All Things Considered

Sarah Ball

This weekend sees the opening of our latest exhibition at St. Jude's, featuring paintings by Sarah Ball and Lucy Edward's handbuilt pots.

Sarah Ball grew up in South Yorkshire and having studied illustration at Newport Art College she was then based in London, working as an illustrator for a range of high profile clients.

Since 1995 Sarah has been living in South Wales and concentrating on her painting, currently producing small scale works inspired by the landscapes of Cornwall and Wales.

"The Coast series takes the colours, light and coastline of North Cornwall as their inspiration. Cornwall has been a tangible, physical presence in my life since childhood - Yellow gorse, green sea, wet moor land pasture, rooftop lichen, can all be found within these coast paintings, which also draw influence from painters such as Ben Nicholson and William Scott. "

If you're in Norfolk on Saturday 3rd May, join us for a glass of wine between 11am and 4pm.

View examples of the work we'll be exhibiting online.

Detour: Moleskine Exhibitions

I wish my selection of battered and half used Moleskine books were just a tiny bit as exciting at the ones featured at Detour, an exhibition of thirty three personal Moleskine notebooks of artists, writers, designers and illustrators of international acclaim. Sadly mine are just filled with shopping lists and to-do's that slowly get done.

Over the past two years, Detour has been held in London and New York, and this years exhibition is taking place, right now in Paris at Printemps Design Boutique at the Centre Pompidou, until 19th May. The exhibition will move on next to Berlin and in 2009 it will be in Venice, Istanbul, etc...

There is also MyDetour, where notebook submissions are open to anyone . The chosen books are displayed on-line and off-line in Paris. You can view pages from notebooks on Flickr, or you can look at videos of Detour artists notebooks via YouTube. It's quite addictive - and very inspiring.

If you feel motivated to get illustrating, we sell a variety of Moleskine's at St. Jude's Gallery.

The Fragmented Orchestra

As usual, I was laying in bed this morning, slowly coming round to the day listening to Radio 4's 'Today' programme.

What a pleasant surprise to hear the voice of an old friend and fellow ex-band member, Nick Ryan, being interviewed.

Along with Jane Carter and John Mathias, Nick is part of The Fragmented Orchestra, a music project that has just been named as the winner of the New Music Award.

The Fragmented Orchestra's idea uses recording units set up at 24 sites across the UK to capture their sounds - these sounds will then be transmitted back to the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool for visitors to hear.

The New Music Award judging panel said: "This extraordinary work mirrors the fundamental human activity of the brain."

Pop-Up-Brilliance

Over the past four years, I've got quite use to pop-up books, but sadly most of the ones we own are now destructed-pop-up-less books. 

There is one pop-up book which I am very keen to buy but not keen for my girls to re-create in there own hands-on origami style, and this is the brilliantly constructed ABC3D book by French illustrator and designer Marion Bataille. 

This engaging hard back book shows each letter of the alphabet in pop-up form, with some letters changing into others as you turn the page or tip the book. Typographic fans, designers and children will love this book. See the clip below to get the full demo.

ABC3d is available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk, due for release in October.

I'm not one for great organisational skills, but wouldn't this book solve Christmas presents for everyone?

Clothkits

I have fond memories of wearing clothes from the 1970's fashion label, Clothkits, and often wish my Mum had stashed my old garments away for me to reminisce over, and to later dress my children in. But this could all change, as I can now be the one to introduce the clothes and dolls to my girls, because Clothkits is back in business.

Clothkits first started in Lewes in1969. The simple concept behind the clothing kits, was that you were provided with the beautiful screen printed fabrics (which you cut to size), buttons, thread and anything else needed to complete the clothing, and all you had to do was stitch the fabric together.

I recently found an article about entrepreneur Kay Mawler's new business venture, and I was excited to see that artist Rob Ryan has been asked to become involved with, I'm assuming, fabric designs.

And if, like me, you loved the Clothkits dolls, you will probably love the new dolls pictured above. And if you have no idea what I've been rambling about, get acquainted with some Clothkits images at Flickr.

The Neil Cowley Trio

It must be about a year since we first saw the Neil Cowley Trio in Norwich. I'd only just bought their first album, 'Displaced', and didn't quite know what to expect. But what a great night. I even ended up sort of inadvertently/accidentally 'stalking' Neil by e-mail in the days following the gig. A long story.

Their latest album - 'Loud Louder Stop' is available now on CD/iTunes and the trio are on tour across the UK. We're off to see them in Norwich next week. Here's a taster...

Salt

Since moving to Norfolk we’ve spent lots of time walking the dogs at Morston. For me, the views over the saltmarshes, across the ‘pit’ with the many moored boats, to the shingle of Blakeney Point and its bright blue tea room are the essence of this beautiful coastline. Here land, sea and sky merge - and there’s a lot of sky.

This landscape has been the strongest influence on my own work for the last 10 years and is the setting for "Salt", the first novel by Jeremy Page. Page grew up in Norfolk and he captures perfectly the haunting quality of this beautifully bleak landscape and influence on the character of the inhabitants of this part of the country.

So when Nathan at Penguin emailed me to ask if I’d like to produce a print for the cover artwork, it was the perfect commission.

"Stunningly good. Captures the landscape with a truly deft watercolourist’s touch" Rose Tremain.

“Salt" is published by Penguin. £7.99

FFFFound

The trouble with the Internet's buzzing social scene, is that one can easily start to drift away from having a real-life social scene, you know, one which involves leaving the house and using your hands to gesticulate not just to move a mouse. Or if like me, you just manage to juggle the two social activities, you then find yourself chatting and marvelling about all the online engagements you are logging on to, such as flickr, del.icio.us, Wists, BlinkList including numerous suggestions of blogs you enjoy.

But if it's images you like, then I highly recommend looking at FFFFound.com. It's a gallery where FFFFound members (it's now invite only) post their favourite images found on the web. FFFFound then suggests other images that are similar that you may also like. It's a great source of inspiration and of course, leads you on to finding even more interesting and inspiring people.

The t-shirt pictured, is by Howies - February's t-shirt of the week.

Linda Florence

Earlier this month I spent a day re-learning how to screen-print at London Printworks Trust. Whilst I was there, London based textile designer Linda Florence, was in the process of printing realms and realms of striking wallpaper for a client in York.

Linda's style combines layers of bold colours, patterns, graphic illustrations and unusual surfaces such as the interactive paper where you scratch off a silver layer like a scratch card.

Another great and unusual design is her striking white patterned floor named the 'Sugar Dance' which was exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum in January. The floor consisted of icing sugar laid out using stencils, then danced upon by professionl ballroom dances where the dancers created there own patterns in the dust as they moved about the space.

There is a video of Linda laying the floor at the V&A on YouTube. Click here to see it.