This year’s Dover Printfest and open studios was fairly quiet but we had a steady stream of visitors and plenty of good conversations about art and politics!
I also sold a collage!
And I was so pleased to get this message from the buyer
Clare I LOVE the landscape that I bought from you yesterday. I like all the different elements and materials you have used, and it’s shape. It is open and free, and yet, particular. Like a poem. Love it!
Had a fabulous morning in the studio today running the 2nd print club session. Things are starting to work as I wanted with really constructive peer-to-peer advice for those involved and lots of experimentation.
Wonderful morning spent remembering that sometimes its good to forget any self imposed rules ! Thank you clare_smith for a morning spent forgetting and the opportunity to bring something new into being.
More drawings from my beach time stories sequence
Nos 10 and 11.
I’ve had a great comment on these from an artist I respect:
I seldom see work on paper that has the immediacy of what you’re doing now.
Feel quite pleased about that!
I have lost one artist from the studio so decided to experiment with a new print club in the studio – not for etching or anything like that, mainly monotypes, some small scale screen printing, lino prints and so on…. When there is no club day, there is a bit more space and then the club day pays the rent I’ve lost.
The idea is that it is peer-to-peer learning so people can exchange ideas and techniques, so I am not teaching but get beginners going and suggest things for them to try out.
The first session was really successful and the second session has a few more takers which is encouraging.
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.
