Southwold Umbrella Competition

Last Sunday Ann, Terry and I went to Southword to see their Alternative Umbrella Competition and have breakfast with friends Carol and Melvin, not to mention also enjoying the company of our friend Sorrell Grove and her partner Jeff. This is THE Sorrell Grove who recently won the Times Newspaper Back Garden of the Year competition!! I have sat in this now well known garden and taken tea, and it IS a beautiful garden.



Anyway, unto the umbrellas. Below are my highlights. The one that won is the origami cranes at the bottom. I was surprised to hear that it had won as one of the themes of the competition is to use recycled materials, maybe they did and I just couldn't tell. My favourite was the umbrella pencils, and I voted
accordingly!


Southwold is an absolutely stunning seaside town on the north coast of Suffolk, if you live close by and you've never been you should definitely go. Unfortunately I imagine you will fall in love with the place, I say unfortunately because house prices in Southwold have rocketed as people from London have bought the property as Summer homes and now even people who live in Southwold cannot afford to move.

A beach hut recently sold there for £90,000.

I still dream...

Textiles

Yesterday I was in Textiles with the First Year National Diploma's. They were screenprinting onto fabric they had dyed with natural and chemical dyes the week before.

I helped them with their printing and any other random questions they felt they needed to ask. Some needed a little more guidance than others which was fulfilling for me and i loved being in the textiles room, just being in that enrvironment is inspiring for me.

I loved the way their pieces of fabric pinned up on the line to dry looked like multi coloured flags.

Coming soon... Feltmaking!!

Being a Student Art Teacher

I've spent the last two weeks being in the Art Department at college observing introductions to the various courses, National Diploma Art & Design, Level 2 National Diploma Art & Design and Foundation Art & Design. There are well over 200 students in all and i need to try and remember who they are. I'm gonna go for trying to remember the ones that will apply to me (those doing Textiles & Printmaking)

This week just gone the Foundation students and ND@ students have had an introduction project. Each group of 7 - 9 were given a postcard of a well known painting and had to recreate it using themselves as the people in it, they had to make props, costumes and backdrops too!

The results were brilliant, all were of a shockingly high standard and of course, some better than others . All in all the amount of effort that went into the tableaus and the way the students mixed in with people they didn't already know was great.

Next week i'm in Drawing and Textiles, i can't wait!