So, I mentioned in my last post that I had been successful in my application to be an artist in residence.  It’s at Erewash Museum in Ilkeston, but I didn’t know what I was going to be looking at.

I met with the manager Helen last week.  After discussing a few options, it was decided that the focus of my residency will be a recent acquisition for the museum.  This is a pair of rare memorial plaques, or ‘death pennies’ as they are often known.   As a result of the Unexamined Lives project, the plaques were gifted to the museum from Canada, where they’d ended up many years ago.

This week, I am going to meet with Keith Oseman.  Keith has apparently done lots of research on these, and the family members they memorialised, to find out more.  I am already intrigued by what information is already out there and what I have already found out.  Before reading about the acquisition recently, I didn’t know such things existed.  I also never knew there was a Moravian settlement in Ockbrook, a place I travel through often.  Click here for a recent article in Ilkeston Life that tells you a little about how the ‘death pennies’ found their way home.

My brain is in overdrive at the moment, thinking about all the possible directions that this research and the project could go.  Should I go down the route of looking further at the death pennies in general? How and why the originated, what people did with them?  Or I might delve deeper in to the family background and the Moravian settlement – Ockbrook is part of Erewash after all.  Where do I even start?

I can end up down the ‘rabbit hole’ when I start my research, which often starts out as text and photo rather than drawing studies (with the style of my work, drawing is not always the most appropriate beginning).  What work do I do at the museum on days in residence?  I try not to think too much about final outcomes at this stage, although sometimes I can’t help already thinking about possible ideas.

But for now, I am going to try and rein in the ideas until I have at least spoken to Keith to find out what he knows.

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I know I am rubbish at keeping this blog updated!  But…at the weekend, I received some exciting news.  I applied for a residency at my local Erewash Museum as part of Arts Erewash rEvive project.  And I got offered a place!

It will be a great opportunity to develop some new work.  At this point in time I don’t know what I will be working with.  I wanted to go back to those heady days of Foundation and Degree years.  Those days when we were set a project with perhaps just a title or a very small brief.  I’ve had a good few years of exploring new techniques and technologies.  Sometimes though, these have not fully come to fruition because I have not had a direction to take them in.

With this residency, I am really looking forward to going back to experimenting, responding to outcomes and developing ideas as I go along.  At this moment in time, I don’t want to have an end game in mind. I don’t want to have a preconceived idea of the finished product. I want to avoid, if I can, steering it towards what I already know.   I’m looking to the staff at the Museum to see if there’s an area they’d like to bring attention to.  Something in the archives that they want to shed new light on, a collection they want me to explore.  I am hoping this will encourage me to work spontaneously and that it will inspire me to investigate some of these little used techniques a little more.

Watch this space, it might also encourage me to blog a little more often!

(the image shows a close up of the installation that I made collaboratively with Gavin Darby of Frailloop three or four years ago, that sits in the Museum garden)

The last few weeks, I’ve been busy making new stock for the galleries and for selling events, that I hope people will love enough to adorn their tree with.  Each year, I make a new decoration design, and having recently got a laser cutter at the studio, I’ve been taking advantage of that with some delicately engraved snowflake designs, along with offering the option of personalised ornaments.

I’ve listed some designs, new and old, over in my Etsy Shop, or if you’re near Ilkeston on the 10th December, I’ll be taking my decorations, along with other glass, to the Erewash Museum for their special Christmas Event.

Well, it’s been a busy couple of weeks, making stock for selling events, and preparing for classes. Yesterday’s workshop was a sell-out, and so is Saturday 3rd December.  There are still a couple of spaces left on “Don’t Panic”.

I’ve been teaching in the studio, and at other venues – workshops are now on the road!  Yes, as well as coming to the studio to learn all about glass fusing, whether on a full days workshop, or to try a taster session, I can now bring the classroom to you.

This will be restricted more to ‘taster’ style workshops, by which I mean, the session will not including learning to score and break glass, and is less intensive on the technical side.  But you get to spend more time spent being creative!

It also means I can run the workshops for bigger groups if you have the space; it can work for a much wider age range; people with dexterity or hand strength issues can do the taster sessions, as indeed those with mobility issues – cutting glass can be physically tiring and is often better to be standing up whilst you’re learning the basics. In addition, there is limited space in the studio, and access is not the best, so this could work for disability groups in spaces more suitable for their needs.  Perhaps a support group, where the participants prefer to be in familiar surroundings.  Whilst the studio has good transport links, not everybody can easily travel, but I can come to you, and I can also fit in with your regular meetings or sessions.

Please get in touch if you would like to know more.

These images below are some of the results from a recent “on-the-road” workshop, that was so popular, they have asked me to go back again this week.

Lets get more people being creative, everybody who’s been doing these workshops keeps telling me how much they enjoy them.

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