In August I exhibited my work at two Sussex Guild shows. The first being at Michelham Priory on the first weekend of August and the second at Pashley Manor this weekend just gone. Both were long shows (4 and 3 days respectively) and exhibiting at something like that is very tiring but lets you see what other people think of your work.
When you work in isolation, as I do, making the things that you think of in your head and finding sometimes very random inspiration it is great to see what other people see in your work and what they think of it. I even had one couple argue as both liked different frames and would not concede to the others opinion! Everybody brings their own life experience to looking at your work and will therefore come at it from a different angle, I find it fascinating when they explain to me what they see in my work.
How people look at your work is very much linked to the way in which you present it I think. I have struggled since I joined the guild to present my work in the right way but I think that I am finally getting there.
Stand at Michelham Priory 2010
The first image is my stand at Michelham Priory, which is in itself a vast improvement on that which I had for my first two guild shows last year (same basic stand but different coverings) the fabric I used to cover it back then didn’t have the desired ‘look’ so it was suggested that I paint the boards white as seen below.
This gives the whole stand a much cleaner feel and lets people look at the frames rather than the fabric. I did have way too many comments on how lovely the fabric was before!
It was then suggested that the frames may look better being on a colour so as to show how they might look hanging on someones wall in their house, more people have coloured walls than white ones I would think. To keep the flexibility of the stand the colour could be put onto large panels which hang from the back boards so that I can alter the number and colour of panels as I see fit. This you can see in the image below.
Stand at Pashley Manor 2010
By the way my carving bench is not about to fall over even though it looks like it in this picture!
I think that the frames look an awful lot better on these panels, I had several compliments on the stand and the public spent their time admiring the frames not the background!
Finally I think that I am getting there, there are a few minor adjustments that need to be made to the stand but the majority of it is now going in the right direction.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below
Its been a bit of a difficult week this past week, not due to the work I’m doing but more to do with trying to work in this intense heat. When the weather is so very hot I have to alter my working day so that I avoid carving across the heat of midday as I work under a glass roof. I get up a little earlier to get started earlier, stop around lunchtime and get going again around 5pm or so and work till later in the evening when its much cooler and I can concentrate better. Oh and I have a fan that wafts the air across the carving bench at intervals.
To be honest it has just started to cool down again which makes it a lot more comfortable to work again. Even the workshop can be difficult in the heat as it is a steel clad building with skylights so you can imagine how hot it gets. I had the roller shutter open slightly today so that the breeze we had could move the hot stale air around a bit, but I had to close it when I realised it was raining in!
Don’t get me wrong its not just the hot weather that can cause me problems, in winter both where I carve and the workshop can be sooo cold its not funny.
Does the weather affect the way that you structure your working day?
June 23, 2010
…. nothing comes along for ages and then 3 come along at once.
I know you’re thinking thats a bit of an odd thing to say, its not that I’m saying that carving jobs are rare, more that the same kind job never usually comes along twice in a row.
Ok so I mainly carve picture frames so technically I’m doing the same job time after time but the patterns and sizes are constantly changing. Out of 3 jobs I have completed recently two have been for egg n dart carving, admittedly one was for the edge of an oak table top seen here , the other was lengths for the pediment at the top of a couple of doors for a museum in London.
This image shows the end of the run of egg n dart as it is about to go round the corner so the final egg has a leaf design on it, probably orginally to hide the fact that it was a different size to the others in the length. I worked mainly from photographs and a site visit, but as I am a coward and really don’t like ladders I couldn’t climb the tall ladder to get a good look at the originals as they are deceptively high up!
Egg n Dart Carving in Utile
I have never carved in Utile before and it wasn’t a particularly pleasant experience ( I have another tale to tell on this subject with another part of this job but it will have to wait until another post).
I had to make sure that my gouges were especially sharp and kept well honed in order to cut throught the wood cleanly (thanks to a helpful hint from a contact on Twitter!). I think that they turned out quite well in the end.
On the plus side my client was very pleased with the job, and so was their client. The lengths also look good with all the rest of the joinery, I can’t wait to see them in situ, I’ll see if I can get some pics once they’re up.
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