Hertfordshire visual arts open studios

Living in Hertfordshire has many advantages but each year an excellent opportunity comes along to get along and visit many skilled artists as they open their studios to visitors across the whole of Hertfordshire.  I am a member of the HVA (Herts Visual Arts) group myself although my shed doesn't really allow for visitors but thought that I would post the link to the site so that other people might take up the opportunity to see people at work.  There is a hard copy brochure available but since it is almost September now, you can find opening times and locations online.

http://www.hvaf.org.uk/Open-Studios/Open-Studios-2012

Seaside panel is on its way to my customer

This panel began many months ago.   I had been asked if I could create a sense of the seaside with sand, starfish and rockpools.  Rather than using just flat pieces of glass, beautiful as it is, I wanted to create some depth and texture by creating some fused glass pebbles which I wanted to place in the centre to create the rockpool.

The starfish was formed with brass wire then filled with a coral coloured glass powder. The mussel shell is an extremely dark purple that doesn't really show in the photo but it is covered with a layer of iridescent glass that gives it a real pearly finish. 

So with all the experimenting, fusing and emailing, it has taken some time to reach a design and get the panel finally finished. I really enjoyed making the piece and am pleased that it is now on its way to meet the kind lady that commissioned it. 

Singing Bird in a tree

This is a new design that I have been working on based on a singing thrush in a rather fantastic looking tree with giant leaves. I'm very fond of blackwork embroidery as well as patchwork and woodcuts so this piece has influences from all of those sources.  Lots of colours were tried for the surrounding borders but the browns and greens are still my favourites. 

There are so many poems about Thrushes but this is one of my favourites.

The Thrush's Nest

Within a thick and spreading hawthorn bush

That overhung a molehill large and round,

I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush

Sing hymns to sunrise, and I drank the sound

With joy; and often, an intruding guest,

I watched her secret toil from day to day - 

How true she warped the moss to form a nest,

And modelled it within with wood and clay;

And by and by, like heath-bells gilt with dew,

There lay her shining eggs, as bright as flowers,

Ink-spotted over shells of greeny blue;

And there I witnessed, in the sunny hours,

A brood of nature's minstrels chirp and fly,

Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky. 

John Clare