Craft Fair Success - Vote of thanks!

Well, after weeks of planning, organising, worrying and creating new items (including a few nights of waking up in a panic about the failure of it all!) the first Craft Fair I organised was a success for (nearly) all concerned. I say nearly, because one lady (who'd only booked in for the Saturday) left early (2.30pm) as she'd left her dog at home, so she obviously missed out on a few more sales for the rest of that afternoon. Also, a last minute entry for the Sunday table was taken by a lovely lady called Helen Hall who didn't really sell enough to cover her cost this time - but she wasn't put off by it and is still happy to take part in the next one, so I must have done something right!

I must begin, however, by giving thanks to all the people and companies who so very kindly donated items for either the tombola (HUGE success)  or as prizes for the Children's Card Competition. So, please join me in thanking the following - I have included links to their websites where relevant so please pay them a visit, too.

Andrea Farmer - fellow Rogue Gene Collective artist, friend and talented artist. Andrea donated two sets of her button hair-grips for the tombola:
andreafarmer.co.uk
andreafarmerart.com
Andrea on etsy
Andrea on roguegenegallery

Lorna Storey -  fellow East Riding Artist member and supporter of BADS - who donated a beautiful beaded spider for the tombola stall:
Lorna Storey
Lorna on Affordable British Art

Mike Finley - another Rogue Gene Collective colleague and amazing photographer, who created a set of stunning A5 sized cards just for the event, which I split over the two days for the tombola stall:
Mike Finley photography
Mike on roguegenegallery

Amanda Hunt - the third "A" of the Rogue Gene Collective (Andrea, Aitch & Amanda!) and a really lovely artist too! Amanda sent me a couple of small prints of her works, a key-ring with one of her paintings printed onto the design, and two small original works of art:
Amanda Hunt Gallery
Amanda on roguegenegallery

Georgia Coote - Georgia is another artist on the Rogue Gene Gallery website and her surface pattern designs are for sale as prints on there. Georgia also creates vintage-inspired jewellery - including necklaces and brooches. She kindly donated a couple of necklaces, brooches and pocket mirrors for the tombola stall. I was very happy to win one of the necklaces on Sunday!:
Georgia Coote 
Georgia on roguegenegallery

Di Jennings - Di is an art tutor who loves to pass on her knowledge to all her pupils and regularly features them in her blog - "Painting My Way". Di sent one of her original oil paintings of poppies in a field as a donation for the tombola stall.  I know Di through various online art forums, and once met her when we were on holiday in Shropshire!:
Di Jennings

Annette Cox -  I have met Annette once, and chatted online to her for about 4 years now. I was thrilled when I received an acrylic/ink landscape painting that she'd created just for the tombola - as was the winner of it on Saturday!:
Annette on Saatchi website

Artists taking part at the Craft Fair also deserve a mention for donating their works to the tombola stall:
Nichola Foster - I first discovered Nichola's finely crafted pieces of jewellery on Etsy last October when I did a search for local sellers in order to raise some interest in the Craft Fair. Nichola has been supportive throughout and proved to be great company at the event as well as a generous crafter, donating a bracelet and handbag charm to the tombola stall:
Nichola on Folksy
Nichola on Etsy

Katie Railton - Katie is a self taught photographer specialising in floral photography. She was also sought out on Etsy last year for the original dates in December and stayed on board for the April Craft Fair instead! Katie donated a large floral print:
Katie Railton Photography
Katie Railton - Etsy Shop

Lynne Smith donated a huge amount of prizes for the tombola - lots of soft toys, hair accessories, jewellery and framed pictures. Her silver jewellery sets were very popular - I bought a couple of coloured bangles from her for my grand-daughters, after I'd tried them out on myself first!

Lesley Wadforth of "Health In Harmony" donated two gift vouchers for the tombola stall. Lesley is a qualified General Nurse who now runs workshops and courses on holistic therapy including aromatherapy, yoga, reiki and stress management:
Health in Harmony website

For other tombola prizes, thanks go to friends and parents of our younger members at BADS - in particular Lisa Jones, Jenny Benge and Debbie Smallwood. Also, our neighbour Margaret was kind enough to donate a couple of prizes, too.

When I originally set the date for the Craft Fair in December (which had to be cancelled due to the bad weather) I contacted a few online Art/Craft suppliers that I regularly use in order to ask for donations. I am therefore very grateful to the SAA and Fred Aldous for supplying me with enough materials to cover the prizes in the "Design a Mother's Day Card" competition and  for some extra tombola prizes.
Society for All Artists
Fred Aldous

I hope I haven't left anyone out, as I am really grateful for all the donations we received - the tombola stall alone raised £132. Thanks also must go to the stallholders, without whom I obviously couldn't have run the event. They all put their faith in me for this first time venture, which really made me feel good. So thanks to Joan Hardy (Jams & Pickles), Christine Petch & Mary Wood (Wooden Figures), Lynne & Steve Smith (Silver Jewellery), Katie Railton (Floral Photography), Nichola Foster (Beaded Lampwork Jewellery), Kathy Marshall (Paintings, silk paintings and greetings cards), Anna Carter (Textile art and craft) and Helen Hall (Baby clothes and teddy t-shirts, cross-stitch cards). Thanks to Andrea Farmer too, for sending me a selection of her wearable art and small ethereal paintings to sell.

I would also like to thank two members of our youth section for giving up their time on Saturday afternoon to help out with the tombola stall - Molly Smallwood and Bethan Holloway.

Special thanks to my mum, June Greendale, for making the delicious cakes we sold and to my Dad, Albert Greendale for helping her sell them and the drinks on Saturday. I will treat you next weekend for your Mother's Day, mum!

Thanks to Scott Roberts and Steve Dale, both members of the Society who helped selling drinks and cake on Sunday. Thanks to everyone who turned up to support us.

My biggest thanks, however, must go to my best friend and husband, Keith. Not only did he help with creating the signs for outside the theatre on the day and prior to the event, he also helped with delivering leaflets, sorting and packaging the tombola prizes and actually running the tombola stall both days (as well as selling drinks when necessary). He supported me throughout and helped me fulfil the idea I'd had last year. Thank you so much.

I will be posting a bit more about the sales I made and any bits of news related to the success of the fair in another post, but for now, here's a few photos to show you:

The competition prizes donated by SAA, Fred Aldous and myself.

My stall

Mother's Day Card entries - 10years and under

Mother's Day card entries - 11-16 years

Hand-crafted wooden figures for the garden. All unique, and great gifts! These were really popular. Prices ranged from £3.50 to £5. A percentage of their sales go to a Meningitis Charity.

New painting completed

I've finished a painting in the past couple of days or so which is another of the collaborations that we like to do as members of the Rogue Gene Collective.  This is the one that Amanda Hunt sent me on Wednesday. Sorry Amanda, I think I may have beaten you to it this time!!!

The painting is on a canvas measuring 16x12 inches. I have decided to call it Nocturne and I have used mainly acrylic inks for the foreground layer of painting here. I started off with a glaze of yellow ink over the whole of the brown area at the bottom of the painting, then I added the "starburst" styled shapes with a metallic teal coloured ink in the night sky, as I see it - using a dropper, which often made the ink spots merge into one another. I added some transparent umber ink to certain areas of the brown/yellow section and added some yellow 3d dots along the horizon line. Then I added some metallic blue acrylic dots within the teal ink spots, and finished those off with tiny dots of white in the middle of each one. I added tiny white dots to all the yellow 3D dots (I must be going a bit dotty now!) and created lots more teal coloured ink spots and white tiny dots in the sky area. Each teal spot was painted with a line of highlight and shadow to create a 3D shape, then I used the same teal shadow colour as a final ink wash over the brown/yellow landscape. I remember playing a piece of music called Nocturne when I was learning the piano as a child, and it was a very sad piece of music, but I have such happy memories of playing it, as I really liked the tune.

You can buy the painting from the Rogue Gene Gallery or my personal website, www.helendavison.co.uk

Collaborative Paintings

This morning I received a canvas which had a background painted on it in preparation for a collaboration between myself and fellow Rogue Gene Collective artist, Amanda Hunt. There's something quite exciting about doing a collaborative piece, since you never know what to expect either way - whether you are painting the background or the foreground. In some cases, as with the latest one uploaded to the Rogue Gene Gallery (Mildred Pearce) the collaboration was between 3 artists!  I painted a textured background using some 3D acrylic paints and a mixture of interference medium in shimmering red with the 3d paint in crimson. This created a sort of terracotta shade overall - although apparently the colours will shine through as different hues depending on the direction of light. I also added touches of gold acrylic to the various raised areas of the 3D paint.

So, this is the original background that I sent to Kos Marton:

Having struggled to come up with a suitable foreground (the ideas don't always appear immediately with collaborations), Kos did a seascape but wasn't entirely happy with it. Therefore, Rob Kirbyson added a third layer and it became the painting "Mildred Pearce" - which is a 3-way collaboration and I think a very successful one. It wouldn't have existed without everyone's input, and even though you can now only really see the textured marks from the original background painting, it's obviously a collaboration.

Now that I have received a background from Amanda, I am just as excited at creating something that I would not normally do. The possibilities with collaborations are much greater, I think, than with painting or creating alone.

Here is the background I sent Amanda previously, which she is going to create the foreground for:

This morning, I received this background from Amanda:

The artist who completes the foreground decides on the name of the painting, which is fairly logical really since it cannot be named in advance unless all collaborators know exactly what they are going to be painting. I suppose that would be another way of collaborating, but it's not the way we are currently working and I think I prefer it this way!

I will post the completed paintings when they are both finished - I think Amanda and I are racing to see who does it first, but if my track record is anything to go by, she will win!

You can see Amanda's work on Rogue Gene Gallery here or by visiting her personal website at http://www.amandahuntgallery.com/

Rob's work can be seen on Rogue Gene Gallery here or on his personal website at http://www.acrylicsandoils.com

Kosana's other works are on the Rogue Gene Gallery here.

Exhibition in Cookham

I can hardly believe it, but it was over a week ago now that members of the Rogue Gene Collective got together for an exhibition/sale down in Cookham, Berkshire. It is a rare thing for us all to be available at the same time so I was really looking forward to catching up with Rob, Kos, and Amanda. Also, for the first time, I was excited at the prospect of meeting Andrea. It was a shame that Tony and Mike could not make it this time, though.

Keith and I travelled down on Saturday, setting off late morning. We stopped off for some lunch on the way and arrived in Cookham at about 3.15pm. First job for me was to find the Stanley Spencer Gallery - something I'd always promised myself I'd visit one day, but never really had the opportunity until now. We parked the car and walked back up the main street (I think it's called the High Street actually) to look around the gallery. The entrance fee was £3, but I must admit I was slightly disappointed at how small the gallery was, even though they have added another level to it in recent years. However, I was just pleased to be standing in front of his original paintings - particularly impressive for me was the last painting he worked on before his death in 1959, "Christ Preaching at Cookham Regatta". This took up a large section of one wall of the gallery and it was fascinating to see the way he'd planned it all out in pencil on a grid, and had only worked on certain areas in stages. The painting is 211 inches wide and 81inches high - there was a photograph of him painting it by sitting on a pair of step-ladders on a table!

I didn't take any photographs inside the gallery, as I doubt that would have been allowed, but I got a good view of the outside of the gallery from across the road:

I was also excited to see the house he was born in and lived in for a lot of his live, Fernlea. I took a photo of the house itself (which is also on the High Street not far from the gallery) and then Keith took one of me outside the house - well, it's one of those things that just has to be done, isn't it? I am interested in Stanley Spencer because I studied him as part of my A level Art several years ago so I remember reading quite a lot about him and his life in Cookham. It was weird seeing some of the work I'd once re-created as part of my personal study on a gallery wall rather than in a book!

With the sun shining, we walked back down to the car park then went for a stroll down to the river - this was obviously a popular place with everyone as the car park was full and there was a constant stream of people walking in every direction. Dog-walkers, young couples, families, serious hikers, frivolous hikers - all were walking along the river-bank at Cookham last Saturday afternoon. I took a couple of photos along the way, but none of the boats moored along the river, strangely enough! Perhaps I thought I'd seen enough water-based vessels after our cruise holiday in April. Anyway, the swans were suitably photogenic and the dandelion is always useful as a reference for future paintings.

What did strike me as we were strolling through Cookham was how many houses had wisteria growing up them - Spencer did a lot of paintings featuring wisteria, and having seen cottages like this one, I can understand why. It's so pretty as it seems to cascade down the walls, almost like a waterfall of delicate lilac flowers.

Saturday evening we had all arranged to meet in a local pub, The Swan Uppers. This was just a short walk away from our bed & breakfast accommodation and it was a lovely, warm summer's evening as we wandered down. At first I wondered if we'd got the right pub, as it was heaving (not that there were too many people in, actually, as it was a small room where the bar is) and I couldn't see anyone I recognised. After getting served we spotted a limping Kos outside so greeted her and then the three of us took a seat to wait for the others. When the others arrived, we all trooped through to a seating area where we were directed to a circular table to eat. There was plenty of choice on the menu, despite the fact that they had forgotten to change the day from Friday to Saturday!  We had a great time renewing friendships - the longest topic of conversation, strangely enough, was cats. It seems that most of the artists I know own at least one cat, or have an affinity with them at least. Alan (Andrea's husband) made me laugh when he demonstrated how you end up in such an awkward position just to accommodate the sleeping cat on your lap! Ridiculous, but oh so true!

We had some olives and cheese to nibble on whilst waiting for our food. To be truthful, the food did take an awfully long time to arrive, but since we were all nattering and drinking anyway, it didn't seem to matter too much. However, when the food arrived, the first meals out were two "Ham, Egg & Chips" which nobody claimed to have ordered. It was eventually deduced that Kos's Scottish rendition of "Haddock & Chips" apparently tranlsates as "Hamegg & Chips" in the South! I opted for a John Dory which I'd never tried before. It was a very meaty, white fish but I seemed to have copped for all the bones - one thing that really does put me off fish is having to filter out the bones when eating it! Andrea & Alan didn't seem to have any bones in theirs so perhaps I was just unlucky. Rob & Kos were staying in the same B&B as us so at some point during the evening he asked us if we wanted to share a taxi back. He'd driven his car down to the Pinder Hall after dropping Kos off at the pub earlier. When we said we were walking back he replied with "Oh, yeah, I forgot, you can walk" which sounded funnier than he'd intended - he's got rather used to Kos hobbling around on her pot leg recently!

The next morning we were up and at the hall for 9am to set up for the exhibition. Amanda had managed to borrow some free-standing display boards which were set up down the centre of the hall and we arranged tables along both sides and at one end. The hall was very light and showed off our work to great advantage.

 Amanda had got a banner made up which she hung outside the hall, and two of her large paintings were propped outside, too, which helped to catch people's attention as they walked by. Thanks to Andrea for letting me borrow some of her photographs here!

The exhibition/sale was also attended by three local artisans - I'm afraid I can only remember the name of two of them - Aurora Spain and Julia Wooster. Aurora is a painter and tutor who saw our Rogue Gene Collective article on collaborative works in the SAA Paint Newsletter. Her work was at one side of mine. At the other side of me was a potter who is a friend of Aurora and a nice lady who was offering free sweets as well as some rather fetching pottery! At the end of the hall opposite the entrance was a local jeweller, Julia Wooster. Her trading name was Blue Cat Jewellery (see, there's the cat thing again?) and I was very tempted by several pieces of hers, but in the end refrained from buying just for the sake of it!

You can see Aurora's work here:

In the next photo, you can see the work of the potter, whose name I have forgotten, sorry! Standing in front of her stall is Aurora.

Here is my work:

Rob Kirbyson's "Special Branch" painting got lots of comments - it really is a stunning creation and much, much more impressive in real life than a photographic representation on the internet!I also liked his latest triptych take on the flying ducks that used to adorn walls such as Hilda Ogden's in Coronation Street years ago. Rob used flying chickens as his theme, which was much funnier!

Kos had some very striking landscapes in classy white frames which set them off beautifully - they looked even more striking against the black backdrop of the display stands in the second image. Kos often paints with a paint roller which gives a really interesting texture to her paintings - I am amazed that she even uses it when painting portraits, which takes some skill, but works really well. She has definitely honed that particular technique to perfection, in my mind.

Andrea brought a lot of her new coastal and ethereal landscape paintings, many of which were painted on small canvases or canvas boards and they were all priced very reasonably considering the amount of work that had obviously gone in to them. I particularly liked "Edge of Darkness". She also had a couple of expressive abstracts which I'd not seen for a while online - these were shown off perfectly on the black display boards and I loved them.

Her expressive abstracts ("Life Form" and "Floral Curves") are painted in oil, which is Andrea's favoured medium, and I really admire the way she has blended the colours in these two paintings you can see in the middle of this shot - you can view these paintings in more detail here. and here.

Andrea had also brought along many of her latest crafty creations which she sells on Etsy - her wearable art brooches that are made of felt flowers and buttons. Very affordable, appealing to girls and women alike, these are perfect little gifts for birthdays, anniversaries or just to say "thanks" to someone! You can view them in her Etsy shop here. Make sure you click on the "Sold" tab, as they are obviously popular items and at the moment she is busy making more to sell online!

Amanda had the most success of us all during the week-end, which seemed fitting since she'd organised the exhibition and put in a lot of work to ensure a smooth operation. She'd also taken part in a "Street Art" exhibition in Maidenhead the day before with lots of sales, so she was in an enviable position from our point of view. We joked that if she wasn't such a nice person, we would be jealous of her success! The truth is, Amanda creates some very marketable artwork that sits well in modern homes and is very pleasing to look at. She is also a very approachable person and interacts with her customers very well indeed. Here are some images of her work inside the hall:

Amanda had far more work than I knew, she must spend every minute when she's not at her full-time occupation painting! I was interested to see that she had also started painting on mini canvases as I have and thought hers were of a very high standard - you can just see them on the left of her table in the photo above. Thanks again to Andrea for the photo here!

We were all impressed with one of Amanda's innovative creations - several paintings on blocks of wood. Sounds dull when you say it like that, but really, they were fantastic! Not just a painting, but a stand alone ornament too, all varnished to give a silky smooth appearance.  You can see these at the extreme right hand side of her table above.

Mike and Tony could not make it to the exhibition ,but fortunately Amanda had some prints of Mike's that we were able to display at the end of the display boards. These are shown on the photo at the beginning of this post.  Mike's photography is always eye-catching and he has a knack for creating an image that draws you into the scene.

Thanks to Andrea, I can show you my table display of crafts - my camera started playing up when I tried to take a shot of it and I lost patience with it. I took several of my magnetic notepads, trinket boxes and mini paintings on easels. I am happy to report that I sold some of them to fellow artists Kos and Amanda - thanks again, you two. It's always extra special when another artist likes your work enough to buy it - it feels like some sort of validation, somehow, that you are actually doing your job properly!

We had a great time meeting up again and are now planning our next group exhibition which will hopefully be nearer me this time - I have a few places to check out in terms of cost and ease of display etc. We also committed ourselves to doing even more of the collaboration work that we have previously done and enjoyed so much, with a view to holding a collaboration exhibition solely. I have already made a start on a background for Amanda, the next one I will be doing is for Kos.

Well, I think I have just about covered everything. I certainly seem to have nattered on for a long time, anyway! Now to catch up with my other personal blog - the holiday! There are never enough hours in the day, are there?