Morocco for Christmas

Mainly because Morocco is not Christmassy at all, though we did spot a tree with helpful bits of cotton wool on it

And this might come in handy too, if only we were here for New Year (we’re not)

But what we HAVE had is a lovely little Riad to stay in, in the centre of Taroudant

And weather in the ’20’s

And some adventures.

More later …

The Handwritten Word: details of course

Amazing Space

The Handwritten Word

July 14 & 15

Tutor: Kathryn John

At Dove Studios, Butleigh

Course times: 10am – 4pm

When was the last time you sat down and wrote with ink and paper? Scribbled out a misspelled word or found spots of leaked ink upon your fingers from a malfunctioning pen?

Markmaking

At a time when our lives and lists, stories and notes have become part of a digital world we will spend a weekend together getting back in touch with the flow of the handwritten word. We will explore using experimental processes to get us moving and making marks.

Sgraffito with charcoal rubbed in

With full permission to get it wrong, to make a mess, we will return to the joy of what it is to write with our whole bodies and not just the tips of our fingers. Using handmade vegetable, oak gall and berry inks and a variety…

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Nature into Print: details of course

This gallery contains 6 photos.

Originally posted on Amazing Space:
Etching by Jenny Graham NATURE INTO PRINT July 3 – 5, 2018, 10 am to 4 pm Tutor : Jenny Graham Fee: £180 Using aspects of the natural world students will explore different aluminium etching techniques. Discussions about creative interpretation of the environment will be combined with practical exercises on…

Making Prints for Books; details of course

Amazing Space

Making Prints for Books is a 3 day intensive course combining printing with bookbinding, with Bronwen Bradshaw and Pennie Elfick. Dates: 10, 11 & 12 July

Concertina Book ‘Lauzerte’ with a series of etchings printed as a strip

The aim of this course is for participants to make a handmade book containing hand printed artwork and maybe words too. The facilities of the Dove print studio will be available for students to make book content, using drypoint and/or lino and woodcut, monoprint and collagraph, with plenty of guidance and tuition on hand to advise on choices and the techniques involved.

The idea of having 2 tutors is that one (PE) will teach the printmaking and the other (BB) will keep her hands clean and help with the bookbinding. We are hoping for a good take up on this course so that we can have 2 tutors, otherwise Bron will be…

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All Blue, in Art and Music

Prussian Blue is one of the most used pigments in the etching studio here: a wonderful rich, reliable colour, and I’ve never, till now, stopped to wonder where it originated from. I found these fascinating revelations on facebook this morning, which wouldn’t let me share it, so I’m posting the link and hoping you will enjoy it as much as I did.

Prussian Blue

And here’s a link to a film I made, called Blue Remembered, which is about the 10 sorts of blue we have in the studio. And about a little dog called Blue, too.

And …it’s just occurred to me, I have another video about Blue, about the Indigo Dyers and Weavers of South West Japan. Here.

You can’t get enough Blue is what I think, in art or in music. Kind of Blue is my favourite jazz album of all time, introduced to me by a boyfriend in 1959. The album lasted, the boyfriend didn’t. The right way round.

 

Dove Artists’ Christmas Exhibition at the Redbrick Building, Glastonbury

A visit to the Redbrick Building in Glastonbury is always interesting and sometimes delicious! The Bocabar restaurant and cafe serve food and good coffee every day of the week; the events space hosts an exciting range of gigs;  all sorts of regular courses take place in the upstairs spaces, alongside the studios where resident creatives work.

From 23rd November there will be an additional reason to go there: the artists who frequent Dove Studios are putting on a Christmas Exhibition in what I like to call the Staircase Gallery, running until January 8th. The show comprises work both by students and artists who attend printmaking classes at the Dove and also members of the Fingerprint group who work together in my studio once a week. There will also be work by artists more loosely associated with the Dove.

All types of media will be on display. Printmaking will predominate, but there will also be paintings, collage and textiles.

This promises to be a joyful, seasonal display of inspiring work, most of which is for immediate sale at very reasonable prices.

You are warmly invited to the preview, which is on Thursday 23rd November, 6 – 8 pm.

Exhibition Dates:

23^rd November – 8^th January

Opening times: daily 10 – 4 (closed Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years Day)

 

A Book in the Hand goes to Glastonbury

The Speaking Tree bookshop is hosting a display of ABCD books from our recent exhibition at ACEarts in Somerton. Gareth Mills, the owner of the Speaking Tree, is a great believer in the value of handmade, artists’ books, and wants to help promote them, and also work out how to make it easier to produce them, thus cutting costs and reaching more people. This display is a start – some, though not all, of the books are for sale.

Catch it if you can: it’s on for a couple of weeks from today.

The Speech I didn’t make at the ‘Book in the Hand’ Preview tonight

 

Lovely preview this evening – the show looked stunning and friends and supporters came and stayed – and actually looked at the work!  I was chatting to visitors and totally unprepared for an off the cuff vote of thanks that Diana Milstein delivered to me, impromptu, generously; and when she said, at the end of it – do you want to make a speech? in my embarrassment I said No, firmly, to general laughter. Afterwards I wished I’d said yes, but the moment was gone.

I should have said yes because I would have expressed the following: – yes, it’s true I started the Dove Book group 17 years ago, and that this current exhibition stems from that initiative and the 17 years of teaching and facilitating since then. But in another, more important way, this exhibition is the fruit of the persistence and ever increasing expertise of the 13 members of the Artists’ Book Club (Dove), and of our group activities that foster creativity, ideas, laughter, and wonderful lunches. That’s what it’s about for me – the group, and what we can achieve when we work together. So thank you to fellow ABCDers; to everyone who came tonight, and to Nina and her staff and volunteers who were brilliant. I hope you read this.

And please note: the show is on for 6 days only: Saturday 29th, and then Tuesday 1st August – Saturday 5th August. 10 – 5 each day. Two members of the group will be present each day to answer questions about the books, and maybe demonstrate a thing or two.

Landscape into Etching

Jenny Graham tutored an etching course last week in the Dove Print Room, which involved going outside and drawing, and then straight back into the studio to make an etching of the same subject. There were some lovely results: here are some of them

Etching classes start again in the Autumn, late this year because of Somerset Art Weeks, so the starting dates are October 16th & 17th for the Monday & Tuesday groups (tutor: Bronwen Bradshaw), and Wednesday, 1st November for Jenny Graham’s group.

Please contact either tutor if you are interested in joining one of these weekly classes (bronbradshaw@yahoo.com; jennygraham2011@hotmail.co.uk)

 

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)