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The Royal Suite is opening very soon!
If you follow me on any of my social media, you may have seen that there has been lots of work going on down at Shed 2 Studios for a while.
Last year, I took over extra space at the communal studios, which has undergone somewhat of transformation. For the last few months, my wonderful brother and sister-in-law, Ian & Allyson, have been working really hard turning this:
Into this:
Yes, the carpet still needs cleaning! But we’re very, very, nearly there. And I am very, VERY, excited!
What will the new space be?
It’s going to be multi-purpose. If ever you’ve been down to Shed 2 Studios, you will know that it’s wonderful, open space that I share with three other maker-businesses. It’s a wonderful space and atmosphere, but I share with woodworkers, which means lots of dust. It also has a high open apex roof, and single glazed skylights. This means the light can be fabulous, but the space can be really cold, especially in winter. It can be very hard to keep warm. Also, as it’s open, I don’t have a lot of wall space, and what I do have is covered with glass, tools and equipment. It is very much a working artist’s studio, and not a gallery space.
The ‘Royal Suite’ has walls, a ceiling and a door. This means it will be easier to keep clean, to keep warm and to have work out on display.
Workshops can be held in the new space, at any time of year, not affected by the winter chill. There will be art work out on display to inspire students.
Or larger groups, for example hen parties, could have their session in the main space, and we can take a break for a drink and snack in the suite.
I struggle with the physicality of selling events; I am going to also open up as a sort of ‘pop-up shop’ sometimes. I will leave out on display in the new room. If nobody comes to visit, I can be getting on with work in my main space, which will be unaffected.
Last year, I talked about doing memorial glass ; pieces with ashes in from dearly departed loved ones, or pets that have passed over the rainbow bridge. I want a quiet, calm, respectful space to do this when I am making. I also want to offer people the chance to make their own piece, or sit with me whilst I create some special, memorial artwork for them. Again, this needs to be quiet; but also a little more private than my main studio, as it may be an emotional journey.
It’s quieter, and kind of tucked out the way. It will also be an ideal teaching space for people with sensory issues, who might not appreciate the hustle and bustle of the main studio.
And of course, it will be an office space for me. I do most of my admin at home, and will continue to do some of that; but I can do a lot more at the studio going forward, as I have a desk that won’t be covered in bits of glass!
Why ‘The Royal Suite’?
A few birthdays ago, a wonderful friend got me this for a birthday gift:
When talking to my brother about various options we kept saying ‘the new space’. Ian said it needed a proper name. This was going to be installed, and so he dubbed the new space ‘The Royal Suite’ – and it stuck.
Exciting times ahead!
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Derbyshire Record Office
As part of the Excite Inspire Engage Erewash project, I met and worked with the rather lovely and very talented Paula Moss on the Metal Ages section.
Amongst other things, Paula has been Artist-In-Residence at the Derbyshire Record Office whilst they redesigned and refurbished their space, and as the project is coming to an end, we got the opportunity to take a “back stage” tour to see what it was all about.
I guess I’ve never given much thought to what a record office does. Is it a library service, a museum, a room full of files and paper? Well, I guess it’s all of those and more.
The office, at Matlock, houses 12 rooms of records for both Derby city and Derbyshire as well as local studies books, and also
You can find out all sorts of information about anything in the area, and the staff are very generous with the help and support. The outlook at this friendly office is that this information is there for the public to see and to make use of, and not only can you access a wealth of information, you can even see, touch and use original documents.
There’s a huge variety of things in their collection from the original silk paper charter for the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School at Ashbourne, to original woodcut blocks and prints from local artists, slave records from a plantation (owned by a Derbyshire estate) and much much more.
A fabulous resource if you are researching for an art project, or looking into your family tree.
It’s free to use and open, without the need for appointments six days a week. Well worth a visit, and they even have a lovely little break room with a most appealing aroma from the coffee machine if you don’t fancy wandering down the hill back into Matlock.
Can’t wait for the chance to go back and study something – I fear I could lose most of a day though!
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Hot Metal
As ever, my life has been hectic with things related to my business, the studio and of course home life – I knew I hadn’t written a blog post for a while; well Christmas was the last one I remembered. What I hadn’t realised was that I never posted anything about the second Metal Ages sculpture, and that was well, AGES ago!
Back at the end of September, we finally got the opportunity to install the final sculpture at Erewash Museum in Ilkeston. I say ‘we’ – that would be me with the camera and occasionally passing a drill or screwdriver, and Gavin & Mark doing the lifting, carrying, digging, drilling….
This one is a rather large sculpture. It’s over two metres high, and about two and a half metres wide. It is made up of 7,000 nuts, which represents the size of the workforce when Stanton Ironworks was in it’s heyday. It has four ‘vines’ growing from the ground, which represent the four main foundries that could be found in the Ilkeston area back in the 1900’s. Across the middle is a shank, used for pouring molten metal in a foundry. The centre of this holds a glass disk, which like the ‘Old Men & Pipes‘ sculpture at King George Gallery is inspired by the ‘fire in the sky’ that was ever present when Stanton was a busy place, and also representing new beginnings.
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More on Metal
Those of you who know me personally will know that there’s been quite a lot of stuff going on in my personal life lately (that may be a bit of an understatement), which has prevented me from spending much time in the studio or on projects.But, as the Metal Age project is on a deadline, I’ve had to pick up the ball again get stuck in.I managed to get along to another one of the Walking for Health sessions, although I didn’t take any photos on the last one, it was far too cold to take the gloves off! And couple of Saturdays ago, we ran the glass inclusions workshop at the Erewash Musuem, it was the first sunny day of the year so we didn’t get lots and lots of visitors – I think people were taking advantage of the first chance to get in the garden. We met a friendly family, where grandad, like a lot of people in Ilkeston, had worked at Stanton at one time; it was great, he had a lot of stories to tell.Gavin and I are now working on the plans for the two sculptures, and for what else will be going in the exhibition. We’ve also been planning the next workshops at King George Gallery in March – we will be working with students from local schools and colleges in the day, and having open drop-in sessions on the Tuesday evenings.I’m still playing catch up, so this is a bit of a post-and-run, but I thought I would show you a few photographs of our site visit – current owners, St Gobain, allowed us access to locked up buildings and the old Stanhope Plant – it was fascinating.I took this photograph after Gavin commented that if you looked down at (extremely thick) layer of black dust on the floor, it was undisturbed apart from our footprints. It was like virgin snow….
Black Virgin Snow Something fascinated me about the chains and hooks that we found lying in trolleys around the place. Not sure this conveys the sheer scale of everything (giant light bulbs, giant oil cans, giant sack trolleys – I felt like one of the Borrowers at times!) – I just liked the pattern of this one:
Dusty Chains And this last photograph, was just a poignant reminder of the busy times that were once Stanton Ironworks – obviously a countdown until the last day in May 2007, that the last pipe rolled out of the plant – it was written on the inside of the one of the maintenance teams lockers.
The Last Post
