As the first cool nights and the fluting of robins signal the flight of summer, we mark the beauty of the changes of the season, looking ahead to the cosy comforts of the home, and introduce our special combined h.Art and Autumn exhibition entitled ‘Caught In Flight’ which opens on Saturday September 8 at Old Chapel Gallery, Pembridge, promoting the work of talented British artists and makers from around the county and beyond.
Our h.Art line up will showcase Carolyn Amos, who studied silversmithing and jewellery at Harrow College of Art and Technology, designs and makes a collection of bold, crisply geometric earrings, rings and cufflinks from silver and coloured resin. Jennifer Hall, now working on the stunning North Pembrokeshire coast, uses traditional techniques to create contemporary slipware, aiming ‘to enhance the daily rituals of refreshment and mealtimes. As a maker of domestic ware, I do not want my pots to challenge, but to sit comfortably in the hand and feel soft on the lips.’ Her ‘Circle’ range, a very abstracted plant design, is influenced by the seed pods and structures of Honesty. Herefordshire based Kathie Barrs, felt maker, creates functional and decorative pieces with an array of textures. Cosy felt collars and scarves of vibrant coloured wools are marbled together with silk, clasped and buttoned with fastenings of English woods. Living locally, Hilary Mee’s chosen medium is papier mache, that ‘lends itself to being humorous and childlike, the application of colour and line giving a piece a more dramatic and theatrical air.’ Her lively pieces include jewellery, clocks, mirrors and ornaments. The dynamic garden sculptures of internationally acclaimed Herefordshire artist blacksmith Neil Lossock take inspiration largely from nature, interspersed with a love of the fantastic. Neil’s signature pieces – large, individual pieces of art that elicit admiration – are testament to his skill. Herefordshire artist Helen Cass’s selection of mono-prints stems from her documentation of the dissolution of the farm which has been an important presence in her work for twenty years, whose activities, processes and objects are now subject to change. Each print is an original, the plants themselves, collected while walking the land, make the image, forming superimposed silhouettes.
Complementing this exhibition will be artist Sue Hayden who will be showing a new collection of striking seascapes and landscapes in acrylic. Excited by the relationship between texture, shape, light and space, she paints with acrylic and pastels in a layered technique, creating a collage effect, adding energy, randomness to her work. Alongside Clio Graham’s enchanting pottery is designed to be functional as well as decorative and follows in the tradition of English slip ware, using the warm colours and qualities of earthenware with contemporary decoration, often influenced by the countryside. Her pieces, depicting flora and fauna, including swallows, owls and kingfishers, are framed with lines of poetry. Familiar birds such as blue tits, rooks and warblers feature in Kay Leverton’s magical scraper-board originals, in which she explores her love of line and detail and the intricacy of the natural world: ‘To scratch away the ink and reveal the creamy chalk underneath, to make up a work out of thousands of tiny lines, this really excites me.’
