The initial chairs or aboriginal chairs as  like the call them were finished some time in early February, and since then the have been cut in half, sanded, dyed, coated in rubber and upholstered.

…all I need to sort out now is the layout for the exhibition.

Amongst all the doom and gloom of funding cuts and the difficulties of making exhibition happen in the current climate it is easy to lose sight of how important the curation of high quality craft exhibitions can and should be.

Lizzie Farey - Spirit of the Air (detail)

An exhibition can inspire, enthuse, teach and give pleasure but at another level it can change your way of thinking and move your own work on a new creative journey. And that is just for the audience!

For the maker, creating work for exhibition can give you the freedom to create new work within a framework – an exciting proposal that can free you from the constraints of the day to day of making and move your work onto a completely new level and direction.

You can gain respect from your peers, acknowledgment from the public and all this often leads onto new opportunities. One of the greatest pleasures is reading comments from people who are not friends or family and who have been moved to write about your exhibition in a positive way!

Our second year of Spotlight exhibitions will open on the 30th April 2011 and our four Making Progress makers are all planning and working away on their designs. Not only do they have to concentrate on new work but they also have to think about layout, the practical constrictions of the space, display, publicity, openings, invites and a hundred other things.

So often the public just think all this happens without too much effort; you spend 30 minutes looking round a show, think ‘that was great’ and walk away not realising how much blood, sweat and tears went into it all!

I had this brought back to me at the end of a wonderful and inspiring talk on Wednesday by Professor Lesley Millar about the exhibitions she had curated, often with Japan. See www.texturalspace.com.

Just seeing the list of funders and sponsors at the end made me sigh – all those months of funding applications, report writing and waiting with baited breath to see if your dream can happen. And then the joy of knowing it can go ahead and wondering what on earth you have taken on. And then the months and sometimes years of pulling it all together – you can only do this is you are truly passionate about your subject, anything less and you would give up!

Or the disappointment of going back to the drawing board and trying to think of other ways to raise funds and make it all happen and not giving up with the setbacks.

On my way home I had the real pleasure of finishing off my day by a visit to the City Art Centre and Lizzie Farey’s ‘Spirit of the Air’ exhibition. To see how she has moved her use of materials from basketmaking to wall and aerial sculptures is inspiring and moving. Drawing in air with willow has freed her from the constrains of closely woven structures and has moved her work in a really exciting direction.

The pleasure for the public is immense but for Lizzie on her creative journey it must be life changing. As all good exhibitions should be!

Pamela Conacher
18/02/11

Witchy branch fingers at Carbeth

The big trip seemed doomed that Saturday morning in early January – with snowfall and ice on the ground in Caithness. And indeed, per text message one of the meetings I was heading for had to be cancelled. This meeting was to be for a theatre project, which is scheduled to happen this summer. But it was hopefully one meeting of many to come…

The main reason for the journey, however, was the opportunity to take part in a workshop offered by the Cultural Enterprise Office in Glasgow called “Next Steps” – development advice for creative businesses trading three years or more. That workshop was scheduled to take place on Monday afternoon, the 10^th January 2011 –and in order to make most out of the trip South, I had organised to still my creative thirst over the span of a few days.

One of the Carbeth Huts (and yet another gnarly tree)

The first station now was to be the home of the environmental artist Ruth Macdougall. Ruth had just come back from a study trip to Uganda, where she had teamed up with a local artist to collaborate on simple boat building for the community at Lake Victoria. Ruth had built a coracle and is currently working on a curach – both ancient forms of boats, which were used to travel over water and over land (carried and used as shelter). Ruth also introduced me to the Carbeth Hutters Community, her artistic history with them – and the gnarly, old, slightly ragged and enchanting landscape she and the hutters live in. The image above was taken there: twigs and branches like witches’ fingers and hairy lichen (you have read about that stuff  before here – inspiring!). From Ruth, I also received a short course in filming (using her professional camera to film a quick “interview” and watch her editing it with professional software – am learning all the time!).

On Monday morning then Ruth and I headed into Glasgow on different missions, but she had a chance for a quick hello to Deirdre – they knew each other through a residency. Deirdre Nelson had kindly agreed to be my mentor within the Hi-Arts “Making Progress” project. Now, Deirdre is a very enthusiastic and inspiring person – and it was such a treat to have her look at images of my work and listen to her comments and suggestions. I filled two pages with notes and ideas to research, alsolots of h elpful and inspiring links (which have set things in motion …).

From her it was only a few steps to a friendly welcome at the workshop. Carol Sinclair led the class. I had met her and – as it turned out – the lady sitting to my right, Melanie (an architect) before at North Lands Creative Glass in Caithness. To my left sat Caroline Dear, partner artist of “Making Progress”. I found the way each of us three sitting there had dealt with the preparation exercise of “mapping” our activities, quite remarkable and unique. It had taken me more time, than I thought it would, but through the workshop it was a bit of an “eye-opener” to myself. I seem to always have a guilty conscience of not doing enough, but boy, do I do a LOT! And don’t want to give up anything (apart from cleaning the constantly dusty studio/showroom, which I obviously cannot give up). Alas, through the workshop I managed to identify a few things, which need to be changed or remedied. And without this session it would have been much harder for me to take the necessary step back in order to see those. I also found listening to other participants’ situations, problems and thought processes extremely interesting and helpful.

After the workshop I had the opportunity to get to know Caroline better – I love her almost ethereal work. And how good, that we had the chance for a one-to-one to find out, that – although our work is so different – we really are on the same wavelength. We both then went for a bite to eat with Deirdre – and I left them to talk about Caroline’s work (Deirdre is also her mentor), while I headed on to Edinburgh.

Through driving rain I made my way to glass artist Carrie Fertig’s studio. Carrie reported about her huge yearly trade fair trip to the US and glass residencies, projects and exhibitions, which she is currently involved in or planning for – some busy and talented lady, she is! Carrie also pointed me to a camera workshop near her house, where I could have my recently damaged camera looked at. Not having this essential tool working properly had started to worry me greatly. Next morning I handed them my camera for investigation – and found out that I need a new one. Thankfully the dithering had come to an end! (and I have a new one by now…)

The road back up to the Highlands was flanked by much snow on the roadside and bathed in sunlight – I arrived in Inverness for a loosely scheduled meeting with the kind Sian Jamieson to talk about – for me – pressing audience development (i.e. facebook) issues. Great, that she was able to fit me in on my way North. She managed to clear up many questions I had – and suggested some things, which I am now using for my research (notably “alerts” – great things, those are!)

Arriving back at my home in Caithness, I managed to throw out the luggage, dump paper and equipment in the boot and got to Wick and life drawing just in time…

Some trip, that was – full of experiences, enlightenment (if I may call it that), catching up, networking and new impressions!

*
Ah, but now! Let’s talk about these karbunkel things! Let me set the scene: It is dark outside, the wind is howling around the wee cottage and the rain is lashing against my windows. I am warm and in good spirits. Typical. That is actually, what a lot of my work is about – the bad and ugly made into the good and beautiful. If it still has some of the uncanny in it – great! A healthy dose of humour usually does not hurt, either.

So these “big” and small objects came into being during a hot glass master class at North Lands. They came from a drawing exercise, which was looking at negative space. I am terribly interested in cavities – especially cavities at archaeological sites, normally hidden away from our sight. But I have also always been interested in scourges and diseases blighting our very existence as human beings. The karbunkels are an amalgamation of those ideas. And again, I tried to make the uncanny into something beautiful. They are only objects just now, but will become body adornment in due course. Below are ideas from my sketchbook:

Oh, and one of these karbunkels has already made it into my weird world as a real, wearable object: Intro the Lichen Slug Ring (a family member of the Lichen/Fungi Rings, the firstborn of which has not been photographed yet). The beastly creature is made from textured Sterling Silver and dark Blown Glass.

Lichen Slug Ring, February 2011

www.patbat.com

Boy, Caithness got its hooks in me! I am just back from an afternoon walk along cliffs, with dramatic light plus some getting lost in micro lichen vegetation and almost “losing the plot” over dizzying heights.

This blogger is a beginner, be warned – also an “incomer” (I hail from Bavarian Germany – these people are known to fall in love with the wilds of Scotland …) – and a maker (of body adornment with precious metals, studio glass and textiles). This place has become my home quite a few years ago. And it is seeping through my work!

My main creative interest is the human body – also anthropology, decay, funeral archaeology and infectious agents – with some humour thrown in. At the moment I am developing and making work for a small exhibition within the Making Progress craft programme. The working title so far is Bones and Beasts.

Lichens are a combination of fungi and algae (or bacteria) – and fungi are  intriguing beings anyway: They grow in many forms, sizes and colours, strictly are neither plant nor animal, can be parasitic (and potentially dangerous: think mould), can be living in symbiosis and/or be quite useful (bakers yeast and antibiotics spring to mind). They spread through mycelium and spores and seem to have something weird, alien and disconcerting about them – absolutely fascinating to me! I would put them into the “Beast” category…

These are components for one of the pieces I have started to make: a ring inspired by lichens and fungi.

In autumn I have made some blown glass objects for more “Beasts” to wear – at the moment these are lovingly called “carbunkles”, but I will talk about their treatment next time…

Many of our projects address the need for our makers to get together; sometimes in a formal way through events such as Makers Days and at other times it just happens that the people involved hit it off and before we know it an informal group has emerged with very little intervention on our part!

Feeling isolated can be a real problem when you live and work in a remote area and anything that can be done to help with this is a really positive and essential aspect of the work we do.

Informal groups have sprung up from Makers Days, our visit to Stroud International Textile Festival, from our Making Progress mentoring project and many of the research visits we have arranged.

Emails and social networking go a long way but sometimes you can’t beat a good blether over tea (and cakes!).

Our latest visit to London and Craft Central brought this home once more.

Members of Craft Central are part of a network of UK makers who can rent studio space in two wonderful buildings in Clerkenwell and participate in many of the events organised there including Open Studio selling days and exhibitions as well as business support and workshops. For obvious reasons a large number of the makers live and work in London but some (and that includes several from Scotland) use the organisation as their London studio, giving them an affordable way of reaching new markets but also the opportunity to meet other members.

Makers that I spoke with said that having the support system of the others in studios near by is one of the most important aspects of membership.

Our makers don’t often have such a luxury so we need to do all we can to put our own systems in place.

Through our Mentoring to Market programme we are delighted to be able to now have the opportunity for our makers to become members of  Craft Central and to benefit from a London base, new contacts and networks.

We will be featuring more on this development on the website but it is one positive way of increasing our profile and gives our makers a chance to work together and with a new group of people.

As we stopped to take a break at the end of a hectic day – and yes more tea and cakes were involved – we reflected on how to make the very best of our London connections.

We are so fortunate to be based in an area that inspires and gives our makers’ work such a strong identity and now we can dip into city life and all the new opportunities that this will bring.

Throughout the next few months we will be strengthening our London links and in May 2011 we will be showing our makers work to this new audience with our Highland Showcase.

I can’t wait to see the results!

After such an inspiring trip it was back to battling snow, delayed trains, flights and the cold road home and the reality of the distances involved between  London and the Highlands. Hopefully we can do something to make this less even if we can’t control the travel aspect!

Pamela Conacher

November 2010

www.craftcentral.org.uk

Early on in my job we featured the work of Plockton based Jewellery Designer/Maker Gilly Langton as part of the Makers of the Month section on our website. I love Gilly’s work and have been lucky enough to get to know Gilly quite well from meeting her at Makers’ Days and through her role as a mentor in the HI-Arts Making Progress Scheme, so when Gilly sent through details of her jewellery making workshops this summer I was really keen to go and take part.

The added bonus of Gilly’s workshops is that they take place in Plockton, a beautiful coastal village on the West Coast (about 2 hours from Inverness). My colleague Fiona had also signed up to come to the workshop, so we set off late on Thursday afternoon and headed west.

Plockton

After a really lovely evening in Plockton on Thursday, we woke up early on the Friday morning and had a good wander around the village. Plockton is a really friendly place, and you realise that everyone knows everyone  – it turns out that the girl who ran our B& B (also called Fiona) was also coming to the course and Gilly had even signed up a recruit for the course in the pub the night before (Janie from Cromarty!).

Gilly is originally from Chorley (near Manchester) and came to Plockton about 5 years ago for a residency at Plockton High School – understandably Gilly fell in love with Plockton and made the massive decision to move from the north west of England to the north west of the Highlands. Gilly runs her studio from her house in Plockton (see recent video footage of Gilly at work: http://www.vimeo.com/12766044) , but has kept her relationship with the High School and now runs her jewellery making workshops from the CDT department of the school.

On entering the school, what struck me was how great the workshop facilities at the school seemed to be – I have to admit that I haven’t been in a  large workshop like that since my days at art college in Birmingham (I studied Furniture Design), so to have access to so many fantastic tools and workbench space I was like a small child in a sweet shop.

Gilly made us all feel very at home with a lovely cup of tea and some homemade flapjacks and she explained how the day would go; she said that she would familiarise us with some of the tools we would be using and then would show us six different techniques she uses as part of her jewellery making process. Gilly also showed us a range of her own jewellery which was particularly useful, as she explained the techniques used to create them as she went along. Also a great inspiration were the jewellery design books (the type of design books I aspire to have lying about on my coffee table) which she showed us, it really opened all of our eyes to the fantastic contemporary jewellery that is being made by makers in the UK and beyond at the moment.

Gilly Langton Jewellery Workshop

We were then let loose on our own to experiment with the tools and try out some of the techniques shown to us using copper as a working material. Gilly explained that copper was a good material to start experimenting with as it is very supple and is hardier and obviously a lot less expensive than silver, so you felt you could make mistakes without worrying about wasting too much of the material.

I decided early on that I enjoyed how much you got to hammer things when making jewellery! Using a range of hammers (Jobbing, Plannishing and Hide Hammers) with a Doming block and punches, it was really interesting to see how the metal could be manipulated. I also enjoyed using the Ring Triblet to form links and ovals which could be used to form a larger structure.

It became apparent very early on how important it is to understand the make up of the material you are using and how it will react to different processes and how the design of the work almost comes from understanding these processes. I know it sounds silly, but I have always been someone who has been over dependant on a sketch book and working through my designs for things on paper, this felt like a very different way of working and I felt a little regretful that I hadn’t spent more hours at college experimenting in the workshop rather than sketching in the studio.

This was not a time for regret though, after a fantastic lunch (with the best homemade chocolate cake I’ve ever had) we were all encouraged to concentrate on one piece of work that we could finish by the end of the afternoon. Gilly had supplies of silver with her which we could purchase to work with. I have to say that by this stage everyone was so focused on what they wanted to make, that there was quite a level of excitement in the workshop. Gilly was great at coming through the group and spending time with us individually to work through our designs and the processes we would have to go through to make our pieces.

As someone who likes to wear quite large jewellery I thought I would stick to using copper and was keen to create something using lots of circles and domes as I had enjoyed making them in the morning and thought it best to stick to a couple of techniques rather than try anything too ambitious. What I hadn’t considered is how difficult soldering is!! We had been shown this by Gilly in the morning and she had made it look relatively simple – I failed to remember that Gilly has had over 15 years practice over me! Anyway, my soldering skills (or lack thereof) didn’t dampen my spirits and I was pleased to finish the day with a piece that half resembled what I had sent out to make.

The other women in the class had made a fantastic range of jewellery and had had the confidence to work in silver – out of the day a total of 6 rings, 3 necklaces, 2 bracelets and one copper creation (that’s mine) were made.

I would like to say a massive thank you to Gilly for such a great day, it really was inspiring and also thank you to the other women on the course, it was a great group of people and really good fun working alongside them all!

Gilly was kind enough to give us all a printed list of the tools and materials we would need to purchase to set up our own small workshop at home. If I knew I could master the skill that is soldering, then I might well consider converting my shed at the bottom of the garden in to a workshop and spend my weekends hammering metal to my heart’s content.

Avril Souter, July 2010

I always love getting new images sent through to me, whether it is for the crafts newsletter which we send out every month, the online galleries or for Making Progress web pages on the HI-Arts website – it’s great to see examples of makers work from throughout the Highlands and Islands.

We are also putting together a postcard to promote the work of the Making Progress makers in the very near future -  I will be sure to include a copy on these pages for all to see. Keep up to date with all things ‘craft’ by visiting the craft pages on the HI-Arts website and checking into the news section: http://www.hi-arts.co.uk/Crafts/

The menu bar is right at the top of my screen, which being a Mac, all the tab lines and catagories are on a grey bar which is EXACTLY the same colour as the Northings - My Account . . . etc. bar. No wonder I couldn’t see it  until Sian talked me through it.

Drowning in leather samples, bits of experimental tooling, dying, braiding, fringing, etc. This is all very intense – actually a good thing that I have photos in three weeks and must have the new product ready for that. By the time of the exhibition, I will be totally relaxed! I am using some of the methods of The Artists Way by allowing myself to start the day with creative writing & drawing of new ideas that have germinated during sleep. It is such a challenge to create something totally new! The only reassuring thing is that I can see from the blogging community that there are lots of people out there who are still in love with books. All this I-Tab stuff is so depressing. Will pen and paper really be obsolete? I use it all day, every day, but am I just part of a dwindling minority? Are children who write and draw seen as being backwards by their peers?

Time for some digital Radio 7 to give a backround of fantasy while I play with more paper. Good to see the progress of you other three.