Gold!

.... so good! John Stewart AND Stevie Nicks, what more could you ask for??? Turn it up! I thought I'd leave you with this for the weekend. It's been a frantic week, I've got my joint exhibition opening tomorrow and another sale on Sat at the Printworks, where I have my studio. Hopefully folk will pop along and even more hopefully... buy some stuff! I shall report back with pictures.

The St Leonards Four- Art Exhibition

I'm having a little exhibition with some friends in just over a week (gulp, better get some work sorted). The St Leonards Four, will be at the Kave gallery, Kings Rd, St Leonards from the 1st-16th Dec. Private View on the 30th Nov (come along and say "Hi". Should be good. Will be fun. Pop down and get some prints, cards, mini-this and mini-that, everything affordable... Hell, I'll even be selling post-it notes and pebbles! Anyway here's the flyer and some splendid blurb.

The St Leonards Four exhibition @ Kave gallery

Overview by Brian Coen, Arts correspondent for the Bohemia Village Voice.

  This is not Art for the furrow brow crowd.  This is Art for the mischievous lovers of life.  

  Freed from normality, these four local intergalactic creative deviants, drag works of irreverent satire and beauty into the white cube of Kave Gallery, Kings Road, St Leonards-on-Sea. An inspiring, diverse combination of Illustration, Print, Collage, Painting and small Sculptural pieces makes this a riotous feast of Art. Check the gallery for extra curricular events being staged during the show.

  A must see for all curious live humans.

Scott Garrett

Mister Scott Garrett is the hairiest of the Artists in this Exhibition. His growth and development has born fruits in many fields. The power of his Art lies in the mastery of few words combined with succinct flourishes of the enpenned fingers to articulate wry human truths. His exposure of the fragile beauty in all is life affirming. Comfortingly reassuring for the insecure and a blast of humour for the rotund. Scott Garrett is an Illustrator of the highest standing. A mighty tall man, he has work published in national newspapers and a multitude of very important capitalist enterprises. Recently the coiffeurs’ paradise boy has directed his forces through to the third dimension. Along side his illuminatory drawings comes a wave of small sculptural artefacts. Combined and distorted consumer items of our current cultural morass reformed into new forms of tactile wonder. This is one beast that shall never be contained.

Sarah Evans

Sarah Evans commands a natural beauty that invigorates all who are lucky enough to witness her work and her eyes. With an understated passionate talent, her paintings and drawings combine deep understanding with seeming effortless joy. Having a lifelong love of creative exploration and a strong involvement in the education profession, Sarah Evans’ work and the work of those she has aided and inspired, clearly informs all to the importance of proactive creative endeavour in the community. She creates characters with gentle depth that draw you into their family. Her work uses line and colour so deftly that you are in danger of missing its technical delicacy as your consciousness swims in her magical world. If you are fortunate enough to own one of her Artworks, you know you have a treasure all yours forever.

Thad Skews

Heavily moustachioed Artist, Thad Skews, uses craft-oriented techniques to explore the fracture lines of Human Behaviour. His work oscillates between themes of love and the absurd. There are three parts to his Exhibited work here. His most recent work is the “Light Body” series. Using his “wandering eye” style clay heads, six caged colourless humanoid creatures wait for something. Vaguely embryonic and elderly, the Artist insists that the work is about making use of “…my all too short life”. To the viewer, the Art Brut and childlike constructions hover around a sense of angered “I could do that!” and “Why?” whilst being essentially mirrors. Other works by Thad Skews in this exhibition include lino-carved animal prints of a playful style and old encyclopaedias butchered with their image content reassembled into gently chaotic theatre scenes. His work is diverse and adventurous, though he claims to be the victim of distracted and inconsistent creative impulses. 

Sarah Janes

Sarah Janes is a perpetual volcano of free-spirited ideas. The smouldering forms of her work hit the surface of the world with a friendly slap. From her Quality Portraits oddball celebrity caricature series, shown in Brighton and Bexhill, to the diverse multi-media pieces exhibited at the legendary Aardvark Gallery and Tea Rooms, along with her voracious desire to put on concerts of incredible underground world class music acts in our little town… Sarah Janes is a major force for the Arts locally.

  This exhibition holds her new “Alphapet” series. The theme proved one of the most successful of the Aardvark projects. The reason for this success is their playful surreal simplicity. Bright coloured blocks of wood brought to life with choice collage material from old animal encyclopaedias, re-formed into absurd new zoological realities. These swashbuckling bizarre beings made of confused truths hint at works by Spike Milligan and Dr. Zeuss.

Many thanks to Jay Toole at the Kave Gallery, for all his enthusiasm, creativity and support for inspirational Arts in our small community.

My T-Shirts Now Available!

I've just opened a new T-Shirt shop, 'GarrettWear'.. which i hope will be successful, so pop on over and have a look around (and then buy one). It's mainly typographic at the moment and quite restrained, i don't really wear T-shirts with big all-over-the-front designs. I like them simple. I will be adding other designs (open to suggestions) and maybe tweaking the colour options of the designs available. The designs aren't restricted to the t-shirt colour shown, you can pick your own Tee colour, but the designs don't show up very well on certain colours. There are also a couple of tote bags and i may add other product along the way. Firstly lets see if anyone wants a T-shirt. Let me know what you think (and that should be easier to do now since changing my blog comment settings, give it a try, say "hello")

Those Glazed Pots...

Finally got some pictures off my phone, so figured I'd share a few of this last firing.

most of the bits, much better 'glassier' glaze this time.

you can see the back of the money box in the top image.

owl.... 'lump'? ...paperweight...whatever. Just made simple
pinch pots and put little bases on so i had things to test in the kiln

argggh, the curse of the rims! 

Glaze Firing #2

... well, it was better. Glaze is now looking much clearer, thicker and shinier... all good things. I'm still having an issue with the glaze coming off on rims and fine points, but nothing like it was last time. It's getting so nearly there. The colour is better too, both of the pot body and the glaze.. i added some iron to the glaze... i need to add a little bit more to get what i want. Now, if i could only figure out how i can get the glaze to just stay put. Next I'm going to tweak the glaze temp, i only changed the bisc temp this time, i didn't want to change both and not know where i was. It's going to be tricky as I'm restricted by the mini cone choices, although i can tweak this with the position of the cone on the pins.
Anyway, now i need to make some more stuff to test. This means more throwing practice for me! I want to put some photos up of them , but my camera (well, phone) doesn't want to work with me on that one! I'll get some soon. here's a little snap to keep you going (he lost the glaze off the tip of his nose : ( )

Photographic Black Magic

...Trapping the souls of me and studio 'cell mate' Tim Marrs! Taken by friend and talent John Hodgson, check out more of his 3D photos here. Taken with one of these Nishika 3D cameras.

This Town-Hastings

Well it's actually St Leonards on Sea, but really it's all pretty much part of the same thing (well, depending on which side i want to be associated with at the time!)


Shoreditch-on-Sea from Hastings Borough Council on Vimeo.


...and here is a rather beautiful blog post that i've just read over on a blog devoted to this side of town, St Leonards.

All In The Background

... Lots of stuff going on here, but all in the background.. nothing solid i can put up here. I have a couple of local sales coming up, so I'm sorting prints and cards for those. I'm also sorting out a small joint exhibition in a local gallery, so my heads buzzing with things i can make and sell for that. It's been good for me to think about getting my work together for these and I've a few things I'm developing for them that i can sell, couple of different formats. Even thinking of names for the exhibition has kicked off a new line of thought for a possible project/prints. I'm trying to get some T-Shirts sorted out to sell too, so i can apply my designs/slogans etc to them, very simple, very graphic, i like them. On top of this i have my illustration work that needs doing... and It's been school half term, so we went visiting family.. and now I'm working at home as there's an "inset day"( another teachers day off.. the week just wasn't enough!). I also fired a bisc load yesterday to a lower temp than the last one, going to see how that works with the glaze. I'll then fire that as soon as... and then see if i need to tweak the glaze firing temps. I think i can tweak the glaze temps by adjusting the mini cone position on the kiln sitter pins. I read it somewhere and it makes sense. The cone issue was bugging me (and the local suppliers were pretty useless at offering advice) but i went to the internet and finally got a handle on it, i should be able to get pretty near the temps i want. Some confusion was over standard cones and mini cones(for the kiln sitter) being one number out, to allow for the smaller cone melting that bit earlier/lower. Anyway I'll see how it goes. I've also added more iron oxide to my glaze, so it's not so pale. Like i said, there's a lot going on in the background! I'll have some pictures of something soon. maybe a preview of my Christmas card this year.... maybe.