Trying on hats at the Otter Hat Shop…
I’ll take this one please!
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Author Archives: Jane Porter
Carrots on a windy day
Yesterday Sue Edkins and I held a drop-in workshop at Diamond Jubilee Gardens, Twickenham – we invited passers-by and local families to come along and make a motif, inspired by one of our WW1 themes, to form a decorative border for the work we are making to go in The Frame in the park.
We had a good flow of lovely participants throughout the session, with two boys in particular being so keen they dashed off to fetch their cousins and stayed for ages making radishes, medicine bottles, and even a locket that opened. The only problem was the fresh breeze sweeping in off the river and attempting to snatch away freshly-made carrots…
Many thanks to Ashley for helping on the day, and to Jagon for helping move all the equipment from Orleans House and back into the cellar at the end of the day.
A romantic night out…
Mr and Mrs Otter have been waiting weeks for this – dancing with abandon to the jazz band at the riverside club…
Another drop of that squirty black stuff please!
This week Sue Edkins and I have been at St Stephen’s Primary School, East Twickenham, running workshops with Year 4 and Year 5.
It’s all part of our WW1 themed community art project, which will go on display in Diamond Jubilee Gardens, Twickenham, in June this year.
The workshops have been great fun, with delightfully enthusiastic children and teachers. Activities divided into 3, with each child getting a chance to try them all – logistically complicated but feasible! The first was drawing, using wartime reference photographs; the second was painting – experimenting with mixing colours within a specified palette – we had some delicious ochres, mustards and khaki shades emerging simply from three primary colours and white. The final activity was monoprinting, which became strangely addictive: once shown the technique, children were given a variety of tools to experiment with mark-making, and they were very inventive in their approach. They were also intrigued by the huge tube of water-based block printing ink (the squirty stuff) and seemed to like the smell!
Each class was making work related to a particular theme: the Belgian refugee community in East Twickenham, Twickenham’s sporting heroes at the Front; and Richmond Park during the war – all fascinating topics on which we were able to share our research from earlier in the year.
We have two workshops still to do, and after that will spend some weeks collaging together all the work we have collected to make three finished images.
Many thanks to Ruby, Anna and Tinah for their help.
Grace’s Woodbines and other stories…
I’ve just spent the afternoon at the Greenwood Centre, Hampton with some delightful ladies – members of the Will and Way Club (a craft and social club for seniors). It’s all part of The Frame community art project I’ve been working on all year with Sue Edkins for the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames’ Arts Team, and we have now reached the workshop stage.
Two hours flew by chatting, eating some delicious home-made bread and jam brought by one of the members, and making motifs to form a border around the three images we’ll be making for Diamond Jubilee Gardens, inspired by Twickenham’s role in WW1.
With a pile of coloured collage sheets and some reference pictures for inspiration, the ladies went to work making all sorts of items, from vegetables representing the allotments dug in Richmond Park to help feed a hungry population, to one of the tobacco tins Queen Mary issued to every soldier at the Front. The star item for me was a tiny packet of Woodbines made by Grace, who remembered people talking about ‘Woodbine Willie’ the priest who offered cigarettes as well as comfort to dying soldiers during the war.
This week we’ve also been working with St Stephen’s Primary School making work for the project, but I’ll report on that in a separate post.
Oh, what’s this?
I feel this is a character looking for a story – a very simple story. Must write one!
Otter opposites
Here’s a spread from a book of Otter Opposites I’ve been working on…
Colour confections and Belgian delicacies…
The project I’m working on at Orleans House Gallery with Sue Edkins is taking shape: we’ve started sketching out how the content of our big panels might look. The three panels are all inspired by Twickenham’s WW1 stories: the largest will look at The Front, while the other two will be based on the East Twickenham Belgian community from 1914-1918, and the role of Richmond Park in the war as a training ground and home of a military hospital.
We’ll be working with St Stephen’s primary school, where children will help make the ingredients of the work – drawings, monoprinted textures and sheets of colour for collage. Their challenge will be to create a range of colours using a very limited palette – we’ve been experimenting to see how many shades you can make with just white, blue and yellow.
On Saturday April 25th we’ll be holding a free drop-in event where families will be able to help make motifs to form a border around the work – we’ve been experimenting with some inspired by our main themes. More on this soon!
Blue and white world
If you’re in London with children this half term, drop in to the V&A for some free family fun inspired by willow pattern china. The Imagination Station is running two activities that I designed for them – you can design a plate and jug, and you can also make a scale to add to a giant Chinese dragon – all in blue and white. SHown above are some brilliant examples done by children today. You can also find out all about the willow pattern story, and marvel at the amazing collection. They’ve even got a gigantic jug almost big enough to hide in – check it out in the Ceramics Gallery.
It’s been fantastic working with the V&A – it’s one of my favourite museums and I never, ever get bored with looking around. Hope you can visit too. There’s more info here.
Many thanks to the V&A for permission to use the images.
Shapes and textures for ‘The Frame’
Four weeks ago I started an exciting new project – a public art commission, with fellow artist Sue Edkins. As I reported in a previous post, we have the luxury of a studio just behind Orleans House Gallery for the first couple of months of 2015, and we have been using it to develop our ideas and experiment in the medium of collage.
We’ll be working with community groups to produce three large framed works, to be installed in June at Diamond Jubilee Gardens, Twickenham, all on a theme of WW1 and local stories connected with the war.
The last few weeks have been spent researching local history – fascinating stories about local heroes like Frank Edwards and Billie Nevill, who are associated with raising morale through football at the front. We’ve also visited the Hearsum Collection at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park, to get an idea of what the park was like during the war – it had a South African Military Hospital as well as a huge training camp, and it was also the site for some top secret anti-zeppelin experiments.
We’ve got a wealth of material but needed to develop a visual language for the work. The Imperial War Museum’s current exhibition, Truth and Memory, was very inspiring, particularly Paul Nash’s paintings and drawings of ravaged landscapes and torn trees. And although he was to become a war artist for a later war, John Piper’s loose torn paper collages from the 1930s seemed to trigger some ideas. Working with monoprint to create scratchy, rough textures, and prepared painted sheets within a strict colour palette, we are starting to work out how the work could look, and how school groups can play an important role in making the work.
We’ll be developing our ideas further next week, and visiting the Richmond Local History archive, as well as the Rugby Museum. We’ve also welcomed a new person to the project, Ruby Maddock – a recent graduate looking for experience in the field of community art. Thanks for joining us, Ruby! And many thanks to the arts and education team at Orleans House, Robert and Lauren at the Hearsum Collection, and everyone else who has been so helpful so far.