On a sunny and warm Sunday afternoon in July...

... we were driving back home from teaching in Lincolnshire, and we decided to go through the Cotswolds - a fairly direct way home, but slower that going in the motorway.  But very much prettier, too!

We drove through a few villages and stopped for a drink and a bite in one of our favourites, Lower Slaughter (no idea of why the name...).  It has a river, many beautiful Cotswold-stone cottages, a big hotel (which used to belong to the Lords of the Manor), an old Mill with a working water-wheel, and attached little museum;  and of course, a pub!  big and with a huge garden.

Cottages

The water wheel at the Mill

Reflections in the river

Lower Slaughter Church

The pub garden

Now I'm back home and back to work!  Looking forward to going to the Festival of Quilts, 8th - 11th August, at the NEC Birmingham!

Alicia

Super Moon

This is the June Super Moon, taken from outside my house with an extra long telephoto lens.

"Suspension" exhibition at the Bristol Guild Gallery

The South West Textile group, to which I belong, is having a new exhibition, "Suspension" at the Bristol Guild Gallery, 68/70 Park Street, Bristol BS1 5JY, UK, from 15 June until 6 July; open Mon-Sat 10 am - 5 pm.  Cafe in the ground floor.

The Bristol Guild of Applied Arts is a wonderful place to see and buy all sorts of beautiful crafts, and the temporary exhibitions gallery is on the top floor of the building.  Park Street has many shops, cafes and eateries, and it is near the Museum, the University, and Colston Hall.  There are a few parking meters in the surrounding streets, and a multi-story car park nearby, near Colston Hall.  Plenty of local buses pass by, and the central bus and coach station is about 20 minutes' walk.

If you are in the Bristol area this Saturday June 15, come and join us at the Private View, from 11 till 4. Or pop in to see the exhibition any other day you are around there, until 6 July (closed Sundays).  See invitation and poster below.

Hope to see you there!

Alicia

Rhododendrons at Stourhead gardens

Last Sunday we went to Stourhead, house and gardens, in Wiltshire.  It was a wonderful sunny day, warm without being too hot.  The rhododendrons were in full flower. Yesterday's photo of the day was taken there too, from inside the house.

My friend the glass artist Gillian Hulse was showing her work at the First View Gallery, and demonstrating how to make fused glass pieces.

The whole place is beautiful and we should go again. There is a Summer Art Exhibition coming up soon. And the gardens are supposed to be especially fabulous in the Autumn when the leaves are golden.  

The combination of art and nature is irresistible.

Photo of the day

Photos of the day

I haven't posted my photos for a while.  The first year that I did this blog, I simply posted a photo a day.  It was hard work, making sure it was done every day.  I think I even filled the days up afterwards when I was away for a period.  (I didn't do it from my iPhone, and I didn't have an iPad then).

Then I used to put up a photo just one day a week. I don't want to tie myself up to doing things on a specific schedule at the moment, but I have been taking some interesting photos so I will post some of them on regular (but irregular) basis for the next while.

Today I have two photos of water (from a tap).  To achieve the opposite effects - catching the water in slow, and fast, movement - I had to think back to the things I learnt when I studied photography in the 1970's.  Then my camera was a semi-automatic SRL, which was easy to set up manually.  With the current automatic digital cameras, setting up the manual controls is more difficult, but perfectly feasible to do, as long as your camera is a little more complex than a very simple 'point and shoot' one (most likely it can't be done with a mobile phone camera).

Anyway, here are my water photos - fast moving and slow moving.  The effects are achieved with exactly the opposite photographic controls:  for fast moving water, you need a slow speed; for slow moving, or rather frozen in time, you need a very fast speed. The short and long exposure times are noticeable in the background to the water.

My work at Black Swan Arts

Black Swan Arts is a forward-looking, long-standing, hard-working for the arts, local art gallery within an arts complex in the town of Frome, Somerset, UK.

Black Swan Arts have an annual Open Arts competition/exhibition, which is open to all artists, not only  those from the South West of England.  I am pleased to say that I have had a piece accepted this year (the third time I entered, and the second time I got in), and it is now on show in their building.

My work is one of only two textile pieces in the show - and the only quilted hanging. The majority of the works are paintings, sculptures, glass, photography, ceramics, with a sprinkling of mixed media of various types, some using fabric as one of the elements.  Although the majority of the works are in more traditionally 'arty' materials and categories, there are many 'cutting edge' works.

It is certainly worth visiting, if you are in the area. The exhibition is on until 25 May.  Open 10 am - 4 pm Monday-Saturday, closed Sundays.  There is a big public car park next door, and the lovely Divas cafe in the building, on which walls some of the art exhibition is hung. "Seeds", a studio crafts shop, and several individual artists' studios, as well as an open studio space which can be used for workshops, complete the complex.  Plenty to view!

"Mapping Earth", above, is my piece in the show. I have mounted it on a canvas stretcher, which makes it look more substantial.

It is always worth entering local art shows - textiles are sometimes accepted. And they are always popular with the visitors!

Alicia

Red Brick Building Arts

I'm having an exhibition on the cafe area walls of the Red Brick Building, Morland Road, Glastonbury, Somerset, BA6 9FT, together with painter Jenny Graham.  It is on until 12 May, so there is still time to visit.  Open Mon-Fri 9 am - 4 pm, closes 3 pm on Saturdays, closed on Sundays. Free  parking.

Because of this, Jenny and I were interviewed by the local radio, Glastonbury FM, in a programme about business - the interviewer wanted to talk about 'the business of art' - very interesting!  If you live in an area within 10 miles of Glastonbury, you can tune in to gfm - 107.1 fm, but you can listen to it via the internet anywhere in the world.  Just go to their website, www.glastonburyfm.co.uk.

Digital Photo Presentations

For some time I've been intending to transfer my old slide shows to digital presentations, and create some new ones.  I'm pleased to say that I've started!  My first move was to buy a digital projector, the best I could afford for projection of photographs.  There is a bewildering array of choices, and I found an online specialised seller that I could phone and get advice from.

The second step was to start creating slide shows.  I already have one digital presentation which I created years ago, A Passion for Colour, which was done in PowerPoint, and it took quite a lot of time to build.  This time I needed to be able to build "My Journey As A Quilter" in two days. So how to go about it? Solution:  do it on my iPad using Apple's Keynote programme (available from the App Store). I already had it, so I started by reading the instructions and found them very intuitive.

I had to make sure that the photos I wanted to use were actually in the iPad, so I transferred them from my computer, which in any case is an Apple one. Then I built my new presentation.

If you depend on other people's projectors, and have a PC rather than an Apple computer, the Keynote presentation can be saved as a PowerPoint one, and transferred from iPad to computer via iTunes. Once downloaded into the computer,  it can be saved, and then burnt onto a CD, or transferred to a data stick, or shown directly from your PC.

But the best and easiest way is to simply connect the iPad to the projector. For that, you will need a special cable, as the iPad does not have the same plugs and sockets that the projector cable has.  There are various alternatives for different connection systems, but the one I bought is an "iPad to VGA" cable.  I plug the VGA end to the projector's connecting cable, the iPad end to the iPad, and then plug the other end of the combined cable system to the projector.  Turn everything on, and hey presto! the projection starts.

I had also had great fun playing with the transitions between slides.

Now I've got to create some more shows. I can see possibilities for workshop use too.  I take my iPad to classes to show students various photos, but taking the projector will be even better.  It is very light (I chose a portable one) and fits neatly in a carrying bag with all its cables.

I recommend giving this system a try!

Thanks for reading!

Alicia

Contemporary Patchwork and Quilting class at Red Brick Building Arts

I will be teaching a Contemporary Patchwork and Quilting class at the Red Brick Building in Glastonbury.  I talked about this amazing new community venue in my last post, but since then, there have been a number of changes in the classes arrangements.  So ignore the previous leaflet I posted previously, and look at this new poster instead:

Red Brick Building Arts wants to reach people at all levels of knowledge and income, and make arts and crafts available to all.  Therefore I will be running a first class as described in the poster, to help RBB in their mission of attracting as many people as possible and make the enterprise succeed.

There are many other classes and activitiesgoing on, from yoga to photography, and a thriving cafe, so do have a look in the Red Brick Building website!

My class is already filling well, but as we work in a new, bright and big studio, there is still space for more people.  So even if you can't come yourself, pass the word round!

Alicia