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I had a sunny Sunday in the Hepworth Wakefield studio working with artist Nichola Pemberton on ‘Scenic Sketches’ (2D-3D) – turning the studio floor into a giant 3D sketch, whilst also doing some string drawing on the windows. The workshop encouraged participants to be inspired by the landscape/cityscape out of the window and have fun experimenting with 2D and 3D lines and forms.

It was another busy weekend and, alas, there was no time for any outdoor adventures whilst the sun was out. Fortunately, Sir David Chipperfield had the insight to position the studios so that the windows faced the path of the afternoon sun. The studios were filled with light and the work was fully illuminated!

The Hepworth Wakefield: http://www.hepworthwakefield.org/

Just a quick one…. am loading up some pictures taken from half-term ‘Surprise, Surprise’ workshops this week, taken at Manchester Art Gallery.

We responded to Max Ernst’s ‘Petrified City’ and asked families to play surrealist word games in front of the painting in the gallery. We also asked them to try out Ernst’s frottage (rubbing) technique before creating a surrealist ‘chance’ composition in the studios…

Families’ interpretations of the ‘Petrified City’ were fascinating! Here are some of their surreal, poetic responses:

It’s a ritz cracker

Like a piano

Sad

It’s a full fat piece of cheese for the people playing multiple chess games underneath 

It’s a cloud falling onto a dolls’ house

It feels smooth

People watching a football match

I like this picture because it looks like a town with a sunset in Bedouin Land! Warm!

The moon revealed happy thoughts from the castle as it glistened in the sky

The hill was filled with petrifying memories as the destruction of the moon howled

Junk and horrible stories clattered together as they steadily expressed hopes that never came true 

The warm moon is lighting up the trains and the city

The icy sun makes the world dark in the country

The sun warms my heart in this warm picture

The water freezes in my brain

The fire burns in my eye

The bright moon shone over the fast trains that were passing underneath

The dull sun lacked light underneath the slow trains that were stopping overhead

The glaring moon bellowed out its glorious light at the speeding trains that were shooting past below

To see Max Ernst talk about the frottage technique, click on the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHdU4JfY-bU

More work (Facebook): http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150825399644128.510733.68496394127&type=1

It’s that time of the month again and I’ve had a great weekend working at Manchester Art Gallery with artist and film-maker Jessica Wild on our joint venture – interpreting surrealist artwork through sound, composition and montages!

Taking Max Ernst’s ‘Petrified City’ and other surrealist artworks in the permanent collection as the starting point, we invited families to embrace random collage-making and chance… on vinyl. Families were invited to create their own collage compositions on records which would, in turn, interfere with the way the stylus moved around the groove. Families could play the records to discover how their colourful collages created unique ‘chance’ sound compositions.

Families were also invited to create weird and wonderful photo-montages using the record covers to cut ‘n’ paste . Check out some of the cool and crazy artwork (above).

The message here is embrace the random and let your imagination wander, whilst developing a unique soundtrack for the artworks in the Modern & Contemporary gallery!

Vid clip uploads coming soon….

One of my workshops next month will tackle the theme of loops, lines and lace, so I decided to take a train ride to Birmingham to catch the ‘Lost in Lace’ exhibition at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, before it finishes next Sunday 19th.  The range of interpretations to the theme of lace from the 20 contemporary artists featured in the exhibition is impressive, and the level of concept, skill, scale and attention to detail keeps the average visitor engrossed for much longer than anticipated.

Quite a few of the artworks respond specifically to the exhibition space within the Gas Hall at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, as threads, panels and lacy forms literally slice through space, forming new perspectives, delineations and boundaries for the visitor to walk around and peer through. Responses range from the microcosm of a thread of lace – ‘Black Lace’, a video-sound installation by Kathleen Rogers; to the dark, otherworldly installation ‘After the Dream’ by Chiharu Shiota, featuring a row of white dresses floating in an intricate, webbed confusion of hand-woven threads (complete with a surveillance camera’s view which demonstrates how the space was painstakingly constructed).

The exhibition space itself is curated in such a way that the visitor can choose their own route around the exhibition, almost as if they too are weaving their own lacy path. There is much to see and walk around and plenty of to-ing and fro-ing, so it would be great if this could have actually been recorded and mapped out in some way!

To travel down by train across icy/snowy landscapes and find myself ‘Lost in Lace’ for nearly two hours was a great visual distraction and inspiration. My fingers were left twitching for needle, thread and paper to play with, pencils to scribble with and my head buzzing with ideas and possible responses. A trip to this exhibition is highly recommended and a pre-conceived idea of lace will be ripped apart and intricately re-threaded.

http://lostinlace.org.uk/

http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/collection-and-exhibitions/exhibitions/lost-in-lace/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Crafts-Council-UK/136690769684701

I’ve had a great day playing with colour in the atrium of the Children’s Hospital Manchester, as part of the +Culture Shots week!

Working with artist and Culture Shots volunteer Louisa Hammond, on behalf of Manchester Art Gallery, we invited people to have a go at playing with coloured acetate on the windows in the main entrance of the hospital. The idea behind Colour Pop comes from previous workshops, playing with acetate on windows as part of the ‘Interactive Laboratory’ and ‘Imagine’ – Anish Kapoor weekend sessions at the gallery (to see examples, click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/michikofujii/5525858773/in/photostream ).

The idea behind Colour Pop was simply to use the amazingly tall hospital windows, as a natural light box, upon which to place the acetate colours. As the sun began to move around the building in the afternoon, the most amazing colourful glow began to stream through into the waiting area, bathing visitors and patients in colourful light and projections. The acetate could be cut up and used as a way of creating colourful lines, images or abstract compositions. All ages took part, including a group of 30 children and their carers from the hospital nursery. We had quite a few compliments from staff, visitors and parents who enjoyed looking at and through the colourful windows… we also had a request to leave it up for the whole week!

Click here to listen to the Colour Pop audioboo: http://audioboo.fm/boos/658728-colour-pop

+Culture Shots is an innovative initiative of creative activities run by different cultural institutions across Manchester, taking place in all of the 5 Manchester Hospitals this week. Click here for more info:

http://www.healthandculture.org.uk/about/

Culture Shot blog: http://www.healthandculture.org.uk

Twitter (for audio boos): http://twitter.com/health_culture

‘The Guardian’:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/08/art-hospital-trust-culture-wellbeing

Manchester Art Gallery: http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/culture-shots/

Manchester Art Gallery Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150831844424128.511346.68496394127&type=1

Louisa Hammond: http://louisahammond.tumblr.com/

Lime Art: http://www.limeart.org/