gorgeous work, and she's a lovely lady. Not only was she invited to illustrate an article, but they've shown more about her work and studio, and interviewed her for the online version here.

As well as the illustration she created for them, the article shows more examples of her stunning work. I know she'll be thrilled, humbled and overwhelmed by having been commissioned by Creative Review, but Helen you deserve it, congratulations!

You can buy your own very reasonably priced artwork from her here

Pollocks to it.

OK humour me, yes this is a child's painting not in fact a Jackson Pollock. (Depsite the clearly way above average use of mass, movement, balance and confidence of colour)

However what I love most about this is the genius who is my toddler's key worker at nursery, who spent a long time on toddlerboy with this until she finally got the story out of him that what he has painted here is...... "daddy cooking beans in the sunshine"

And that is why I love good nursery staff!

More Festival

Following up my last post about Manchester International Festival, I've just discovered the trailer for It Felt Like a Kiss. I have less and less idea what to expect the more I find out, other than I expect to be amazed - in a very, very good way indeed.

Procession

I've been very excited for quite a while about this year's Manchester International Festival. We're lucky to have such an incredibly ambitious and creative set of events just on our doorstep.

 

I bought tickets for It Felt Like a Kiss the day they came out, and am really looking forward to Jeremy Deller's Procession on July 5th.

And as if that weren't enough, this amazing woven badge of an invite dropped through my letterbox. I get a lot exhibition preview invites and don't make very many but there's no way on Earth I'm missing this one. Jeremey Deller (Turner Prize Winner whose work is actually interesting...), as part of Manchester International Festival, at my second home of Cornerhouse, with a textiles based invite? You betcha I'll be there! I'm quite intrigued too as to how you turn a live procession event into an exhibition. By the way you can be part of the Procession if you're quick - more *here*

Oh and whilst on full Festival excitement mode, I was caught out hook line and sinker by the marketing gimmicks and bought one of their bags made from the publicity banners, recycled into all sorts of designs.

Children in galleries

I was in Orkney at the tippy top of Scotland last week. It was a wonderful relaxing break. Whilst there I visited the much hyped Pier Arts Centre to see if all the fuss was justified.

 

It was an absolutely stunning building, once the office and store for the Hudson Bay Company, recently extended and reopened with sympathetic but iconic architecture. Inside hung temporary exhibitions on the ground floor, and on the first floor, the permanent collection of modern British art (think Barbara Hepworth and the St Ives school of art). I came away wowed and utterly in love.

 

And then as I mulled it over some more I realised I hadn't seen any evidence anywhere of people actually engaging with the work. In many galleries now (and in many I've worked in myself) there are family activities, family corners, 'interactives' (i.e. hands-on stuff to do that are permanent parts of a particular exhibition), signs of projects with young people or community groups that took place and have been incorporated into the exhibition design...

But there was none of this on show. A flaw I thought, so went back to see if I'd missed something. And looking round again it seemed I had. I noticed, upstairs in the permanent collection, something I'd seen so many galleries say they do but really don't. Hang art for children. What this usually turns out to be is art picked because the curator thinks it will appeal to children, sometimes assisted by the Education Officer (in more forward thinking places anyway). It might have bright colours or patterns, or some kind of humour. But invariably it's hung at standard gallery level - eye level of a 5'6"ish adult, or just above.

 

Pier Arts Centre has turned some potentially problematic architecture to its advantage - small low level walls with big chunky windows have been used because of, rather than in spite of, their scale, to show valuable, historic, original pieces of work at all levels. Some only a few inches off the ground. Several times I sat down cross legged on the floor to look more closely at favourite pieces like the one below.

 

Stooping, crouching, kneeling and crawling seemed by far the best way to explore the work in all its finery. A much more integrated and authentic approach to making galleries more accessible to children than simply selecting the jolly stuff and hoping for the best.

(And for anyone wondering, yes it was accessible to people with mobility related disabilities too, I checked that out having had the same thought whilst I was there).

It was a great way to revisit and rethink the way I work with galleries in the future.

words and pictures

It's a tough call which I love more, words or pictures. They both do such wonderful and different things and really my life revolves around both, when I'm at work and when I'm at play.

So it seems appropriate to give a little shout out here to my friend MyTarPit and his new project. For the past year he's been sneaking mini street art drops here there and everywhere across the world. And now you can get one, he'll just send it to you without you even having to leave the house. For the small price of just... 200 words! Yes that's right 200 of your finest handcrafted words. Genius. Now that's what I call affordable art.

Find out more on his 200 words blog

back to art

I'm very lucky. I love my job, I work from home, and I get asked to work on some amazing projects.

Currently I'm researching British artists for a particular exhibition, that need a particular set of skills.

I'm not always bowled over by contemporary fine or installation art, much of it is fraught with problems for me. But this project has renewed my faith and I wanted to share my finds...

Christil Trumpet

 

Travellers

Lisa Ashcroft

Jesus stuck in bubble gum again

Karen Whiterod

Tipping Point II

Karen Logan

Snow White

Ruth Spaak

Shine

Janine Woods

Nest II

Claire Weetman

Drawing a Crowd III

None of these single images posted in isolation on my blog really does full justice to their work so do visit their sites and find out more for yourselves. Amazing, inspiring, rewarding worlds to get lost in for a little while...