Cover 2 Cover, part 1

Open Studios (West Berks and North Hants) 2015 

Next May, I will be opening my studio for the first time as part of the West Berkshire and North Hampshire Open Studios scheme. It is all rather exciting and new.

What is Open Studios?

Open Studios is a concept that involves artists inviting the public into their work spaces. This is usually as part of a scheme involving several artists in a geographical area who all open during the same period and whose details are collected together in a freely distribuuted guide. Interested people can then tour the studios, and may even buy some art direct from the artists they are visiting!

There are a couple of "extras" running alongside the core Open Studios scheme here in West Berkshire and North Hampshire; there is the Insight exhibition, to be held at New Greenham Arts, and there is the collaborative sketchbook project - which is the subject of this post.

Collaborative Sketchbook Project:
Cover 2 Cover 

Artists who choose to be involved get an A5 landscape sketchbook, for which they choose a theme. They then fill a number of pages (up to five double page spreads) with things related to the theme.

Then they pass the book on to the next artist, exchanging it for another, with a different theme. Again, they then fill up to five double page spreads with things related to this theme.

And then it all happens again. There are 42 artists taking part, split into six groups. Each group has eight sketchbooks to work in. After five months, it will be done; the sketchbooks will be collected together and exhibited, and a book featuring work from the sketchbooks will be published.

In the Clouds

My theme is "In the Clouds".

It's a song title, but ignore that and there's a lot of scope for interpretation – literal cloud studies, shapes that might be seen in the clouds, things that might be obscured by cloud... fluffy and white, ominous and grey, however the mood (or the weather) takes you.

I have completed my ten pages, and am looking forward to the first exchange.

This post is getting a bit long, so I will leave you with the collected images and - hopefully - find some time and some bandwidth* to write about each one later.

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* We have been without landline or broadband for three weeks; the trunk cable that serves us and many of our neighbours is in need of replacement. BT are digging up the thoroughfares of the village as I type...