Jack Norris

Scrapheap Challenge

Mike Harrington

Louise '95
Pollenca Sunday Market 2 - 1995


Pollenca Sunday Market - 1995

Swanage Lifeboat - 1997

Wareham (3ft wide)

Online Art Reference

From 'THE ARTISTS' YEARBOOK 2007

Art & Architecture Thesaurus Online
www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat

Art Movements
www.artmovements.co.uk

Artcyclopedia
www.artcyclopedia.com

Artlex Art Dictionary
www.artlex.com

artnet
www.artnet.com

artprice.com
www.artprice.com

Creative Space Agency
www.creativespaceagency.org.uk

culturebase.net
www.culturebase.net

Grove Art Online
www.groveart.com

Own Art
www.artscouncil.org.uk/ownart

Ownit
www.own-it.org

the-artists.org
www.the-artists.org

Visual Collections
www.davidrumsey.com/collections

Galleries That Don't Have Websites

2 January 2007

Galleries that don't have websites
GEEDON GALLERY SPRING EXHIBITION31st March - 15th April 2007Six Artists Six SculptorsGeedon Gallery, Jaggers,Fingrinhoe, Colchester11am - 5.30pm

Proposal for an Essex Gallery Basildon

THE FOUNDATION
FOR ESSEX ART
Delivering expertise and knowledge to the people of Essex.


Thursday, 18 January 2007

Proposal for an Essex Gallery Basildon

Dear

Basildon has always had a thriving and flourishing arts community, but the visual arts in particular have perhaps shone through most of all. A good example of this is the jointly mounted exhibition by BAT [Basildon Arts Trust] and START [Support Through Art] at the Eastgate Shopping Centre last year, which attracted over 40,000 visitors during its six month limited run. This was a phenomenal attendance considering that it was the first major art exhibition to be held in Basildon during the new town’s relatively short history.

Over the years various groups have campaigned for an art gallery in Basildon and indeed for a county gallery in Essex to display the county’s indigenous art, but up to now finding a suitable site and a local authority with the vision to make this happen have proved to be the two of main obstacles to achieving this. Fortunately in Basildon we have a forward thinking Council, one that has been quick to see the value of the visual arts in particular -a Council who have voted in full council to support a major gallery in the town. They really do appreciate the cachet that a thriving cultural scene can bring to the vibrancy of a town like Basildon

Basildon Town Centre is about to experience a 21st century transformation to put the town where it belongs as a major destination in south Essex for business, shopping, leisure and culture -a place to enjoy town or country walks or just to relax in and see a show. Basildon also has some very significant 20th century art and architecture. The Trust’s art collection includes prints by Barbara Hepworth and Dame Elizabeth Frink RA, paintings by Sir Terry Frost RA, Ivon Hitchens, William Scott RA and Essex artists Ken Kiff RA and Richard Sorrell. The district contains a number of listed buildings including Brooke House, a fine example Brutalist architecture designed by Sir Basil Spence. Another fine example this time of Post-modernist architecture is The Basildon Swimming Pool, designed by local architect, Ken Cotton, who was also a founding member of the Basildon Arts Trust.

The Swimming Pool is due to be decommissioned in the very near future and we feel that a new use for it has to be found. This is such a vital part of Basildon’s built Heritage. We are therefore proposing to call a meeting at the Towngate Theatre on Wednesday 28 March 2007 at 7 pm to understand what local and regional people feel about creating such a visual art centre within Basildon’s Town Centre.

The Proposers of this meeting are interested in finding a lasting and permanent home for the Basildon Art Collection, a place where the artists of Essex can be given a high profile display of their work, and a place that will provide a large enough space to house many the national and international exhibitions that hitherto have by-passed out south Essex because we have nowhere suitable to mount them. This interest is shared by our partners BAT and START and we hope that you will share our vision by coming along to this meeting and sharing your views and thoughts with other interest groups and individuals from across Essex.


Yours sincerely





Vin Harrop
Chairman of the Trustees
The Foundation for Essex Arts/
Essex Architecture Centre

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..


Please detach and return to the address below



I am interested in a visual arts space for Essex. I would therefore like to attend the meeting to share my views and interests in helping Basildon to fulfil its ambition to provide such a space in the south Essex, Thames Gateway region


Name……………………………………….. Signature…………………………………..

Email address……………………………….. Telephone number……………………….

Address…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Name of organisation where appropriate…………………………………………………..
Under the data protection act, we are required to ask you if you would agree to us putting your name on our files to receive future information about Essex Gallery Basildon or other related material. Please tick here if you agree. □

Patrons: Vivien Heffernan Andrew Motion Richard Sorrell Mark Wallinger

THE FOUNDATION FOR ESSEX ARTS

(A voluntary, community-based, unincorporated charity)

Incorporating Essex Architecture Centre + Commission for 'The Essex Gallery'

15 Rosslyn Road, Billericay, Essex, CM12 9JN

Telephone/fax 44(0) 1277 630760

E-mail: vin@designessex.com, www.essexgallery.org.uk

CHALVEDON SECONDARY SCHOOL

CHALVEDON SECONDARY SCHOOL

At Chalvedon Secondary School I worked with 6th Form Students. I worked with them for two days, the first in the school and the second day in my Sculpture Studio in Laindon.

The first day was spent in the classroom showing my commercial work and talking about how design and sculpture has an important part to play in the every day world. I talked about production and running a business producing sculpture.

On the second day I invited the students down to my studio. The aim was to treat them like professional sculptors by taking them out of the school environment. I set them a challenge of creating a sculpture of a man and a woman that portrayed the stereotypical view of Basildon youth. The brief was to enjoy the construction using the materials provided. The work had to include humour and the ability to take the mickey out of Basildon youth. Their levels of concentration were very surprising and they threw themselves into the work with great gusto.

Before the end of the day they had to not only complete the work in the given time, but also to justify the work in a short critique and question and answer session. Their unflinching ability to laugh at themselves was to be commended.

The sculptures were fantastic and in all their enjoyment they said they actually learnt about timing, teamwork, materials and about themselves. Sometimes the sculpture is only the visual aspect of the work, but I feel the overall experience is the most important part of the artistic learning curve.

The newspapers were invited down to view the finished work, the school was proud of the 6th form students and the experience sparked some of the students into higher education studying art and design. The students and I thought the two days were well worth it.

THE BILLERICAY SECONDARY SCHOOL

THE BILLERICAY SECONDARY SCHOOL

The Year 11 Students at Billericay School had a project to decorate their Year 11 common room with a mural painting.

The work was to be done by the Year 11 students to enhance their space, make a statement, come up with a concept, develop designs and execute the work themselves. My part of the project was to help create inspiration, develop the ideas and design work and give practical techniques on painting and composition and work along side of them every step of the work.

The collaboration between the students was enthusiastic; the inspirational ideas were ambitious to say the least. The important thing was to keep the work achievable without letting the enthusiasm falter.
Sharing the work between all the participating students meant it came on in leaps and bounds. The total project took 2 weeks from concept to completion. All the students had great fun during the painting, learnt a lot and were proud of what they had achieved. This was a voluntary project; I was only reimbursed for the material I supplied.

JANET DUKE INFANT SCHOOL

JANET DUKE INFANT SCHOOL (YEARS R – 2) - showing the children my portfolio in slide form, drawing with the children and mould making hands, taking impressions using plaster paris and modrock bandage technique. The children always show a natural, honest enthusiasm.

MERRYLANDS PRIMARY SCHOOL

MERRYLANDS PRIMARY SCHOOL (YEARS 3 – 6) – taking groups of 40-60 children in the hall. Showing work in slide form. Talking to the children about the work and the individual projects. Then gave demonstrations on moulding techniques and casting in plaster of paris. They enjoyed me taking moulds off their hands and actively taking part in the mould making process. More projects planned for the future and, possibly, even a school entrance sculpture involving the children and their designs.

BASILDON COLLEGE

BASILDON COLLEGE – Visited the college to speak to students who were teacher training and students who were going on further to BA College. Demonstrated how sculpture, display, theatre and mould making has an important part in the future employment of the students.

Vins Rant

As Chairman of the Trustees Foundation of Essex Arts Vin has been having his say.
Click on the newspaper cutting to enlarge

Creativity Is Good Medicine

This was inspirational froma songwriter talking about creativity:-

I have the sense that our left brain world, whilst productive and efficient, has made us jumpy, panicky and sad. Our addictions and miseries stem partly from allowing no time for play, no time for creating it.I have known countless people (including me) who when they started scheduling regular creative time in their lives, began to heal all kinds of messes and addictions.

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Scientific American.com

News December 18, 2006

Happy people are open to all sorts of ideas, some of which can be distracting
by JR Minkel

Happiness: Good for Creativity, Bad for Single-Minded Focus

A HAPPY THOUGHT: People in a happy mood perform better than others on a task that requires them to be creative, but do worse when asked to cut through distractions and focus on one thing.
Despite those who romanticize depression as the wellspring of artistic genius, studies find that people are most creative when they are in a good mood, and now researchers may have explained why: For better or worse, happy people have a harder time focusing.
University of Toronto psychologists induced a happy, sad or neutral state in each of 24 participants by playing them specially chosen musical selections. To instill happiness, for example, they played a jazzy version of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. After each musical interlude, the researchers gave subjects two tests to assess their creativity and concentration.

In one test, participants in a happy mood were better able to come up with a word that unified three other seemingly disparate words, such as "mower," "atomic" and "foreign." Solving the puzzle required participants to think creatively, moving beyond the normal word associations--"lawn," "bomb" and "currency"--to come up with the more remote answer: "power."
Interestingly, induced happiness made the subjects worse at the second task, which required them to ignore distractions and focus on a single piece of information. Participants had to identify a letter flashed on a computer screen flanked by either the same letter, as in the string "N N N N N," or a different letter, as in "H H N H H." When the surrounding letters didn't match, the happy participants were slower to recognize the target letter in the middle, indicating that the ringers distracted them.

The results suggest that an upbeat mood makes people more receptive to information of all kinds, says psychologist Adam Anderson, co-author of the study published online by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. "With positive mood, you actually get more access to things you would normally ignore," he says. "Instead of looking through a porthole, you have a landscape or panoramic view of the world."
Researchers have long proposed that negative emotions give people a kind of tunnel vision or filter on their attention, Anderson says. Positive moods break down that filter, which enhances creativity but prevents laserlike focus, such as that needed to recognize target letters in the second task, he says.

As for the myth of the depressed but brilliant artist, Anderson speculates that creativity may be a form of self-medication, giving a gloomy artist the chance to adopt a cheerful disposition.

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From 'the Artists Way'

A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity - by Julia Cameron

Many of us wish we were more creative. Many of us sense we are more creative, but unable to effectively tap that creativity. Our dreams elude us. Our lives feel somehow flat. Often, we have great ideas, wonderful dreams, but are unable to actualize them for ourselves. Sometimes we have specific creative longings we would love to be able to fulfill - learning to play the piano, painting, taking an acting class, or writing. Sometimes our goal is more diffuse. We hunger for what might be called creative living - an expanded sense of creativity in our business lives, in sharing with our children, our spouse, our friends.

Another excerpt:-

Filling the Well, Stocking the Pond

Art is an image-using system. In order to create, we draw from our inner well. This inner well, an artistic reservoir, is ideally like a well-stocked trout pond. We've got big fish, little fish, fat fish, skinny fish - an abundance of artistice fish to fry.As artists, we must realize that we have to maintain this artistic ecosystem. If we don't give some attention to upkeep, our well is apt to become depleted, stagnant, or blocked.Any extended period or piece of work draws heavily on our artistic well. Overtapping the well, like overfishing the pond, leaves us with diminished resources. We fish in vain for the images we require. Our work dries up and we wonder why, "just when it was going well." The truth is that work can dry up because it is going so well.As artists we must learn to be self-nourishing. We become alert enough to consciously replenish our creative resources as we draw on them - to restock the trout pond, so to speak. I call this process filling the well.Filling the well involves the active pursuit of images to refresh our artistic reservoirs. Art is born in attention. Its midwife is detail............