Faith and Image talk and FOE. Exhibition

Last week I was pleased to be giving a presentation about the connection between my art work and my practise as a Buddhist to Faith and Image, a group of people interested in art and belief at ST Mary's church in Woodford.
I had been invited by Graham Dixon and he kindly put together a PowerPoint of my work with an introduction by himself including some great images of Buddhist caves near the Mongolian border that he had recently visited.
It was good for me to reflect on my art work and its connection to my being a Buddhist and to

put something down in writing about it. The presentation went well, people were interested and had questions and I took some original work in to show people too.
Jonathan Evens, vicar of ST John's Seven Kings and secretary of Commission 4 Mission has included a great blog about my presentation which can be seen here labeled Faith and Image.

The Friends of the Earth exhibition finished on Sunday with a closing party, comments left by visitors said that they had found the exhibition stimulating, interesting and challenging. There was plenty of information about climate change and work by Friends of the Earth to be taken and while I was invigilating there it was good to hear people wanting to know more about what they could do to help the environment.

Friends of the Earth Exhibition and last of the Art Trail

Yesterday I took my work down to the Changing Room Gallery for the Friends of the Earth exhibition. I am showing some photo collages called Windmills In My Mind, they are exploring the ideas about micro-electric generation. Part of my thinking is about how, in this case wind turbines, could look more fun interesting and colourful, if they were on ordinary homes and town buildings.

I took photos along a few local streets and used colourful children's windmill toys as the wind turbines on the buildings and some lampposts and added some text about micro wind generation. I also added some home made paper windmills to the collages, and made a couple for added interest.

In the gallery extra windmills have appeared decorating the walls around my work, it seems other people like these windmills too.

The exhibition is on till Sunday 27th with a party on Sunday from noon till 4pm

I just wanted to mention a couple more exhibitions that I had chance to see at the end of the E17 Art Trail.

Lino Cut at Ye Olde Rose and Crown, had a good selection of Martin Adams, martin's site here and Anna Alcock's prints. Anna's site here. Martin had added a William Morris border to the walls and included his well cut and detailed Darwin lino cut that I'd seen as work in progress earlier in the year.

In the old Crawford building lower down on Hoe Street, Image 17 were showing photographs in an exhibition called Meet. This was something I had intended to be part of earlier in the year but had proved too much for me to do in the end. Members had taken photos of various clubs and societies held in Waltham Forest. Sean Pines had some great images from the pigeon racers club, and Katherine Green's images from the cacti and succulants society were a glimpse into a different world. Image 17 website here.

The Art of Politics

The Art of Politics exhibition has opened at The Changing Room gallery.


There is some great work on show, Martin Adams has several pieces that deal with the local political situation with wit and invention. His mixed media piece "Sweet Temptation" had edible sweet treats in a box,with piped lettering on the sweets including "Influence", "Power" and "Renumeration" As the text concluded "Get elected get appointed and dig into the box of delights" You can see more of Martin's work here.



May Ayers had two pieces of ceramic sculptures that dealt with government policies of locking up vulnerable young people, "Zero Tolerance, in dedication to Joseph Scholes" and human indifference, "Indifference" "Zero Tolerance" is a large piece made up of several sections. The base sections have text around them and incised images. The top section is a torso, hands wrapped around the body and the head is split to show other faces inside. It is a powerful piece and addresses real issues in government policies that have lethal consequences. You can see more of May's work here.

In "this space has been left intentionally blank", people from the fight the height campaign had gathered together the ideas people had put forward for the space at the top of the high street in Walthamstow. These are on postcards and paper and form an installation on one of the walls. Visitors to the gallery are asked to contribute as well.


I was pleased to see that visitors had also been responding to my "The pound in your pocket"installation piece, writing their ideas of how they would spend their Waltham Forest pounds.






On the theme of money Chandra Mora, showed "Veni, Vidi, Depradavi, I came , I saw, I plundered" A large copy of A Zimbabwe million dollar note, and text citing the corruption and exploitation of the Zimbabwe government, as well as drawing parallels closer to home.




The exhibition continues till Sunday 6th of September and is part of the E17 Art Trail which starts on Saturday 5th.

The Art of Politics

I'm just starting with a bit of a season of exhibitions, the first one being part of The Art of Politics, at The Changing Room Gallery. I'm working on a piece called The Pound in Your Pocket, which is exploring the ideas of local currencies such as the Totnes Pound,details here. the Lewis Pound and the Brixton Pound.

The idea of having local currencies is to benefit the local community by spending money locally and keeping the money in circulation.( The money given to national and international companies and businesses is more usually siphoned away from the local community) There are also environmental benefits in keeping carbon footprints low.

I'm using images of altered notes (altered £20 note with portarait of William Morris above) and asking people to imagine that they had unlimited local Waltham Forest Pounds and to write on the new bank note how they would spend their Waltham Forest Pounds. These ideas will be part of the exhibition and I will also document the results.

The exhibition runs from Monday 31st August till Sunday 6th,(overlapping with the first weekend of the E17 Art Trail,the private view is Tuesday 1st 4-7pm.

Exhibitions and Leytonstone car free day

After the inspired by William Morris exhibition, I have a painting in The annual Arts Club exhibition at the Changing room Gallery. It is a painting of an angel, the "Angel of Dusk Lunden "




After painting in acrylic for a while, I had forgotten how long oil paints take to dry! and my painting was still slightly tacky 5 days after I'd stopped painting. I am using the new water mixable oil paints from Winsor and Newton and I am pleased with them. There is very little smell to them, the texture is like traditional oils and It means I can paint in my flat with them now.

Last weekend was the Leytonstone car free day, I hadn't been for a couple of years, and the event had grown, there were a lot of stalls up and down the roads near the tube station, a french market ( where I had gone to look for a particular soap) and lots of childrens activities.