And this morning

A very snowy path out to the shed, as my burner is on order and not yet installed, I will be mostly working in the house today, in front of the fire, on my computer!


And the countryside outside my own house is rather beautiful at the moment. A good excuse for taking photographs into the sun.

Memory Box Book

I've recently has a go at making a book out of a little cupboard, it was to celebrate a 50th Wedding Anniversary and I really enjoyed making it. I had limited photos to work with so the book was a bit short of pages really, I could have added pages with writing, but didn't feel that it worked on this occasion. I do want to have another go at something else though, to refine it. But for this occassion, it was recieved gratefully as a unique gift.

Aesthetics of Africa

My work is being installed at Pickfords House in Derby today. The exhibition is a response to the African collection of Derby Museum and I concentrated on one piece, The Ibeji Figure. The Ibeji Figure is made to remember and honour the death of a twin, and as I have twins this resonanted on a personal level. I found myself thinking about the void that loosing a twin (or any child) would leave in your life. I'm not sure if the pieces convey that, as usual the my work is fairly ambiguous and I leave a lot of interpretation for the viewer.

MONSTERS!

And just so I can sit down and do something that is fun and not just me hidden away in the studio, I make some monster to keep me company...



They will be for sale at various fairs in the run up to christmas, I'll let you know when I've got some definite dates confirmed.

A very quiet time...

A very quiet time creatively due to the school summer holidays, a festival, and two new commissions. Normal service will resume on the 8th September when structure returns to my day! sigh.... back into the garden to read my book and watch children squabble over the hose pipe...

The Flow

When I listened to the TED talk last week by Martin Seligman, he talked about levels of happiness. He talked about three levels that can lead to a happy life. The Pleasant Life - where you get as many pleasures as you can get from external sources, the hedonistic lifestyle. The Good Life - where he talks about stepping into the flow, you become absorbed in what you do and time stops and you become unaware of your feelings. The ultimate is of course the Meaningful Life, where you know your strengths and you use in the service of something higher than you are.

I have definitely have been in the Good Life today, time stopped and I became thoroughly absorbed in my art making, music was playing and I stopped worrying about what I was or wasn't feeling.

So I have come out of my studio at half six on a Sunday evening having been lost in the flow all day, and it feels like a very good life.

Bee House Plaque

I recently finished this commission, the brief was to design a house plaque with 13 bees on it, I really enjoyed making it and am really pleased with the results. I used glass, mosaic tiles, beads, and handmade dichroic glass for the bee bodies, made by Dee from Ju-San.