This week Spring Fling has been mostly. . .

LAMINATING!!!

Bella was hard at work all day sorting, counting and laying out all the brochures and leaflets that Spring Fling participants require for their own mailing lists and marketing schemes and then adding to those piles the necessary car parking signs, studio number and arrow signs along with the instructions for where signs can and cannot be attached come the weekend of May 23rd to 25th.

Last week Amanda was on sole laminating duty, today Hazel and Hannah finished that job, the laminators are now being allowed a well earned holiday. This is all being done so early so that participants will be able to collect their signage and brochures and leaflets this coming Thursday and Friday when they bring in their work for the Taster Exhibition. It certainly makes us realise yet again just how organised and forward thinking the Art and Craft Development Officers based at Gracefield have been for the last 7 years.

The Spring Fling Taster Exhibition opens at Gracefield Arts Centre on Saturday 21st March for any of you that would like a snap shot of the delights that will be on offer at Spring Fling Weekend as all the participants will be represented.

Spirit of Air

Running from Saturday March 6th through to Saturday April 18th Lizzie Farey's "Spirit of Air" exhibition is currently at Gracefield Arts Centre in Dumfries before touring to a number of venues across Britain. This solo show is an exhibition of new large scale expressive willow works which is the culmination of a twelve month Creative Development award from the Scottish Arts Council.

Using willow, birch, heather, bog myrtle and many other locally grown woods, Lizzie's work has developed from strong traditional baskets through to the very expressive organic sculptural forms for which she is well known and these new wall based "inscriptions" that the current exhibition highlights so well. Having taken part in Spring Fling since it's inception Lizzie's studio, number 50 on the Red Route, is in a converted barn, part of a small cluster of studios at Lochdougan House near Castle Douglas which is also home to fine artist Bea Last and potter Hannah McAndrew.

Sculpture Workshops

Lucianne Lassalle - Studio 29 on the Blue Route - Born in Paris, she has traveled widely working and exhibiting in Canada, USA, Europe, London, and the South East and South West. Recently she moved to Dumfries Scotland and will be exhibiting for the first time at Spring Fling (sharing studio space with the potter Jason Shackleton).

As well as being a full time sculptor, she runs 6 weekend workshops a year working from the model in clay. These are informal classes studying a life model, each student working at their own pace, class sizes between 8 and 12 students. Workshops are suitable for all students from absolute beginner to the more experienced.

Lucianne is also running a residential workshop in Tuscany 18th - 27th June 2009......

A Residential Sculpture Workshop and a Taste of Beautiful Tuscany, Italy!!
At 'La Meridiana' an International Ceramic Centre and 15th century farmhouse in the Tuscan hills. Clay studios, kilns and equipment, good food, wine and company
"The workshops will be focused, creative and intensive, for students to gain a good working understanding of the human form. We will work in clay directly, making clay sketches from the model and then working on a longer pose for more in depth study. There will be flexibility for students who wish to move from direct representational interpretation to creating their own expressive or abstracted interpretation of the human form."

Please contact Lucianne for more details or see her website under Workshops and Courses (linked via her name above)

Mosses, Waters, Slaps and Style

From March 7th to 29th this year Hazel Campbell will be having a solo exhibition at the High Street Gallery in Kirckudbright entitled "Mosses, Waters, Slaps and Style". Her forth exhibition with the gallery this show will feature mostly landscapes with a few inclusions of brightly coloured flower studies amongst them.

Hazel Campbell has developed her own vigorous style of painting which exudes life and vitality and she draws endless inspiration from the Galloway countryside in which she lives. Increasingly Hazel's work is developing in a less representational direction which she will be keen to discuss with visitors at Spring Fling.

Studio 49 on the Red Route of the Spring Fling Hazel's studio is set in the converted stable beside a typical Scottish back garden and is a welcoming and vibrant place to visit. During the summer Hazel runs popular painting schools which are tailored to meet individual needs. If you would like to know more visit her website.

If you can't make it to the gallery a full catalogue is available from the High Street Gallery.

Saratoga - A mosaic by Kate Anderson and Peter Howell

Mosaic artist, Kate Anderson (on the Red Route) has just finished a large mosaic piece in collaboration with another Dumfries and Galloway artist, Peter Howell and is to be exhibited at the annual Arts Festival in Saratoga Springs.

"At the beginning of November 2008 work began on the first mosaic collaboration I have been involved with. I had met the equine painter Peter Howell and his wife Jo some years ago. They like me live near Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway. We talked about the possibilities of making a piece together based on one of his racing compositions, but work commitments got in the way for both of us until last year.
With a world-wide reputation for being a top equine painter, Peter Howell has for thirty years exhibited his work annually at the Arts Festival in Saratoga Springs. His style relates to the French Impressionists, in particular Toulouse Lautrec, Monet and Degas, especially in his use of reflected light, and the perfect connection between horses and landscape that it creates.

A lot of discussion went into how we could interpret and adapt elements of his original sketches. Peter was new to mosaics and so the fact that in painting, as he put it, ‘one can push and shove the masses about easily and make tonal changes to suit’ unlike in mosaics, was important. Colour contrasts and co-ordinates cannot be experimented with as you go along! Used to mixing his own pigments he was faced with the challenges in using vitreous glass, but recognised the similarity of cutting individual shapes to represent directional brushstrokes. As he saw it and as many of us might agree, ‘there are mysterious elements at work in placing areas of these different cuts in close proximity to each-other.’


Over 6,500 pieces of vitreous glass were cut. I was anxious to maintain vertical as well as horizontal tension in the piece as, unlike most of my own semi-abstract compositions this one has a strongly horizontal middle ground, with horses and visitors stands set against the striped pavilion. We aimed for good directional structure to give a varying reflective dynamic to the whole. So the small square pieces in the sky halo the background trees and bring the eye in to the centre, while larger organic shapes retain maximum colour in the foreground, and support the horizontal cuts on the horses’ bodies. In the grouting stage the tone of the grout was crucial. Shapes could have easily become fragmented had it been too light, and we needed cohesion in the detailed design.

We finished work in January 2009 and ‘Saratoga’ (measuring 41 by 54 inches framed), was sent to America in February to be shown at this years’ festival after a detour to a gallery in Miami. Saratoga the place may conjure thoughts of a battle in the American Revolution, or names like Diamond Jim Brady of the 1890’s, and John ‘Old Smoke’ Morrissey who brought racing to the town originally, (a politician who was head of a New York gang called the ‘Dead Rabbits’!). By the 1800’s the racetracks and casinos were as popular as the mineral waters. ‘Everything seemed possible in a place where Romance draws dreams in indelible ink’, as Heywood Hale Broun wrote. To me it is encapsulated in the light and shade of Peter’s paintings and the experience of working together on this piece."

House for an Art Lover Exhibition

Heather Blanchard a painter on the Orange Route is exhibiting at the House for an Art Lover in Glasgow, opening on the 24th February. Heather has spent the last 20 years concentrating on her painting, mainly in oils, following a successful career as a textile designer and teacher.

Her work is influenced by the dramatic light changes and strong patterns seen along the Solway Coast and the Hebrides. She has had many successful exhibitions in Essex, Suffolk, Shropshire, Wales, all over Cumbria and now in Scotland; including successful exhibitions at Upfront Gallery Unthank, Courtyard Gallery Appleby, Gossipgate Gallery Alston, Pinfold Gallery Bowness on Windermere, Off The Wall Gallery Corbridge, Pennel Gallery Peebles, Rockcliffe Gallery and Farfield Mill Sedbergh.

The Art Lovers' Cafe

House for an Art Lover

Bellahouston Park
10 Dumbreck road

Glasgow

G41 5BW

Tel.0141 353 4770

http://www.houseforanartlover.co.uk/

Gallery open daily from 10am - 5pm

Exhibition starts 24th February through to 7th April

Julie Dumbarton, another Orange Route artist is currently exhibiting at The Art Lovers Cafe until 23rd February.

Visual Arts Scotland Exhibition in Edinburgh

We are pleased to announce that 9 of our Spring Fling Open Studio '09 artists were accepted for the Visual Arts Scotland Open Exhibition, held this year at the City Arts Centre in Edinburgh.

Hazel Campbell
John Chinnery
Nancy Chinnery
Bella Green
Lucianne Lassalle
Hannah McAndrew
Christine Milne
Jennifer Watt
Elizabeth Waugh

2009 Annual Visual Arts Scotland Open Exhibition of Visual and Applied Arts
City Arts Centre, 2 Market Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1DE
open 31st Jan to 19th March. Monday to Saturday 10-5 Sunday 12-5

http://www.visualartsscotland.org/

Hazel Campbell

Hazel has lived and worked in Galloway for most of her adult life, and through attendance at painting classes over a number of years she has developed her own vigorous style of painting. She has a loose, bold approach, working mainly in oil and gouache, using local Galloway countryside as a stimulus for landscape painting. Still life and flowers are also subjects, and like the landscapes, are being treated in an increasingly broad manner.

John and Nancy Chinnery

John and Nancy run Lynwood Carvers and Gilders, a traditional workshop based in Southern Scotland. Lynwood keep alive the traditional crafts of carving and gilding, producing beautiful pieces in much the same way they would have been made two centuries ago. They employ all the classical techniques to create fresh designs as well as more traditional pieces. Over the years they have worked on jobs for the House of Lords, Stirling Castle, Glamis Castle and other historic buildings, private commissions and the antique trade.

Bella Green

Bella’s main expressive element in painting is colour, it is her passion. She loves its emotive power to communicate all shades of feeling. She enjoys decoratively reorganising the facts of things seen through both still life subjects and landscape to make compositions freed from direct observation. She aims for balance and simplification of forms, unexpected juxtapositions of imagery and playful placement of shapes which may evoke visual narratives.

Recurrent themes are inside/outside; views through windows and doorways and tabletops with objects. such as vessels, flowers and articles with personal associations such as her tango dancing shoes. She likes to use different degrees of representation such as graphic elements contrasted with modeled forms, as well as multiple viewpoints to create visual tension. She works mainly in oils because of its richness and versatility but will use any medium which will suit her purpose.

Lucianne Lassalle

Lucianne will be showing at Spring Fling for the first time this year. She works directly from the figure with a variety of clays but mostly stoneware. "I build up the sculpture using clay slabs and modeling the clay as I go, sometimes I also use a mould of a previous piece to get the basic form. None of my work is from life casts it is all hand modeled I am interested in the craft of interpreting the figure in my own way not in copying it".
Lucianne is currently in the process of exploring new materials and making methods. The content of her work is changing too looking more deeply into human relationships, what does it mean to be human, responding to what’s going on at the moment in the socio/political/world arena.

Hannah McAndrew

"I love clay. I love the feel of it in my hands, wedging it into the correct consistency for the job I am about to do, the smooth fluidity of it on the wheel, the ease and satisfaction of turning a foot ring into a pot that is at just the right stage of leather hardness. I love the way my pouring slips stick to a leather hard pot and the way the excess runs off like cream while the trailing slips sink gently into the freshly applied base layer. I love the way my sgraffito tool runs cleanly through a layer of semi-dry white slip to reveal the deep red of the clay body underneath. I love the potential for creativity and the fact that the pots that I make can in turn be used to make and serve food and drink."


Christine Milne

Christine's landscapes shift evocatively between abstraction and observation, small jewels of half remembered light and form. Her work is represented in several collections, including the Scottish Academy, and the Italian Institute in Edinburgh.
The ferocity with which a storm wave explodes against an ancient but ever receding sea cliff. Myriad sparkling streams slowly exposing the skeletons of the mountains and joining to carve the valleys to the sea. Christine's paintings are created in much the same way as water creates our landscape,with its intricate patterns and textures, shared at every level, from mountain ranges to a pebble on a beach.

Jennifer Watt

Jennifers' work is mostly inspired by nature and is executed mainly in British hardwoods. Recently she has been working on a series called New Beginnings. They are all inspired by birth in its many forms, whether it is a chestnut opening to reveal its glossy inner shell, a seedling pushing through the ground or the birth of a baby child.
At the same time she continues to work on figurative pieces. "The interactive movement of the human form holds endless fascination for me as does the bond between mother and child and the tenderness that exists between them. These are my inspirations and aspirations."

Elizabeth Waugh

At 79, Elizabeth works with as much enthusiasm and energy as she ever has and still follows her great love and fascination of human and animal forms in her creative endeavours. She finds that her desires to experiment and further her creativity or to exhibit widely are not in any way marred by her age.
Elizabeth’s work, usually built in plaster and then cast in bronze or bronze resin in small scale strictly limited editions, is mainly figurative and includes both human nude and animal forms. Elizabeth was brought up and still lives in close contact with animals and aims to incorporate the diverse character; movement and general ‘feel’ of the different species from which she works.
She aims to produce sculpture, which is tactile in nature and is always pleased when she sees people touching her work.