the workshouse, southwell

Last Sunday I visited The Workhouse, Southwell, a National Trust property in Nottinghamshire. This particular workhouse, though harsh from the vantage point of today was well organised & considerate towards those under its roof, providing hot meals, medical care, immunisation & an education for its children.  

Much time & money has been invested in the visitor experience on the 1st & 2nd floors but I found myself drawn to the upper floor, encountering breathing space after information overload. Each layer of paint held a story, sunlight traced time across walls, the floors revealed rows of bed sized shadows: the past in the present, ripe with my projections and romanticism. I thought about the people who slept in these rooms but they are impossible to conjure from the safety of (my) today.  

fast-print-wearable-sculpture

My brief was to create an activity that could accommodate 300 participants a day, reference Hodgkin and Hepworth and result in something wearable within 20 minutes of making! This workshop was the result. Run during the Summer Bazaar weekend at the Hepworth Wakefield, our visitor total was 611 happy people - phew! With thanks to staff and volunteers Hilary, Lesley, Rachael and Haleema, also Sandra for help moving tables!

 Thoughtful layering of colour and texture

 Mr Happy

 Lefty

 Print head

Inventive child

 Our home for the weekend

outdoor play

Myself and Gillian Brent got our heads together in her Sheffield studio and invented this drop-in workshop for families in response to Howard Hodgkin: Painting India. Rain and wind meant our Outdoor Play workshop became indoor play in the bright and roomy learning studios at the gallery. We had a few utterances of 'wow' as children stepped into the space, one child calling the installation a laundry painting, which I loved! 

Our idea evolved from a sense of being able to walk into Hodgkin's paintings. Throughout the days, our walk-in painting altered, evolved and began again as 230+ participants pegged, tied and draped fabric, ribbons and drawings within the structure. They did this after exploring the gallery using an inventive pack containing questions, prompts, ribbons, fabric, a black card frame and bags containing cloves, cardamon, cinnamon and coriander seeds - connecting scent and painting in their own personal way.

As always, we couldn't do this without the support of the learning team and generous volunteers - a BIG thank you to them. 

 Ribbon response to Howard Hodgkin

 Dressed for the occasion!

 Walk-in-painting

 'Painting' with fabric

 Laundry painting

Small artist

colourscape

300+ participants got involved with Colourscape, inspired by Howard Hodgkin: Painting India at The Hepworth Wakefield. A weekend of outdoor drop-in workshops for families, arranging fabric and play equipment in response to Hodgkin's bold, gestural paintings.

 Concentration & focus

 Mother & child (hidden under the fabric)

 Play equipment Hodgkin

 Flying colour

 Team work

I like pink

wooly thinking

Today, the Epicentre in Leytonstone was buzzing with families celebrating Story Feast, a wonderful poetry project for primary schools developed and delivered by the Discover Children's Story Centre. Families listened to and joined in with story telling, invented poems, made art and sculpture. Children created a wooly walkway into the event, some spending hours carefully interweaving, others working in joyful bursts. We joked they would receive a ball of wool for their birthdays, so absorbed were they by the process!  

As participants threaded and wrapped I captured their imaginative descriptions of the growing wooly web:

Spider girl!

A trap

A maze

Cobweb

Zig Zag

Colossal

Mega web

Climbing

Tangly

Sticky as honey

 Ready!

 3D drawing

Wooly thinking

out & about - yorkshire sculpture park

Yorkshire Sculpture Park provided the final destination for Out & About 2017, bringing together our project themes of landscape and sculpture in a phenomenal way! The groups explored the park, free range and self directed, linking/relating sculptures to Brimham Rocks, Hepworth and spotting designed landscape, reminiscent of Nostell Priory and Parkland amongst naturalistic views. Standing in front of Bob & Roberta Smith's, Art Makes Children Powerful we considered this statement and shared our ideas, before asking the question, 'How has this project made you powerful?' The thoughtful and heartfelt statements that followed were beyond my hopes for the project. 

Our last day was also the wettest of this whole adventure, and spirits were high. As the group trudged, rain soaked, towards the coach, an aunt of one of the boys turned to me with a grin and asked, 'Would you do it again?', 'YES!' I replied without hesitation, 'I would too' came the reply, and that felt amazing!

 This isn't sculpture!

 Drawing Koorida

 Investigating 

 Yorkshire soil on our sketchbooks 

 Cragg, reminding us of Brimham Rocks

 Peace of paper

 Moore drawing

Art Empowers

hepworth wakefield

My two recent workshops at The Hepworth Wakefield with young people and families. An exploration of the Kettle's Yard exhibition culminating in painted stones, and felt making inspired by Yorkshire: Hepworth, Moore and The Landscape.

 Acrylic paint & sharpie pen on stone

 Balance

 Acrylic paint wash

 Protective eye

 Learning studios

 Felting table

 Nail varnish kid

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