writing Archives -

In Etsy, Mixed Media, Painting, Sculpture

Artist Interview with Sally Welchman from Mogg Shop

Kiana J.June 17, 2017July 7, 20182 Comments

I’m excited to introduce Sally Welchman from Mogg Shop on Etsy!

Can you give me a little background on yourself and how you developed your unique style?

Hi, my name is Sally and I live in Brighton in the UK. I went to art school and took a degree in design and then a masters in ceramics in Cardiff, Wales. I was then awarded funding by the Welsh Arts Council to do a one year ceramics residency in a small town in Germany. I had already been doing a lot of drawing during my M.A. and had produced some kind of 3D assemblages with wood I picked up in the street and other items collaged together, and in Germany I continued with this, creating paintings of animals using some of the ceramics tools and techniques I was using on my pots too. I think working on wood is a little like decorating the surface of a pot, because its an absorbent hard surface that can be carved into or sanded back. I like that you can keep a design simple whilst still giving it depth in that way.

Why the use of reclaimed wood?

Partly I use reclaimed wood because I like the idea of turning old things into new and reusing something that already exists. From an ecological standpoint I think that’s a good thing to do. Also though I just really like the look of wood that has already had a life and looks a bit battered, so its also for the aesthetic.

What are your sources of inspiration?

My inspiration comes from animals, our two pets (a dog and a cat) but also from feelings and human emotion. I am really interested in facial expressions and what they do and don’t reveal and how human expressions do not always reflect our true feelings: animals and young babies don’t cover their sadness or anger with a smile or “put on” a confident face when they are nervous etc. That’s something that interests me.

I work as a facilitator on a great project at the Brighton Museum, which is about providing a space for marginalized artists – often people with a diagnosed mental health issue or learning disability to make art. This is a project that has been running now for several years and is very inclusive and person centered. People can pretty much create what they want there and I find that very positive and inspiring. For my own work, I honestly feel that every day that I can make art is pretty exciting – I feel like I have the best “job” in the world!

Have you worked on, or are you working on, any exciting projects?

Coming soon I think is a book that will feature one of my cat paintings. It will be written by Desmond Morris (a famous and respected sociologist and author in the UK and a painter himself). The book is called Cats in Art and is due out in September (the book is now out and you can purchase it here!). I have also just finished taking part in an Open House exhibition with other artists at Bright Moon Studios in Brighton, which was a lovely experience.

What is life like as an artist in Brighton?

Life for an artist in Brighton is really good. Brighton has a large artist community and many galleries and events where you can show work and take part in open houses, craft fairs and networking opportunities. People here seem very supportive and interested in art and the city itself is close to London, with its major museums and galleries and also the countryside of the Sussex Downs and the wonderful seaside. Sussex has a long artistic history going back years and the Charleston House (home of Vanessa Bell) (@CharlestonTrust) and Virginia Woolf‘s house are nearby as well as the Ditchling Museum which showcases the work of significant local artists and craftspeople of the last century.

Thank you for reading and make sure to check out Mogg Shop on Etsy and get one of Sally’s reclaimed wood paintings!

__________________________________________________________________

Subscribe to The Art Spectrum for more posts like this!

Please follow and like us:

In In The Art Library

Dieter Roth’s Diaries

Kiana J.September 8, 2016Leave a comment

Book: Dieter Roth Diaries by The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh

Over a brief 12 weeks working on a digital humanities project in which I analyzed the text in Van Gogh’s letters to his friend, Emile Bernard, I started to grow a larger interest in artist letters and writings. I stumbled upon this book in the stacks about Dieter Roth and his diaries, a book that has caused me to generate my own questions about private/vs/public art and private/vs/public self.

With my Van Gogh project, I was trying to explore what his letters to Emile Bernard could tell us about his work, and if there was any correlation between certain details in the letters and certain details in his paintings (I looked at color more specifically). In the book on Dieter Roth’s diaries, Fiona Bradley discusses the book’s publication and the exhibition it is based off of as a way to “examine the impact they [his diaries] may have on the production, reception and interpretation of his work” (31). I was immediately fascinated because of the interest to explore similar veins in my own research this past summer.

Dieter Roth’s diaries date from 1964 to 1997—the last one is a video diary called A Diary (33). Roth describes himself as being a compulsive diary-keeper, and throughout his life was enamored with the concept of diary-keeping, even collecting other diarists (32). He was very aware that someday someone might read his diaries, and he often wrote them with that very assumption in mind (33). While holding to this assumption, the practice of diary-keeping was complicated by his own feelings of self-consciousness (47). He writes:

“I write as if I’m writing for a typesetter/fear of writing incorrectly/I can’t let myself go/as soon as I have the feeling of being observed (e.g. the reader), I want to appear correct (even if it’s only the spelling).” (48)

The fact that he often felt self-conscious about doing something so personal, and worried about how it might appear to others, but simultaneously assumed others would read it, generates some interesting questions:

How can the truest self be revealed through writing if an individual can’t let himself “go”?

What does it mean for that individual’s identity if they are constantly going between a public and private self in the act of diary-keeping?

When the self is revealed through writing and bound in a material form, and it is poetry and art process, drawings and paintings, even material waste, and a document of everyday life down to the most mundane details, but it is also meant to be seen as an art object—although with self-conscious feeling attached to the process of creating it—the boundaries of public and private self and art become so unclear that the boundaries could even be said to be broken all together.

I believe his diary-keeping and the questions it implies are important to think about for any artist who may want to keep a journal or diary, especially if the keeping of it is even partially meant to document artistic practice and process.

Please follow and like us:

In Illustration

An Interview With Writer and Illustrator Kevin King

Kiana J.January 2, 2015Leave a comment

Can you give me a short background of yourself?

I don’t want to make myself out to be a special of any sort, but as far as I know, I am the only baby to have been delivered by a Pekin duck at the OB/GYN. It’s a rather remarkable story, considering hospital policies preventing animals from being in hospitals. But this duck was very career minded and a real go-getter.

I distinctly remember my first thought when I was born- “I’m not getting a job.” And I decided at that moment to become an illustrator. But becoming an illustrator right off the bat is not without obstacles; mainly the drooling and the diaper thing for the first few years. I have since overcome the drooling- it’s a problem that can easily be licked.

My childhood was quite unremarkable- I invented the color “Sleem”, which is mostly beige with cat hair. I wore plaid pants and shirts throughout the entire 5^thGrade, (and was not beat up). In art class I spilled paint down the back of the pants of a fat girl with a yellow tooth, (and got beat up). And as that I am on the subject of art classes, I was quite fortunate to have a mother that was an extraordinarily talented artist. What she could not teach me, she provided private tutors, Art professors, to school me in the classical arts. Some music virtuosos are sitting at the piano bench at five tinkling out Chopin on the ivories, I was sketching still lifes of bowls of fruit. And by Providence and the talent I honed, I became an editorial cartoonist for a local newspaper when I was fourteen. This opportunity defined and shaped my future.

The next many, many years I did nothing but dedicate myself to dutifully cartooning and illustrating for panoplies of newspapers and advertising agencies. (Of course, I had bathroom breaks during that time.) One of the most important skills you learn in the newspaper and ad agency business is- meeting deadlines! Another, and if not more important skill you learn as a cartoonist is to be able to tell a joke, impart a political comment or tell a story in a single panel that can be understood by the 100,000 or more people a day who will see it.

Eventually, I became rather worn out from the industry and went on a long sabbatical. Somehow, through an odd chance meeting, I found myself in a very niche field of creating art to be sandblasted on glass that was installed in mega-yachts. After some time I grew tired, or bored of that, and decided to begin illustrating- for me; which is where I am at nowadays.

How would you describe your artwork?

I see myself as an illustrator. And as an illustrator, I tell stories. To describe what I produce is probably best defined as a perfectionist exercise in line and negative space with bits of watercolour.

Your work is so fantastical and full of narrative, every single piece I look at makes me want to know the story behind it. Where do your ideas and inspirations come from?

Hypnagogia is certainly the wellspring of many of the images and characters, I am overwhelmed, deluged I reckon, with imageries and creatures that seek to be birthed by my pen the next morning. Many of the ideas are born through doodling. And as they emerge onto the parchment I begin to know their disposition and story and I am deeply compelled to tell their history. No doubt I too was deeply influenced from rich the illustrations and engravings from the scores of old children’s books I profusely read as a youth.

Do you have any advice for aspiring illustrators or artists?

My advice is very simple- stay away from puerile social commentary. I see so many young artists, (and too many older artists), that want to give an opinion on the “World Condition”. The only condition you should have any concern about is hair conditioner. Avoid drawing celebrities…there is only so many ways you can illustrate Marilyn Monroe or P-Diddy. And somebody has already drawn them better than you. But first, you must really know what it is you want to do with your art…your purpose behind the pen or paintbrush.

Are you working on any upcoming projects?

I am working on a manuscript, a children’s fairy tale of sorts, which I am in long process of writing and illustrating. It has taken me a while to remember…but my “purpose behind the pen and paintbrush” is to write and illustrate my own works.

You can find Kevin hanging out at his Facebook page and his BlueCanvas portfolio.

Please follow and like us: