Thinking of Home and the Chinese stamp

This weekend I was at Joshua Tetley's 236th birthday party at The Tetley in Leeds as part of a celebration of Yorkshire creativity. I took some of my prints, including this one that I made a while back and blogged about previously (see entry Thinking of Home, 1 April 2013).  

A man asked about the print and in particular about the Chinese postage stamp image on it. He is a lecturer in Chinese politics and told me that the stamp celebrates the first anniversary of The Peoples' Republic of China (1949 - 1950). Not reading Chinese myself, it was exciting to learn that and also that he decided to buy it to hang on his office wall!

The Dreadful Project

In anticipation of the première of "Penny Dreadful", a terrifying saga reinventing some of the most terrifying and horrific characters from literature, The Sketchbook Project recently invited 1000 artists to “illustrate a monster, create an eerie scene, or share your greatest fear of something that lurks within us all—in the shadows.”

Here's my contribution...

And yesterday I got the following email from the project:

Hi Jenny,

I simply wanted to reach out to you to send our "Congratulations" on behalf of The Sketchbook Project team! Out of the 1,000 participants from the "Dreadful" Project, your artwork was chosen to be published in The New Yorker! I included here a link to the article, and there are hard copies of the issue all about the city where you can find your artwork on paper!

We can't thank you enough for taking the time to participate, and are excited to see the amazing places you go from here with your art!

Two big thumbs up,

Kate Lewis

Community Manager

The Sketchbook Project

www.sketchbookproject.com

Well! That was a surprise and I'm very excited! Here's the link:

http://www.newyorkeronthetown.com/experience/youre-invited-sketch-with-a-sense-of-dread/#c_0

Open the link, then click the sideways arrows to scroll through the artwork. Health warning: the central blue arrow gives you a preview of Penny Dreadful and it's not for the feint hearted!

Dead frog

Many thanks to my friend Gillian & her little lad for acquiring this dead frog from the pavement! Not everyone would have done it, but some people just know how excited I will be! Shame they couldn't find the head, but just look at the amazing fine bones in the feet, visible through the dessicated skin.

Teapots

Screen print  I created from a photo I took of teapots in a window in Amsterdam...

And this was the photo...

And some shiny kitchen things in the adjoining window...

Age is just another number

One of my friends recently had a significant birthday and invited us all to contribute something to hang on a tree / washing line of life to celebrate. Here's my colourful creation, playing on the number picking game I used to play as a child. This time it has much bigger numbers and words of wisdom about age and life instead of the unkind things that kids used to put inside!

Hide and Seek

The other half of the group portrait project we did last term (see previous entry entitled The Portrait Challenge). This is the self portraits.

In the shadows

The Responses to Art group met at Bradford Industrial museum last month and I finally got to join them. Artist Steve Gumbley is currently exhibiting Shadow Machines and Singing Paintings there. He talked about his work with light and shadow, introducing us to his shadowgraph 'From Horse Power to Hydrogen Power', involving models of all manner of items relating to power, from cooling towers to bicycles, chimneys to galloping horses. He has assembled these on a large, slowly moving turntable with a small, low light source on one side, creating shadows on the far wall. Objects close to the light source project huge shadows, whilst those further away create smaller shadows. As the base revloves, the shadows move in relation to each other, growing and shrinking and interacting in different ways.


We had been briefed to bring with us small items which may create interesting shadows and there were boxes full of wire, paper, small toys and other ephemera for us to delve into as we then created our own shadowgraphs on themes such as Procession, Fairytale and Urban Landscape.  

We then went on to create individual pieces on the theme of power and energy to add, one by one, to Steve's big revolving shadowgraph. Using some of my weird but beautiful collection of hedgehog bones, a few feathers and the bird skull and dead bee that my sister gave me for my birthday (brilliant! Thank you Jo!) I created a fantasy flying creature.

Next Responses Art Group, for anyone who wants to get creative, is at Cartwright Hall this Thursday, 6th March 2014, 10.30am. It's a lovely building with some beautiful artworks. This session will be a response to some of the Indian silk paintings on display there.