another chance to see work, and me too

I’m opening the studio again for Artists at Home, part of the Dulwich Festival. Saturday and Sunday, 18, 18th May, 11-5pm. It was great to have visitors last week, some trying out calligraphy, some eating cake!
 
 

 

 

I’ve also been delivering work for upcoming shows, for those of you nowhere near London. I’m really pleased to have work at the Bowie Gallery in Hay on Wye. Bowie also have a stand at the Festival, where I hope all the literary types will like the texts on the pots. Hay’s a fantastic town – I was amazed how many interesting art and craft galleries there were there as well as the bookshops, market and castle.

heavy lifting at the studio

My workshop will be open as part of Dulwich Festival Artists’ Open House tomorrow & Sunday – 8/9th May 2013. This year I’m also opening the following weekend – so two possibilities for you!
 
I’ve been making some new work with a beach theme for this and for Cambridge Contemporary Craft‘s Beach show in June. These have extracts from Sorley Maclean’s Hallaig.
 

An artist’s life is rarely lolling about reading poetry, though: this week, in preparation for the Open House, I have been mostly helping to move large objects!

pots and text: no new thing

Another visit to West Norwood Cemetery, for this year’s Curious Trail: this time in the Columbarium and the Greek Orthodox part of the cemetery.
 
It’s a salutary reminder that pots and text have been important to people for a long time: there’s an amazing variety of shape, material, font, calligraphy there, including fantastically archaic engraved ones – I couldn’t quite make out the words, but there are some.
 
 
Last week I was struck by some stories of the Greek community: there’s a Greek Orthodox section in West Norwood, amazingly full of classical pediments, but crammed together: luckily also still square – there’s subsidence in many parts, the ground heaving and toppling the monuments in a rather disturbing way.
 

 
 
I’ve almost decided what my piece for the Trail will be: based on the Greek sisters killed in 1942 and the poem by Edith Sitwell – Still falls the rain. The Trail will open at the end of June – I’ll post details nearer the time.

do not go gentle into that good night..

I’ve been visiting West Norwood Cemetery, one of the Magnificent Seven, to prepare for this year’s Curious Trail.

They hold the original records there, in wonderful copperplate, and I’ve been getting my hand in to the style by copying the details out.

You can already get leaflets on the interesting and famous people buried there – Music Hall performers and Sportsmen – from the Friends, but there are still poignant traces of stories there.. The sisters Zinopoulos, Sophi and Christine, dying four months apart in the dark days of 1941/2.Next time I will visit the plots – 39474 and 39494 – to see how far apart they are now…

craft, digital, and guest blogging

I’ve been thinking about the overlap between digital and objects for a while – having spent so many years in the digital world I’m not sure I’m ready to go back! So I love this non-digital gps system from the 1920s.After last week’s chip programming at the Big Bang Fair, I’ve been thinking about investigating a bit of programming myself. I found the most amazing programmable textile site – http://www.kobakant.at/DIY with ideas like this fabric speaker, or the sewable LilyPad Arduino chip.
I found these via Carol Torgan’s wearable technology pinterest site – which makes me understand the attraction of pinterest for the first time.
 
I’m still investigating innovative approaches to ageing, filling up my Nesta Ageing Blog while still an intern there.
 
This week I also guest-blogged on the Nesta site. Appearently it sounds like me, which I hope is a good thing: it’s kind of what blogging is about, anyway.

craft for kids at the Big Bang

I’m still thinking hard about craft and innovation during my Internship at Nesta, but I helped out at the Big Bang Fair last weekend, which reminded me that all craft comes from making things, and there’s just as much craft in software engineering as making pots.
 
Nesta’s stand Make Things Do Stuff had great ideas, like making new toys from bits of old. Remember this in Toy Story 2?
 

 
 
I was helping kids programme flashing badges – starting with a flow chart on a computer, and downloading the instructions from there onto the on-board chip. It was great seeing kids get the hang of it – the feedback of having a real object responding to their computer instructions really worked to get them excited.
 
The sensibility was often ‘home-made’: I loved Technology will save us and their plywood approach.
 
The best use yet of a 3D laser printer was there: the ability to print objects from within the World of Minecraft. My nephews have built me a house there, so I’m particularly keen, it’s so much more than animated Lego. I like to watch the sunrise over the sea below….
 
There’s more ideas for making stuff at http://makethingsdostuff.co.uk/search/find-stuff
 

memes and nudges at Nesta

I’m still at Nesta – working on the Living map – a collection of vignettes describing interesting ideas and projects, amongst other things. My favourite is still Mindings. There’s a similar map at The Age of Creativity for arts project for older people, which I hope to explore further.
 
Nesta also have a fantastic idea – The Randomised Coffee Trial – where people at Nesta are randomly matched to half a quick coffee-break together.
 
Started by another intern, the blog about it is the most popular blog entry at Nesta for a while. It’s partly a great idea, partly a great ‘meme’ , a kind of cultural gene propagating through the culture. It also reinforces the idea of a nudge as a good way to effect social and cultural change.
 
I’m writing a blog for Nesta on what it’s like to be an intern – it’s also to reflect what it’s like being an older person starting again, I think. I’m already forgetting what it was like to not work in an office – it now feels so natural to be dressed in black and white smart clothes and pointy shoes. I’ll cross-post here when I finish it, you can see whether the tone is different as well as the clothes.
 
I’m still getting to the workshop at the weekend – so more images of pots next week!