Some images of the Bike Wheel Dome I made for Small World Festival 2010 and the Bike Wheel Shelter I made to permanently stay at WoWo campsite (Sussex) 2011.
Making these shelters coincided with the launch of Room for Imagination; an artists collective I established to be able to collaborate, take on commissions and make outdoor installations for festivals and events.
The bike wheel shelter became a literal ‘room for imagination’… I would like to investigate creating different rooms for imagination, that confound expectations when a person enters them.
Projects and preoccupations:
Bike wheel structures
Birds
Divers
Things have shifted. My contract has finished at the college and I have just registered myself as a Self Employed artist.
I have been trying to draw today and have been sifting through old photos – about ten years all jumbled – to find a starting point. Everything feels a bit daunting – wouldn’t it be easier to just get a job?!
I have seen one today that may have my name on it – but I don’t know whether this is a very practical idea or whether its me wriggling out of having to make things!
The Artists Way has been on my mind – I think I need to get collecting images and ideas and filling up the old inspiration well again.
I have come back to this blog after a long gap. Its July, I’m making again, in a rather different direction. Venice is where my minds eye is looking.
I went there in March and I have a rather large urge to return to experience the Biennale. There was some talk of being able to go through work but unfortunately its not been given the goahead. And my financial situation isn’t any better (but the guardian did say you could do it for £150 if you camped) so I’m ever the optimist.
The images I’m working with currently are from my March trip and i’m trying to do some prints at home as well as arrange some time to do some screenprinting at work. I have been experimenting with collage and using chalk pastels over the top of press prints.
I have an exhibition booked for October and this has given me a little jolt into action!
I have been working to create a little more space in my life and today has been my first friday off. I have been talking to a friend that I did my degree with and discussing the mother/artist/work balancing act. Just a little space and I'm back to thinking about whirring wheels. Could I make it in my garden? I think I'm going to put some images up at home to make my desk a workspace. My house feels like a home but not a making space. Not yet. This blog is so helpful, I was just looking at my last few trains of thought. Its good to remind myself where I got to before I pressed pause.
The news continues to provide interesting material, potentially for screen prints.(This sounds callus, I'm just interested when the obsurd or the strange becomes entagled with the everyday)
The plane that emergency landed in the river.
The professors dying of pancreatic cancer years after nuclear experiments at the university.
And one from the summer that caught my attention:
The priest that went missing after flying off with hellium balloons.
