Art in Action

We decided to extend our trip to Oxfordshire and visit the Ashmolean Museum to see an exhibition of "Treasures from the royal Capital of Macedon" entitled from Heracles to Alexander the Great. We were not disappointed! However, the down side was that no photography was permitted and there were a large number of security staff lurking ready to swoop at the sight of a camera. So I bought the catalogue instead and all the photos I would have wanted to take are fortunately included. Can't show those on the blog either, but here's a photo of the front cover by way of compensation.

I will use some of theses photos as the basis for the work to be included in my Sketch Book 2012 project for which I have chosen the theme "Prehistoric". My aim is to try to capture the distinction between primitive and prehistoric. The people that made the beautiful items in this exhibition were certainly prehistoric, but definitely not primitive.

And so off to Art in Action on Thursday with camera, water bottle, notebook and umbrellas! It was as wonderful as always and as usual there was simply not enough time in the day to get around everything we wanted to see. I had a great time in the printing marquee and here is my very first etching!

It's a dry point etching scratched onto perspex with an old dart. The printer, a lovely lady called Barbara Jackson inked up the plate and then put it through an enormous press and hey presto!
Here is my selection for the winner of the best of the best competition. It is a tapestry woven by a peruvian weaver who uses Alpaca yarn rather than wool or linen.

Full of colour and texture and a snip at £5,000! We decided to save the money and didn't buy it. In fact there were a number of items we didn't buy saving us over £10,000 on the day!

On Friday morning I spent some time in the Textile marquee as it was quieter and it was possible to get close to the stands. I signed up for a workshop with Dionne Swift and met some very interesting people. Somehow I think it's time for the organisers to invite some fresh blood into the textile marquee. It seems that there is a core of people who are there every year and so there's not always much new stuff to see.

However, there is a lot to see and do generally and lots of lovely food and drink. This year we went for the Heavenly Haloumi burger from the Veggie table. Yum!

So back to Leeds on Friday afternoon and a lovely sunny weekend relaxing in the garden.