Jill Tattersall Mixed Media Art

The Lincolnshire artists’ Open Studios scheme, Art on the Map, has undergone a transformation this year. It’s been triumphantly adapting to funding problems by raising its game, staging a series of exhibitions and events all over the county – Louth, Fotherby, Lincoln, Hackthorn, Grantham….lots in the pipeline.

All this in addition to the usual Open Studios which are now being organised in cluster groups, to allow more people to visit more studios – and artists to visit each other. The new, beautifully produced brochure will be out any minute! Look out for it in the usual places, including libraries and tourist offices. There will be autumn, Christmas and spring events.

So here’s a picture of two of my ‘recycled’ pieces, taken by fellow-artist John Lincoln at a recent weekend event at the new Spout Yard Gallery, Louth:

A month or two back I wrote about Andy Pepper’s project, One Million Points of Light, which is about to achieve its millionth hit from all over the world. Is it art or networking, people ask? Not sure, but it has led me to all sorts of fascinating and sometimes eccentric art and art-related websites from all over the world.

Andy is an artist based in Nottingham specialising in light sculpture and holography. Wonderful trance-inducing work; the sort of thing I would love to do if I only knew how. See his work at:

http://www.apepper.com/

This month, out of the blue, I have been selected as artist of the month for OMPOL, and the website carries a feature on my work:

http://www.onemillionpointsoflight.com/feature.php

Though the last few months have been ones I would rather forget, interesting art-related events have nevertheless cropped up which I’ve not had time to mention here.

In June I did an online interview for a lively arts website, FirstAngel, which I found great fun. It included lots of pictures and the questions made me think hard and realise I don’t ask myself enough of them.

I love the atmosphere of this sunlit picture, included in the FirstAngel interview, which was taken at my recent exhibition at the Spotlight Gallery in Newark.

Coming up this week is the unexpected opportunity to have some work in the July exhibition – on mixed media art – in the gallery’s Eye to Eye section.

As life has been ultra busy in other respects, it’s fun occasionally to do something at short notice and with little fuss.

An Habitation of Dragons, which incorporates some evocative poetic text from Isaiah, is probably the bluest piece I have ever undertaken. The colour was built up with many washes of acrylic paint plus pure pigment. The support is a piece of specially cast cotton paper which contributes to the luminous effect of the colour.

The best month to have garden sculpture on show – if only it doesn’t rain! Twenty-five of my outdoor pieces using recycled materials are on show in the glorious gardens at Hall Farm, Harpswell, Lincolnshire. Old roses, formal areas, wide herbaceous borders, water, secret gardens, a giant chessboard – and a wonderful nursery with unusual plants. A gardener’s paradise.

A hanging golden dragon, a salamander, a sciapod, seedpods, totems, bold abstract wall pieces – I really let my imagination loose with these pieces. The materials to hand suggest an idea, and off I go…. The exhibition runs until the end of June; the gardens can be visited for free on weekdays 8.30 – 5.00. On June 28-29 the garden will be open for the benefit of McMillan Cancer services.

http://www.hall-farm.co.uk

In this nice little gallery in Newark I shall be showing an assortment of pieces: mixed media, cast paper, recycled materials and some artist’s books.

The idea is to illustrate the interplay between intention (design, plan, intellect) and serendipity (chance, spur of the moment, accident, inspiration even!).

For me there always has to be an element of risk in each piece, no matter how carefully I may have thought about it in advance. I can wreck a piece at any moment. Or it might be possible to salvage it and even improve on the original. But it’s no good playing safe: the end result will be tame and unrewarding.

And I suppose this is why I toil over some some pieces while others almost do themselves. Careful planning, yes. But happy chance and a willingness to engage with it: there’s nothing like it!

Do come and see the show. Or go to Brighton. (Better, both.) Myself, I need a rest cure!

..and Brighton, of course. Coming soon, and part of the Brighton Festival: all May weekends. Last year around 1,000 artists took part.

http://www.hovearts.co.uk/venues/hove_park_villas.htm

And this year I shall be one of them, at Collectors’ Selection, 43 Hove Park Villas, Hove.

Last weekend was delivery day: ten indoor and ten outdoor pieces. There will be twelve of us at no 43, with a broad range of work on show at an elegant Victorian commuter villa. Well worth a visit I hope.

…or, to be less pretentious, it’s a pleasure to go and see a piece of work completed some time ago in situ, in its new home.

This is a cast paper piece, Homer’s Moly, hanging in Hall Farm, Harpswell. Hall Farm Nursery is famous for its wonderful plants. Very appropriate, since the title refers to the bit in the Odyssey where Hermes tells Odysseus to use the juice of the moly plant – thought to be Galanthus (snowdrop) – as an antidote to Circe’s wicked potions. His entire crew have been stricken with amnesia. It seems bit ironic that galanthamine is now being used in the management of Alzheimer’s disease.

Have a look at this interesting worldwide project, started two years ago by Andy Pepper at the Broadway Media Centre, Nottingham – where we have seen many a good film:

One Million Points of Light

Artists in 21 parts of the globe have ’switched on’ blocks of light. (See if you can find my own tiny block.) By January there had been over 800,000 ‘hits’ from 92 countries or territories, which makes the average number of visitors to a gallery, even for a successful exhibition, look minuscule. In theory every person who visits the site might go on to look at this one….

Here (appropriately I hope) is Semi-transparent, which is a celebration of light. It’s actually based on the AIDS virus and is constructed mainly of felt, cellophane and tissue:

Not enough of the clouds seem to have made it to the hanging stage, but the dragons mostly did. An entire primary school became dragon-obsessed over a couple of weeks and this is the result. It can be seen hanging alongside the current main exhibition Seeing Dragons in the Clouds, which celebrates the interaction of imagination and design, at the Hub, Sleaford. It’s on until March 30 and well worth a visit (even if you don’t like dragons).

The whole project was a pretty exhausting start to the year, but produced such brilliant enthusiasm and results that it was well worth it. I shall be doing another couple of workshops at the Hub next week, this time for families, aiming to produce some African-style animal prints using a little Lincolnshire mud to add local colour. Then it’s back to the studio for some serious work.