Drum Roll Please for my Website!!

Hello,

I was like to introduce to you my very first website, www.lucyanneharding.co.uk I have been slowly learning how to use it and what not. Soon enough there will be online store where you will be able to purchase some of my work, which is very exciting!

Feels like ages since I have written a blog as so much has happened in those few weeks. I have some very exciting news; I have now started my 3 month artist residency at Smithy Studios in Glossop which is very nice to have somewhere creative to go and be creative, and the journey in also gives me time to update my blog (or fall asleep).  The studio is a fantastic space with a lovely kiln that keeps us warm, I have only been in there a 3 weeks and already put a bisque and transfer kiln firing on (with some help from the wonderful Catherine Carr) In addition we have converted the garage in to what my dad likes to call ‘the office’ where I can do my drawings, screen-printing and applique work, I seem to live in there when am not at the studio.  And YES you heard right I know can screen-print from home!! I love screen printing, it’s so relaxing and I have been very eager to get my screens so I could get printing!

My lovely studio

My Office in the Garage

I am starting to develop new work based on butchers and the decline of butchers on the local high street, so I have spent a few days filming in a butcher in Mansfield, Nottingham so I can start illustrating. I want my new work to include slab built vessels, so hopefully in a few months they will be developed and ready to show you.

No Milk Today work is progressing too; I am creating more original textile wall pieces which are coming along nicely ready for THREE craft fairs I am exhibiting at!! BREAKING NEWS!!! I have the delight to have the opportunity to show and sell my work at South Hill Park Craft and Design Fair, Bracknell, Craft in the City, Nottingham, and Merge Contemporary Craft Fair, Oundle. So I have been really busy preparing for them, creating a mug and mug cosies which look really nice, my upcycling work is developing well with a range of blue and green cups and saucers, I am also doing coffee cups and pots.

I went on a trip to Origin at the end of September; it was amazing so many very talented crafters, Catherine Carr with her amazing glass, Abigail Brown who I was really looking forward to seeing and it didn’t disappoint, and Jennifer Collier with her unique paper sculptures.

I also have a few exhibitions coming up which is exciting and my work is currently until the end of the week in an exhibition Cheeky Stitches at Punch Gallery in the Corner House in Nottingham. It is a really lovely space and all the other artists are so friendly and very talented.

Thanks for reading!!

Part One to a fantastic adventure!

Hello,

I have been on a fantastic adventure to the South West of England visiting Bristol, the beautiful Bath, Wells, Glastonbury, and the wonderful Cheddar Gorge.

Bristol is an amazing city and I was so taken with the creative atmosphere. Bristol is BIG on art, design and crafts from streets covered in amazing art work (you just can’t call it graffiti) to little quaint streets with craft shops with studios.

In the heart of Bristol’s Christmas Steps Art Quarter is Blaze Studio a combined studios and craft boutique, there I met Hanne Rysgaard who was downstairs hard at work, before I disturbed her.

 Hanne creates funky ceramic pieces by slip casting quirky objects to create fun contemporary home wares decorated with a mix of vintage and modern patterns and colours. I couldn’t resist not buying anything, but it was so hard to choose, as there was a mixture of milk related objects which I loved and I think I might order one, but I decided I would get a lovely tea light jar with a beautiful flower pattern around the side. Hanne Rysgaard shares the studio with a very talented textile artist, Kay Morgan who makes beautiful leather purses, corsages, and handbags in the upstairs studio. So glad I rang the bell, as it was really insightful to talk to an artist who is living the dream!

Blaze Studio

Window Display

My lovely purchase

Another studio in the Art Quarter, I visited was ‘SNAP’ which is a printmaking co-operative run by eight resident artists with an art gallery upstairs, and studio space downstairs where they run screen printing workshops from.  The gallery space was really quaint and the all work was amazing. I think my favourite work was by Freya Cumming who is a printmaker and Illustrator. Her shopping series of patterns are beautiful and really shows the perfect balance of narrative drawings and surface pattern which Cummings has perfected over the years. A really good place to visit!



My two prints from SNAP

Freya Cumming

SNAP studio

Well… part two of my trip to the South West is coming really soon, and also some other exciting news about new work.

Thanks for reading xx

Upcycling!

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience- Paul Cezanne

Yesterday I spent the day in local charity shops, collecting vintage tableware as I want to use up cycling pieces in my work. Up cycling is taking discarded items which would normally end up in a land fill and finding a new use for them. It’s a very exciting turn in my work; I am going to apply my doorsteps to the pieces to create a whole new piece.  I have chosen pieces with bits of pattern already on them as I want to integrate the old pattern with the new. I really love the idea of up cycling, as another man trash is another man treasure. Up cycling can be linked in to my theme of saving milkmen as it is known that milk man were the first recyclers as you ‘rinse and return’ your glass milk bottles.  I have been mainly looking for china that has been made in England, because I want to support English industry, as I don’t think that we make any pottery or very little pottery in the UK, and like milkmen, the industry is dying out. Tomorrow is a very busy and exciting day, as I am adding my designs to the china and also screen printing!

 



Very excited to work with this pieces!