The Shed is Shed

Shed - Collect - Shed finished at the weekend. The exhibition has provided many amazing opportunities for me to show and share my work, to collaborate with two excellent artists, to meet new people - Herbert staff, volunteers and visitors. As always it's been the opportunity to connect with people that has really made the whole thing worthwhile.

The completion of the exhibition marks the end of my involvement with the Coventry Centre for Contemporary Art. I'm passing this on to The Pod who are working with Fargo to ensure this great resource can continue to propagate art projects and ventures. Many thanks to everyone who has been involved with the CCCA over the last 5 years.

Now onto the next thing...!

Printmaking Workshop

Joanna Rucklidge ran two printmaking workshops on 18th October, using found objects and reclaimed materials. Adults and children alike left with great art works under their arms, big smiles and messy hands!

The 79.7% of the way through party

Unusually for a Private View the celebration of our exhibition Shed - Collect - Shed came 79.7% of the way through it's duration. This gave visitors an opportunity to look at some of the items that members of the public have collected over the last 8 weeks and a few extra works and items added since the opening day. It was a great evening and lovely to see so many familiar faces. Thanks to the Herbert Art Gallery and Arts Council England / Lottery funding for making it all possible.  

Workshops (Part 2)

A second Saturday of workshops (4th October 2014) produced more wonderful work by some incredibly inventive and creative children. Here's a few of the photos from the day  ...

 

 

 

Found Object Workshops

On Saturday 27th September I ran a day of drop-in workshops at The Herbert for anyone who wanted to take part. It was a great day of creative play using found oject photographs as the stimulus. The idea was to consider the objects more; to add worth and value to these discarded things; to allow them to spark creativity and imagination; to have fun.

There were 5 different activities people could take part in, here are some example pictures of what was produced:

1) Using a found object as a starting point for a drawing or picture. 

2) Creating a display case and showing objects inside.

3) Producing Found Object Top Trumps.

4) Making a story board narrative involving the objects.

5) Found object equations - considering the subjective value of an item.

It was a lot of fun and some really inventive work was produced. What struck me was the lack of fear that children have when they set out to create something. So often adults can be paralysed with a sense of worry or fear about messing up a drawing or not knowing how to start. And yet the children who took part weren't phased by drawing a dragon or whatever; they just went for it - and usually they turned out brilliantly. It's a good thing to learn from.