Cathedral Close

Last week I went to a private view called The Close in Art. It was a tile project which I had done last November with a group of Secondary students from 4 different schools in Hereford.

The project was a celebration of Hereford Cathedral Close which is being completely renovated. All the students took patterns and textures from the close, which formed the boarder of the mosaic. Some students worked on creating a relief tile depicting the collapse of the west end of the cathedral in 1786, and some worked on a tile showing animals grazing in the close. The central cross in the mosaic is made up from raised tiles which have architectural details of the cathedral on.

These close ups show the mosaic before the grout went in.


You can see the exhibition inside the cathedral until the 23rd May.
There is an article about the project and another picture of some finished tiles in this weeks Hereford Times.

Dinosaurs

Recently I have been working in my little boy's reception class. They wanted to make dinosaurs so I took in some boards, a big bag of red clay and a few textures. I worked with groups of 4, and I had about 30 minutes with each group. I tried to plan lots of different things to show them, but in the end found it was better to just give out the clay and let them take it in the direction which they wanted to go in. It was a lot of fun. These are a couple of the results. The top one is a mummy and baby lizard dinosaur, and the bottom one is a slide o saurus whose 'tummy is a slide'...fantastic!

Yellow dresser

I've been looking for a cross between a dresser and a sideboard for ages and here it is. It came from a kitchen in a little terraced house, and is a very bright yellow. I might paint it a less bright yellow or maybe a blue. It houses all my teacups and bowls.

Packing pots

Here is a selection of pots which I am arranging to put in a couple of exhibitions. When I send work off to galleries, I try and give them a balance of work height wise and price wise. I like to have matching patterns in different sized pots, and patterns which compliment each other; some bold patterns, and some delicate patterns. I can fiddle about for ages doing this, and when I'm done they all get packed up in a big box and sent off. The group on the left is going to The Pyramid Gallery and the group on the right is going to Leeds Craft Centre and Design Gallery

Etsy Treasury

Illusio has very kindly featured one of my vases in her lovely treasury.

mydeco.com

The nice people at mydeco.com have asked me to sell my vases through their design boutique, the 'unique place to shop online if you're looking for something special'. It's a massive site with loads of articles and other things to keep you busy, you can even design your own virtual room.
Have a look at my profile page....


and products for sale.....

wibble wobble

I got these lovely jelly moulds for my birthday, and I've been working out the best way to turn the jelly out without it ending up as a puddle on the floor.
1. Use double the consistency recommended on the packet ie. 2 packets of jelly to 1 pint water.
2. Rinse out the mould, shake out the water and pour jelly mixture in, and set in the fridge.
3. When it has set, put jelly upside down into a bowl with half boiling and half cold water. make sure water comes up to the top of the jelly mould so the bottom of the jelly will release.
4. Leave for 1 minute. Place plate over top and shake out. If it won't come out , put in water for another minute. Repeat. Mine took 3 mins to come out, but if you leave it too long it just melts and runs everywhere.
If this does happen, and you are quick, you can pour it back into the mould, re-set in the fridge and try again.

Mmm they look so good