Inspired by the highly successful Perthshire Open Studios – their second- I have launched a project to do something similar for Forth Valley.So far I am getting a good response and we have got an Open meeting fixed for December 12th-in the Changing Room gallery’s eduation room- in Stirling- courtesy of Arts Officer Emma Hamilton.Hopefully we can get together a committee to drive the project forward.
Migrant workers
Have decided to include some photographic documentary work of migrants returning from Saudi in my forthcoming exhibition.
It was one of those unexpected events I stumbled across while in Egypt last year. I just had my cheap cameras with me and a small camcorder but I managed to record the event of thousands of Egyptian workers as they disembarked carrying their possessions in bundles.
The scene was medieval.
If you are interested in making films, especially low budget ones on a shoestring, then a visit to Cafe Flicker, the monthly open cinema in Glasgow is a must. It’s run by Glasgow Media Access Centre and I have been a member for years , first introduced to it while a student at Glasgow School of Art.
In the past I have shown lots of my videos there until I discovered Youtube. However I am encouraged to start showing them there again especially since they have moved into their smart new building on the 5th floor of 103 Trongate, Glasgow.
I am a bit intimidated though because there are no female filmakers.
Why not? In all the years I have been going to Cafe Flicker I can count on one hand the number of films/videos shown by women.
I did notice though that the standard has shot up – result of new digital technology and the falling price of decent camcorders though last month a guy showed a film he had made on a cine- camera he had bought for £12 from a junk shop.
Eleven films were shown on Wednesday night and they ranged from a documentary on Romanian gypsies singing, never seen footage of an interview with George Harrison, ( yes of the Beatles!) to a community documentary on the Citizens community theatre in the Gorbals. Oh yes we had experimental films too and the funniest was one involving a frog…
“Brushes” app
Have just downloaded “Brushes” app to my Iphone and experimenting with drawing with this new cool tool.
David Hocknry has been using it for some time. Can’t figure out yet how he manages to get such complex pictures using just a finger.
The Big Draw
Thanks to The Big Draw” which aims to get everyone drawing I got a chance to try my hand at screen printing in a workshop held at The Tolbooth Stirling .
Our tutor, Andrew Mackenzie managed in three hours to give us an intensive introduction to the process which ended up with us all walking away with several screen prints each! quite an achievement!
We used the current exhibition of Aladsair Gray’s prints as source material. After an introduction and brief history of screen printing we were taken to the exhibition and given quarter of an hour to draw an image from which we would later develope a stencil for screen printing. I must admit that I entered the workshop feeling a bit sceptical: how on earth could be do a screen print from scratch in such a short time? Andrew proved me wrong. I m now an enthusiast of screen printing and want to find out more.
Ann Shaw is an artist/writer based in Scotland working in new media. As a journalist she campaigned and wrote about many social and medical issues. She is a feminist and founder member of Falkirk Womens Aid, active in the trades union movement and former member of National Union of Journalists Equality Working Party, and founder member of Forth Valley Open Studios.
