I took my daughter (nearly sixteen) and my two nieces (nearly fifteen, and ten) on a bit of a gallery crawl the other day. We started off at Unit Twelve Gallery near Stafford, run by the very talented Jennifer Collier. The current exhibition is called 'Traditional Twisted' and features work by one of mine and Sophie's (Grammar?) favourite artists, Alix Swan as well as work by someone we know from our home town, Leah Fletcher.
Alix's work is based on traditional tales and I have a couple of her tiny books. For this exhibition she had created wooden boxes containing elements from the stories, with a handle on the side to turn (which played music) and a book tucked in the back with a padded label stating 'pull me'.
From Unit Twelve Gallery we travelled West, just a few minutes down the road to Stafford where we saw the 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen' exhibition by Lauren Van Helmond at the Shire Hall Gallery (Sue, you'd love this!)
Lauren creates amazing metal sculptures of dogs and combines them with blokes!
I love how, with a simple bit of carving, wooden spoons can have such character!
The gallery shop is fabulous, full of way too many goodies. There's a cafe too but we didn't have time for cake unfortunately!
Off on the road again we headed for the market town of Eccleshall, where a group of artists have got together and run a gallery called 'gallery at 12'.
It's a proper English town and the photo really doesn't do the main street justice, but how fab is that old fire station!
It was great to see work by Jo Hill in particular as I love her textile designs.
A quick trip to the old fashioned sweet shop completed our trip as my youngest niece had to get back to go bowling with a friend. Cake would have been nice, but never mind, and there are lots of little boutique shops in Eccleshall which looked fabulous through the windows.
you did find some wonderful places to visit Sarah. hope "the young'n's" appreciated it too! :)
ReplyDeleteHow great to have so much to visit in one day.
ReplyDeleteHey Sweetie! Looks like you and the girls had a great day. I love that Rapunzel book too, and those paper/cloth quilts are just gorgeous! I'm sure your book making workshop will be awesome! I'd love to see what you both make. Have a fun weekend, Sarah. xo
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