I am a Scottish artist and designer based in Glasgow. My key area of interest is in collaborative projects that explore place, narrative and participation. My work encompasses painting and drawing, installation, print and delivery in the community. Learn more about my approach and interests in this blog section of my website. For a more frequently updated insight into my practice please follow me on twitter @josievallely
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What an amazing time we had at Moving Minds, the opening mini-festival for the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival. We were running a weaving workshop (myself and my glamorous assistant, Sarah). We asked people to contribute to our, for want of a better title, 'Tapestry of powerful feelings'! I have posted a few photos here, but there will be more because the paparazzi where active all day! The theme of the SMHAFF this year is Power. This is a really exciting in terms of its wide range of meanings- we could think about politics, autonomy, rights, voices and levels of mental health. What we chose to focus on was how powerful our emotions, or feelings, can be, and how it is often these most powerful of feelings that we consider when we are talking about mental health. We asked people to think about a situation in their lives, or an experience they have had, which was particularly powerful emotionally. We then asked them to respond to this experience in colour- using fabrics, bead, buttons and wool. This sounds so simple- but everyone got so involved! It was incredible to see the results. One of the most powerful parts was the little tag we asked people to contribute to communicate what experience they were thinking of. From births, deaths, psychosis and war- no one shied away from engaging with truly powerful moments. I feel so privileged to have been given such insight into people’s lives! Thank you everyone who contributed, and Sarah, who is amazing and explaining things and engaging people. And Thank you also to the Felin Uchaf Centre in Wales, who donated the wood that the loom is built from.
Now that I have graduated I have plenty of time to fill with exciting projects! I have a few design commissions in the pipeline but in the mean time I am being entertained by my new mentoring programme with the amazing Impact Arts. Impact offer a really wide range of community arts initiatives and I am really excited to be being supported by the for the next six months. Fist stop is my individual placement with Elderpark raft Cafe, which I start tomorrow.
Watch this space! After a year studying at the Glasgow School of Art I have graduated with my Masters of Deisgn, with a specialism in Illustration. The degree show was great fun and thankyou to everyone who bought my work!
In the build up to refugee week I have been working with a number of community organisations who work with refugees and asylum seekers to create a zine exploring themes of Welcome. The zine will be co-produced with a variety of people- refugees and asylum seekers currently living in Glasgow,local people in the community, and Students of Glasgow School of Art. In the coming months I will be bringing all of this work together to create a Zine which will include stories, ideas, poems, and artwork. On the 22nd of May, a few weeks before the Zine’s launch, I ran a drop in workshop, along with some amazing helpers, in the Vic where we worked with students to contribute content to the zine and work on it’s curation. I have been having an amazing few weeks working with the GCIN mapping group. I have worked with them on a few workshops- looking at drawing landmarks, drawing out trails and bring all the information they had collectd toegther into a zine
"Together with Josie Vallely our mappers this week created a zine about Govan. Using drawings, stencils, transfers and text they created a booklet with places they'd recommend to people who are new to Govan. Get your own copy from the PI soon..." This is the start of a longer project developing Zines with Lots of different people all over Glasgow, as part of Refugee week 2014. Watch this space for more info! My masters project is based on finding ways of representing experiences of chronic illness in a visual way. This Illustration explores the frustrations people face in trying to access the support they need to manage their chronic conditions. The last few months I have been working with Linda Mcleod, who runs the BreatheEasy group in Alloa. She is incredibly inspiring and a great advocate for political change to help people who have COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). She highlighted to me how people with COPD can find it particularly hard to receive the support they need as their condition is somewhat 'invisible'. This illustration explores the element of chance that seems to be inherent in the assessment of cases from bodies like ATOS, as well as the endless cycle of phone calls and paperwork which people have to wade through in order to access support. Sufferers of chronic conditions can feel like then are constantly have to 'prove themselves' to receive even the most basic help.
More information about the challenges people face in accessing DLA can be found here. I have just started a new course as part of my Masters programme which is called 'mapping the city'. Our first assignment was to create a map of ourselves. Something I have always loved doing is creating books from scraps- so I painted freely on some large papers and then cut them up to create this book. I experimented with binding after chatting to the lovely Rachel Anna Cocker about the wonders of exposed spines. Take a look!
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I work on lots of different kinds of projects and sometimes it can be hard to keep track of what I up to! Archives
September 2018
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