Did another drawing today, accompanied by Joanna who worked on a watercolour of the same view.
Rules as for yesterday’s drawing.
Visitors to the park stopped with their children to either explain what we were doing or admire – the admiration in at least one case based on the fact that it was better than what they could do…
I promised two new drawings for a show at Brew in Folkestone in September and suddenly realised that time is getting short… So yesterday I went out to the Lower Leas Coastal Park to get one of them done.
There are a couple of rules:
The work I did for my residency with the Wealden Literary Festival has, apart from anything else, brought about a rethink of my artist’s statement, to take into account my perspectives on the problematic issue of identity, especially in a society which categorises people by ethnicity. Even if there are now different variants of “mixed” categories on various forms, I often find myself ticking “mixed other”! The residency was an opportunity to work consistently over a period of time and this has helped me focus. I have resolved to keep going with timetabling studio time and sticking to my “own work days” unless it is absolutely impossible.
Over the weekend I went to see Joanna Jones’s fabulous exhibition in Bad Soden. It was in the former Badhaus in the alte Kurpark and the smell of sulphur from the springs brought back memories of time spent in Bad Kreuznach as a patient, with various doctors trying and broadly succeeding, at least for a time, in getting my RA under control.
It’s all go at the moment! I am one of 70 artists to have some work on paper in Afternoon Tea in Margate as part of the Margate Festival and curated by Chiara Williams and will be making new work for Brink, curated by Karen Pamplin Browne at Brew in Folkestone (September) as part of Folkestone is an Art School.
The relatively new Dover Studio Collective is organising its third open studio and exhibition with invited guest artists. As a format, it is working really well and helps get the venue known and stretches us all as artists, and because the other artists are invited we don’t have a selection process for the work, which would add another layer of time-intensive organisation. The Collective is quite informal – there is no constitution and no written rules and the events are organised on a fairly ad hoc basis, although that said, we do set a few ground rules as we go along. The aim is to show contemporary print-based work and artist’s books, taking an expansive consideration of what print can be. So we are planning an ‘in conversation’ event as well, depending on whether there are enough of us around at the same time to make such a conversation work!
The open studio takes place downstairs in the workspaces, while the exhibition is upstairs in the project space and we will have a pop-up shop selling further prints, multiples and artists books/zines from other artist-makers.
We are excited to be joining this year’s 5th Fête de l’Estampe http://www.fetedelestampe.fr/ with currently 222 artist printmaking events taking place across France, Belgium, Italy and the UK.
Clare Smith's mixed English/Chinese heritage informs her perspective on issues of identity and categorisation. Her nomadic childhood and early adulthood have meant a somewhat ambivalent relationship to place, reinforced by the sense of ambiguity that comes from her mixed identity. Smith works with drawing, print media, collage and moving image to investigate this ambivalence, with references to craft, the importance of labour and the handmade. Through her choice of materials and approaches, she creates work which attempts to create a sense of unity, an interpretation of Homi Bhabha's "Third Space" - seen as a space in which different parts can come together to challenge dominant ideas of wholeness. Collaboration is part of Smith’s practice and she is also co-founder of Dover Arts Development (DAD) together with painter, Joanna Jones. This involves working with many different artists, curation, organisation, event management, creating networks across East Kent and influencing the public realm in Dover. Clare works from a studio in Dover. She has an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins and has exhibited nationally and internationally.
