Gokotta, the Exhibition.

Gokotta has now been up for a week, and so far we've had some very enthusiastic and positive comments from our visitors. Workshops are also running alongside the exhibition, and are proving popular.

Above and below, Lucy Dean's incredibly colourful and patterned  bird drawings.

Angela Curror takes the most wonderful photos, and has captured the robin below singing his little heart out!

Jackie Harford has some beautifully detailed ink drawings and lino prints of birds nests on display.

Jodi Jones creates fabulous collages with her own painted papers, capturing some of those gloriously subtle colours that nature does so well.

Karen Moser's little ceramic wrens are full of character, and her feathers and Angel wings show such brilliant detail.

Another one of Lucy's, a patterned crow this time.

The PV was well attended and we've had some very encouraging and enthusiastic interest in our work.

Gokotta, Swedish for 'getting up early to hear the birds singing', is on for another week and a bit. We take it down on the 22nd March, so still plenty of time to come along and see for yourself if you happen to be in the area of 67-69 Seaside Road, Eastbourne BN21 3PL. Open daily, Tuesday through to Sunday, 11am until 5pm.

Jackie's fun, bird boxes. A hopeful sign that Spring must surely be on it's way soon. 

Finishing off before a relaxing play around.

Finished at last! You may remember my processes from my weekly sketchbook class, but if  not you can refresh your memory here. Anyway, there's nothing like an exhibition to prepare for, to nudge one into getting stuff finally done! This is quite small, and if I feel inclined later in the year, I may decide to make an even larger piece, probably with a few adjustments. 

It's been a busy week getting everything organised for the Gokotta exhibition, but in a funny sort of way, the bitterly cold and snowy weather has been to my advantage. Too cold and slippery to venture out, I've had a good few days to get things ready.

Finally, time to relax a bit and have a play. For those of you who subscribe to the Kemshall's DMTV, you may have seen last weeks video, where Laura demonstrated the technique for the hand paintings. Well, I decided to continue with a bird theme and have a go. I like this technique, but need to experiment a bit more before I'm completely satisfied with my efforts. Nice idea for some postcards though.

Hopefully my next post will have some photos of our KAIROS Gokotta exhibition, and fingers crossed that the weather will continue to improve. Eastbourne seems to have got off very lightly compared to the rest of the country, so do come along if you're not too far away.

From sketch, through process, to finished product, and finally exhibition!

Well it's taken us a year or two, (or even three), but finally KAIROS, the small group of artists I belong to are having our Bird Exhibition, Gokotta, from the 6th-22nd March at DC1, 67-69 Seaside Road in Eastbourne, BN21 3PD East Sussex UK.

It feels like quite a journey, because we decided to set ourselves a project inspired by bird song at least three or maybe even four years ago. Gokotta, the title of our exhibition is Swedish for 'getting up early to hear the birds singing'! We are a mixed age group of six women, and inevitably life and work gets in the way. Babies are born, we move house, poor health happens, and family events all give us obstacles to overcome, but thankfully, we do seem to have held on to our dreams. 

I hope this post will be self explanatory, I thought I would whet your appetites by showing some of the processes I go through before actually arriving at the finished piece. I know that I have posted about some of this work before, but I'm hoping that they may be a reminder of what to expect from me if you manage to get to our exhibition.

Above shows how I gradually layer up fabrics, adding paint as I go along, and finally adding the free motion machine stitch.

I really enjoyed building up the textures in the sky, and hopefully you can see more detail in the close up shots below.

Finally, we have something here in Eastbourne called 'Secret Stones', which involves collecting stones from the beach to paint images or patterns on, and then hiding them around the area for children to find. It's a way of encouraging families and children to get out into the fresh air on a regular basis, and seems very popular. I was really thrilled when I discovered that there is a similar thing happening in Whangarei New Zealand, while staying with my daughter, and they call it 'Whangarei Rocks'.

I painted three stones giving details of our exhibition, and we are offering a small prize for anyone who finds them and brings them along to our art show.

We are also running bird related workshops during the show, including chicken drawing, clay work, card making and felt book wraps.

Now I do realise that there are followers of this blog who live in many far corners of this world, but if any one of you does happen to be in the Eastbourne are of Southern England during March, we would be extremely pleased to see you. I hope that the very cold snap we are expecting this coming week may have passed by the 6th, but if not, just make sure to wrap up warm. What I have shown here is just a tiny drop in the ocean of what you can expect to see, because the other five artists will be showing some beautiful pieces of bird related art, photography, 3d art and lots of  greetings cards. Bring your Mum along on Mothering Sunday, and there will be free cake to enjoy, so that MUST be worth a visit.

Gokotta, an exhibition about birds.

Having recently returned from a wonderful five weeks staying with my daughter in New Zealand, I am now feverishly trying to get my head around the fact that I am one of six artists preparing for an exhibition here in Eastbourne. It's title is Gokotta, which is Swedish for 'Getting up early to hear the bird song'. Hence my theme for this post being inspired by our feathered friends.

My daughter keeps chickens, so I spent a happy few hours one afternoon trying to sketch them, but for some reason they didn't seem to understand that I needed them to keep still!

Anyway, making quick sketches are always good practice for looking more thoroughly.

Eventually I collected a few of their feathers, and made some feather prints with paint. I intend to work into these prints, and did manage to make a start with the print at the top, adding some pen and paint for detail.

Above is a stitched textile of some feathers that I made a few years ago. If you like birds, and are interested in art, I can recommend a trip to Eastbourne this March.  We are also running some daily workshops which will be very inspiring, and you can find all details on the Gokotta link above. Maybe something to look forward to during this very cold spring we seem to be experiencing this year, so cheer yourself up, and come along! We would be very pleased to see you!

Happy Christmas.

A short post to wish you all a very Happy Christmas.

I have included a few photos of my latest creations, including the sketchbook I have made to take on my travels to New Zealand. I bound it with some watercolour paper printed with one of my textiles. I think this way of binding is called 'Butterbox'. You can see the stitching on the spine below.

The next few photos show some techniques from my Wednesday art class, and as you can probably guess, we used some leaves in this process.

Above and below, another technique from the same class using tissue paper and watercolour paint. Some very interesting textures were created this way.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who pop in to browse my blog from time to time, and to wish you all a very joyous, peaceful and creative 2018. I will hopefully be posting again in February, once I have returned from my New Zealand travels.