The School Creative Centre Catalogue 2013

Friday 5 & Saturday 6 July

Open Studios Nick Archer ARRCC Elizabeth Barton Carol Breese Sarah Campbell Chris Cleere Sarah Cleveland Jenny Edbrooke Anny Evason Caroline Fraser Neil Greer Christine Hopwood Angelika Howard Paula MacArthur Rob McCaig Tracy Nors Jenny Pockley Yulia Podolska Susan Prince Stephanie Rubin Jenny Sinclair Beverley Thornley Simon Young

23 ARTISTS

Invite you into their worlds…

Friday 5 July: Private View: 6–8pm Saturday 6 July: Studios open: 10am–5pm The School Creative Centre, New Road Rye, East Sussex TN31 7LS

4…………………………………...Nick Archer 5………………………………Elizabeth Barton 6…………………………………..Carol Breese 7……………………………… Sarah Campbell 8………………………………….. Chris Cleere 9………………………………Sarah Cleveland 10……………………………… Jenny Edbrooke 11……………………………….. Jillian Eldridge 12…………………………………. Anny Evason 13………………………………..Caroline Fraser 14………………………………….....Neil Greer 15…………………………..Christine Hopwood 16……………………………. Angelika Howard 17……………………………...Paula MacArthur 18………………………………….. Rob McCaig 19………………………………….....Tracy Nors 20…………………………………Jenny Pockley 21………………………………...Yulia Podolska 22…………………………………. Susan Prince 23……………………………... Stephanie Rubin 24………………………………… Jenny Sinclair 25…………………………….Beverley Thornley 26…………………………………. Simon Young

With multi-layered meanings that some of cinema’s great directors would be proud of, Nicholas Archer’s paintings possess a nocturnal, Lynchian quality that suggest a dystopian vision of the world in crisis, a journey at an end.

His new paintings link early North European painting with the cinematographic language of recent dark fairy tales. Menace is implicit in a seemingly enchanted landscape.

Archer’s paintings have grown out of his interest in painting the figure. But the inanimate objects found in these new works, whether a van, caravan or cottage, possess a metaphysical quality that allude to both a world out of kilter and a more disturbed state of being. Here we find an unsettling balance, between childlike wonder and a more grown up fear of loneliness.

nicholasarcher.com

Nick Archer narcher07@btinternet.com

Elizabeth graduated in fine art 1982 from Otago in New Zealand, majoring in printmaking, and travelled to London in 1985 where she worked as an artist and illustrator. Clients included Penguin Books, Hodder & Stoughton, Daily Telegraph, and Broadgate. She also exhibited her art, and was invited to exhibit at AOI’s Shopwindow in the West End in 1993.

In 2000 she left commercial illustration to train as a pilot, and holds a professional pilot’s licence.

In 2009 Elizabeth made a return to fine art, and has joined other artists at the School Creative Centre in February 2010. She is a member of the East London Printmakers and member of the Society of Graphic Fine Art. Her work is in private collections around the world, and in a corporate collection in London. She has also won numerous awards in New Zealand and the UK including SGFA prize for best original print.

musewave.co.uk

Elizabeth Barton elizabeth@musewave.co.uk

Carol recently retired from a 35 year career as an Art Teacher, which had seen her focus gradually shift to become more concerned with management in Education. After spending the last two years travelling together with her husband, she has been able to begin focusing on her own practice. Moving to the local area at the beginning of April she has been inspired by the shoreline to produce vibrant new works. Her primary interest comes through the contrasts: the consistent, rhythmic, rolling waves, against the random, fractal quality of water and foam. The wave action has started to remind her of a recurring childhood dream: neither threatening nor peaceful, the dream was never particularly disturbing, but on waking the residual images were both powerful and elusive. As her practice has begun to further explore and develop these ideas, she has become curious to discover whether she is recalling the dream more accurately, or perhaps the process of producing the images is allowing her to lessen the frustration associated with lost and broken dream memories.

Carol Breese carol.breese@gmail.com

Internationally acclaimed textile designer Sarah Campbell was the co-founder, with her late sister Susan Collier, of the original company Collier Campbell. She is now working under her own name for influential retailers in the US and UK. Together with painting new designs for these companies she also gives talks about her many years in the industry, the nature of pattern making and her current daily studio practice; she runs workshops, writes a blog and retails a small range of products via her website.

Now and then original paintings both from the Archive and her current work are offered for sale.

The book “The Collier Campbell Archive - 50 years of passion in pattern�, recently published by Ilex Press, is a rare and rich record of the working life of their textile design practice. sarahcampbelldesigns.com

Sarah Campbell sarahc@mpbell.com

After a career in the antiques trade as both dealer and restorer Chris studied conservation for museums and archaeology at University College London.

On graduation he founded a conservation company providing conservation, restoration, mounting and installation services for museums and galleries, predominantly in London, but also across the UK and Internationally. After five years he sold his practice to concentrate on international heritage preservation consultancy and the conservation of archaeological site, working from his base in Turkey.

In 2010 he returned to the UK and opened a studio at The School Creative Centre from where he still runs his conservation consultancy, undertaking conservation and restoration work for private and public clients.

His work has always been closely associated with the art world and he has worked directly with artists throughout his career to help them create and realise their artistic potential through practical help with creation and installation.

He is always eager to find new and interesting projects and is always happy to advise on conservation and restoration matters, big or small. www.chriscleere.co.uk

Chris Cleere c.cleere@gmail.com

Sarah has been making mosaics since 2000 and has worked on commissions ranging from a rose-covered toilet to a mirrored pillar for a shop. She uses a variety of materials including tiles, broken crockery and mirrors and any found objects that have interesting texture, colour or pattern. ‘I especially love using old crockery and ceramics as each piece has its own story to tell.’ Sarah works in schools and runs workshops with families.

Sarah Cleveland sarah_and_co@hotmail.com

This past year has seen a big change in Jenny’s practice as she has crossed over from performance art to visual art. This change in art forms is being supported by her studies for a Masters in Fine Art at Brighton University.

Jenny has thus been developing new methodologies for making work with new mediums and is being challenged to find a new language that speaks to her audiences with the same vitality and immediacy of her past performance work, now that her physical body and presence is not part of the art.

The resulting installations and collections have seen unlikely blends of subject matter (genitalia and astronomy for example) which have been depicted with delicate pencil, graphite and ink illustrations; visceral oil and gloss paints; with installations created from soot, ashes, creosote and red glass. jennyedbrooke.com

Jenny Edbrooke jennyedbrooke@hotmail.com

Jillian Eldridge studied painting at Wimbledon School of Art and University of Brighton.

Recent paintings are fuelled by an interest in migration and the creation of imaginary journeys of people and other migratory creatures, particularly moths. The images are made to suggest the passage of the migrant, on the move, forever hopeful to arrive. She combines this idea with the love of the process of painting gold, silver, and other reflective surfaces, the effect of the sharp image on a blurred or roughly painted background and a keen and enjoyable awareness of pattern and shape.

jillianeldridge.co.uk

Jillian Eldridge jillianeldridge@hotmail.com

After graduating in fine art at Brighton College of Art, Anny moved to Australia and spent thirteen years travelling and working in theatre. She has designed and produced sets and costumes for several major theatre companies in Sydney including Nimrod Theatre Co. and The Australian Opera.

She continued designing for the theatre after her return to the UK whilst also selling her work to private and corporate clients. Since 2000 she has been designing outside spaces, private and public, teaching, and developing ideas about landscape through painting, drawing and installation.

During 2013 she has been working on a collaborative audio-visual installation, A Garden Enclosed.

annyevason.co.uk

Anny Evason annyevason@route56.co.uk

Caroline Fraser is an outdoor photographer whose work is inspired by nature. She took up photography seriously, after recovery from serious illness, as a means to express the fragility and transience of life. The title of her 2013 solo show ‘being alive’ in Sevenoaks describes the intense feeling of being alive that being out with her camera in wild places brings.

Having gained her ARPS ( Associateship of the Royal Photographic Society) in 2010 and studied for a postgraduate certificate in photography at Central St Martin’s School of Art in 2011, she is now based at the School Creative Centre. She produces intimate and abstracted landscapes from the natural and man-made world. Recent work from Iceland explores the flow of glacial ice from glacier to sea. Other favoured locations include the Outer Hebrides, Camber sands and local woodlands.

www.carolinefraserimages.com http://carolinescamera.blogspot.co.uk

Caroline Fraser Contact via website

After graduating from Fashion and Textile Design at Kingston University, Neil Greer worked in Switzerland for Jakob Schlaepfer AG, creating promotional designs for their world famous textiles. He then went on to work for Nigel French Enterprises, a trend forecasting company in London. Here he developed a facility for putting together colour, fabric and styling trends for future seasons and he went on to consult with major international design companies and department stores, under the name Tendenz, a company he established in 1995.

His love of decorative arts is a recurring theme. Historical and contemporary mosaic design hold a particular fascination. He is now exploring this further, taking commissions for fine art work, portraiture, furniture and garden works. His designs have a strong illustrative feel, and he uses a combination of smalti, vitreous glass tiles and matt ceramics to create vibrant and fractured artworks which invite the viewer to collaborate in the design process. By visually encouraging and challenging them to fuse the separate elements to form the whole ‘picture’, they become complicit in the finished result. neilgreermosaics.co.uk

Neil Greer info@neilgreermosaics.co.uk

Christine has a deep and abiding passion for art and lay science. Working in multiple mediums her approach is predominantly driven through research; continually having an holistic and interdisciplinary approach, fitting media and style intuitively to each new project. She tends towards the recurring ‘naïve’ themes of reductive and repetitive ‘natural forms’; and will regularly work through an idea in various mediums. She is fascinated by pattern, networks and connections, for example, past to present, microcosm to macrocosm and Computational Theory of Mind. She is currently studying astronomy and photography (for astrophotography). This has strongly influenced her most recent works.

She is currently developing two projects: ‘Descent With Modification’- a series of large scale paintings and sculptures exploring the origin of life from star stuff, celebrating the adaptability and endurance of life at a primal level; and, also: ‘Painterly With Light’ – a series of photographic manipulations pushing the boundaries of photography as an artistic medium. She describes her practice as ‘eclectic, frenetic and vibrant’.

christinehopwood.co.uk

Christine Hopwood christinehopwood@hotmail.co.uk

Angelika was born in Vienna and lived there until 1988. She is a trained teacher, with degrees from Vienna University and the Open University, and a Diploma in Integrative Arts Therapy (Therapeutic Counselling for Adolescents) (IATE).

The origins of her art lie in “Art is a Way of Knowing�. She is interested in the creative process and the healing properties of art, and in understanding the human condition through art making. This includes writing, journaling, poetry, fine art, music clay work and dance as well as puppet-making and other crafts. Her art is varied, vibrant, colourful, symbolic and abstract.

She embraces the creative process that arises from inner expression, transformation and change as well as the collective unconscious and storytelling. Her other passions are ecological balance and sustainability – she aims to use environmentally friendly and recycled materials.

schmart.co.uk

Angelika Howard frauhoward2@hotmail.com

MacArthur’s work has become increasingly painterly, with bold use of colour and a commitment to naturalistic draughtsmanship. Working quickly and instinctively she places colour onto the canvas working with wet on wet glazes, merging oily translucent layers with the brush and dropping colour onto the canvas, allowing it to bleed and grow into the surface creating abstract passages and allowing pareidolia.

MacArthur’s current series is based on gemstones in the Natural History Museum. In the museum context these jewels are presented as scientific specimens, yet it is impossible to escape the monetary and symbolic value we give them. The artist attempts to evoke the many associations ascribed to these stones - love, eternity, jealousy, temptation, greed.

axisweb.org/seCVPG. aspx?ARTISTID=16561

Paula MacArthur paulamacarthyr@me.com

Studied painting at Chelsea College of Art. Specialised in Illustration and worked for most mainstream publishers in the UK and America. All areas of illustration, book covers, illustrated fiction, children’s books and humorous cartoons.

Most noteworthy authors: Jackie Collins, James Herriot, Wilbur Smith.

Occasionally commissioned to make figurative bronzes for various clients, including Dick Francis.

Rob McCaig r.mccaig@hotmail.co.uk

Having trained as an illustrator originally, Tracy Nors thinks in narrative, and likes to create small stories within her paintings. She is now working as a fine art painter in mixed media, but mainly acrylics. Her approach is spontaneous; working in layers with shapes and composition.The works then start to become more directed. Colour is at the heart of all her work and she experiments with many different palettes.

She states that her ‘style is still evolving and emerging’. Previous artworks have included elements of graphics, text and image transfer. Her current body of work is moving away from this and into experimentation with the paint itself, although she says these ‘more abstracted works will eventually contain small figurative elements’. An example can be seen above.

She lived in Scandinavia for many years where she was influenced by the history of naive painting, particularly the Cobra movement. Other influences include, Basquait, Heron, Art Brut and children’s drawings. tracylornanors.com

Tracy Nors info@tracylornanors.com

Pockely’s work depicts cityscapes described as landscapes where the structures and shapes are formed by artificial light and soft shadows rather than edges and solid forms of mass, all seen through the hazy quality of twilight. Thin layers of oil paint glow on a gesso back- ground giving a luminous quality, that enhance the glow of light. The colour and paint quality cultivate the viewer’s emotions and assimilate memories rather than creating a factual description of the city. Other works are made using Carborundum paper, a black sandpaper, which gives an equally luminous quality but this time through the rich contrast of colour against the deep absorbent black surface.

jennypockley.com

Jenny Pockley jennypockley@btinternet.com

Yulia Podolska studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kiev, Ukraine, on a six-year program equipping students with advanced expertise in the traditional academic and practical skills required to produce sculpture of the same standard as the classical and renaissance periods. Having graduated, Podolska rebelled against this formal training, starting to work with abstract forms, inspired by the natural world. She then returned to her training, taking the human body as inspiration but simplifying the form to explore an inner world of feelings and emotions. This exploration of an inner life further develops as Podolska moves from working with blocks of marble to working with the natural shapes of found material such as stone to emphasize the emotions and character perceived within. Podolska continues to broaden her pallet, experimenting with new materials and production techniques.

yuliapodolska.com

Yulia Podolska podolskaya84@gmail.com

Discouraged from going to art-college as a teenager in the 60’s, art nevertheless remained Sue Prince’s first love. In 2009, Prince gave up her full-time job to rent a studio and fulfil her ambition. Largely self-taught she has experimented and evolved as a textile artist over the last four years.

The landscape, the sea, gardens and natural forms all influence her but it is often colour that is her starting point and inspiration, particularly for the pictures. Drawn to the colour, texture and versatility of felt and having always been a stitcher, Prince also uses machine and hand embroidery, beadwork, patchwork and appliquĂŠ to enhance and embellish a wide variety of both decorative and useful pieces.

susanprincetextileartist.wordpress.com

Sue Prince lilypearl26@yahoo.co.uk

Rubin’s artistic practice has two faces.

The first explores 3D sculptural portraiture. Often classical in approach and method, she has recently begun a series of 1/3 - 1/4 scale figures, designed to work as a group of works.

Her other body of work has concentrated on landscape. In the past Rubin’s practice referenced painting, print and souvenir imagery to form architectural three-dimensional sculptural pieces. This has lead her to investigate the often overlooked fine details in our surroundings, using these observations to create abstracted ‘scapes.

Most recently she has been looking into weather and data collection methods, collaborating with an engineer. Together they hope to develop a machine that can collect and store weather data over a period of 3 months. This information will then be used to develop a series of sculptural objects and two-dimensional works. stephrubin.com

Stephanie Rubin info@stephrubin.co.uk

Jenny graduated from Surrey Institute of Art and Design in 2004 with a degree in packaging design and branding. She worked for 7 years both in the industry and freelance covering many areas of design, from print to packaging, apparel, web, branding and product design.

In order to further express her creativity without the restrictions of home location and the restraints of company branding policies, Jenny founded the wedding and event styling business, Bellaboo and Beau. Working directly with a bride or a client rather than via the marketing director of a company offers much more scope for creativity and a bespoke approach.

Bellaboo and Beau is a platform for Jenny to use her creativity in as liberal a sense as possible, offering a hands-on service, as well as the skills of an independent, individual artist.

Jenny designs and makes props, styles photo-shoots and events and maintains her love bellabooandbeau.co.uk

Jenny Sinclair info@bellabooandbeau.co.uk

Creating layers and transparency can engender feelings of ambivalence and doubt - a sense of liminality. Memory, with its reference to both past and present, evokes a similar sense of things concealed or revealed, remembered or forgotten.

Beverley Thornley’s painting and printmaking draw on her memories of north Kent’s chalk pits and cement works. To Print, a visual and sound installation in The Printworks in Hastings in February 2013, also worked with memories, in this case of the people who worked there.

For the Your Memories Matter project with Stone Parish Council, Thornley explored and photographed Stone, researching its history, collecting old photos and press cuttings and interviewing residents. Running a memory workshop and a walk with local people in Stone has provided material for Stone Place – an installation of video, sound and photographs – which will be exhibited at Sussex Coast College in June.

Beverley Thornley beverley635@btinternet.com

Simon is a textile weaver with a passion for construction and a distinctive style, creating three-dimensional, ‘sculptural’ cloth artefacts and design led textile based products.

The primary concern with Simon’s work is an exploration of woven structure and the possibilities and limitations of traditional textile materials and techniques to create three dimensional sculptural works.

Drawing inspiration from both the natural and man made world Simon takes simple patterns and structures and repeats them many times over to build a more complex whole. Variations in the size of the individual “building blocks” create form and break the regularity of the pattern. The introduction of different yarns and other materials – feathers, wire, plastics and paper -,particularly when combined with the post production technique of fulling or felting further disrupts any pattern.

The results of Simon’s labours and experimentations sit well in both the gallery and the home or work place. loominessence.co.uk

Simon Young scymon@loominessence.co.uk