As you may recall I spent much of last summer creating a Silhouette Stop Motion Animation as part of my artist residency at Halsway Manor. Luckily, the final film was seen by the Somerset Heritage Trust who then commissioned me to create a film for them to support their exhibition 'The Art of The Potter' with the focus being upon the lives of the Donyatt Potters.

There is a blog post on the South West Heritage Trust website which explains the process in some depth and I hope you will take a look at it to see a little more about the project. However, the film itself focuses upon the last pottery in Donyatt, Pit Potter, which was run by the Arlidge brothers.

The commission has been a real treat for me as it has seen me move into vertical 4K film making which has been an enormous challenge. However, the greatest compliment (and terror) has come from the sheer size of the screens that the film is being shown on. If you look a the image below you can see a shot of the animation with the doorway to the pottery exhibition included to give you an idea of scale.

I was really lucky to be asked to speak to BBC Radio Somerset about my work so went to the studios last night to talk to Darren Daily.
Sitting in the studio was quite a strange experience but the process really reminded me how far I have come since graduating in 2014.
The interview is available for the next 28 days available if you follow this link www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07j9mf9 but I will try to upload it to the website in the next couple of days. 
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My paper cut artworks,inspired by Axbridge and District Museum, are joining the works of the other artist from the Muse: Makers in Museums project and will be on show at the Museum of Somerset. An excellent opportunity to see all of the artists from Devon and Somerset I am really looking forward to seeing the different artworks on display. 

Its always the same with blog posts, nothing for ages then loads come along at once!

I am really happy to share the news with you that I have been selected as one of the artists working in local, volunteer led museums in Somerset and Devon. 

Over the summer I will have the privilege of working with the museums collection and the marvellous and very knowledgable volunteers to create a body of work focusing on local craft. I can't tell you how many ideas I have and am only disappointed that the project will eventually have to end! However, I will be blogging as part of the project and will keep you posted with details a bit later.

In my last post I mentioned going to see the Starlings morning murmuration on the Somerset Levels and I thought I would include a bit of the film footage I shot whilst I was there. Unfortunately it was only filmed on a small digital camera so it certainly isn't professional but I think you will get a feel of the experience. 

I have spent many hours researching the murmurations since I took the film and I can honestly say that, whilst some of the starling behaviour seems to be explained, there is still no real understanding of how the starlings manage to navigate their way without crashing into each other. However, in many of the articles I have found reference to an ornithologist called Edmund Selous I have included a link here so you can find out more about him. Selous wrote a book called 'Thought Transference (or what) in Birds" in which he claimed the starlings used a type of telepathy to communicate during the murmuration.  I think it helps to remember that Selous was writing in 1931 so his ideas lack real science but he also wrote a book called 'Bird life glimpses'. This book contains extremely vivid descriptions of the birds he was watching which are a joy to read and conjure the most incredible mental images.

"And still they circle; now dense like a polished roof, now disseminated like the meshes of some vast all-heaven-sweeping net, now darkening, now flashing out a million rays of light, wheeling, rending, tearing, darting, crossing, and piercing one another - a madness in the sky".
Edmund Selous (1931)

Although my blog has been quiet over the last few months I have been extremely busy researching and looking at starlings, a pastime that some of you may find questionable but last years Somerset Art Weeks made me realise that there is a huge fascination with these birds which, at the time, I didn’t quite understand but I felt I should look more closely into.

With my usual initial enthusiasum I spent most of last Christmas rising well before dawn to watch the morning murmurations, a good tip from a birdwatcher. Luckily the Starling hotline made finding the starlings much easier that trying to guess where they would land in the evenings.

I have to admit to several failed attempts and a worrying tendancy to wonder what on earth I felt I was doing, however, the morning of 4th January saw me standing in the reed beds at Westhay experiencing the full might of several thousand starlings all whirling around me, I have to admit, in the space of half an hour I was completely hooked and amazed and have spent the last few month trying to unravel the misteries of the murmuration. Here is a small sample of one of the sound recordings (sorry about the buffering on the speaker)    

I have read many different articles and studied various papers about the murmuration and I can truly tell you that it remains as much a mystery to me now as it did when I stood in the reed beds but it has led me on a very interesting journey which I will share with you over the next couple of weeks before my exhibition for Somerset Art Weeks at Marcombe Studio

My film, Memory Archive will be showing at the launch of the Horsebox Theatre on 29th August at the Salutation Inn, Ham, Berkeley, Glos. GL13 9 QH. Sounds like its going to be a really fun evening with lots happening so if you are in the area I will see you there.. 

Great news Memory Archive has been selected to appear in the First Impressions 2014 exhibition at  View Gallery in Bristol which runs  from 4th - 21st September.
I am really pleased to be selected and can't wait to see the film in a gallery setting. 

I had a really interesting morning visiting exhibitions around Park Street in Bristol. Its a really good and manageable route. Started at the RWA which has a few exhibitions on at the moment but my vote definitely went to their 'Oneself as Another' exhibition especially Brook and Black's video installation 'Self Portrait'. I sometime struggle to engage with video installations but I was mesmerised by the two faces interacting as they painted around their image on the camera lens (there is a photo below).

After this I went into Bristol Museum's 'City Lives' which unfortunately finishes this weekend. Once again another really interesting video installation by Akram Zaatari, there is a photo but it was really difficult to get a good angle on the installation which has two videos, cabinets and a projector.