Here in Nottinghamshire a local artist and actress, Hazel Ellerby-Sansom, has been chosen to stand on the plinth on Wednesday 12th August at 3pm. Hazel has decided that she wants to spend her time celebrating women of the East Midlands (UK) and the traditional craft of patchwork.

So, Hazel wants women of the East Midlands to create patchwork squares which will be sewn together to make a quilt. She will display the quilt on the plinth whilst reading out a message for each square. After its time on the fourth plinth the quilt will travel around art galleries in the East Midlands and will finally be auctioned off with the proceeds going to charity. Details of art galleries, dates of auction etc are still to be confirmed as this will be an ongoing project.

If you’re a woman living in the East Midlands of the UK (it really does need to be the East Midlands only please) then how about you send a green message from the Fourth Plinth? All you need to do is create a patchwork square sized 12″ x 12″ of any design with a short message attached. Tell London and the world about how important the environment is to you. Keep it short though (just a few words) as Hazel only has an hour to read them all out.

Please send your completed square (one per person please) to Hazel Ellerby-Sansom, 17a Fisher Lane, Bingham, Nottinghamshire, NG13 8BQ by 1st August to be displayed on the plinth. Hazel will accept squares after this date for the quilt’s longer term plans but they may not be included in the plinth display.

I’ll be making my patchwork square this weekend and I’m very excited to be involved!

The Fourth Plinth project began on 6th July and will end on 14th October 2009. You can watch the footage 24/7 online at www.oneandother.co.uk.

Changing for the sake of the planet may require falling off of it. It may require a break from that grounded feeling. People may wonder what happened to you or if all is ok.  All is fine with me now, even though at some points I thought I had ruined my life.

I haven’t written in awhile because I have been busy changing.  It has been a drawn-out process; one where I messed my life up in order to put it back together. What accelerated my change was an artwork and I write today to present it as an exercise.

In December 2007, I was asked to participate in an art exhibit called “Heating up,” a show about global warming at the Evanston Art Center north of Chicago. I was given an entire room to work with and created an installation of a once flooded room and filled it with my journals, journals from my future. The Installation was called “Found” and the discovered journals were tattered and once waterlogged, make most of the pages illegible.  I worked on these journals for 8 months, writing about how my life would be and how the world was to be. I considered global warming (and climate change) but didn’t sugar-coat things, nor did I go down the gloom and doom road.  I plunged into this fantasy with my New England work ethic and absorbed the future challenges of life with bravado. I inserted myself into a distant world and discovered a place that I actually could be.  Yes, it was a world where the polar bears were sadly no longer, yet a world filled with ingenuity and resiliency. So, the most urgent question became why wait?  Why was I keeping the life I could live as some future occurrence?  Had I learned to cherish the present and live in the moment too successfully? Why not speed up that process and begin to create that life now?

In this imaginary future I was not the person I expected to be, but did discover that this new person was quite content. I found a direction that led me closer to a natural disposition when I projected myself realistically into the future.  I gained a secure footing to break free and truly look beyond the things cast upon me; to ignore what isn’t working and replace it with an image of what will. The mind is a powerful tool.

I write to encourage you to loosen your footing for a brief moment in life.  Go ahead and stick your head in the clouds, dream on and imagine a different world.  So many people are letting go, so you are not alone.  We are accepting what isn’t and putting days of global silliness behind us. We all have great stories to tell as we redefine convenience, conscientious and comfort.

I look forward to writing more. : )

A charity art auction, ‘Art Aid: Embrace‘ will be taking place on Saturday 21st June to raise money to support poor communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America adapt to climate change.

The work of around 50 artists from the East Midlands will be displayed in the View from the Top gallery in Nottingham from Wednesday 18th June until the reception and auction on Saturday 21st June.

The many artworks available are:
Painting and Drawing
Mixed Media
Original Printmaking
Ceramics and Sculpture
Photography
Signed Print

So there’s something for all art lovers out there!

If you’d like an evening of culture, treat yourself to a beautiful piece of art and help raise money for those affected by climate change then pop along to the website www.art-aid.org to find out more.

I know that there are places where you can take your cards to be recycled but if you like crafts or know someone who does then here’s a genius idea. Turn your Christmas cards into gift boxes with the power of origami!

The boxes can then be used to put gifts in next year, especially those small, special items like jewellery. Alternatively you could ask your local craft group if they would like to use them for anything.

If you think that all origami is complicated and difficult then think again. Here is a video that shows you how to make these boxes – it’s very simple I promise.

I’m so impressed that I’m going to make them for our wedding favours. Admittedly I won’t be using Christmas cards, they might look a bit out of place in April!

Give it a try!

Sharon Porteous, a textile design graduate from Derby Uni discovered a way to turn those horrible, ugly bags into funky fashion accessories. It was by chance that she melted a plastic bag with an iron but soon realised that this could be part of a process to weave them into handbags and wall hangings. Clever eh? And better than going in the landfill!

This article got me thinking about eco-art generally and reminded me of another artist called Sandra Walmsley whose work I saw in a gallery in Norwich last year . I  thought that her styles and designs were so beautiful, unusual and intricate that I bought a couple of her prints. Based in my second home, Norfolk, Sandra who has studied both print making and ecology not only creates her own work but runs workshops to teach others how to be artistic in an environmentally friendly way. Why not book in Sandra and Jeff’s (a fellow artist) guest house and learn how to make something as lovely as this? Visit their site Impressions Prints at www.impressionsprints.com

there’s a new online art show in town!

Or even better – there’s an online art show – from recycled materials. Yes – they are talking trash here..

from the website:

This show is about taking things that are destined for the landfill and turning them into art. Yep, we’re talking trash here. This is “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” on steroids and your challenge for this show is to take what would normally never get a second look, what most people would throw away, and create. It can be anything from a coffee filter to a broken chair. An old, spare wheel or an abused and broken toy. Box tops, cans, scraps of fabric, cd cases, jars, coolers, old oven racks… you get the idea. Anything that has found its way into the dustbin or onto the curb is fair game. What you do with your finds – what other things you combine them with, is entirely up to you and limited only by your imagination.

last chance of entry is 4/15/2007

make some art people !