Everything Means Something, photographic collage, by Claire Morris
FIVE York artists are opening studio spaces on Saturday from 11am to 4pm for early Christmas shopping opportunities at three South Bank locations.
“The Winter Artists Open House is a chance to support the city’s independent artists and maybe buy unique greetings cards, a print or eye-catching original artwork,” says participating painter Kay Dower. “All venues are within walking distance of each other with parking available.”
Reflections Of York, acrylic, by Kay Dower
At Kay’s Corner Gallery, at 2 Telford Terrace, YO24 1DQ, a selection of her artworks will be complemented by photographic collages by Claire Morris. Kay will be displaying original acrylic paintings and limited-edition prints of corners of York, the Yorkshire coast and quirky still-life objects, from Yorkie chocolate bars to York Gin bottles.
Claire will be decking the walls with her latest collection of fine-art photographs inspired by vintage books, for which she cuts the characters out of books, then dramatically lights and stages the shot so that the figures appear to jump off the page.
Wizard, photographic montage, by Claire Morris
Kate Buckley’s sculptural ceramics and Marie Murphy’s modern, geometric paintings, prints and illustrations can be found at 31 Wentworth Road, YO24 1DG. Kate’s porcelain is described as “origami meets porcelain”; indeed, seeing is believing in the way her elegant wall sculptures play with light and shadow. Marie uses flat blocks of colour and striking angles to produce a serene sense of calm in her urban landscapes.
At mixed-media artist Jill Tattersall’s Wolf At The Door studio, at 15 Cygnet Street, YO23 1AG, she works with paints, inks and dyes on handmade paper to create vivid, dreamlike art. Please note, the entrance to Cygnet Street is by the back gate on Nunthorpe Road.
A sculptural ceramic by Kate Buckley
Among Jill’s works will be a newly framed recycled cedarwood block depicting sunset and wind turbines. “It’s just stunning to me,” she said on rainswept Tuesday (15/11/2022). “It’s a miserable day but this little painting gleams in the gloom. It will be on display at my Open House this weekend, from my Waste Not series, which I always make as affordable as possible.”
Looking forward to the weekend eagerly, Kate says: “Enjoy a winter wander around the varied selection of art on offer by York artists and get some inspiration for your Christmas list.
“As well as art to peruse, there’ll be refreshments available at the South Bank Studios Art & Craft Winter Fair, running at Southlands Methodist Church, in Bishopthorpe Road, from 10am to 5pm on the same day, or at the independent cafés and eateries on Bishopthorpe Road.”
The poster for Saturday’s Winter Artists Open House in South Bank, York
Adele Karmazyn’s show poster for Westside Artists’ Into The Blue
INTO The Blue, an exhibition of paintings, sculptures and prints by York’s Westside Artists, is running at Pyramid Gallery, Stonegate, York, until March 13.
“This is an eclectic show of work by this collaboration of artists from the West of York,” says gallery owner Terry Brett. “In Pyramid’s 40th year in York, we’re keen to celebrate the wealth of talent here in our city, starting the year off with this beautiful show.”
Jane Dignum’s poster for Westside Artists’ Into The Blue exhibition
“Each artist has created new work to portray their personal interpretation and concept of the exhibition title, Into The Blue. With so many diverse disciplines, the exhibition really is a sight to behold.”
Taking part are Adele Karmazyn (digital photomontage); Carolyn Coles (painting); Donna Marie Taylor (mixed media); Ealish Wilson (mixed media and sculpture); Fran Brammer (textiles) and Jane Dignum (printmaking).
Photographer Simon Palmour’s poster
So to are Jill Tattersall (mixed-media collage); Kate Akrill (ceramics); Lucie Wake (painting); Mark Druery (printmaking); Richard Rhodes (ceramics); Sharon McDonagh (mixed media) and Simon Palmour (photography).
Pyramid Gallery is open from 10am to 5pm, Monday to Saturday, but closed on Sundays at present.
Wake-up call: Lucie Wake’s poster to attract visitors to Into The Blue
Autonomous, mixed-media collage on box canvas, by Sharon McDonagh, long-listed for the 2021 Aesthetica Art Prize and now to be shown in the Momentum Summer Show at Blossom Street Gallery, York
YORK art group Westside Artists open their Momentum Summer Show at Blossom Street Gallery, by Micklegate Bar, York, on Friday (25/6/2021).
This coterie of artists from the Holgate and West area of York will be showing a varied range of disciplines, from painting and photomontage to textiles, ceramics and mixed-media art.
Among the participating artists, and a key organiser too, is Sharon McDonagh, from Holgate, who had her mixed-media work long-listed for this year’s Aesthetica Art Prize, whose accompanying exhibition is running at York Art Gallery. One of Sharon’s submitted pieces, Autonomous, is now featuring in the Momentum show.
Missy T, oil on canvas, by Lucie Wake
Joining her at Blossom Street Gallery are: Adele Karmazyn, digital photomontages; Carolyn Coles, seascapes; Donna Maria Taylor, mixed media; Ealish Wilson, textiles; Fran Brammer, textiles; Jane Dignum, prints; Jill Tattersall, mixed media; Kate Akrill, Skullduggery ceramics, and Lucy McElroy, portraits.
So too are: Lucie Wake, from Facet Painting, paintings and portraits; Marc Godfrey-Murphy, alias MarcoLooks, illustrations; Mark Druery, pen and watercolour sketches; Michelle Hughes, prints; Rich Rhodes, ceramics; Robin Grover-Jaques, painting and metalwork, and Simon Palmour, photographs.
The Momentum Summer Show will be gaining momentum until September 26. Gallery opening hours are: Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, 10am to 4pm; Covid-compliant measures are in place.
Untitled, ‘Dark and Light’ acrylic on canvas, by Robin Grover-Jacques
VILLAGE Gallery, in Colliergate, York, will reopen on Wednesday (2/12/2020), when Lockdown 2 ends, to present the first collective exhibition for York’s Westside Artists.
Running until January 23 2021, Immersed will showcase the work of Adele Karmazyn; Carolyn Coles; Donna Maria Taylor; Ealish Wilson; Fran Brammer; Jane Dignum; Jill Tattersall; Lucy McElroy; Marc Godfrey-Murphy; Richard Rhodes; Robin Grover-Jacques and Sharon McDonagh.
Cayton Bay, by Carolyn Coles
“2020 has been an extremely hard year everyone, not least of all for artists, with many exhibitions and events being cancelled,” says gallery owner and curator Simon Main.
“So, Village Gallery is delighted to announce that its next post-lockdown exhibition will feature a group of local artists in their first collective showing.
Beehives & Sunflowers, by Jane Dignum
“The ‘Westside Artists’ is a small group of artists based around Holgate in York, who work in varied disciplines, such as painting, photomontage, print making, collage textile art, pottery and mixed media, and in varied subjects, from landscapes and seascapes to portraiture and abstract.”
Village Gallery’s opening hours are 10am to 4pm, Tuesday to Saturday, with Covid-secure social distancing measures in place.
Moon jars, by Richard Rhodes
“This exhibition is opening in time for everyone to find a truly unique Christmas gift while supporting local artists,” says Simon.
“Aside from its regularly changing art exhibitions, Village Gallery is York’s official stockist of Lalique glass and crystal, and additionally sells art, jewellery, ceramics, glass and sculpture, much of it the work of local artists.”
Here Be Monsteras ceramicist Kayti Peschke at work
YORK Open
Studios 2020, the chance to meet 144 artists at 100 locations over two April
weekends, has been cancelled in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, with
doors sadly shut for the April 17 to 19 and April 25 to 26 event,
CharlesHutchPress wants to champion the creativity of York’s artists and
makers, who would have been showcasing their ceramics, collage, digital,
illustration, jewellery, mixed media, painting, print, photography, sculpture
and textiles skills.
Each day,
in brochure order, five artists who now miss out on the exposure of Open
Studios will be given a pen portrait on these pages, because so much art and
craft will have been created for the event and still needs a new home.
Addresses will not be included at this time.
Meanwhile,
York Open Studios artists are finding their own way to respond to the shutdown
by filling their windows with their work instead. Look for #openwindowsyork2020 to locate them.
“If you see one in your area while taking your daily exercise, take a picture
and let us know,” they say.
Camera Obscura, by Jill Tattersall
Jill Tattersall, mixed media
THIS would have been
Jill’s second York Open Studios since she and her The Wolf At The Door art
enterprise moved north from Brighton.
Before turning to art,
she taught mediaeval French literature, leading to her fascination with the creation
myths: Norse, Eastern, European and Aboriginal. “I’m overawed
by early cave and rock art, made long ago with the simplest, most elemental
means. People looked up into the night sky, just as we do, and must have asked
the same questions about their place in the universe.”
Coasts and maps have
inspired her too. “I used to live as far from the sea as you can get on this
island but, like most of us, I was fascinated by coastlines and the sea,” says
Jill. ”I moved, and till recently lived on the south coast, where the
light is fabulous. I try to avoid trite seaside scenes and ration myself
to a few sea-related pieces a year.”
Jill Tattersall: Left Brighton for York
Town and country are key influences as well. “Subjects just crop up: loaves of bread, a stretch of pavement, a passing scene, reflections in a train window,” she says.
“Often I use my own hand-made cast or moulded cotton paper. I then apply washes of paints, inks, dyes and pure pigments to build up intense, glowing colours, combining gold and silver leaf with recycled elements. Labour intensive, highly individual. The paper has a seductive, unpredictable surface: I like the danger and uncertainty this brings. You can wreck a promising painting at any moment.”
Jill’s paintings are in
collections from Peru to Tasmania. Since moving north, she has exhibited at Kunsthuis
Gallery, The Dutch House, Crayke. Discover more at jilltattersall.co.uk.
Here Be Monsteras: Ceramics created in a garage studio in a Wolds garden
Here Be Monsteras, Kayti Peschke, ceramics
KAYTI creates ceramics under the name of Here Be Monsteras from her garage studio in her garden in the Wolds east of York.
Her background is in photography and magazine design, but a year ago she started making pottery and now she has converted full time. “It has become an obsession,” she says.
Kayti makes wheel-thrown
ceramics with stoneware clays to create functional objects for the home. “A
collection of special pieces that bring a bit of extra joy to the ordinary,” as
she put it ahead of what would have been her York Open Studios debut.
“It has become an obsession,” says Kayti Peschke of her conversion to making pottery
She has been working on
new collections, including screen-printing ceramics with artist Jade Blood,
creating travel cups and a full dinnerware set, as
well as collaborating with restaurants and cafés that serve their menus on her
tableware.
“A cup of tea in a handmade cup really
does taste better, maybe because the process feels more special or you take
more time over it? I’m not sure why, but it’s true,” she says.
In her home studio, the cups of tea flow
and her puppies hang out in the sunshine as she listens to BBC 6Music or podcasts.
“I absolutely love being out there, creating, and hopefully this shows in the
things I make.”
As testament to that, her ceramics can be
found in York at Kiosk, Fossgate; Sketch By Origin, York Art Gallery; Walter
& May, Bishopthorpe Road; Lotte The Baker, SparkYork and Botanic York,
Walmgate. Take a look at herebemonsteras.com.
Gold needle necklace, by Joanna Wakefield
Joanna Wakefield, jewellery
DESIGNER jeweller Joanna’s
work combines her two passions, jewellery and textiles, with the third
essential element of her memories, observations and musings.
Joanna creates silver
and gold jewellery inspired by textiles, haberdashery and her vintage collections
and found objects.
Her work invokes a sense
of nostalgia. Alongside button-inspired pieces is a delicate interpretation of
handcrafted bobbins, thimbles, measures and needles.
Joanna first trained in design,
specialising in textiles, having grown up in a family environment of three
generations of needlewomen.
Joanna Wakefield: Switched from textile designs to jewellery designs
She travelled the world
as a Fair Trade designer, but after more than ten years she could no longer
ignore her desire to develop further creatively, leading her to re-train at
York School of Jewellery.
“A huge part of my jewellery designs is influenced by textiles and haberdashery, stemming from a fascination that grew from admiring my Grandma’s talents and fond memories of sorting through her button stash,” says Joanna, whose work was to have featured in the MADE shop at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield, from March 7 to June 21.
Take a shine to Joanna’s
jewellery at joannawakefield.com.
” I’ve always had an interest in natural history and the British countryside,” says Mark Hearld
Mark Hearld, collage, printmaking and ceramics
MARK studied illustration at Glasgow School of Art and an MA in natural history illustration at the Royal College of Art in 1999 before breaking into the artistic world with exhibitions at Godfrey & Watt in Harrogate and St Jude’s in Norfolk and in London’s arty Lower Sloane Street.
He specialises in bright collages, paintings,
limited-edition lithographic and lino-cut prints and now hand-painted ceramics,
his work often involving animals and birds, flora and fauna.
“I’ve always had an interest in natural
history and the British countryside,” says Mark, 46, who is strongly influenced
too by mid-20th century art and design. “I like the idea of the artist working
as a designer rather than making images to stick in a frame,” he reasons.
Mark Hearld: Birds, beasts, flora and fauna
He undertook a set-design commission for the 2005 film Nanny McPhee and has done design projects for Tate Britain – cups, jugs, plates and scarves – and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield, where he held a solo show, Birds and Beasts, from November 2012 to February 2013.
In 2012, Merrell Books published Mark
Hearld’s Work Book, the first book devoted to his work, and he has illustrated
such books as Nicola Davies’s A First Book Of Nature (2012) and Nature Poems:
Give Me Instead Of A Card (2019).
He curated the Lumber Room exhibition at
the re-opened York Art Gallery from August 2015 after its £8 million
development project, as well as a re-imagining of the British Folk Art
Collection at Compton Verney Art Gallery and Park. Contact him via
mark.a.hearld@googlemail.com.
Lauren Terry, Lauren’s Cows, painting
Out in the fields: Lauren’s Cows artist Lauren Terry
LAUREN has moved out of Bar Lane
Studios, not too far away, to a new studio workspace overlooking Micklegate Bar
and Blossom Street, where her focus remains on creating vibrant cow paintings,
prints and homeware.
Lauren’s Cows had began with a one-off painting of a cow that
she painted while working as a waitress and actress in the heart of London.
Growing
tired of city life, she craved a window to her country childhood. What better
view than a curious cow peering in on her kitchen table?
Scarlet, by Lauren Terry
The
framer in North Yorkshire was so taken by the characterful cow that he offered
to host an exhibition if Lauren agreed to paint 20 more of her beautiful beasts.
The
response this debut show generated gave her the confidence to change career
tack by launching her art business and brand, and so Lauren’s Cows was born in
2012: a daughter-and-mother partnership where Lauren paints character-filled cattle in heavy-bodied acrylic paint and designing
items for the home in her York studio and Jude takes care of business from the
family home at Crackenthorpe, Appleby-in-Westmoreland.
Lauren Terry in her new studio in York
“I love what I do,” says Lauren. “Cows have such a curious
nature and humorous personality that they just make me smile, and I take great
pleasure in passing that smile on through my vibrant paintings. It’s all about
capturing all the character while still remaining true to the breed.”
Lauren’s Cows can be found at laurenscows.com.
TOMORROW: Sharon McDonagh; Jane Dignum; Carolyn Coles; Adele Karmazyn and Nathan Combes
