I have been working with the wonderful Alice Myers. Alice is a photographer and we have been working on some wee hoosies for  yet to be released project- watch this space!

Last month I was lucky enough to receive a bursary to go to West Dean House, in Chichester, to explore my work around Landscape drawing. I use landscape often in my work to explore emotion, symbolism and narrative. The recent piece of work that I have featured in the Prescriptions Exhibition (photos in my last post) is made up of landscape drawings to express narratives of Chronic Obstructive Pulmanory Disease.

This week away was an opportunity to spend some time exploring these themes in a pressure free environment without having to look towards a finished piece of work. During the course I learnt an extensive range of ways of drawing and connecting with landscapes. In particular I revisited the use of drawing as research, which was inspiring and will influence my future practice.

Can you spot my work in the middle? What an amazing collection of Artists books related to medicine. Who would have thought there were so many!

Prescriptions is a juried exhibition of book art to supplement Martha Hall’s exhibition of works as part of Artists’ Books and the Medical Humanities symposium and workshop, organised by University of Kent and University of New England. Hall's books, created from 1998 until her death in 2003, document her experiences with breast cancer and her interactions with the medical community. The symposium, which will launch the exhibition, will explore connections between artists' books, health/illness and medicine from interdisciplinary perspectives. It will include invited keynote presentations, panels, a poetry reading, an exhibition tour and a documentary screening that features Hall.

Last Month I had the pleasure of being Artist in Residence at DECLARATION festival.

DECLARATION took place at the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Glasgow from 3-6 March. The festival was the result of a unique partnership between NHS Health Scotland, the Mental Health Foundation, the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE) and the Centre for Health Policy at the University of Strathclyde.

The programme featured 30 events - a mixture of film screenings, performances, debates, workshops and provocations, each one inspired by one of the 30 articles in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with a focus on how human rights and the right to health come alive in Scotland today.

The organisations behind Declaration have come together as part of Scotland’s National Action Plan on Human Rights (SNAP), and the programme is based around the SNAP themes of Better Culture, Better Lives and Better World. The festival will build on the First Minister’s vow to ‘do even more even better on incorporating human rights in Scotland’, and is part of an on-going commitment to the right to health and social care in Scotland.

A lovely write up from the Alloa Advertiser about the mosaic I made together with Breatheasy Clacks. A  link to the original article is here

Glasgow Artist Josie Vallely has given art and drawing classes to the group over the last two years. And she mentioned that funding could be available from The Voluntary Action Fund for an art project which would benefit the group and the community.

Breathe Easy applied for the grant and were overjoyed to receive the funding. And after much deliberation a mosaic was chosen. Josie visited regularly and asked what they would like to see portrayed. She worked on the suggestions and started the project which was put together during months of hard work. On the day before the unveiling, the mosaic, which was made in three parts, was brought through to The Speirs Centre for the members to complete.

The members all placed a red tile into the red balloon on the mosaic. The tiles were placed in remembrance of members, friends and volunteers sadly no longer with us. The red balloon is the logo of The Breathe Easy Groups and The British Lung Foundation. The mosaic which has the heading ‘Look Aboot Ye’ shows the Ochil Hills, Castle Campbell, Alloa Town Hall, Alloa Tower, Gean House and the Speirs Centre. The windings of the River Forth and The Clackmannanshire Bridge are also featured, as is Andy Scott’s beautiful sculpture ‘River Spirit’, which is situated on the Collylands roundabout.

Other things depicted on the mosaic include a dragon’s head which is prominent in the Spiers Centre. A wading bird from The Black Devon Wetlands, which is home to all kinds of birds, has pride of place along with a fish which depicts the fish found in Gartmorn Dam. Bottles on the mosaic symbolise Alloa Glass Works, an important industry for the area, while Wasps are shown on the right of the artwork - Wasps being the logo of Alloa Athletic FC. A head of grain portrays the brewing and distilling industries. A ship and anchor tell the story of how Alloa docks used to be a busy port and the harbour which was a major exporter of goods to the continent in the 18th century. A needle and yarn depict the rich textile industry with many wool and weaving mills in the county. And the golf courses of the county are depicted with a flag on a green and lastly a dog which depicts the Scottish SPCA at Fishcross.

The bottom panel on the mosaic has the words ‘From Breathe Easy Clackmannanshire to all of the Wee County’.

We have been working away on the development of the Woodcraft Folk's new heritage wesbite. Working with the Media Co-op on this project has been fantastic, but it was working with the Elfins (aged 6-9)  and Pioneers (aged 9-13)  that was the real treat for me!

Taking inspiration from the Woodcraft folk archives, I had begun exploring colors, shapes and iconography that we could bring to the new website...

I planned the workshops around Woodcraft Folk badges, which are lovely objects in them selves and lend themselves to being abstracted and explored.

After a few hours of creative chaos, the young people involved in the project came up with some beautiful deisgns which will be used in the final site design!

I have been looking back over the last year and I was reminded of a fantastic project which I haven't had a chance to share with you all! Last year The Mental Health Foundation began a project looking at the mental health of young people with long term conditions. As part of this project we are ran a series of events which brought young people together to creatively explore the well-being impacts of living with long term conditions and to brainstorm potential solutions to challenges they face.
 
I was invited along to the event to help creatively co-design  with the young people who were involved with the project. I also designed some activity templates and workshop tools to go along with the project- photographed here by Chris O'Sullivan.

The templates supported young people to create fictional characters who are like them- young people with long term conditions. They created these people in detail so we could use the characters to imagine what challenges or problems might be faced by people living with long term conditions and develop potential solutions.

We then went on to make 'cereal box' pitches about our potential solutions- here you can see one in progress!

The Atopic Art project that I have been working on for the last year will be showcased in Edinburgh for the first time as part of Bio and Beyond visual art exhibition at Summerhall for the Edinburgh International Science Festival 2016!  Alongside the exhibition program I will also be running creative drop-in workshops; Bedtime Balencing Act

This exhibition was curated by ASCUS, who are a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing the arts and sciences together. Based in Summerhall, we run events, curate exhibitions, commissions work, runs artist residencies and much more. Through our work we also strive to help academics engage the public through the arts. Our latest project is to open the ASCUS Lab at Summerhall: a publicly accessible laboratory for experimentation in art and science. To find out more, please visit the ASCUS website.

Take a look at our Atopic Art Adventures in this fantastic video featuring yours truly!