I was reading in various papers today and on the BBC’s website about a project starting up in Leeds in the coming weeks. The new Trinity Shopping Centre will be home to a number of vending machines which will contain 150 miniature works of art commissioned by 30 artists. The idea is that you put your £1 in and out comes a random, bona fide work of art, encased in the same little plastic ball that you get on seafront arcades across the country!… Brilliant!
£1 a go!
Glass Art Table
Sunny Side Up
Here is the latest Glass Art Table from SerenArts Gallery. Serena has painted this one using a combination of glass paints including a sparkly one that really looks amazing in the sun. So all we need now is some sunshine!
You can get more information and place an order for Serena’s tables on her website at www.serenarts.com
When I first saw the title of this article in the ARTnews magazine online, I thought it was going to be featuring some beautiful works depicting members of the animal kingdom. I was wrong!… Here is just part of it…
Last year London’s Grant Museum of Zoology staged what organizers thought was the first inter-species show of paintings by animals.
Baka, a Sumatran Orangutan who resides at Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, showed impastoed, calligraphic slashes in the manner of Kline. Samantha, a Western lowland Gorilla who lived at the Erie Zoo in Pennsylvania, had an allover composition of candy-colored strokes evoking late de Kooning. Boon Mee, an elephant in Thailand’s Samutprakarn Zoo, took a more figurative path, with an astounding rendering of a flower pot.
That such primate and elephant art hews so closely to Western art conventions reveals more about our expectations than their talents. Boon Mee, for example, was guided by a keeper who manipulated her ear like a joystick in order to steer her trunk. The result may still be impressive, but it hardly reflects the creature’s natural tendencies—or the latest science.
The perception of animals as art-makers has come a long way since the late ’50s, when Desmond Morris put Congo the painting chimp on British TV, and in a famous show at London’s ICA.
Today animal artists are not viewed so much as novelties but as sophisticated creators with skills and senses that can enhance projects in ways humans never can. Anthropomorphism is out, and biological determinism is in.
It has become common for zoos and even aquariums to offer art supplies to a wide variety of species, part of efforts–known as Enrichment–to keep animals physically and mentally stimulated.
It certainly did give us a laugh, but I have to say, we much prefer Serena’s Pet Portraits. People painting animals is more our bag than the other way round!…
(Thank you to the ARTnews for the excerpt from their online magazine)
As part of our business we are now offering Photoshop and Photoshop Elements Courses at our Tithebarn Workshops Gallery.
iTeach Photoshop offer tuition by the hour or if you prefer a full day, we can arrange a suitable time for you to visit us.
So if your computer is overloaded with photographs you’ve taken and not sure what to do with, come and learn how to use this amazing software. We also have the facilities to print your images for you on canvas or photographic papers.
We would like to let people know about SerenArts range of digitally printed greetings cards.
Our range of greetings cards are perfect for artists, the small business or personal user, anyone who is looking to produce their work in small print runs and is coming up against that age old problem of getting the first step on the ladder. It can be very expensive to get your work printed on greetings cards…. but not any more!
We take great care to match the colours of your painting so that the finished card is a true representation of your work. This can be a great selling tool for exhibitions and shows.
Our greetings cards are digitally printed on quality 350gsm card, in stunning full colour and supplied pre-creased and folded with envelopes. We can also arrange, at very reasonable rates, to have your cards individually wrapped in cellophane bags and labelled for reselling. To discuss the other options available with our greetings cards and talk over your individual requirements, please feel free to contact us at any time.
We cannot quite believe that it has been 4 years today that we opened up our gallery at the Tithebarn Workshops.
We thought we would have a celebratory New Year Sale to try and kick start 2013!
So come on down and see us and pick up a bargain!
Just thought we would share these images of a woodpecker that visited our cheery trees outside the gallery the other day. He bashed away for a good couple of minutes as he wasn’t going to be bothered by any customers!! Sorry the quality of image isn’t up to our usual standard, but it was me that took them and not Serena as she was working at the home studio…
Great Spotted Woodpecker on our Cherry Tree
Well we were supposed to do the Bradford on Avon Street Market this weekend just gone but rain stopped play for us I am afraid. We just can’t risk the weather getting to our stock of photos and pictures. We’ve done shows where we’ve broken or damaged more than we’ve sold… a little counter productive!
Anyway, this weekend (Sunday 15th July) we’ve got the Summer Art Car Boot Sale at the Black Swan Arts Centre car park in Frome. It’s a great day and we’ve done it for the last 5 years. 40 to 50 stalls of local artists, photographers, sculptors etc. exhibiting and hopefully selling their stuff. Well worth a look if you are anywhere near Frome on Sunday – starts at 10am to 4pm. Hope we see you there…. weather permitting!!
We really could do with some sun please, but I have to bear in mind that some friends of ours are a lot worse off than we are, living and working in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. They just clearing up their third flood in the last 2 weeks. Good luck guys.
Simon cleaning up again.
SerenArts Gallery 