Green Pebble Magazine

News Archive

A Chance to Buy Some of the Best at Norwich Castle
Suffolk Students Shine
Keith Osborne selected for RWA
Vanessa Thomas celebrates Old Printworks Birthday

Winter 2008 issue
The Best of British Watercolour Painting

Jennifer McRae has become the 21st person to win the RWS/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition, with her watercolour 'David by the Window, Spencer’s Belle Vue' (pictured).

Cameron Galt took the second prize of £7,000 for his watercolour 'Late Saturday Morning'. The winner of this year’s new prize, Penguin Classics Prize for Cover Art, £1,500 goes to David Firmstone for his watercolour 'The Persistence of Memory', and the £1,500 Young Artist award goes to Peter Haslam Fox for 'Self portrait with tower'.

This year there are four highly commended artists who have been selected due to the very high standard of their work. The four selected artists are: June Berry 'Night Walker', Mick Davies ‘Man U’ Fans celebrate ‘The Treble’, Michael Williams 'Island and Waterhole' and Brian Woods 'Maelstrom'.

RWS/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition is one of the longest running open art competitions in the UK today, and remains the largest art prize dedicated to the medium of watercolour. For twenty-one years, this exhibition has provided a forum for exemplary painters to demonstrate their skills in the technically challenging field of watercolour. Whether abstract, figurative, or landscape, each year the exhibition demonstrates the strength of contemporary watercolour.

This year’s panel of six judges included Richard Sorrell, President of the RWS and Penny Johnson, Director of the Government Art Collection. Over 1,200 entries were received from artists across the UK.

Autumn 2008 issue
Suffolk Students Shine

Congratulations to Lowestoft College BA textile design students who competed yet again with students from other larger universities such as the Royal College and Central St Martins and won many of the prizes and commendations at the prestigious Bradford Textile Society Student Awards.
Louisa James received 2nd prize and Katy Hunt 3rd prize for Knitted Fabrics for Fashion and there were commendations for Katy Hunt, Louisa James, Jenny Ferns and Danielle Wade in other categories.

In the meantime last year’s student, Danielle Spellman, successfully sold her collection of ceramics to fashion designer Paul Smith to be sold in his shops in London.
Clearly, Head of Course, Liz Clerk is doing something very right.

Janet Piehl says, ‘I particularly enjoy using the traditional skill of wood turning to produce work with a contemporary feel. My work is turned in modular pieces that have been laminated and I use a variety of finishes to exploit the inherent properties of the material, including burnishing, scorching and wire brushing.’

Chrissy Harrington, Associate Dean of Art at University Campus Suffolk, has kicked off her first year in office with a stunning display of the students’ work at Ipswich. Works exhibited were from the BA (Hons) degree courses in Fine Art, Graphic Design, Interior Design, Model Design and Computer Games Design, the aim being to create employable, capable and creative individuals able to respond to the challenge of the work place with imagination and integrity.

Mark Bingham says, ‘My design [above] is of an integral exhibition stand and bar for a major furniture company’. Mark graduated with First Class Honours.

Autumn 2008 issue
Sweet Success

In a further story, two second year BA (Hons) Graphic Design students from University Campus Suffolk have gained recognition for their work in the Institute of Packaging’s Student Starpack Awards.

Mike Todd won a bronze award for his entry for the competition’s ‘Easter egg packaging’ brief; and Suzanne Frank won a commendation for her design for the ‘Haute Chocolat’ packaging brief.

A requirement of the Easter egg package was to reduce packaging waste, and Mike accordingly did a Constructivist-inspired design which allowed the egg to be seen fully, from all sides, whilst protecting it more than adequately.

Suzanne also set out to appeal to fine art afficionados, with a highly inventive design inspired by the painter Piet Mondrian.

Competition was fierce for these awards, with many of the entrants being students on full-time packaging courses. University Campus Suffolk’s students do just one seven day project devoted entirely to packaging.

Summer 2008 issue
Dancing Sails Liven Up Supermarket

Wander over to the new Tesco Express store in West Mersea near Colchester and you will find a 2.75 metre high aluminium set of ‘Dancing Sails’. The driving force behind this new sculpture, which was erected in the spring, was local West Mersea artist Lesley Carruthers, who produces abstract sculptures, mostly in aluminium, in a studio behind her house on the outskirts of the village.

Commemorating the maritime history of West Mersea, this project came with its own particular set of challenges. Because the finished height of the sculpture, plinth design and budget were already fixed, Lesley was more constrained than usual.

‘In designing the sculpture, my aim was to create an impression of the movement of sails in the wind. I started experimenting with a single simple sail shape, and finally settled on three linked sail-type forms which appear to interact or ‘dance’ around each other,’ she explains.

Once she settled on the shape, the next challenge was to resolve several complex practical issues: The stresses of the structure, weight, aerodynamics, health and safety aspects, and whether it could be produced within the constraints of the budget. The latter was resolved by having sheet aluminium rolled on huge factory rollers, rather than using her traditional method of casting in a foundry from a polystyrene original.

The various administrative hurdles were also systematically overcome – the Tesco board approved the design, and the local planning department not only approved it, but asked that it be 30cm bigger than their original stipulation, meaning that all the practical issues had to be revisited and re-assessed.

Specific problems included finding someone capable of welding together the thick 3m high, curved sheets of aluminium, and handling and manoeuvring the work in progress, since each unit weighed 90kg and needed three people to move it.

The finishing processes of grinding, sanding and waxing were further complicated by the mid-winter temperatures, but finally, with the help of an engineering firm, all difficulties were eventually overcome and the sculpture was successfully installed in time for the opening of the new store.
Although the sculpture is large – 3.85 metres from pavement to tip of sails, and 4.5 metres along each arm of the plinth, Lesley feels it quietly fills its allocated space without dominating or overwhelming its immediate surroundings.

Summer 2008 issue
All That Jazz

Following the feature about Will Teather in the Winter issue of Green Pebble, the artist has been invited to exhibit his series, ‘Jazz Masters’, at one of the world's finest jazz festivals. Each year 180,000 people travel to the small French town of Marciac for ‘Jazz in Marciac’.

The venue: gallery 'No 9' in Marciac.

The exhibition takes place during the Jazz Festival which is from 1st - 14th August '08.

Eight painters will be in the show, with each artist having an individual room to exhibit in. The exhibition includes British and European painters, including Jayne Ivemy, Ursula Leach, Ben Brotherton, Erica Hart, Ryoko Ottignon and two final year students from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Bordeaux.

Contact Will Teather