This table was inspired by helping out at the Bristol Design Festival in the summer of 2009, where a simple contest had been put in place with the brief that contestants could take a £5 Ikea table and adapt it anyway they deemed fit. The creations that were on display were inspired, so encouraged me to give it a go, and this jigsaw puzzle of vintage beer mats is the result.
Upfest is an event to showcase the best in up-and-coming talented painters, showing us that an awful lot more can be done with paints than the chocolate-box country cottage watercolour. An event that was a 24 hours of painting across Bristol, I went to the big event at the Tobacco Factory. Walking into the achingly cool café the artwork is shown on industrial metal grid work – a perfect way to remind us of its less glamorous origins.
Upstairs the artwork was on Canvas, Postcards, T-shirts and Old Vinyl records. But the pieces that caught my eye were done on cardboard, a great canvas for the artwork, and a bargain at roughly a tenner, a big old two fingers to the establishment and showing that urban art will always belong to the people.
There was also a wealth of live painting to watch whilst sipping on a coffee, from the collective of artists working in the main café to Popbang by artist Ian Cook. He was painting using radio control cars, car tyres and toy wheels and had his audience of hushed 5-8 yr olds kneeling as close as they can to the action. Something tells me there will be a lot of paint-covered kids having a lot fun with their own toy cars this weekend…
Article first published in Bristol Design Festival blog: 06/06/2009
http://www.upfest.co.uk/
http://www.tobaccofactory.com/
http://bristoldesignfest.wordpress.com/
http://bristoldesignfestival.com/
Jamaica Studios describes itself as Stokes Croft cultural heart and houses a diverse bunch of illustrators, artists, textile designers and even an embroiderer tucked away in its rabbit warren of white cubes (admittedly white cubes with a fantastic view and great natural light to work in). But now continued operations are under threat and they need to raise 1 million to buy the building and secure the future of the building, part of this has become the annual open studio event were locals get to gaze at the artwork and if we have the cash to splash take it back home with us. As an added fundraising bonus each of the artist has donated a small-framed canvas to the cause that was auctioned Sunday afternoon and you would be pretty hard pushed not to find a style of art to suit all tastes.
The real joy for me though was getting to see not just the diverse array of talent but of the diverse personalities up on display as well as the artwork, from the inspiration walls of Illustrator Bjorn Rune Lie to the cubby-holes and pot plants of Textile designer Harriet Powis. Every artist had their studio set up uniquely to their own needs and is unintentionally giving us a secret glimpse of the creative working life of the studios for the other 364 days of the year.
Tales of vegetable planting by the artist and the obvious involvement of local business such as niche framing in the art auction help to prove the point noted in the fundraising brochure
“The positive effect of artist on our cities is too often underestimated…artists have brought so much more to enliven an area than the developers who have followed them”
Here’s hoping that there will be another open studio event to wander around and wonder at next year rather than a soulless block of flats to walk past.
Article first published in Bristol Design Festival blog: 08/06/2009
http://jamaicastreetartists.co.uk/homepage-c-464.html
http://bristoldesignfestival.com/
http://bristoldesignfest.wordpress.com/
