We have just had a visit from two Artists at College. Rihannon Evans is a successful performing Artist who trained initially at Banbury College.  She does much of  her work via Tweeting, digital art and film. She told us about her work and about how she did her MA. (see above). She is also a trained herbalist, see her website, http://www.plantspeoplehealth.co.uk.  So she must be pretty busy!  She is a bubbly person who has no self doubt, otherwise she would not be able to do this type of performance work. 

The image above is ‘Special Delivery’ performed at Charlbury festival last Summer. It was about the glove making history of Charlbury. Also Quakerism and Activism.

 

For this image Rihannon lay down on a path and had salt poured over her by a friend. She had to sweep it up afterwards as salt is dangerous for dogs! She gave a very interesting talk about her Final Major Project, which was a piece of collaborative work done over the internet, which invited conversations with people which she recorded.

The other Artist was Calley Shadbolt, who was the complete opposite in that she doesn’t have a website and doesn’t use media for her art, only cotton, paper and card. She told us about her Art, previously she was a sculptress. She sees herself physically as based in the Landscape, and has become very interested in perspective and the horizon. After Leonardo,  Surrealism is her greatest influence followed by Yves Tanguy (see below)

Then of living Artists, Nancy Holt (see below)

She also likes James Turrell and Agnes Dien.

She was very helpful about how to describe work. ‘Think of explaining a car to a Martian’ she said. You would tell them how it was made, the materials used ,and why you made it. Very useful advice for us students!

Afterwards she gave us some exercises to free our thought processes. Also to show that it is still possible to be creative with simple materials rather than digital. To cut out any shape from card, the to draw round it while it moved across the page, then to draw round it as it moved in itself. then to think of some words like ‘cut’, ‘wrap’, and ‘rub out’ and to use a pencil to interpret them. After that we made 4 copies of our shapes and cut out the five shapes. Then we made a sculpture of the shapes using glue only.  The sculpture should be freestanding.

I found a plastic tab to connect the shapes in my bag. After that we drew our sculptures. I felt everyone enjoyed the class.