Fantasia Dolls House Club Exhibition

On Wednesday, 11th August, we took our two grand-daughters to see this well-presented exhibition at the Hedon Museum, East Yorkshire. It was staged by the Fantasia Dolls House Club and we were greeted instantly by two members who were keen to inform us of many of their techniques, which was very interesting. The main display was of a set of Victorian terraced houses, all decorated in different ways. It was a bit awkward for children to see what was inside the houses, since they were all set up facing into the middle of the room, but Matheea and Evie were allowed to stand on a chair in order to see the insides - well worth doing. Matheea, who is 8, was so impressed she wanted to go and make a start on building a miniature house immediately! She sat down for ages, chatting to one of the women and looking at one of the books on how to create miniature items. Evie was impressed with the "Wedding Belle" house and the fact that there were so many small items hand-made. They did think about using their "Polly Pocket" dolls as part of such a creation, but soon realised that these houses and people in them are not designed to be played with, but are works of art to be looked at instead.

I was equally impressed with the whole exhibition - a couple of my favourites were the "Theatre Box" and "Sewing Box" which were part of another theme the club had used for a creation - simply by utilising a cardboard box (of a fairly small size) in an imaginative way.

These photos show most of what was on display. The exhibition is on until Wednesday September 8th and I would urge anyone with young children to go and have a look - or any of you with an interest in hand-made crafts of any kind. The tiles on the roof of most of the terraced houses, for instance, are mostly made of pieces of cardboard, painted individually and stuck on.

Another of my favourite pieces was the replica of the Preston Village Show - the cabbages and cakes were made from polymer clay and I was in awe of the detail that had gone into each piece.

Here are some photos of the exhibition that I took on the day.

Here's Evie admiring the row of Victorian terraced houses.

If you look closely you can see the mess left behind by a seagull or two on the roof of the house painted blue! The Wedding Belle shop on the left had a mirror on the back  wall at the top, which gave the impression of a much larger room inside - very clever!

This is the view of the houses from the back, looking over the tops of the other houses. Some of them had attic rooms, whereas others just had two levels.

My favourite box design was the Theatre Box above, but I also liked the Jewellery Box next to it, and the Hat Box and Sewing Box, below.

Here is a photo of the rear of "Mystic Maria" (I think, I've forgotten her name actually) - the lady at the exhibition turned the house around so that Evie could see the crystal ball properly!

Finally, here are 3 shots of the fantastically created replica of Preston Village Show:

The museum is only open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, from 10am to 5pm. I have exhibited some of my paintings there previously, and despite it only being a small museum, it's great for children and adults alike as they regularly have varied displays alongside the regular exhibits. It is on two floors, with refreshments available at a very affordable price and very friendly staff, too!

Summer Poduction

This weekend, the Junior and Youth section members of Bilton Amateur Dramatic Society are performing their Summer Production. On Saturday July 24th and Sunday July 25th at 7.30pm, they will entertain family, friends and anyone else who turns up to watch them.

Keith and I have been busy making sure all the props and costumes are made/bought/acquired and in the right place ready for the dress rehearsal on Saturday afternoon.  Today we have designed the programme - a tight fit due to the fact that there are 23 named characters in the Junior play and four separate plays for the Youth with at least 5 characters in each of those!

The Juniors are performing a play that was written by one of our members, Andy Jowett, for the school-children he teaches at Preston Primary School. We saw it performed there a couple of years ago and thought it would be a good play to do in order to involve all the members. As it turned out, we have had to incorporate two of the Youth Section members and double up on some of the parts as people dropped out! Drama is a big commitment and not many young children are able to cope with the dedication required to rehearse on a regular basis - often to the detriment of going out with their friends! However, with a few slight alterations to the script and by omitting the songs from the original play (it would have taken way too long to rehearse those as well) we are now hoping to stage a play that lasts approximately 1 hour 15 minutes. There are three main characters - Singalong Spike, Detective Inspector Moldiwarp and Chief Superintendent Mole. Singalong Spike (Bethany Jones) is the leader of a criminal gang who open the play by stealing a pile of gold from the police and attempt to take it out of the country in order to get it laundered for cash. Along the way, as DI Moldiwarp (Bethan Holloway) constantly tries to keep up with the gang, we meet several characters with ridiculous names such as Bob the Carver (how did he get that name, I wonder?) and Reg Beet. C.S. Mole (Molly Robinson) is the boss in charge of the police force and he is determined to make his mark by catching Spike and his gang. Therefore he decides to send one of his young officers under-cover in order to find out what Spike's plans are. PC Jasper (Daniel Robinson) is selected to become one of the "glam rock gang". His cover is blown, however, when Stunning Suzi (Matheea Ellerby) overhears him reporting back to his boss after a meeting with the gang. The final result proves that crime doesn't really pay, but in order to find out what happens you will have to come along and watch!

The Youth Section will be performing four short sketches. First of all, they all take part in "12 Angry Pigs" written by Wade Bradford

They are all wearing very eerie-looking pig masks for this production and here are a few pics of them when they first tried them on a couple of weeks ago:

I love the fact that Molly is wearing her glasses over her mask, and the boys just loved posing for this photograph! Also included in the 12 Pigs Spoof are a few characters from children's nursery rhymes/stories such as the Big Bad Wolf, Little Red Riding Hood and Little Boy Blue. We have selected some of the members from the Junior section to play those parts.

The other 3 sketches are written by Johnny Ball. "Mind The Trains" is set in a railway station and features a star performance from a weighing machine, expertly crafted by Keith! Also appearing are a strangulated Tannoy voice courtesy of Molly Robinson, an odd chap sometimes known as Jacob Preston and a Sales Lady with all the customer service skills of an old mop. Johnny Ball has written all these sketches with great use of words to convey double meanings and create laughter. One of the opening lines makes me chuckle: Business Man:I say, Porter, have you seen your level crossing? One gate is half open and the other gate is half closed." Porter replies with: Yes, sir, we're half expecting a train.  Certainly groan-inducing lines, but a lot of fun to do.

"The Sins of Cinderella" is a spoof of the famous panto, complete with Buttons, Cinderella, Fairy Godmother, Ugly Sisters and an orchestra of sorts! Sourcing the costumes for this has been a lot of fun, particularly trying to make the costume for the Fairy Godmother. I am not in any way handy with a needle, but I will persevere and create something for the job when necessary, albeit by hand. Fortunately, the Fairy Godmother in this production is supposed to be wearing a very tatty outfit, so I am happy with the result!

Finally, "Full Of Eastern Promise" is a tale of mistaken identity and long-lost sons returning. As this sketch was very difficult to learn, the teenagers involved in this play have really done us proud. When you have a character named "Iyam" and several cast members saying it out loud at different points, it gets very confusing! I think the audience will leave with a smile on their faces at the end of the evenings - and for the right reason, too.

I think next week I will be mostly lying down and relaxing.......Until the play reading I have to plan for the adults, that is!

Opening night at BADS

The opening night for Bilton Amateur Dramatic Society last night at the Bilton Theatre was a great success. The audience loved both plays and responded really well to all the humour. We were very happy at the end of the evening. One of the nicest compliments we received was from two members of our Youth Section who watched it. They said that they hardly recognised Keith - not because of how he looked, but because he seemed to be a totally different person. Well, by any standards that must be a sign of how well he acted, so I am obviously proud of my soul-mate and co-actor!

Tonight is the night that we are performing in front of the Vicar of St Peter's Church in Bilton, Rev. Richard Major - hope he likes the plays and comes back next time!!

It's looking likely that word of mouth is increasing the numbers of audience members, too - I've had several messages today asking if people can come along tonight without booking! My artwork has taken a bit of a back seat this week, but I am really enjoying being in the production, as is everyone else involved. Keith and I walked to a local village this morning to do some shopping and on the way there and back we just went through our play - we like to try and be word perfect, so we believe that you can't over-rehearse, even during the week!

Carol and Dave Hawxwell in a scene from "For Starters", which is the first play of the evening in our production this week.

Below is another photo taken from the production of "Purvis" that my husband and I are performing in:

BADS dress rehearsal time!

I can't believe we are at the dress rehearsal stage already! It doesn't seem long ago that we first read the script for our play- here we are getting ready for opening night on Tuesday! I only hope the weather cools down a tad, otherwise we will be sweltering on stage! No air conditioning in our little theatre, I'm afraid - we're lucky to have central heating in the winter months!

Anyway, I thought I'd share the publicity we had recently in one of the local newspapers - the Holderness Gazette. They used a photo we took at rehearsal a couple of weeks ago and have given us a good feature that may well bring in a few more audience members. We usually don't need to do much in the way of advertising, as we have a mailing list of patrons who are very loyal and support every play we perform. However, every little helps, to coin a phrase!

Here's the article:

East Yorkshire Open Art Exhibition

Today I have dropped off two paintings to be judged ready for the East Yorkshire Annual Open Art Exhibition. It's the first time I've entered this exhibition so I am really hoping my paintings get selected. I've opted for two similar sized, framed works - "Red Rocks" and "3 Wise Men and an Interloper" so fingers crossed! The exhibition runs from Saturday 3rd July until Sunday 29th August and is held at Sewerby Hall, near Bridlington, East Yorkshire. Sewerby Hall is a very popular tourist attraction and has some lovely landscaped gardens as well as a children's playground, cafe, gift shops and animals to look at.

I have a space in my hall where "Red Rocks" normally hangs which I am hoping will need to be filled by something else before the end of August!

Bilton Amateur Dramatic Society

One week to go!

Well, I can hardly believe it, but exactly one week today I will be performing on stage once more at the Bilton Theatre. I have been a member of this particular society in East Yorkshire for 20 years now and it is where I met my husband so I have an extremely strong attachment to the theatre and society. We are lucky (some may say) at BADS in that we have our own purpose built theatre in which to perform. The building itself is held in trust for us as long as there is a dramatic society in operation. The downfall of having your own theatre, of course, which most people don't even think about, is the fact that we are responsible for every aspect of running it. As members are so thin on the ground these days, that often means that a lot of the work falls on Keith and I since we do not have to go out each day to work. Today we have spent the morning down there tidying up the stage and wings, dressing room area and main auditorium. We also cleared away a huge pile of horse manure from outside the stage door - something I'm sure no self-respecting professional actor or actress would ever have to do prior to performing! We were only going to spend a maximum of one hour down there, but as ever we see things that need doing and promptly get on with them - such as the sign that we put up to advertise the fact that we've got a play on.

Oh, yes, that's what I was writing about - I got side-tracked with telling you of the pitfalls of owning your own theatre and having to maintain the place yourself. We also share the land with some horses - these are usually in a fenced off paddock at the side of the theatre, but every now and then, the owners let them roam on our grassed car parking area. We had a rehearsal the other week on a bank holiday, during the day, and were greeted by three horses at the gate when we drove up, so had to leave our cars in the drive until we left. I took some photos of them - they were quite curious about the step-ladders we'd left outside momentarily and even managed to knock them onto the ground at one point! I find horses fascinating, yet am also slightly scared of them. They are magnificent creatures and I can appreciate their beauty, but they tend to nut you with their head and when they search for food as you approach them, it's quite intimidating.

This is the scene that greeted us that day:

That's enough about horses, now, I think. We just have one more rehearsal before the Dress Rehearsal on Sunday and I am hoping that we get some good houses next week. We have sent photographs to the local press and our Publicity Officer, Nikki Grannon, has been working hard contacting the local radio stations as well. Any press cuttings that we get will be posted here for future reference! It would be nice if we got a review from the local newspapers, like we used to years ago, but it's not always guaranteed. A critical review would be the best so that we can see where we are going wrong (unless, of course, we are doing everything right).

This time round, we are doing two one-act plays. Each play is a comedy written by Nick Warburton and features a husband and wife team as the two characters. The first one, "For Starters" is set in an exclusive hotel restaurant where a new waitress, Daisy, is learning her job and getting to know one of the hotel guests rather well. Dave & Carol Hawxwell are the stars of this play - at the moment they are enjoying a week's holiday so will not be rehearsing on the stage until the Dress Rehearsal, but I have heard that they have both been going over the play on the beach this week!!! The other play, "Purvis", is set in St Peter's Church vestry. It just so happens that the name of the church in Bilton (where our theatre is) has the same name! We couldn't let this coincidence go by un-noticed, so we have invited the Vicar of St Peter's, Bilton to come along and watch the production. He has booked his seats for the Wednesday night I believe - I'm looking forward to hearing what he makes of it! The play features a woman called Rachel (played by me) who is the Vicar's wife, and a new parishioner by the name of Mr Purvis (played by my husband, Keith). Rachel tries to welcome Purvis to the community and somehow ends up giving him the job of Health & Safety Officer of the church. This action sees many accidents occurring and Rachel getting more and more exasperated as time progresses. Purvis is very accident-prone but also completely unaware of is, which only makes matters worse!

I have thoroughly enjoyed learning a play with just two of us in it - particularly since the other character is my husband, Keith. It has meant that we have been able to rehearse at home in between our regular rehearsals, which is so much easier. It is probably the only time we will ever get to act in a two-handed play together again, so we've really enjoyed the experience. With our acting membership down to just 6 members now, it's really hard to cast and produce anything other than small cast plays now.

If you need to find out any more about our society or the play - click on the title of this post to be directed to our website. Here's the poster advertising the production:

Wolds Village Summer Open Exhibition

Earlier this week I paid a visit to the Wolds Village Summer Open Exhibition in Bainton, near Driffield. I was very inspired by seeing all the works on display, and especially so at the works from the children at Pocklington School.

It was nice to see work from people I know in this area, too - and interestingly, two of my paintings were positioned next to Lorna Storey's and Rob Soar's! I managed to to take a few photographs to show you some of the work on display.

I don't recall whose paintings are the large ones in the photo above, but the brightly coloured one at the top on the right is one of Rob Soar's, then mine is just below it (We Will Remember Them) and below mine are two by June Hammond. I have met June a couple of times, I remember her doodle styled ink drawings from the Beverley Art Fair we both exhibited at in May 2009.

Pupils from Pocklington school, aged 13 & 14, were displaying works that they'd created using the starting point of African Masks. I particularly liked this area of the exhibition and thought that the children had all done an excellent job. Some of their creations were very reminiscent of my time spent in Africa, therefore I felt a connection to these pieces:

There was also a selection of paintings from younger children - I think also from Pocklington, although I may be wrong as last year's exhibition featured work from children at Warter Primary School. Whichever school they were from , I loved seeing their work. They had all written comments next to their pieces, some of which were priceless! One child had written "I like the art group because I like drawing" - that says it all, really, doesn't it? Another child had put a joke onto his written accompaniment which I really can't resist sharing. As all these children's works were related to the adult exhibition theme, coastal, the joke was along those lines, too. "Why did the sand cry? ............................Because the Sea weed" I did actually chuckle at that! Here are a few of their paintings:

The children's work was all in the smaller room at one end of the gallery, along with a few entries from adult artists, too, as can be seen in the next photograph:

Here you can see my work (Coastal Contemplation) sandwiched  between two of Lorna Storey's pieces - coincidentally, two of my favourite paintings of hers, which look even better in real life than on the computer monitor, as artwork always does in my opinion.

The painting above ours, of the penguins, is done by Frank Thompson, inacrylic. I haven't managed to find a web-site for him, so you will just have to enjoy this lone image for now! I think it is a lovely painting and I like the visual impact of his landscape shaped canvas against our much smaller ones beneath. In fact, I think the layout of the whole exhibition was really well done.

Another of my East Riding Artist colleagues whose work was in the exhibition was Debbie March. I have met Debbie several times at various fairs and exhibitions in the area - she makes some gorgeous jewellery as well as creating glass paintings, which are stunning. I'm afraid the photo in this instance really does not do her work justice. However, you can see more of her work here.

Debbie's glass paintings are hanging on the left of the photo, I don't remember who did the other pieces, although I have a feeling one of them may well be Sally Brealey who runs the Wolds Village Gallery.

My painting (Spurn Point Inspired) can be seen towards the left of this photo, above. Also on here I can see a painting done by one of my ERA colleagues, Steve Dove. Steve works very quickly in acrylic - I watched him complete a painting in a couple of hours one afternoon at an exhibition last year in Beverley, and photographed him at various stages of the process. I then created a slide-show of the process with suitable captions and gave it to him the next time I saw him. He has paintings in galleries across the East Riding of Yorkshire and is a very active exhibitor who also happens to be really good company. He usually exhibits with two other ERA artists, Penny de Corte and Selina Fennell. I like and respect both these artists and their work. Penny creates some lovely tactile ceramic pieces which she loves with a passion that just pours out of her whenever you speak to her. Selina is a very talented pet portrait painter, but she also creates really unusual "found object" style paintings, using many items she finds on the beach in Hornsea, where she lives.

You can see two more of Steve's paintings in this photo top and bottom in the corner position. The painting sandwiched between the two of Steve's was a very intricately painted acrylic painting which was very delicate and calming to look at. The artist was one I've not heard of before and I've even forgotten her name, I'm afraid!






Penny's ceramic work was on display throughout the gallery in various glass cases, also she had this lovely bowl on the table in the entrance area.

Here are Selina's driftwood styled creations:

You can see more of Selina's work on her personal website here.

The exhibition at Wolds Village lasts until 1st July and is open daily between 10am and 5pm. It's worth a trip to the gallery, but be warned - there's also a very fine restaurant/cafe on site, as well as a wonderful gift shop that you could spend a small fortune in! It's always busy, especially in the summer months and it has a great atmosphere, too. I am very happy to be part of such a varied exhibition.