Moving on... and looking back Part 2

Here are some of the projects Carole has been involved in just recently

Carole was commissioned by Corby Borough Council to work with Kingswood, Exeter, Oakley Vale and Beanfield Primary Schools to create a series of Story Chairs. Each child made an illustration to a given story e.g. The Tale of Robin Hood, first on paper, then with fabric, these were then applied to a beanbag chair and was an exercise in using visual art to stimulate interest in both reading and story telling.

Carole was asked to paint a mural to encourage the children of Priory Lower School in Bedford to eat their 5 fruits and vegetables a day. The mural was painted in a room not much larger than a cupboard and is now hanging outside the dining hall.

Between October 2009 and March 2010 Carole was Artist in Residence / coordinator on the Invisible Threads project for the group Back To Books. She facilitated workshops in silk painting, printmaking, felting and textiles for adults exploring family history and using it as a spring board for their creativity. Participants came from many different places and had a wide variety of material to draw upon.

Invisible Threads Participants looking at family photographs at West Glebe Park

Invisible Threads Textile Workshop in Litchborough Village Hall

Invisible Threads Screen printing day at Carole's studio

Carole liaised with author Kathy Page in Canada who ran an Online Writing Course and then joined Carole for the Residency at Sudborough Green Lodge Cottages in Fermyn Woods. They were challenged by the weather, the heating and the plumbing but managed to have many good walks and talks as well as some time to create their own work.

Kathy Page writing at Sudborough Green Lodge Cottages

Kathy also gave a reading at the Water Tower in Brigstock and you can see parts of the reading here and here

Kathy Page reading, photo by Kate Dyer

By sheer coincidence Carole discovered that Tasmanian Textile Artist Tara Badcock had relatives from Kettering (Carole's current home town) and persuaded Tara to take part in the project. Tara made three wonderful pieces celebrating her wonderful Aunts, Madge, Vi and Doris.

Tara working on her pieces for Invisible Threads in Tasmania

You can see a clip of the Invisible Threads Tea Towel Installation here

The collection later went to Leicester to become part of this year's Art Houses event which saw a host of artists showing work in houses in the Clarendon Park area of Leicester.

From September 2009 to May 2010 Carole worked for the Wellingborough Inter Faith Group and with the Women Have A Go group at the Victoria Centre in Wellingborough. She was asked to research and then design a table drape that the Inter Faith Group could use during their meetings. The design was then sewn by the WHAGs, Carole was on hand to advise during the course of the project and spent many happy sessions enjoying tales from many countries

( Russia, Poland, Rhodesia, Pakistan ........) and cakes from many countries too!

Carole continued her role as Artist in Residence at Priory Lower School and worked with Year 4 on large pastel drawing and paintings of flowers inspired by the work of Georgia O'Keefe. They looked at the O'Keefe Museum website and discussed the artist's work, each child choosing a painting and talking about what they liked about it. Carole discussed scale, use of colour and technique, then shared out the flowers both bought and from her Mum's garden, observation from nature made a huge difference to the work they produced. After the drawings were finished they looked and commented on each one, discussing the aspects that worked and the areas that could be improved, before a smaller group went on to make a series of paintings of their own.

In June Carole worked on a Creative Partnerships project at The Ferrers Specialist Arts College with artist Carol Jacobs. They used the self-portrait as their starting point and explored the theme using a variety of different techniques. Carole's students made an A2 line drawing which was divided into quarters, they then chose one quarter to translate into a mosaic panel. Each group had 3 sessions to complete the task.

Students work in progress

During the summer Carole worked with 4 groups of children at the Steelbacks and the Cobblers education centres in Northampton. The brief was to imagine that the Olympics were coming to Northampton and then to design banners to highlight what was special about the town. Each banner was made in a day!

and finally ....... Carole is just starting a mosaic project with the young people at Dreams Youth Club in Corby and will also be running evening art sessions to Beat the Winter Blues for 18 - 30 yr olds battling with stress at the Mixing Bowl in Kettering.

Coincidences

Thinking about Jo’s image of the child on the station platform made me remember some journeys from my own childhood. My family emigrated to Western Australia on the £10 ticket, we lived in a place called Kelmscott and for the first few years my brother and I travelled to school in Gosnells by train. There was a walk from our house to the station, then a brief train ride and a short walk to school. I can’t remember much about the journey, or what the train was like, I have no image of either station in my head. What I do remember was that every day, whilst waiting for the train our Mum would read to us. I loved getting lost in stories and I expect that’s why I can remember so little about the built environment, I was wandering around in my imagination and not paying too much attention to the outside world. If I strain my memory I can just feel the dry morning heat on my cheeks, catch a whiff of railway carriage and recall the ache of being torn away from the book of the moment.

These memories prompted a spot of Googling to see what the station had been like. The old Kelmscott Station, which opened in 1889, had been replaced, in 2008, by a modern, state of the art station. You can see both the old and the new by following this link

I did get a slight tingle on seeing the new Kelmscott station building, as its’ outer structure is very like the new building that houses the swimming pool in Corby.

Photo by Andrew Rushton

Corby Swimming Pool under construction 2009.

Kelmscott Station under construction

The second shiver of coincidence came when doing research into some tangential family histories, looking through public records, at patterns of work and the moves made from countryside to cities. I discovered that in 1911, a distant relative, 17 year old William Miles was living with aunt Hannah Sophia Staples & uncle Charles Staples at 12 Becher St, Derby (the original house no longer exists). Peartree Station (Peartree and Normanton as it was known) opened in 1839, the Victorian / Edwardian housing stock in the area was built to cater for the growing industrialworkforce, employed by the chemical industries, Rolls Royce and the railways in Derby.

William was employed as Railway Clerk Hotel, I assume this means he was employed in a railway hotel. His uncle Charles and cousin Albert were railway clerks working either at Derby Station, 22 minutes walk away or Peartree Station, 12 walk minutes away. As our project is still in the planning stage I can’t do too much digging around about Peartree Station, which is one of the names on the line from Corby that appealed to me, but I quite like this invisible line radiating out from the past into the present.

In the meantime here is an image connected with both Kelmscott and the research mentioned above – a piece called “Three Sails, Many Voyages”, digital images printed on silk, currently on display as part of Out Yer Tree’s exhibition of outdoor contemporary art in the grounds of Coombe Abbey Country Park (Brinklow Road, Binley, Nr Coventry CV3 2AB) from 28th August – 17th September 2010. There is a free walk and talk event on Saturday the 28th of August where the artists involved will discuss their work and answer any questions the public may have. The walk and talk will leave from the visitor’s centre at 2pm.