baking tiles...

I’ve now baked the ceramic tiles for the collaborative community mural at Fern Street. (there’s quite a few so it took a while!)

Here’s a quick sneak peak of the first few together looking lovely… :)

I’m a big fan of the effect of seeing kids and adults art side by side, all the different styles and ideas blending and complimenting each other…I think we need a bit more of that intergenerational spirit in life in general. Anyway, the ‘share the world’ tile is one of my favourites. :) Now I’m both nervous and excited for the next steps of getting them all up on the wall (fingers crossed I won’t drop/smash any of them!)

community fun day mural making!

Following on from last month’s workshops, was the community Fun Day! In celebration of 5 years of Fern Street Family Centre, I was there to invite community members and attendees to decorate a ceramic tile that, together, will form a collaborative artwork for the outside of the building.

There were some really beautiful explosions of creativity, colour and joy!

The next step is to finalise the overall design, and get each individual piece up on the wall! Watch this space to see how it all turns out :)

community fun day workshops

Last month I had the joy of leading a couple of workshops at the local community centre! The aim was to build towards creating a collaborative mural for the outside of the building, working with people who live locally and come and use the centre. The first workshop was with a group of women who usually attend a weekly ESOL class (English as a Second Language), and another was with an afterschool club of around 25 primary school kids! By the different nature of the groups, the sessions themselves were structured pretty differently, but both were centred around exploring key values of Fern Street itself: a place where people can LEARN, GROW, PLAY, SHARE, and be TOGETHER. :) It was really wonderful watching the workshop attendees begin to express themselves and figure out what these words could mean visually.

Especially with the kids session, I tried to make it as practical and fun as possible, and we made pictures with our bodies, worked in groups to try and guess and explain the key words, as well as drawing with pens and pencils on big sheets of paper together to gather ideas.

From the big idea papers, we then pulled out elements that could inspire our collabroative mural, which we’d work on at the Fun Day, where everyone would be invited to decorate a 15x15 cm ceramic tile in celebration of the centre. Everyone was pretty excited about creating their tile; their contribution to the overall big celebratory picture! Just like Fern Street itself, all the different elements, patterns, expressions and ideas would be needed to make something big, beautiful, and full of meaning.

art in the yurt!

This past month I’ve had an exhibition at London’s only Yurt Cafe! It was great to share a collection of my recent paper cuts, and receive some super kind, useful and encouraging feedback in return. :) Thanks so much if you popped by to visit, and an extra special thanks if you supported me and my work by buying one of the pieces! I’m currently making Christmas cards and gifts, then new things will be on their way in the new year. As always, if you have a commission idea or any other kind of request in the meantime, just get in touch!

Here’s a few snaps of things from the Yurt x x x

public acts

Over summer I had the amazing opportunity to be part of a community theatre project via my local community centre, in partnership with the National Theatre. Together with around 200 other people from all across London, a whole series of workshops and rehearsals culminated in a musical production on the NT’s main Oliver Stage over the August bank holiday. It was incredible- one of the most joyful, life-giving things I’ve ever been part of! There’s so (so!) much I could write about it, but I’ll keep it brief and let my art say a little for me instead. Here’s two special paper cuttings I made inspired by the show itself, all the beautiful people I met & made friends with in the process…

Mother's day

My Mother's day gift went down well. Hurrah! Always a good thing to happen. This year I made my beautiful Muma a framed picture with a difference- the picture is bursting out of the frame! 

I've really been enjoying painting flowers again lately, and that's how this piece started. My housemate had brought some daffodils, which sat in a jug on our living room table. I was captivated by them- so bright and beaming with joy, I thought if I could even capture just a tiny bit of that, it would be the kind of present I'd like to give to honour Mum with. 

Once the daffs were painted, they just didn't seem to want to stay on the page however. They looked too flat like that, and absent mindedly I found myself cutting round them with a craft knife. (why is it that the best ideas often bubble up when we don't exactly have a plan?!) I had a white frame that was meant for hanging notecards on, and suddenly I realised- no, this is what it's truly made for! I pulled the string and pegs out of the middle, and attached my bloomin daffs instead. 

Mum likes it, and I enjoyed making it. I may well make more similar pieces again soon!