Stephanie Sampson

Painting
1979-1981

I recently recieved an email from Stephanie, a Greek Canadian artist who sent me these striking pictures from her The Faces of Nemesis; Investigative Painting on the Streets of Athens (2012). The work shows people affected

by the recession and are watercolour portraits done on location on the streets of

Athens, Greece 2012. 

Stephanie says "I will be doing similar portraits on London streets in Feb 2013..

(needless to say, the risk of making cliche images of the poor is a danger, but

I try to bypass that with economy of means and unsentimentality)".

After leaving Corsham Stephanie went on to do a MFA in Canada.

Roger Deakins
Graphic Design
1968-70?

A real hero of mine, and the cinematographer on many of the Coen brothers finest films, Roger Deakins, on the set of Sam Mendes's Skyfall with that car! And yes he went to Corsham, but just not quite sure of the exact dates.

Axel Scheffler
Illustration
1982-84

As a first year I was lucky enough to help a certain third year put up his degree show in Beechfield house to the sounds of the Cocteau Twin's Treasure album. He kindly rewarded me with an illustrated card for my younger sister which she loves til this day. The show got a first, Axel illustrated The Gruffalo, and what do you know this year his illustrations are on the Christmas stamps.

Gwilym John
1957-1962

New paintings in acrylic

Helen Simmonds
Sculpture
1982-85
 
Thanks to Helen for sending me one of her paintings from the forthcoming show


Small Works for Christmas
Beaux Arts Bath
 
19 November - 22 December
Private View Saturday 17 November

The show will also feature work by Simon Allen, Jackie Anderson, Jennifer Anderson, Akash Bhatt, Mark Johnston, Nick Mackman, Elisa McLeod, Nathan Ford, Anthony Scullion, Jason Walker and Simon Wright. 

Beaux Arts Bath, 12-13 York St, Bath BA1 1NG  00441225464850

www.beauxartsbath.co.uk

Guy Thomas, Richard Crooks and Iain Cotton
Sculpture
1984-87

30 October–4 November 2012
Open daily 10.30am–5pm
Private View on Tuesday, 30 October 5.30–8.30pm

3+1 steel stone clay paint presents three sculptors and one painter
who over a 25-year period have shared a critical dialogue relating to
the formal considerations and influences in their work – abstract and
figurative alike.
The three sculptors – Iain Cotton, Richard Crooks and Guy Thomas –
work respectively in stone, clay and steel to explore the expressive
elements of their material. They studied together at Bath Academy of
Art (1984–7), where they were influenced by the teaching of Charles
Hewlings. He supported the direct, exploratory and three-dimensional
approach to making sculpture that these students were engaged in.
At Wimbledon School of Art, Barbara Cheney studied painting
(1988–91) and in the same period, Charles taught in the sculpture
department where Guy worked as technician and lecturer, and
Richard undertook an MA in Site Specific Sculpture. After graduating,
Barbara and Guy immediately formed a close, ongoing critique of
each other’s work.
All four artists believe that their work should speak for itself and
reveal strong formal qualities; underpinning this is the discipline of
drawing. All are members of Bath Society of Artists and Guy is the
current Chairman. The Society has had strong connections with Bath
Academy of Art, including artists that taught there such as Patrick
Heron, William Scott and Howard Hodgkin.

‘Iain, Richard and Guy constituted, for me, the core of their year
group at Bath Academy of Art. My visits there were unfailingly
enlivened and made stimulating by them. How to account for the
unusual chemistry between them? On the one hand, a shared
belief (untaught for the most part) that inanimate material can,
with passion, be made to speak; and, on the other, very different
aptitudes, temperaments and (sculptural) rhythms. And hunger,
and intellectual curiosity and much more. Always in the light of
a recent discovery in the world of sculpture, each piece of work
was a criticism of the one before, and of course a response to
each other’s latest. So, I believe, the creative rivalry between
them continues…’ – Charles Hewlings

Corham Re-formed Exhibition
at Tokarska Gallery, London

163 Forest Rd., Walthamstow, London E17 6HE Tel.: +44 (0) 20 8531 5419
5 minutes from Blackhorse Road at the North end of the Victoria Line underground

After a year's planning the show is finally up! Private View tomorrow, 6-10pm.

Works by former students of Bath Academy of Art many of whom's work I've posted on this blog: Anna Bisset, Iain Cotton, Richard Crooks, Tim Daly, Frank Gambino, Paul Lindt, Mark Mainwood, Guy Thomas, Paul Tucker, Simon Ward, Jon Woolfenden in this group exhibition.

www.tokarskagallery.co.uk

Michael O-Donnell
Painting
1964-67

Corsham Student still working hard.

 

This exhibition has been shown in Truro Cathedral Cornwall

Then Manchester Cathedral, Lancashire,

Next Portsmouth Cathedral in Hampshire in the new year.

 

www.michael-odonnell.co.uk

Corsham Court, main site of Bath Academy of Art 1946-1986

For those of you unable to make it to the Corsham Re-formed show here is Stephen Clarke's essay from the catalogue in full:

In a paper for a series of conferences at the Tate Gallery in the early 1990s, the artist Susan Hiller related the comment that whereas Paris has artists’ cafes and New York has artists’ bars, in England we have art colleges. She then went on to elaborate that the function of the British art college was to validate a professional path but tied to this was its nature as a socialising body. British art education, she says, “has been a rite of passage more than a form of training, a situation where older artists influence, criticise and sponsor younger ones and where the younger ones keep their elders on their toes”. This relationship between master and pupil, authority and the acolyte, was neatly visualised by another artist, Tom Phillips. As an introduction to a profile of his own work on BBC2 television in 1989, Phillips traced his lineage from his own tutor/master Frank Auerbach through to Auerbach’s tutor Bomberg, followed by Bomberg’s tutor Sickert, and so on until he reached Raphael. Many of us who went to art college can trace a similar lineage. We were all taught by artists who were taught by artists. It is a ‘vertical’ chronology stretching through time.

Alongside this vertical heritage is a horizontal plateau. On this plateau are our contemporaries at college, our fellow students. We look across to their example; we learn from the work that they have done; we acquire skills that they have forged; and we take sustenance from both their encouragement and their criticism. It is easy to label this as mere influence but in both cases, tutor to student and student to student, it is more a matter of dialogue. This dialogue does not end with college, it can last many years as can be seen with this group and their current exhibition project.

Traditionally at the centre of the art academy was the life room. Drawing the figure from life was an essential skill that all were trained to master. It is the expectation of the man in the street that an artist can capture a likeness – make a drawing of them or their loved one. Life class drawing is much more than this. It demands honest looking, and the result might not be attractive. Frank Gambino continues to work from life with the basics of drawing, a stick of charcoal and a sheet of paper. As he states: “My work is a record of the time I spend drawing the people who are in my pictures.”  It is not just a finished result that we consider, but also the event of making a drawing. Gambino has described his drawings as ‘big ugly heads’, not very flattering to the sitters but this label gives heft to the drawings as worked events.

This emphasis upon the process of making is the approach that Anna Bisset brings to her work. Using the subject as the starting point, she explores materials, techniques and production methods. Bisset has commented upon her time spent working in an industrial foundry saying that “making the original piece (in wood, clay or resin) and mass-producing it in metal using the sand-casting method was something I could observe every day as being an influence in techniques and methods of production”. While Gambino’s drawings may point to a more traditional perspective of the art academy, Bisset’s emphasis upon process may be the outcome of a necessity to consider design and the links to industry. Many art colleges in Britain trace their history to the Victorian period and the foundation of design education that would strive to take account of the new manufacturing processes, an approach that would inform design education across Europe. Art academies became colleges of art and design. This relationship between functional design and the aesthetics of art have become an important factor of visual culture. Many of the practitioners in this exhibition are trained designers and part of a contemporary industry. Industry is the key aspect to Jon Woolfenden’s work. He says: “I enjoy all things oily and industrial… I visited a turbine factory; man, machine, smell and sound akin to a scene from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis”. Not for Woolfenden the refined approach of the academy. He applies paint with kitchen knives, rollers, stencils and even an icing sugar applicator. These worked surfaces reflect wrought products of the factory worker.

Guy Thomas uses the material of industry – steel – to fix the forces of nature. Thomas orchestrates the dynamic fluidity of landscape and seascape, but the organic force has become unyielding metal. Both Thomas’s practice, and that of his fellow sculptor Richard Crooks, comes out of late modernist sculpture as advocated by Clement Greenberg. Following the discourse set out by the American critic, the sculptor Anthony Caro established a truly British tradition of post-war sculpture in the British art colleges of the 1960s that would concentrate upon the formal aspects of the discipline. This bedrock of abstract sculptural practice provided a discourse that other artists could expand upon. Charles Hewlings, a tutor at Bath Academy of Art, had himself studied under Caro at St Martin’s School of Art, London. Both Thomas and Crooks identify Hewlings as a mentor and an influence on their thinking in relation to this discourse. The forces of nature crash into Thomas’s work while for Crooks the culture of international commerce makes its impact. In Crooks’ work imagery from a colonial and trading past, such as the humble teapot and Indian figurines, has been brought into conflict with the language of international modernist forms. Richard Crooks’ practice as a sculptor has been transformed by more recent study in relation to Craft, specifically ceramics. His present work encapsulates the border skirmishes between Craft and Fine Art. Crooks’ subjects are forced into compliance by the action of casting processes and subtle modelling. The result is ceramic pieces that have the weight and mass of stone sculpture.

Parallel to the work of the British abstract sculptors was the work of British abstract painters, notably the St Ives group in Cornwall. Unlike their American counterparts, the Abstract Expressionists, the St Ives painters took inspiration from the landscape. As with the sculptors who followed Anthony Caro, these post-war abstract painters would have a significant impact upon British art education. The question has always been whether the British painters just copied their American peers or whether they offered something else. It is this strand of discourse that Mark Mainwood engages with. Starting off with small-scale organic forms such as insects and microbiology Mainwood produces abstract compositions that, although largely concerned with formal properties, have the ambition to contain references to day-to-day emotions and experiences.

By the 1970s the boundaries between practices had started to melt as the Postmodern era dawned. Hybridity rather than purity would become the norm. Paul Lindt, a graphic designer since leaving college, uses some of the abstract devices of Fine Art practice in his work. However, with Lindt’s work we take a significant leap forward to art colleges of the present day as he experiments with the digital tools of contemporary graphic design to create his pieces. Avoiding obvious simulated images, Lindt constructs what he terms an ‘abstract architecture’. This architecture incorporates vivid colours and the texture of photographic elements to produce a fabricated space.

The impact of technology in art colleges has always been present. Since its birth in the 19th century photography has been the upstart. Now it is perhaps a traditional media as all are consumed in the digital revolution. Paul Tucker’s photographs follow a tradition of observed street photography that stretches as far back at the French photographer Atget. His seemingly ordinary scenes are the stuff made art by the American photographer William Eggleston. As with the painters and sculptors in this group Tucker is concerned with colour and form, using the pretext of place to pull the images together into a body of work. Until recently, photography was not shown in galleries alongside other art media. By the 1980s photographers in Britain had developed the photobook as an alternative space to disseminate their work. Closely related to the artist’s book (books produced by artists as art works in their own right), Tim Daly has developed this format to construct books that use photography to picture events that are associated with particular sites. Daly includes discarded material, such as paper ephemera or textiles, to give his pieces a sensory aspect; consequently looking at his photographs becomes haptic as well as visual.

British art colleges have changed. Most art colleges have been subsumed into Universities and become departments of the larger institution rather than remain independent bodies. Alongside this change in organisational structure are the changes in curriculum and the changes in working methods. New media now dominate; notably studios are equipped with computers. Iain Cotton’s practice dates back to even before the art academies. As a stone carver Cotton’s work is both ancient and permanent. His work is as much part of a craft tradition as it is a part of art and design. His word sculptures and his use of the written word have strong links to Conceptual Art practice of the 1970s and in particular the work of Ian Hamilton-Finley. Both old and new, Cotton’s work stands stubbornly in contradiction to the immateriality of digital breakdowns. As he states: “I design and carve my own letters by hand, because I want them to be human, full of life, and distinctive rather than mass produced”. The British art college of the past may have had its summer. Like Simon Ward’s watercolour images of pressed flies, all we have are the ephemeral marks on paper. Ward’s work encapsulates the delicacy of the fleeting moment, something that was hardly there.

All of the artists in this exhibition went to the Bath Academy of Art in the mid 1980s. What is apparent from the work of these artists is the emphasis upon crafted skills honed in the studio rather than conceptual critique sharpened in the seminar room. Although art and design education in Britain still thrives it has become something different. The conferences referred to at the beginning of this essay sought to look at the state of British art education in the 1990s. Twenty years on perhaps we are still asking what should the art college of the twenty-first century be?

Stephen Clarke is an artist, writer, and lecturer based in the northwest of England.


Susan Hiller, ‘An artist on art education’, in P. Hetherington, (ed.), Issues in Art and Education: Aspects of the Fine Art Curriculum, London (Tate Publishing / Wimbledon School of Art) 1996, p. 43BBC TV film The Artist’s Eye: Tom Phillips directed by Jake Auerbach (1989), from The Artist’s Eye series.
All quotes from exhibiting artists are taken from email communications between the author and the artists from March to August 2012.

The following is the press release for the show I posted the invite for yesterday:

Corsham Re-formed

Private View

12 October 2012, 6pm - 9pm
Show runs
11- 20 October 2012 

Thur - Sat, 12pm - 7pm

This show explores the continuing influence of a uniquely British institution, Bath Academy of Art. The artists are drawn from the final years of the college’s independence in Corsham, near Bath in Wiltshire, over 20 years ago. A small number of the group moved to East London in 1987 and have been pursuing their creative work, some alongside other careers, ever since.

Inspired by the exciting developments in the arts in Waltham Forest over recent years, the artists decided to bring this larger group together for a celebration of their achievements as well as to note the significance of the three years that were spent immersed in the art college community. These artists live and work in Chester, Bath and Devon as well as in London, and all continue to develop the creativity that was uniquely formed in Corsham.

the following is an extract from an essay by Stephen Clarke
In a paper for a series of conferences at the Tate Gallery in the early 1990s, the artist Susan Hiller related the comment that whereas Paris has artists’ cafes and New York has artists’ bars, in England we have art colleges. She then went on to elaborate that the function of the British art college was to validate a professional path but tied to this was its nature as a socialising body. British art education, she says, “has been a rite of passage more than a form of training, a situation where older artists influence, criticise and sponsor younger ones and where the younger ones keep their elders on their toes”. This relationship between master and pupil, authority and the acolyte, was neatly visualised by another artist, Tom Phillips. As an introduction to a profile of his own work on BBC2 television in 1989, Phillips traced his lineage from his own tutor/master Frank Auerbach through to Auerbach’s tutor Bomberg, followed by Bomberg’s tutor Sickert, and so on until he reached Raphael. Many of us who went to art college can trace a similar lineage. We were all taught by artists who were taught by artists. It is a ‘vertical’ chronology stretching through time.

Alongside this vertical heritage is a horizontal plateau. On this plateau are our contemporaries at college, our fellow students. We look across to their example; we learn from the work that they have done; we acquire skills that they have forged; and we take sustenance from both their encouragement and their criticism. It is easy to label this as mere influence but in both cases, tutor to student and student to student, it is more a matter of dialogue. This dialogue does not end with college, it can last many years as can be seen with this group and their current exhibition project.

All of the artists in this exhibition went to the Bath Academy of Art, in Corsham in the mid 1980s. What is apparent from the work of these artists is the emphasis upon crafted skills honed in the studio rather than conceptual critique sharpened in the seminar room. Although art and design education in Britain still thrives it has become something different. The conferences referred to above sought to look at the state of British art education in the 1990s. Twenty years on perhaps we are still asking what should the art college of the twenty-first century be? 

Stephen Clarke is an artist, writer, and lecturer based in the northwest of England.

http://tokarskagallery.co.uk/re-formed

Frank Gambino

1984-87

Previous posted 20 August

Admittedly Frank has given the model, Adrian, a smudged head here, but below is a piece about his portraits, which include the one of Lydia posted on 20th August.

 

"Traditionally at the centre of the art academy was the life room. Drawing the figure from life was an essential skill that all were trained to master. It is the expectation of the man in the street that an artist can capture a likeness – make a drawing of them or their loved one. Life class drawing is much more than this. It demands honest looking, and the result might not be attractive. Frank Gambino continues to work from life with the basics of drawing, a stick of charcoal and a sheet of paper. As he states: “My work is a record of the time I spend drawing the people who are in my pictures.”  It is not just a finished result that we consider, but also the event of making a drawing. Gambino has described his drawings as ‘big ugly heads’, not very flattering to the sitters but this label gives heft to the drawings as worked events."

From Stephen Clarke's introduction to the forthcoming Corsham Re-formed Show. Clarke is an artist, writer, and lecturer based in the northwest of England.

Claire Palmer

Graphics 

1981-84

Previous post 12 July 2012 

This time of year always really reminds me of being a youth arriving in the magical world of Corsham - just so amazing and atmospheric. Here's my latest piece, extolling the love of paint, in a graphic form. 

Thanks for sending these through Claire. It's nice to see Morrissey included in your poets, as I remember seeing him and The Smiths at Chippenham's Goldiggers in 85. I still cherish the programme.

Jon Woolfenden
Painting
1984-87

Disco Inferno Part 1
2012 Oil on canvas 180x165


It was early doors in the Swordfish and already like kicking out time.  

Wilson was late as ever, so I sat quietly and killed time with some text conversations.  
“I’m having a pint in the land of the Uglies”  I told Sandra.  She said she was sat at her desk, bored, doing her nails. 
“What colour?” I asked.  
“Disco Pink” came the answer.

Folks were screaming – out of control.  

Wilson arrived, eager to go down to the harbour to take some photos, I finished my pint.  

There was this mad scarlet sky silhouetting the beamers.   The Gantry’s of the ice making factory appeared to hover in a swirling mass of fire;

The heat was on, rising to the top.  

The electric lights above the line of work stores quivered and cast warm hues onto piles of gear strewn around the quay.  

Satisfaction came in a chain reaction.

Back in the Swordy, and there’s one tune I have to find on this juke box…..

I couldn’t get enough so I had to self destruct



Part 1.

http://www.hopecovegallery.com/gallery_124258.html

Simon Ward
1984-87
Previous post 15 August

Crane flyTipulidae

First flying sounds of shaking paper,
then gangly Tsars flapping flickbooks,
my fumbling hand catches
the dog eared fling crows feet.
I had one fine leg pencil line,
my hair nets the restless left
softly landing prayers on my neck
with paddling wings
whilst tremoring legs on walls
search for old stories lost in the corners
until ceilings knock them back
like fine rattling chopsticks
balancing wings
with piano playing legs
they teeter around shadows
stupored by the bumping boredom
dabbing the bed of uncertain reason,
their silhouette line
caught in the spiders web.

©Matthew Andrews

Paul St George
1976-79

When I first set up this blog, someone called Paul St George contacted me, this is his story...

Some years ago an artist by the name of Paul St George happened upon a packet of dusty papers in a trunk in his grandmother’s attic. On further inspection he discovered that they had been the property of his great-grandfather, an eccentric Victorian engineer, Alexander Stanhope St George.

Paul began to read through the papers and discovered a veritable treasure trove: diaries, diagrams, correspondence, scribbled calculations, and even one or two photographs. At first, Paul felt a detached interest in this first hand account of social and cultural history. But as he read on, he became more and more absorbed, until, with a sudden thrill, he realised that these papers could have a greater significance than was at first apparent.

The notebooks were full of intricate drawings and passages of writing describing a strange machine. This device looked like an enormous telescope with a strange bee-hive shaped cowl at one end containing a complex configuration of mirrors and lenses. Alexander seemed to be suggesting that this invention, which he called a Telectroscope, would act as a visual amplifier, allowing people to see through a tunnel of immense length… a tunnel, the drawings implied, stretching from one side of the world to the other.

www.devices-of-wonder.com

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Chris Reynolds (originally Pershouse)

Sculpture

1983-1986

The physical process of drawing & mark making is an integral part of my work, each piece is based upon memory, impressions and chance occurrences.

www.chrisreynolds-art.com

Paul Tucker

Photography

1984-87

Image from a series of photographs taken during the major refurbishment of the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow: another chapter in the life of this historic building. The Gallery invited Paul to document the transition between November 2011 and May 2012. The resulting images show the interior of the building in a process of change, revealing layers of its past as well as the creation of a new layer for the future. What emerges from the vacant, off duty, spaces is the inpouring of light and a sense of scale. The pictures capture fleeting moments and elements that will fade from view as the finishing touches are added to the house before it returns to public life as a gallery and museum.

www.paultucker.co.uk 

Richard Crooks

Sculpture

1984-87

Original post 16 July 2012

Richard has just returned from 6 weeks in Nepal where he has been artist in residence  at the Kathmandu Contemporary Arts Centre (KCAC), Patan.  He even got a write up in The Himalayan Times!

http://epaper.thehimalayantimes.com/PUBLICATIONS/THT/THT/2012/09/02/ArticleHtmls/VALLEY-INSPIRATIONS-02092012009040.shtml?Mode=1

Frank Gambino

1984-87

Previous posted 16 June

This drawing is one of the pieces I'm planning to show in the Bath Re-formed show in October. Charcoal on paper, A1 in size, and the face belongs to Lydia.

Simon Ward

1984-87

Previous post 19 June

Just back from Backpacking the South West Coast Path with my 3 stone pack containing everything you need for a home and maybe an easier option than having a house, just walk forever?
I tried to experiment with "taking a line for a walk", which was not so easy to fit in with 5-9 hours walking a day!  I still have a bit of time to play with this idea - to take one line (pencil does not leave the paper) just like I am taking myself along one line (the path).

My shoe slips and a line develops, I notice it is not straight, not where I am going, is almost on the ground, around me and against my train of thought. I watch the line, my train of thought, a random scribble, indistinct, blurred, out of control.

I spent the afternoon trying to tame the line, make decisions, almost let it follow a path, become organised. My line rebels. A scribble breaks free from description, from expression, deviates from reality, becomes more real- becomes just the line, accepting it's beauty, accepting its fate - its burning desire to make its own path. The dialogue a reflection of a dream, my path becoming a dream path, my own personal lay-line.

Quick line, zigzag, pastoral wandering. Space falters between as the line travels across my life dawning on me that it becomes a cleft, ripping apart the surface of my dreams, separating right and left, before and after, truth and theory, spontaneity and procrastination.

Though utterly flat, the line has more dimensions than reality allows, it envelops me, drawing me into its fistula - the crack widening in my imagination, drawing me in like a black hole. Knowing I cannot escape the line I am relaxed trying to be aware only of the lines ability to be me, to be all of me. I have no blinkered vision of around the line - nothing else is blank but it is openly drawn with all the lines energy.

There is only one line! A sudden realisation - how had I not noticed this before? - there is only one line! I stare bewildered and the lines proportions flex and contract, like it is breathing. Maybe my eyeballs are flexing and contracting, maybe I am just emotionally trapped.

The line is music and flashes and almost burns the paper as it rips across. It fights with the white for a kind of harmony, a balance before full rejection in favour of disturbance - counterpoint - scrawl.
The line has left me behind and I am running to try and keep pace. The line is bursting from the suppression I had locked it in, desperate to escape from my control, my management. I feel a mixture of brevity, relief and fear of letting go. My ideas feel like they are tethered to the line and are being pulled out with it like a winkle, or potatoes pulled up with the roots of the plant. I grab the line with my softest pencil and try to coax it back onto the tip. It fights with the edge, some graphite crunches, my hand feels kicked and pulled as I grasp the lines taught front edge, feel the rawness of its newly crunched tip.

No harmony, no marriage, just desperation, despair, disappointment created from the rub. should I bend back the lines will? Give up my need to be in control? Manage the line?

Mark Mainwood

Painting

1984-87

After a very active period making pictures after Art College, I have over the last 20 years taken a conscious break in order to bring up a family and to pursue my work as an Occupational Therapist in a busy neurological unit. However my artistic interests have remained constant with me and this show is an opportunity to revisit and develop some of the themes. I continue to live and work in East London. 

 

My work since Art College has predominantly used organic sources (insects, skin, microbiological structures, and more recently cacti) as the thematic starting point in what are predominantly abstract paintings. These forms are often transposed into more geometric structures which both encompass and occupy them. 

 

In my current work the ‘Cactus Dream’ series I have been using acrylic and water based oil paints on canvas. The work involves a peripheral colour ground which engulfs and contains an abstract central image (the dream). The works have evolved as a series from an original ochre/gold base colour; like ‘dreams’ the titles only bare a subliminal link, if any with the appearance of the final composition. I use the titles as a way of generating additional interest and emotion, but prefer to leave any interpretation to the viewer. My primary aim is to produce images which are interesting in terms of their abstract qualities but which also have visual presence, where there is both harmony and disquiet.

Iain Cotton

Sculpture

1984-87

Previous posted 2 July

I have started a blog as a dynamic record of my practice. Mostly pictures of lettering, carving and sculpture. Images from the workshop and stuff that inspires me. Find it at http://iaincotton.wordpress.com

Richard Crooks

Sculpture

1984-87

Richard Crooks's ceramic sculpture featured on the cover of publicity material for the BATH SOCIETY OF ARTISTS annual exhibition 2011.

richardcrooksart.co.uk

Richard Crooks, Guy Thomas and Iain Cotton, all from the same year studying sculpture at Bath, are now members of the Bath Society of Artists. Guy is the current Chairman of the society.
 

Claire Palmer

Graphics 

1981-84

Working has put unfettered artistic expression on hold over the years but at Christmas 2011 I decided to start doing a 'diary' of digital montages to record the year 2012. I have about 70 so far. 

Iain Cotton

Sculpture

1984-87

Designing and carving lettering, relief carving in stone and sculpture are my working passions. So I make headstones, house signs, gifts and garden sculptures to commission. I have been trying to break into the public art sphere for a long time and finally...

This years big project is a commission to carve a marker for the beginning and the end of the Cotswold Way. It will be sited in front of the west doors of Bath Abbey, where the Way starts or finishes, depending on which way you walk!  The other end is in Chipping Cambden. The lettering will be designed and carved by hand, and cut in a disk of Irish Blue Limestone, 1.4 m across. We Have just received planning permission, so its full steam ahead. I will be carving in July and August, for installation in September.

I am supposed to find some time to make work for an exhibition too...!

Simon Ward

1984-87

This is a picture and poem from a book of Poetry I finished in 2009. They are about the sense of place.

Unburnt Flesh

My emollient tears have glued my lids
  from last night.

My head is still numb on the right side
  from listening less well.

The shock of her yawn when I tried so hard-
  but she really was tired.

She is a naked flame,
I am unburnt flesh.

Her tears bled
like the tired ink stains
  on my faltering fingers,

with fisted alarm wrung on her face -
  (her wrinkled brow told me that!)

The sigh,
  an ignominious communication came too,

I ignored,
  waiting for time to pass

but she really was tired.

My fire guttered
as coarse nailed the old plank
  spat life from the chimney mouth.

Frank Gambino 

1984-87

These days I tend to let my work do the talking.  But by way of a brief explanation, it may be useful to know that for the last three years I have only worked with charcoal on paper.  My pictures are portraits and figure studies all drawn from life. Mostly A1 in size, though some drawing are 915mm x 1520mm. 

www.frankgambino.co.uk

Anna Bisset

Illustration
1984-87

This is a recent sketch, 1 of 3, which will hopefully lead to some finished work for the Bath Re-formed exhibition in October...

I wanted to do something with lots of action rather than the tranquil english landscape, which has been a recurring theme in the past. The subject of "The Olympians" is rather predictable, I know, but I love arranging all the figures and as my students were tied up with a similar project, I got involved with the idea myself. I took my students to see the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum for some background info on the origins of the Olympics. We enjoyed drawing the amazing figures and horses which were full of action and energy. I have included a few images from a visit I made to the Olympic site with the boys - a bus tour around the unfinished site at Easter. We have tickets for the Olympics over the summer, so there may be some more detail to add. At the moment the three images go together to form a sort of frieze, but in watercolours. They may or may not end up as oil paintings - depends on how much time I have. But I think the images do represent what for me has been quite a dramatic year. I am very much looking forward to meeting up with everyone from Bath at the show.

www.annabisset.co.uk

Paul Lindt

1984-7

Living in East London, have just been part of the recent "Spring" show at the new Smokehouse Gallery overlooking the Olympic Stadium in Hackney. There is a huge artist's community in this area of London where loads of disused industrial units have been converted temporarily into artist studios, sadly only until the bulldozers arrive. Anyway the show included over 40 artists from around the world including someone from Nepal!

My day job is as a partner in a small graphic design agency, but over the last few years I have been making and selling more and more of my own work in an attempt to regain my sanity. My work is created purely digitally but recently has begun to include photographic elements. It is largely an exploration of architecture and also the urban character of where I live.  

www.paullindt.co.uk