Today we met a the Clocktower Gallery at Northern General Hospital. We went to visit the Foxhill Art for Health groups first group exhibition, which Carole and Jo are showing work in. Sadly Diane, Eileen, Ian and Matt couldn't make it so Carole and Jo showed me around the work.
I was really impressed by the work, by the variety of styles, techniques and subject matter. The group have only been meeting for a year. They meet at the community centre in Foxhill every Thursday from 1-3. The group is run by Clair Liversidge, a nurse from the local GP practice, and every other week lead by Joanne... , an artist and arts teacher. I have previously visited the group and found a really warm and friendly community of people who obviously love meeting up every week to create artwork.
Carole and Jo told me that over the year Joanne has introduced them to a huge variety of techniques. Different painting styles and methods, pastels, collage, mixed media work. This experimentation has given the group the opportunity to find out what materials they like to work with and begin to find their own style. This is evident in the huge variety of work on show from framed pastel drawings to huge scale acrylic paintings to multi media painted, drawn and collaged work to canvases that have been stitched into.
Carole and Jo talked me through all of the work in the exhibition. Told me a little bit of background on the artists and the sort of journey each of them has been on. Some were talented artists to begin with, some even selling artwork in their own right. One man worked as an engineer during his career and found painting very frustrating to begin with as he tried to get everything perfectly straight and angular; he has now relaxed this approach and enjoys a much freer style. Carole and Jo said that some people found it difficult coming together with others to begin with but now are enjoying the regular company each week. It was really interesting to see how the group has progressed and developed.
Carole and Jo said that they both really enjoy and appreciate the class, they said everyone does, hardly anyone ever misses a class. They both said that the class has given them the time and inspiration to really develop their artwork. Jo mainly works in collage and mixed media, a style that she has developed over the year. Carole is mainly a painter in acrylics and she uses various methods of applying paint to the canvas for different effects. Carole has recently started creating artwork with her daughter. They take a large canvas and mix up paint colours and create abstract paintings together. I asked if they argue when they do it and she said that it works very naturally, they lose hours whilst engrossed in the paint. She said she enjoys it because it takes her back to the days when she used to bake with her daughter when she was young.
I found that the exhibition is a really great example of how important art groups are. The level of skill is incredible and the class must be essential for people who may not have the chance to express themselves creatively otherwise. The social aspect is obviously important to the group. I think that this exhibition is really inspiring in terms of the Lisen Profile groups' involvement in the Allotment Soup event which is a really good opportunity for us to get together to be creative in a group and to work towards and end result. I am excited about the potential outcomes of this.
After we looked around the exhibition we had a cup of tea in the canteen and discussed our shape records. I had drawn all the circles that I could see in my studio. Jo had recorded all of the arch shapes that she saw last week by written description. That was a really interesting shape to look into and it seemed to appear in all sorts of places from bridges to doors to window frames to air freshener plugs! During one journey that she took into Sheffield city centre Jo recorded every arch she could see with the location of the shape. The result was a perfect description of that journey along Penistone Road.
We also talked about our postcards. Carole wrote that her dream destination would be to deep sea dive in caves in South America, however she said that since she wrote that she had thought about it and actually if she would go anywhere she would travel through time! She said she wouldn't want to be involved or see the events that we read about in history books but she would just go and see how normal people lived their daily lives during different periods in the past. Jo told us about a holiday she had taken in Greece where they did a tour and were told about all of the Greek myths and legends. She said that it was so atmospheric that she really wanted the myths to come true. She said that at one point they were standing on the cliffs and the sky was dark and stormy and the sea was wild and she could just imagine mythical creatures appearing. The postcards are proving great for bringing out stories that we wouldn't necessarily share.