PORTRAIT BOOTH

For the Open Studios event 2014, I came up with the idea of making a portrait booth. This was something I had done whilst working on a massive performance/installation about being on the dole in an old printworks in Vauxhall London in the mid 1980s with artist/performer Robin Whitmore who I shared a house with at the time. We had made a portrait booth where an artist instead of a camera produced your portrait. This seemed like an idea worth revamping. Ian Rolls, Alasdair Healey and I built and decorated the booth which then took pride of place in the Royal Square for the launch week end of Open Studios with great success, we even had several "just married" couples coming straight from the registry office! 

The booth has since been a feature of the Spice Fayre and the Branchage Film Festival.

HAMPTONNE RURAL LIFE MUSEUM

CULTURAL EXCHANGE RESIDENCY

In February 2014 I took part in this residency with 6 local and 4 French artists from St Malo. Myself, painter Ian Rolls, painter Lucie Marie Holt, painter Matt Daly, jeweller Lisa Le Brocq and conceptual artist Christine Finn, Photographer Javier Belmont, Printmaker Mélanie Le Maître, painter and collage artist Valérie Dechaume and painter G-Rem. The residency was to explore the concept of the artists communicating with each other and further audiences through visual language.

We did not get off to a very good start as the poor french artists were disrupted by weather and strikes. With true grit and determination they boarded a boat to England and then back to Jersey in an epic voyage to get to Jersey. After several bonding exercises we divided into four groups "out of a hat" and I worked with local painter Matt Daly and French printer Mélanie Lemaître.

The whole group decided to root the projects in morse code and in each of our personal mantras, each group expressed this in a different way. Our group started with the premise that we are all the same but different and that through any form of communication, subtleties are lost, misunderstandings happen and yet we still do manage to communicate with each other. We took photographic portraits of ourselves which were overlaid with each other in different combinations. We had limited resources so we decided to make a projection screen from toilet paper. We stitched with red thread to represent the blood that we share, straight lines of stitching represented understanding, knotted, chaotic stitching represented misunderstanding. Helix stitches represented our shared DNA. We laid the tissue out in a random way and printed our mottos which then became broken and disjointed when we hung them. We projected the images in a morse code pulse which spelled out "Only connect" a quotation from E.M. Foster

 LA BORDÉE DE BRANCHAGE

BRANCHAGE FILM FESTIVAL

COD FISH BALL

Each year, one of the celebratory events during the film festival is the Bordée on the Saturday night. Each year has a different theme and this year's was all things sub-aqua. I was part of the creative team which produced set, props and costumes: Giant clam shells, coral, pearls, bubbles, under sea mountains, mermaids and jellyfish.

A magnificent marimba player opens the evening

A smack of jellyfish

 Miss Seal-a Black introduces "Blind Date"

The Coral Queens perform a seaweed fan dance

Angler fish freak out

Sultry Miss Molly and her Swing Band

Busby Berkeley Pearls

BRANCHAGE SHOP WINDOW PROJECT

September 2014

Branchage Film Festival is a wonderful event showing a huge variety of fascinating films in unconventional venues; churches, National Trust properties and Heritage sites. This year, it's fifth on the island, local artists were invited to interpret either Branchage as a whole or one of the many fantastic films. I chose "La Planète Sauvage" an incredible surreal animation directed by René Laloux. I was particularly drawn to the rich colour and textured surface of the drawings. I one of the scenes, the bodies of seated figures dissolve and change shape which is what inspired the "mobile" construction of my piece. 

MATISSE INSPIRED

At d'Auvergne School I went to create some display boards. The Year 2s drew sea creatures inspired by photographs and the shapes were used as templates. At Open Evening children and parents were invited to paint and print coloured textures onto lining paper from which the creatures were then cut out. The boards were inspired by the Matisse Cut-Out exhibition in London.

Letter press

Letter press

Fishing Off Corbiere

 

Voracious mermaid chasing her lunch, printed on an old map

artwork

Artwork for a new print

Fun fun fun

 

Had fun making greetings cards with some Letterpress letters and numbers.

 

 



 

 

 



 

I used some of the elements of The Book of Kingdoms print to make these Jersey posters.

 

My Heart's in the Right Place

Collograph with wax and chine colle

skill

.......and by the professional photographer........

Finally........

Finally "The Book of Kingdoms" prints are complete, all 15 of them. I have learnt so much doing this, its been a great, frustrating, satisfying project. I'm taking them to be photographed today so that in the new year a poster can be reproduced.

yellow man

The yellow man is gone. He travelled to Guernsey to be exhibited in the JJ Fox exhibition and " a very discerning client" (Guernsey Arts Centres words) bought him. I'm thrilled to bits, although I will miss him, he's had a great year!
I do still have the rest of the series, in different colours, with different titles.
Here we are in the summer at the opening of the Open Studios exhibition.

Christmas card : Crazy Santa

 

 

                                                             Don't freak out! Dance!

Peculiar

One of the words which came up in the theatre workshops was "Peculiar". Jersey is a peculiar of the British Crown and so answers directly to the Crown, not the British Parliament. One thing I love about Jersey is stories, I wanted to include a sea monster as they often appear in tales of the sea and the sea is an intrinsic part of Jersey. So my peculiar monster swims past the peculiar rock (based on a 17th century map), the ship is the Janvrin, a cod trading ship built in Jersey, both are printed on hand made paper and the map is printed on part of a map of Jersey which was found at an auction and donated by a kind friend. My father is horrified that I have been chopping up maps which would otherwise be useful navigational aids!!!

Chine Colle

Experimenting with a bit of chine colle.
Tissue has a slightly glossy surface so the ink takes forever to dry. I will use hand made paper which is much more absorbant for the actual poster production line. Hoping to get most of this job done this week. It is Corbiere lighthouse of course (sorry dont know how to do accents....there should be one on the first e).