Sunday, March 4, 2012

Art in small places

This is what I planned to blog on yesterday, but got carried with redness instead; so today we focus once more!

I think like a number of blogging buddies, (hello Ronnie, hello Gabriella, hello Trace and others), we live in a town that is very creative and has the artist vibe around. Sadly it is also a bit of an expensive town when it comes to renting premises for art galleries, say.  So strangely enough the wonder and success of the town's artists can't be fully shown or fully expressed because of the success of the town - a weird conundrum I think.

Fortunately we have Ken and COMA who keeps local artists on the map with regular shows, along with a cooperative gallery and another small commercial gallery. We also have the UpFront Club where they hang a new show every month. And just as importantly, I think, our local Library loves and supports its local artists and always has art on show on walls and and in the foyer cabinets. So whilst there is no longer a community fine arts exhibition space, we do have plenty of opportunities and the town gets to show off its assets in a way.

Barry and I are lucky enough to have our pieces in the Library's foyer gallery space at the moment.  The Library is a busy place and and its great to know so many folk will walk past our work, pick up our cards and have a good look over the next few weeks.

The general theme of my showing is using old books and making them beautiful again. I have a couple of folded books; as well as a wall piece where I wrote over old pages and combined them with wax and drawing and rusty bits, as well as a page where I burnt out words and left a key word; and a book that has burnt out pages images throughout it as well.






Here is a link to Barry's pieces on display - they work together nicely I think.

I think it's great to offer art up to folk in spaces other than galleries - so many more people get to see and look and hopefully be inspired... so here's to all the small spaces and places that support artists!

7 comments:

  1. It's a good idea to have an art space in the library where people who don't usually frequent galleries might be drawn to something new. A nice contrast between Barry's metal and your paper pieces.

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  2. F this is a lovely display! Adding a whole new dimension to the book as object - literally. It's so good to have these alternative spaces when galleries aren't an option - as long as people get to see and enjoy the work it's all good!

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  3. a lovely display... and what an irony that your artistic community has few options for showing work... glad you have this one...

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  4. Both your displays look great, and I couldn't agree more Fiona. So important to show art in places where the "unconverted" may stumble on it and be converted.

    The library displays are great too. Ours has all sorts of things from local people and also the not-so-local at times. It's a wonderful way for people to share their personal collections with others.

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  5. A beautiful display Fiona... three cheers for the library.

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  6. Now I'm going to suggest it to our library! A beautiful display Fiona - I love artist books

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  7. think of how important that art is, how important that it is seen.

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I appreciate your thoughts and comments; thanks for taking the time.