News
Preparation for installation at Lakeland
I'm currently preparing all the long hanging threads for the mobiles to be suspended within the very high space at Windermere Jetty Museum. The studio is full of long silent threads of different lengths, held in tension with a clip. The effect of so many empty strings...
Lakeland Arts site visit
We had a wonderful day last week visiting the Windermere Jetty Museum for a site visit for Dovetailing in the summer. A talk with the conservation team opened up so many avenues of thoughts about wood, trees, shapes, craft, and working with the elements. The sounds of...
London Art Fair 21 – 24 April
I am currently packing up some Dovetailing pieces to send to jaggedart for the stand at Platform at the London Art Fair (21 - 24 April, Business Design Centre, Islington) which this year is exploring the theme of 'Music and its Part in Contemporary Visual Art'....
Work in progress: moss pieces
Inspired by the book Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I have been searching for sphagnum moss on Ilkley Moor. In its ability to capture carbon, sphagnum moss is inordinately precious to the balance of the world and yet it is so small; clearly discerning the...
Commission in olive wood
I am working on a commission for a couple who specified that they would like it to be in olive. I have always wanted to work in olive. I love olive trees and my great-grandfather worked in Italy, where he and my great-grandmother lived and raised their family, as a...
Allotment visit
Last week I went to visit Alice Fox's allotment. Alice's allotment is the source of materials and the focus of her work, and it was good to go in winter and see the structures and shapes which lie under all the growth of spring and summer. It was a cold but dry day....
New eco-friendly materials
We are slowly finding ways of making our work more sustainable. I have finally sourced an eco-friendly thread to replace the nylon monofilament fishing wire. It is not transparent which is what we like about the fishing wire - this gives a sense of the pieces...
A small visitor to Dovetailing Responses with Les Goldman improvising on bass clarinet (click to see the dance)
Mobiles and dance
We've always wondered what it would be like to see contemporary dancers respond to the mobiles. It was fascinating to see this at Dovetailing Responses. Mati Torres and Beth Cassani moved in and around the pieces and seemed to fuse together images, movement, shapes...
Dovetailing Responses
A new webpage showcasing some of the responsive work which took place during the Dovetailing Responses exhibition 4 - 7 November has been added to the Dovetailing website. It's lovely to revisit it all and get a sense of everything that went on and the collaborations...
Dovetailing in St. Louis
Brilliant to have been included in this exhibition at Intersect Arts, St. Louis: "The dovetail joint is ancient carpentry technique that predates written history. The technique, while simplistic, is extraordinarily strong, aesthetically elegant, and can provide the...
Crafting a Difference at Soshiro, London
Crafting a Difference: A curated selection of more than 200 works in ceramic, glass, metal, paper, textile, plastic and wood by over seventy artists exhibited across the four floors of SoShiro, a splendid Georgian townhouse in Marylebone. We are very pleased to have...
Dovetailing: trees on a recent walk
Dovetailing – generation of first templates
Dovetailing
Description of how the project has developed Dovetailing developed out of an awareness I have had for some time that I could learn much from the craft of luthiery (the term for the making of stringed musical instruments). As a maker of suspended sculptural mobiles in...
‘Untethered’ on Ilkley Moor
Joan Ransley, photographer and journalist, approached us with the idea of writing about and taking images of our Ilkley Moor series for the Ilkley Art Trail. Like us she has been shocked by the recent fires...
Ilkley Art Trail 2019, June 28th, 29th, 30th
My mobiles for this exhibition explore a specific space on Ilkley Moor and the dry-stone walls which surround it. These walls delineate the landscape and exist as barriers between spaces but also as places of shelter for plants, insects and animals. In making these...
Studio shots
I have been lucky this week to have the opportunity to have some images taken of me in my studio by a good friend and neighbour Joan Ransley, who is a wonderful photographer and writer. Below is a small selection of the images which she took. For further information...
Mobile making workshop with BAfR (Bradford Action for Refugees)
This is another voluntary workshop, this time with a group from Ilkley who support BAfR in arranging day trips for refugee families currently living in Bradford. The day trips provide an opportunity for families to come out of the city and be welcomed by local...
COLLECT, Saatchi Gallery, 2 – 6 February 2017
Please visit the jagged art website for more details.
REFUGE at The Barn Gallery
An Embrace of Trees – how the pieces evolved
SOFA London, Olympia Art and Antiques Fair
As featured in Financial Times 'How to spend it' and 'Collecting' in 'Chicago's functional art fair arrives in London', new work exhibited at jaggedart, stand 44. 28 June - 3 July.
Swing and Swirl at jaggedart, London 29 June – 23 July 2016
The works will explore what happens when visitors come to the gallery and how their movement within the space effects how the mobiles turn.