At last I get time to write some content for my newsletter/blog.

It’s been a busy few weeks and, just to put it in context, this was the week of the floods in Doncaster where neighbouring farms were washed out and the next village is still under water.  When the sun did finally appear I was able to put in some time in the studio…..

I’ve just finished my contribution to an Opera North project with 2 junior schools in Bradford.  It ended with a great performance at Cartwright Hall but along the way we built a range of sugar snow mountains, totem pole speaker boxes, a large meteor and a magical, tap-dancing, flying horse.  The children had some great ideas but there simply wasn’t enough time to do justice to them all.

Back in May I had the pleasure of working with Karen Stansfield, a theatrical costume designer, to make some wierd and wonderful costumes based on Earth, Air, Fire and Water from recycled and scrap materials.  This was part of Leeds University’s “Aim Higher” project with Doncaster secondary schools – more on this later.  The 23 Year 9 pupils worked well and produced seven costumes in the day for a presentation that evening!

Exhibitionwise I’ve presented work at the Fringe annual exhibition in the new Frenchgate Centre,  a one day show at Doncaster’s Mansion House and a couple of days at the museum and art gallery as part of the South Yorkshire Open Studios event.
In mid-June I successfully bid for a commission for the Hesley Group of schools to illustrate the story of one of their pupils.  The pupil I chose was fascinated by curtains (for pulling on) and lights (flourescents for the removal of).  On a very tight schedule I made a large, 3-layered interactive piece representing the frustration created by the curtains (fragmented images painted onto vertical blind strips) and the calm that follows when they are removed (restful figure hidden behind the fabrics).  Like much of my recent work, it holds together well conceptually and rewards close investigation and interaction but its very difficult to capture in a photograph!