Slide 8 x 8″ Print by Cassia Beck

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Scrap Bag Festival Bunting by Flaming Nora

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The Circus Is In Town – Mini Print by Blackoutwell

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Carousel Rose by Maria Allen

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Bandstand by Lynsey Hunter

Hungry Bear Plate from James Ward

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Chocolate Cake Coin Purse from Dinky Daisy

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Alice in Wonderland ‘Eat Me’ Cake Toppers by Crafty Pagan Designs

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Apple and Pear Card from Little Bird Too

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Cream Egg Cosy from Charlotte Macey Textiles

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Now I’m even more hungry.

]]> http://bonbah.co.uk/2010/07/16/folksy-friday-hungry/feed/ 3 http://bonbah.co.uk/2008/07/20/urban-art-fair/ http://bonbah.co.uk/2008/07/20/urban-art-fair/#comments Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:31:10 +0000 joanne http://bonbah.co.uk/?p=30 I went to the Urban Art Fair in Brixton yesterday to see Charlotte Hardy’s work. It was lovely to see her work up close and really nice to talk to her about her own work as I’ve only known her as a tutor where she’s either been discussing our work or other artists. I only wish I had some spare funds to buy one of her pieces.
I had a wander up Josephine Avenue to see what else was on display and found loads of really talented printmakers and artists. Just a quick run down of some of my favourites:

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Katarina F Jones

I’m not very good at talking to people at these things, but I had a quick word with Katarina about her work. It’s really eyecatching. Each print shows a captured world with something almost glowing. The light she’s managed to create in the prints is incredible. It’s as if there is a torch being shone through them. She told me that some people find them spooky, but I didn’t at all, they felt very safe – like sitting within the glow of a campfire.

see more – www.katherine-jones.co.uk

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Staffan Gnosspelius

Alot of the prints that Staffan was showing at the fair were of foxes and rabbits in very storybook settings. They really reminded me of Brer Rabbit,one of my favourite storybook characters when I was a child, and I really expected the artist to be a wise old man with twinkly eyes. But no Staffan appeared to be a twentysomething Swedish young man, although I’m sure he probably had alot of wisdom and a bit of a twinkle had I been brave enough to talk to him. He must have had about 30 or 40 prints up and each one managed to capture an entire narrative in what was sometimes only a few lines and strokes. My favourite was of a solitary rabbit looking off into the distance. I couldn’t find a good image of that to put here but you can see it on his website (address below).

see more – www.gnosspelius.com or artswitch.com

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David Pepper

I couldn’t find David Pepper on t’ inter-telly, but here’s a tiny thumbnail that doesn’t do any justice at all to his actual work. I found it on the Streatham Artists website which makes him a local and it looks like they’re having an open house in September so will be well worth a visit just to see his works again. To steal their description:

“David creates these liquid like images using multi-layers of paint and varnish on a traditional gesso ground. These dream like paintings play on an ideal of beauty, creating a new vision as seen by the artist.”

He had about 6 or 8 of these panels in a row and each one had the most beautiful blue ‘blobs’ on them which he had created from paint and what looked like oil. It wasn’t just that he’d managed to make all of them my absolutely favourite shade of blue but there was something very delicate and organic about them.

find out more – Streatham Artists

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Emiko Aida

I absolutely loved every single one of Emiko’s prints. The colours and the detailed line drawings were beautiful. To quote from her website which says it all:

Her works are the visual equivalent of the Haiku, the Japanese 17 syllable verse. She invites the viewer to use their imagination and engage with her imagery: dew, raindrops, rainstorms and rain-drenched flowers.

see more – www.aidastudios.com

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Lene Bladbjerg

Lene’s work was quite striking and I wasn’t surprised to read on her website that she studied graphic design. Her paintings and prints have a really pleasing order and composition to them. She does a lot of work with handlettering which is something I really love. She also managed to create beautiful compositions from razor blades!

see more – www.lenebladbjerg.com

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Martin Grover

The colours of Martin Grover’s work first caught my eye and then you get drawn into the detail and reading the little anecdotes and messages everywhere. To quote his website:

His screenprints offer little paeans to iconic traffic signs, bus stops, buses, and to destinations or states of mind reached and those elusive ones so often glimpsed or imagined but always tantilisingly just out of reach.

His paintings of record sleeves are brilliant also for their colour and lovely type.

see more – www.martingrover.com

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Well I didn’t really do any of them much justice but this would end up being a coffee table book if I went on any more so please have a look at more of their work on the links above and also a full list of the exhibitors at the Urban Art Fair on their website:

Urban Art Fair – www.urbanart.co.uk

We haven’t actually got our new masterpiece yet. We bought it at the Brighton Art Festival on Saturday. We both saw it separately and both really loved it so although it’s not really something we can afford we decided we should have it anyway plus it was an excellent way to spend our Christmas money from Bonnie and to give each other a belated anniversary present. It’s a print by Alexandra Dipple called Dots and Full Stops No. 1 and we will have print 3 of 50.

The print is much more mesmerising in person. I couldn’t stop looking at it. It’s like a town of tiny houses and every time you look you see some more. I have always loved pattern and things with tiny detail, but I’m also rather in awe of things where it’s obvious that the artist or craftsperson took absolutely ages and gave all their attention. Maybe it’s because in an era of mobile phones and internet it seems so impossible to get that immersed in anything and it’s wonderful to think some people can.

Alex Dipple, the artist, rang us on Sunday to organise pick up and to thank us (several times) for buying her work. That made me realise, if I had any doubt, that we’d made the right decision.

Here’s Alex’s description of Dots and Full Stops No 1:

My Dots and Full Stops series uses a number of process rules: I use only discarded newspapers. I cut all the punctuation out by hand. Each dot is cut out in a square and the dots are arranged Tetris-like in a grid with a fine line between each square of paper, each dot occupies its own space. I use what Philip Galanter, in his Vague Terrain article, identifies as a constraint rule and predetermine the area to be filled with dots. I am investigating how different start points affect the look of the finished piece.

A Limited Edition of prints is available of Dots and Full Stops, no.1 and no.2. Both images are in an edition of 50 on 300gsm Innova Art Paper, Giclee Prints with a Silk Screened UV Glaze.

I hadn’t realised when we saw the print that the original artwork was made from newsprint. On the print it looks as if it’s made up of watercolour squares. I’m not sure which would take longer – painting them all or cutting out and arranging hundreds of tiny little squares. Probably the latter.

Alex has other works which we unfortunately weren’t able to view, but you can see them on her website. There are a few others and an installation done using the same method, but this time with hyphens and dashes rather than dots and full stops. These ones also evoke buildings to me, but this time cityscapes on the water’s edge. Alex is also a professional framer, so all of her prints are beautifully framed. Ours is in a very similar frame to the ones shown below. Unfortunately we don’t have enough walls right now to have the whole collection.

Here are Alex’s words on these prints:

My Lines of Dashes and Hyphens series puts into practice a number of production rules: I used only discarded newspapers. I cut all the punctuation out by hand, without using rulers. I take the empty space above and below the hyphen/dash. The hyphens/dashes are arranged on a straight line with the bottom of the hyphen/dash aligned and I paste the punctuation on the line from left to right to evoke the process of reading. When creating this original series I pasted up the punctuation in a random way.

Can’t wait to pick up our print. Also gives us an excuse to go back down to Brighton over the weekend…

see more from Alex here

We watched a short film created mostly from Henry Moore’s own journal entries and discussions and he described how he saw the sculptures as existing in the natural landscape and not in an urban or museum setting. Some he even created specifically for sheep to enjoy. The sculptures are also really interesting to photograph (as you can see from my Flickr set), not just in this temporary setting, but for the shapes and forms and contrasts they create within themselves. Looking at my photos, it looks like we were the only people there but in fact the gardens were quite full and it was really nice to see whole families out together on Easter trudging round the gardens in the cold to see these magnificent sculptures.

Unfortunately the sculptures are only at Kew until the end of the week but I’m really interested to see how they are in their permanent homes. Hmmm, I feel a road trip coming on…