Dove Summer Courses 2017

This year we are running two studio-based courses and one mainly outdoor-based course: details as follows:

Landscape into Etching

July 18, 19, 20

Tutor: Jenny Graham

Fee: £175

Times: 10 – 4

Further details to be announced: briefly, this course is a marriage between getting out in the landscape to draw, and coming back into the studio to make prints, so it is designed for both painters and printmakers, or people wanting to develop either of those and the links between them. Suitable for all levels of ability.

 

Mokuhanga – Japanese Water-based Woodcut and Monoprint

August 15, 16, 17

Tutor: Robin Frood

Fee: £175

Times: 10 – 4

Further details to be announced; briefly, you will learn a technique that uses the free flowing water-based inks of Mokuhanga to create work that either has structure and can be repeated, using woodcut, or the one-off approach of monoprint, or a combination of both. Suitable for both beginners and more advanced students.

Woodwork and Tree House Design

May 6 & 27

June 17, 18

July 8 & 22

August 12, 13 & 26, 27

September 2 & 16, 17

Tutor: Jim Blackburn

Fee: £30 per day,  or by donation, of skills, materials, money…

Times: 9 – 6

Taking part in designing and building the Dove Tree Hide will be a very broad and project-specific activity. Participants will learn basic carpentry, joinery and green woodworking skills, ie splitting and cleaving oak, as well as how to use more modern materials and connections. Tree species will be considered and discussed, as will wood science, and building biology (why wood rots etc). We will explore how structures work, designing with the materials at hand as we make and build.

Jim writes: ‘The last thing I want is for people to feel any pressure on them as regards ability or experience as we will be a mixed group of people; young and old, male and female, skilled or unskilled. I will be filling in the blanks (of the tree house build) as necessary so as not to lean  heavily on the group, rather I am looking for an exciting voyage of discovery, design and making!’

Please contact Bron Bradshaw at bronbradshaw@yahoo.com, or phone 01458 850682 or text 07905644015, to register your interest in any of the above courses, and I’ll send you the booking form and further details.

 

Regular etching classes start again in October: please contact Bron if you are interested (Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday mornings)

ABCD “Repetition”

This gallery contains 8 photos.

Originally posted on barleybooks:
We gathered at the Dove last Saturday in warm sunshine. Some of us had visited BABE – the biennial Bristol Artists Book Event. My finds included a large and jolly picture book with a blackly humorous message (from OttoGraphic),  a lovely little hand-painted floppy zigzag from Andrew Law, and some simply…

Ceramics at Messums, Tithe Barn, Tisbury

Sculpture by Bridget McCrum outside the Tithe Barn

Material: Earth, A survey of Ceramics is on at the beautiful tithe barn in Tisbury where Messums have a gallery. Catch it while you can: it finishes next week (30th April). And next weekend there is a public event there: Clay Festival: Making and learning for the whole family.

Here are some of the works that caught my eye – among the many.

Dominid Welch sculpture

Stephanie Buttle: performance with pottery

Alison Britton: Upland

Grayson Perry: Vase

Adam Buick: Moon jars

Christie Brown: Statue

Tithe barn display

Bouke de Vries: Dead Nature Chaos

Christie Brown: The Uncanny Playroom

Sandy Brown: Platter

View of exhibition

KaoriTatebayashi: In the dark of night

Elisabeth Fritsch: Counterpoint vase

Sam Bakewell: a messenger, a smuggler

It’s a little hard to find as we spotted no sign posts: but if coming from Hendon direction, take an (unmarked) left as you enter Tisbury and can see what looks like the High Street sloping down ahead. A mile or so, and you are there. Really worth the trip if you love ceramics.

Forest Bathing

The path to the trees

I’ve just been reading a Facebook post about Shinrin-Yoku, which translated means ‘Spending more time around trees’. Which is what I’ve been doing this last couple of beautiful days; not just spending time around them, but taking what the Japanese call a ‘Forest Bath’. Lying under them.

The Biggest Pine

All the more enjoyable because these are all trees that we planted nearly forty years ago, so they are family.

Scots Pine family

The smell of the Pine resin heated by the sun was quite intoxicating, and no doubt mightily healing as well. Lucky, because I was in search of healing.

Wych Elm trunks

These pale trunks are those of a Wych Elm, which was grown from a cutting Roger took from a hedge up the lane. Wych elm is said to be a bit more resistant to Dutch Elm disease, which shows no mercy to our native Elms.

Wych Elm seeds

Here in the foreground are the embryonic seeds of the Wych Elm; still not much sign of leaves yet. And the Ash tree: its flowers are a thing of wonder – just look at this exotic beauty!

Ash flowers

Or this: the furled leaves of the Wild Service Tree:

Wild Service Tree leaves

Evening on its way now: time to go in, well bathed in Forest. Well healed.

Winged

ABCD (Artists’ Book Club Dove) meeting at the Dove today, to share work done on the topic of ‘Winged’. Ama Bolton usually records the work in her blog, but she is in Poland at the moment, so I’ll do it, using photos Jane Paterson took.

Tree Spring Book, Clare Diprose

This is called a Spring book as it starts off folded in half like a book, and then quite literally springs into shape when you let go of it.  Look carefully and you see the birds. I’m collecting poems about trees at the moment, and this tree reminds me of lines from a lovely poem by Andrew Marvell, called ‘The Garden’ – “Casting the body’s vest aside/My soul into the boughs does glide;/There like a bird it sits and sings,/Then whets and combs its silver wings.” Lots of poets in this tree.

Tree Spring book from above

Winged Words, Caroline Mornement

Caroline found the right book by chance, fortuitously called ‘Winged Words’ and altered it to make this explosion of birds and words. I couldn’t remember the title of the book (see Jane Paterson’s book below about memory – or lack of it) so Caroline emailed me this:

Winged, Karen Young

A many winged book; an ingenious piece of paper engineering, with details and inserts that you don’t see here.

Insects, Judy Warbey

Judy painstakingly drew 100 insects or so onto handmade Korean paper, and constructed this delicate spiralling book.

Winged, Janine Barchard

Upside down, but the best way to see all the pop ups in this book, and the nice details on the spine.

 

Memory, Jane Paterson

Last not least: having set us the topic of Winged, Jane had so many ideas she couldn’t settle on one, so made this book about memory and how it comes and goes as we get older. Ebb and Flow (more Flow and Ebb though).

A little bit like an art week?

This gallery contains 2 photos.

Originally posted on rosalind marchant:
I have just signed  up to show my work at a friend’s studio in Lauzerte during a national “arts and craft” weekend called  “Les Journées Européennes des Métiers d’Art ” (JEMA).   JEMA takes place during the first weekend of April…. well, Friday 31 march until Sunday 2 April….  and…

Talking with the Clay

Acoma Parrot dish

This is a little dish I bought in Gallup on our trip to the American South West last summer. It set me off in a journey of discovery of Native American, and specifically, Pueblo pottery, from the area we had visited (sped by, actually, on Route 66). I found a great book called Talking with the Clay, by Stephen Trimble, who like me had been grabbed by this pottery after his first acquisition of a Pueblo pot. There is a picture on the flyleaf of the book of him cradling his pot:

and before I ever saw that picture, I cradled my pot too:

This is work that is clearly to be handled, probably for ceremonial reasons – Stephen seems about to tip something out, and I seem to be offering something. The tactile quality is partly down to the fact that these pots were burnished, not glazed, so have a soft and sensual accessibility. So I set about making some, using my sketches and photos from the trip. Mine are not painted, like many of the pueblo pots, but incised (I’m an etcher, after all, and anyway I no longer have the extreme steadiness of hand required for painting these).

Monument in the Valley

Here I had a go at the ‘corrugation’ technique used in my Parrot pot.

Thunderbird Mesa in the light of the Full Moon

Seen as I emerged from our Hogan in Monument Valley for a pee. So glad I did! The huge cliff opposite us was bathed in moonlight and quite surreal. Unforgettable.

Snakeweed

Snakeweed in Monument Valley. The desert floor was covered in this plant with its soft yet persistent yellow and glaucous green leaves (not here: the brown is the shadow from the fierce morning sun).

A Turkey Buzzard inspects us

At the house in Aztec we had a huge 2 storey high verandah roof, and each morning, after warming their feathers on a rock down the valley, a group of turkey buzzards flew up to say hello. This one nearly came under the roof, and this drawing was based on a still from a movie I grabbed on my phone. How else could I record this beautiful creature? Too quick for the hand/eye/brain!

Aztec Cliff in Moonshine

Another night of moonshine. (And getting up in the night – I recommend it!) The night before the full moon, and I was looking out for the white foxes that come out at night here, and can sometimes be seen running along the arroyo (dry river bank, the white strip in the middle). Well camouflaged by the white rock in the moonlight, I think.

So there are my pots. Nowhere near the extreme skill and beauty of the Pueblo pots, but I’ve so enjoyed making them. There are more on the way. I’ll post.