Cause For Concern

During my career I have had the pleasure of working both as a part time Youth Worker and as an artist with many young people in Corby. Although I don't live there, it's where my studio is based and I have seen the changes that have taken place since the dark days of the 1980's. It has always had and continues to have a wonderful community spirit, a generous heart, an outgoing nature and I'm delighted that the ongoing Regeneration has injected a renewed sense pride, ambition and optimism in the town, particularly amongst it's young people.

However I am worried about the fate of one of it's older buildings, the Connaughty Centre, it's not a beautiful building and it's certainly a little battered and the worse for wear, so what's so special? It's value lies within, through the work it does with young people.

Dreams, the Youth Club based there, has had many different incarnations, many young people have learnt skills, developed their passion for music, dance, sport and creativity, made friends, had crushes, fallen in and out of love, learnt about life, mixed and moved on. It has offered them a place to express themselves, to hang out and socialise under the expert eyes of some wonderful, caring, indomitable Youth Workers.

I heard recently that the Connaughty Centre is due to close in December and feel this is a serious cause for concern, there are few enough places for young people to make that transition from child to young adult and I hope that the powers that be will seriously reconsider their decision.

In the last couple of years I worked on two separate mosaic projects with young people at the Connaughty Centre. The first was a Heritage Lottery Funded project in which groups of young people researched eight decades in Corby from 1920 to 2000. They looked at landmark buildings, traditions, activities and the part Corby played in the different decades. Once the research was complete I worked with them and the Corby CIC Youth Team to encapsulate some of their findings in a series of mosaic panels.

Working on the 1960's panel

The young people involved worked over several months with drop in sessions happening at the Connaughty Centre, Lodge Park Sports Centre and structured group sessions in my studio. As I've mentioned before, mosaics take patience and staying power but each group put their all into making their particular panel.

1970's Panel - Glam Rock, Punk, platform form soles,

Porridge Oats, Westwood and the Silver Jubliee

We also had time to talk about their findings, the people they'd met during their research, the differences and similarities in the lives of people in those eight decades. The finished panels were edged in steel and hung, temporarily in the Connaughty Centre Hall. The mosaics were unveiled by the local MP at the time, Phil Hope and the young people were commended for their work and creativity.

Once the Cube opened, the mosaics were taken down to be rehung somewhere in the new building. Another group of young people were inspired by the mosaics and wanted to try their hand at making one of their own, to represent what Dreams, the Youth Club meant to them. They applied for the money and their application was successful, I was asked back to help them with their project.

I asked the group if they wanted to draw the ideas themselves or whether they wanted me to come up with a design based on their ideas, they chose the latter. They came up with a series of words : growth, the seasons, nature, music, DJs, cooking, fruit, birds, faces flowers, dreams, stars, fireworks, bonfire, trees, snowflakes, friendship, the world.....and from that I came up with a wiggly cut out design which was intended for a large rectangular space in the Coffee Bar area.

As usual time and money were tight and as I only had 10 sessions I went ahead and cut out the pieces, then found out that the mosaics were going to be hung where the previous ones had been. It's a difficult space, high up, with trunking running through the middle and on slope, but we did the best we could to make the pieces fit the space.

We met on Monday evenings for 2 hours at a time and over the course of the project lots of different young people came in and took part. Vicki, the young woman who made the initial application was a star and made sure the rest of the team kept on coming. I found their commitment encouraging and all their different personalities inspiring.

We did run out of time but thankfully J Devereux, Corby's Strategic Arts & Cultural Officer managed to find funding for the extra sessions and it was money well spent.

Not only was it a chance for the participants to learn new skills, but it also offered lots of opportunities for lively conversations and debate.

Some participants popped in for a brief time, just to have a quite moment before going back out to socialise with their friends. There was always a good atmosphere in the room and even the most unlikely characters were tempted in to take part.

During the course of the two projects the importance of all the different types of work that goes on at the Connaughty Centre became increasingly evident. If the building has to go, then some other provision must be made for the young people who use it.

During the planning meetings one young woman

came up with a slogan for the mosaic

"Dreams: together, united, we make our stand"

People are taking a stand, making their voices heard, various suggestions and options are being looked at and if you'd like to know more about the centre and what it means to the community click the link The Connaughty Centre Facebook Page for the latest updates.

TEXTURE, REFLECTIVITY, SURFACE

As a child family days out, often involved visiting historic sites, stately homes, roman ruins, collections and curiosities. The Romans certainly left a strong imprint on this country and made a huge impression on me. Even today I can’t resist a Roman bathhouse with fabulous mosaics and under-floor heating, this is not surprising as I was often lulled to sleep with tales of “What I did at work today” from my Dad, a former pipe fitter / heating engineer who loves everything about complex industrial heating systems.

Mosaics at Chedworth in Gloucestershire

During a Millennium Project called Spirit of the Valley I found myself in Nether Heyford whilst they were conducting an archaeological dig, the archaeologists donated some actual roman floor tesserae to the Nether Heyford mosaic Millennium way marker. It was very surprising to see that they weren't square tiles but were more like lengths of clay carpet pile.

Through the years I have found that there is something completely compelling about mosaics, looking at them it’s easy to think you know how they work but as soon as you try making one you realise just how complex they are, just how many pitfalls you can stumble into! In my previous post I mentioned the Leicester- Mumbai project and my first mosaic – well I designed it and the children made it. It had to be simple because they were only 8 or 9, time and money was tight and I had no actual experience other than having read a wonderful book The Mosaic Workshop: A Practical Guide to Designing and Creating Mosaics by Emma Biggs and Tessa Hunkin

We worked using the reverse method and even though I’m a printmaker and know about reverse images and lettering, I forgot that the same principles applied to reverse mosaic making. I’d troweled the adhesive onto the board, the grout to the mosaics and sandwiched them together, when I realised my mistake. Thankfully I managed to cut away the lettering and reapply it before the adhesive set. That was a very long time and several mosaics ago but I still have huge amounts to learn and seeing or doing is the best way for me to learn.

My partner comes from Stoke-on-Trent, (I love the way he says Burslem, Tunstall, Duck and Sweetheart) but long before we met, I’d started collecting domestic china and the Potteries Museum in Hanley remains a favourite haunt. On one visit I picked up a leaflet about the Made in England project, a mosaic involving the community devised by Emma Biggs, they were looking for volunteers. My heart raced, she’d written that book - we could have met, I could have taken part……….had I not found the leaflet months too late and I'm not sure that I would have counted as part of the community! However I followed the mosaic's progress, read about it on the project website and went to see the finished piece when it was installed. It’s wonderful!

Minster Nights took me to York when the Emma Biggs and Matthew Collings “Five Sisters" installation was at York St Mary's and once again I was bowled over by their work.

Recently I was lucky enough to take part in one of Emma's courses, AN INTRODUCTION TO MOSAIC: TEXTURE, REFLECTIVITY, SURFACE described below

“Texture in mosaic can be one of the most exciting, and beautiful properties of mosaic material, but it is tricky to use texture really effectively as there are so many issues at play. On this course, students will be taught the important strategies on which to focus, and how to do so to greatest aesthetic effect. Reflectivity and qualities of surface (granular, flat, sheer, rounded, sharp – for example) have to be considered and balanced to achieve a compelling design.”

For a magpie like me it was hard to resist the tiles with lustre

or the gorgeously coloured smalti

We were encouraged to look beyond the surface,

to notice that marble has many subtle shades

And when you break open a clay pot it’s amazing

to discover rich, unexpected colours and textures

It also requires a huge amount of concentration.

I began with simple circles, then cut my circle in half at an angle and couldn’t get Lyle Lovett’s ‘If I Had a Boat” out of my head, my semicircle spent the morning pretending to be a boat. I was trying hard to be abstract but the figurative would keep creeping in!

It’s very hard not to be influenced by work you admire

and other things you are thinking about,

the boat shape later became a train track, well I have been spending a lot of time beside them lately

the shards reminded me of rubble on the waste ground in Corby where Jo Dacombe & I (as part of Undiscovered Networks) did our Guerilla gardening

then lo and behold I found myself adding a tree

It took ages to resolve the middle, lots of umming and tutting and tea, before Emma rescued me by bringing out some blue and white pottery shards

one of my favourite finds in the many boxes of shards was part of a cylindrical pot, you can see the imprint of the maker and the pressure of the fingers that shaped the base, such an assured, steady spiral.

It was a wonderful course, with great tuitition, in lovely surroundings, good company, stimulating conversation, space for thought and careful deliberation, time, care and love! We all left wanting to make more.

You can read more from Emma on her Blog

Find out more about her work on her website

and her collaboration with Mathew Collings here

But if you get the chance, see the work in reality

or go on a course, you’ll be captivated too!

If you can't wait to get started here's a little link for some virtual mosaic fun.

Photographs from the course were taken by Mac Canonymous

Silver Lining

I took part in ArtHouses for the first time last year when the work from Invisible Threads was shown at one of the group members' house, a fascinating terraced house which hides a secret history behind large wooden gates. The house had once been the home of an early horse drawn bus driver and the building at the back of the courtyard housed the bus.

Legend has it that the driver was caught speeding along the London Road! During that first weekend one of the visitors commented on the necklace I was wearing, saying I should make some more, it was a silver piece that I had made at Magnolia Studios in Northampton and which had given me the skills to make the work for the Held in the Hand Hoard.

When Karen & Alistair invited me back to take part in ArtHouses this year I thought it would be good to make a small collection of jewellery in the same way as I had for the Hoard in memory of the positive comment I had received. Once made, how to display the work was a puzzle and I spent a lot of time trawling the internet for suitable solutions. I wanted to create a mini installation and the first thing that came to mind were the glass domes that house fob watches, but these were far to costly.

I finally found some glass storage jars and worked out a way of suspending each item inside, little objects of desire each with their own printed label, showing the complete image. They were displayed on a gorgeous, distressed Regency door lintel and initially people didn't realise there was anything inside them. You can see more details of the jars and their contents here

Also sharing the space was an old friend from my Leicester Print Workshop days, Sarah Kirby. It had been about 10 or 12 years since we had last met, and it was wonderful to catch up and see her new work. She was exhibiting in two houses, the work here was from a series about buildings in Leicester.

My journey in to Leicester on the Sunday afternoon proved just how timely her series was, I took a wrong turning and ended up coming into the city centre rather than approaching from my normal route. So much had changed and continues to change in the city.

The Clarenden Park area where ArtHouses takes place is an area full of interest, memories (for me) and unexpected delights, like the shop selling boxes of beautiful ripe tomatoes and deep, black cherries for £3 a box and Avenue Primary School, the school I made my first full size mosaic with.

It was a lovely project linking the school with a partner school in Mumbai and the children explored print, textiles, drawing, story telling and communication in their school, at the City Gallery and via email with the children in Mumbai.

During the almost ceaseless flow of visitors during the ArtHouses weekend I met one of the former City Gallery staff members and heard that the gallery no exists but there is a shop bearing it's name in the New Walk Museum. City spaces change constantly, catch them before they disappear!

The Held in the Hand Hoard

I’ve been blogging on Undiscovered Networks with artist and collaborator Jo Dacombe for just over a year, as the project has now become more focused I thought it might be good to start a separate Blog to talk about my other projects and to explore other areas of interest

Earlier this year I received a commission from Leicestershire Artworks to make a piece for the second series of Held in the Hand collections. I had seen the Held in the Hand 1 and was excited to be part of the second round of commissions, which had three themes light, sound and movement. My piece was made for the aural collection.

I had worked on a mosaic project for a Festival of Angels in Hallaton, during the making sessions in the village the group told me wonderful stories about an ancient treasure trove that was found in one of the local fields.

Whilst thinking about the Held in the Hand Commission I had a vivid dream about the hoard, imagining holding the coins in my hands, letting them jingle and rattle in my palms, feeling them slipping through my fingers. From this dream my idea for a bag of treasure, which would also be a rattle that could be shaken to make sounds, evolved.

I did some research and went to see the finds in Market Harborough Museum. I was intrigued by the images and markings on the coins, loving their tiny yet tactile qualities. I was interested in the notion that the Held in the Hand boxes might contain things that are precious and from an imagined or undiscovered country.

My piece was inspired by the idea that access to language is a gift, incredibly valuable and that signs and symbols can aid communication, preventing meanings from being buried or obscured. As my ideas developed I needed to create images on the coins that related more closely to the way I draw.

Clay test pieces

Before firing, after firing and bronze coin all made from the same master

There are also some very small, very rough bronze coins, they were meant to be the same size as the silver ones but there was a problem either with the material or the firing. I have included them even though they are imperfect because they remind me of objects that have been worn and eroded by time, pressure and earth.

There are a selection of images on the coins, some drawn from the symbols used in Communication in Print, others represent the changing seasons and our connection with the earth. There is a horse, which refers to an image found on the original treasure and a running dog with a curly tail after my own dog. I hope that the people who handle the coins will use the images on them to create their own stories, invent their own language.

Whilst wrestling with the contents of my ‘hoard’ and struggling to make enough coins to make a suitable amount of noise I started looking at other sorts of rattles. I had seen a small bowl, which was part of the treasure found in Hallaton, I liked the idea of coins falling into the bowl and the noise they would make.

I asked my Dad (a four times retired Heating Engineer) if he had any scrap copper spheres we could fashion into a bowl for my treasure. As is often the case when I go to him with an idea he came back with all sorts of copper fittings and end caps.

Some of these became my second rattle, which also doubles as a series of chimes.

I took them into school and asked some of the children to help me test them out.

Both the rattle and the descending chimes worked well and one young research assistant said “Where can you buy these, can you get them on the Internet?”

I made a pouch to keep the hoard in, constructed out of fabrics with different textures, tea-stained cotton, velvet and silk.

The pouch is decorated with a tree and an assortment of leaves, the exterior is in subtle shades and the interior is a deep red to enhance the shine of the coins within.

The pouch also serves as a rattle when it is shaken

I can't wait to see the other treasures that have been made for the three new boxes and the see what all the other artists involved have created.

For more information about the Held in the Hand Collections

Contact : The Artworks Officer
E-mail :lisa.webb@leics.gov.uk