April 2013
This is a selection of prints, postcards, business cards and
t-shirts featuring the designs I have produced since I started Illustration 1,
either as course work or as personal projects or commissions.
Concentrarte (street art market)
5th May
I
posted this photo to my facebook art page
which
I took part in for the first time today.
It generated lots of interest, I took over 175€ in sales, got some great feedback, gave out lots of business cards and have been
asked to follow up contacts for further sales of a limited edition print, a
commission for a mural and more cockerel stencil work. I sold out of cockerel
postcards... it was a huge boost to my confidence and great fun.
Here I am behind my stall,
wearing a self-promoting t-shirt.
My next steps are to replenish my postcard
stocks, update my paper portfolio, frame some prints for my forthcoming
exhibition in June (the gallery owners are coming down for dinner this week to
help me choose which pieces to include), send some prints to a group show in London, frame more prints for a guest house in
Cadiz, follow up my street market contacts, get cracking on my t-shirt screen
printing project and adapt my El Palmar logo for a local guest house.
Casa del Arco Exhibition
We have set a date for the opening (Sunday June 23rd)
and the house photographer has been down to photograph the pieces which I plan
to show. It turns out that a second room in the gallery may also be free so I
hope to be able to take the opportunity to show more work and use that space as
well.
So far I have made a plan and a price list and hope to confirm which pieces will be included this coming week (10-16 June).
The plans...
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| patio |
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| sala |
...Alain, the gallery owner, has asked me to take everything (as in all the work I have) with me on Monday next week (17th June) when we'll start to prepare the rooms; that way we'll have the whole week to work out how to make the best possible use of the space, he's more for mixing up the styles whereas in my plans I've tried to group pieces together according to materials and themes (eg portraits- digital and charcoal, collage, pen and watercolour drawings etc). The sala at least needs repainting and I've been given permission to stencil a line of cockerels at floor level all the way round the walls.
I'm making a holder/dispenser for my business cards (printed at http://uk.moo.com/)
out of drift wood, nails and bottle caps
and here it is finished
June 18th
I've been stenciling cockerels in the gallery for the last two days (15 down, 15 to go) here are the first 7
and it's all go on the publicity
https://www.facebook.com/events/423678804406307/
and my work is ready to hang (...it took 2 days)
June 23rd
The opening was a great success and great fun (despite feeling exhausted from a full on week of preparations), I had some wonderfully positive feedback: the most interesting being from a retired illustrator who became disillusioned from selling his work to ad agencies and said he thought my diverse range of styles was a great asset; an Italian lady whose chosen art form is embroidery who would like to organise an exhibition of my work in Genoa and a young, local graphic designer who says he can always pick out the superior quality of designs started as pencil sketches as opposed to those started from scratch on a computer. We have agreed to meet again after the summer as he would like some tips on using the craquelure/stain technique to embellish his photographs and I would like some insight into the basics of adobe illustrator.
I sold a good few postcards and a collage.
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| Photograph of a visitor photographing my cockerels |
Accompanying text
At
the suggestion of Alain, I approached a
few people to see if they would write some text to go with my exhibition. One
of these was Jackie Cornwall who recently commissioned the painting ‘Rosas
Amarillas para Adrián’.
Jackie is a British writer who lived in St Ives and is now
settled in Vejer.
This is what she wrote:
"I came to Kathryn Hockey’s art through a St. Ives prism,
seeing in her clear colours and careful outlines the legacy of Ben Nicholson,
Christopher Wood and Bryan Pearce. How wonderful then, that when I asked her to
create a painting for a friend’s birthday, she gave me that most quintessential
St. Ives discovery, a windowless windowsill! Her work vibrates with a
life-affirming joie de vivre. Her ability to find colour and interest in
unregarded objects is one of the most engaging aspects of her art.
Everything in Kathryn’s work has its own glamour, from
bulging gas bottles to clustered flowers. A white skull, an elegantly strutting
rooster, a squadron of peppers are almost tamed by her instinct for line and
pattern, but in their exuberant colours nature has its way. A dancer’s boots,
crowned with roses and creased with use, lead our eyes into a looking-glass
world. Beyond her delicately wrought
townscapes dance the lights of infinite possibility.
Sometimes cartoonish and stylised, sometimes lovingly
detailed, her people are not strangers; they look straight into our hearts, and
whether they smile, wink knowingly or merely look out at us from the sanctuary
of their own thoughts, we know them and their humanity. To encounter one of her
subjects is to find a friend. Her animals, too, are real personalities.
Kathryn’s work would enliven any context, but in the
brilliant light of the Costa de la Luz her feel for both colour and line have
come together in a unique combination. She is a true artist, one who makes art
out of everything she sees, and I trust that in the future, her reputation will
increase as she deserves.”
Alain has chosen this text to go on the reverse of the exhibition
flyer.
To be honest it’s like reading about somebody else- the
artist I’d like to be. Maybe, just maybe, despite my doubts and periodic crises
of confidence, I am on the right track.
It is enormously flattering to be mentioned in the same
context as Ben Nicholson, Christopher Wood and Bryan Pearce, I have been
looking at their work in order to find similarities with my own:
In Ben Nicholson’s,
‘Winter Landscape Halsetown’ , he uses subtle colours and cubist shapes to
represent the landscape dotted with houses, his textural use of oil paint (in
contrast to my watercolours) are accompanied by fine black line work.
This fine, energetic line work is also evident in the drawing
‘Tree at Sava’ on the same page.
I can see a similarity between the naive rendering of Bryan Pearce’s townscapes and my own in
this
and the windowless windowsill theme with a flattened
perspective is evident here
Problems, hiccups and things to learn from:
- postcards- there was some philosophical discussion as to whether inclusion of postcards in the exhibition was valid artistically. I love postcards; I have a collection of them and I love to send them. I also like to offer people the opportunity to own a little piece of my work at little cost, the income from postcard sales is small but it means I can repeatedly earn money from an image, which can then, theoretically end up anywhere in the world. I submitted my gallery plan with a display of framed postcards included and no objection was made until I came to hang them when it was suggested that they be placed on a board and all hung as one piece. What did not become apparent until afterwards was that one of the gallery team also feared that his work would be disrupted by people repeatedly asking to buy them. I apologised to him once I found out (slightly mystified that he hadn't mentioned his misgivings before) and offered alternative arrangements for sales (there's a paper workshop nearby that sells my cards) but another gallery team member insisted that we continue as planned and address any problems as they arise.
- images on the webpage-whilst incredibly grateful for the work the gallery team had put into photographing my work and uploading the images to their facebook page as a catalogue, I was disappointed by the quality of some of the images, particularly the watercolours as they lacked light and brightness. I tried to overlook this but since this maybe the first and only time that people see my work, in the end I decided to point this out in a very apologetic email with my better versions of the images in question attached and an offer to replace them myself.
- sales-because there are many tourists visiting the town and gallery in the summer months there is a chance that anyone wanting to buy a piece will want to take it there and then, and not wait until the exhibition is dismantled. The gallery team asked me to OK this, and while I'm not entirely happy with the disruption of the carefully arranged hanging I think this is probably the best way to deal with it. Alternatively I could ship the pieces once the exhibition came down which would be expensive and potentially damage the work. At the opening a friend of the gallery team asked me place a red sticker on a piece he wanted, without paying a deposit, later someone else expressed interest in buying the same piece but I felt I had to tell her that it was sold...without having received any money. I feel awkward about asking a friend of the gallery team for a deposit but truly that is the only way to secure the sale.
- my own work?-I was persuaded, probably against my better judgment, to include some collaged pieces in the exhibition which break copyright laws. Here is a video catalogue of the exhibited pieces including those which contain snippets of other artists' work.
Mid-September
update: I’m just about to take the exhibition down and saw the gallery owner
today; he told me that they had hugely enjoyed hosting my exhibition, that I
had sold more work than any exhibition they had had so far and they had learnt
a lot from it, especially in terms of how well the post cards sell and they
plan to include postcard versions of all art works where possible in future
exhibitions, including those of the artist in residence.
This exhibition was a tremendously positive experience for me too in terms of organising my work, positive feedback and sales. I'm extremely grateful to have had this opportunity.
Sept 17th Yesterday I took down my work and painted over the cockerels...people had been asking me since the beginning of the exhibition what would happen to the cockerels and I had replied that they would be painted over, that it was the nature of street/ mural art to be transient and that I had accepted it from the start...but it was sad to see them go.
TEN Exhibition
I have been invited to submit two pieces to a group show in London which runs from 11th July to 11th September.
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| TEN flyer |
"This is an invitation
to be part of TEN, a proposed exhibition celebrating 10 years of THE ARTS
PROJECT bringing artwork into health care locations in Camden and Islington
with the support of THE NORTH LONDON NHS CHARITABLE FUND supporting activity
not otherwise covered by NHS Funding.
Since 2002, THE ARTS PROJECT has presented 120 exhibitions
in 4 locations and instigated funding for projects including a major artwork
installation in ward entrance areas of South Wing at St Pancras Hospital. The
project has worked with a wide range of creative /professional artists, from
within staff, local community and service users across Camden and Islington. It
has also offered volunteering possibilities to an increasing number of
university students from UCL as well as continuing to support a range of people
with work skills.
An opportunity has
arisen for a unique 2 month long exhibition at the CONFERENCE CENTRE in ST
PANCRAS HOSPITAL which after an uncertain period has now consolidated itself as
the site for the Foundation Trust. The exhibition would open aprox Thursday 11/7/13
and run until 11/9/13 ( tbc) . THE ARTS PROJECT is first of all inviting
selected artists who have been supported by the exhibitions over the last 10
years to be part of a group show.
As there are a large
number of artists involved over 10 years
, it will not be possible to invite everyone associated with the project ,
although we are pleased to invite you, based on factors such as range of work
developed alongside the project, interest from buyers and the pleasure of
working with you.
The idea of the exhibition is to present artwork on the idea of
progress which you are welcome to express as freely as possible, for example
reflecting your artwork during the last ten years or more abstract treatments
of the idea of progress with life in general."
These are the two pieces I have chosen
Head
Jauja
and this is my contextual note
"The two pieces ‘Head’ and ‘Jauja’ (pronounced ‘Howha’ meaning
paradise in Spanish) are separated by just over TEN years. I started the
drawing ‘Head’ in 2001 while doing a refresher course in dentistry; I’d taken a
two year career break during which I’d felt thwarted in my efforts to express
my artistic potential in southern Spain and London. I dreamt of returning to
Spain and art while instead I was resuming a safe career. Several twists and
turns later and I’m now based full time in southern Spain, a working artist and
illustrator. I was commissioned to produce ‘Jauja’ by the blues band ‘Mr Groovy
and the Blue Heads’ as an illustration for their CD cover in 2012. I have
various other commissions completed and in progress and am currently preparing
for a three month exhibition in a local gallery. I am studying
illustration as a distance learning course and expect to finish the final
module early next year."
Click here to go to the TEN facebook page
Screen-printing T shirts
13 June
Courtesy of my very kind boyfriend I now have a screen ready to print my single colour logo for El Palmar (the seaside village where I live)
Details of design development here http://kathrynhockeyocalog.blogspot.com.es/2013/03/project-el-palmar-logo.html
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| logo |
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| screen |
I printed five t-shirts first off, three old ones and two new ones I'd bought especially...of course, according to the law of sod, the prints on the old shirts came out perfectly while there was some disappointing smudging on the new shirts...
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| straight from the screen, drying in the sun |
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| smudgy letters |
I really wanted to wear a new shirt with a perfect logo to a party in the village the following night (show off...) so I decided to have one more go on a new t and this time it came out perfectly.
I've had an idea to try to improve the appearance of the smudged lettering; I will try to mask it with screen printing inks the same colour as the shirts applied with a fine paint brush...worth a try.
10th July
A local beach-side market stall holder with many years experience has just said that he thinks the El Palmar shirts will 'fly off the shelves' during high season if I can produce them cheap enough. Time to research t-shirt wholesalers.
17th July
More El Palmar t-shirts for the local summer markets
September update: sadly the market stall holder was overly optimistic, I sold a couple and my Dad had one but in retrospect I don't think I researched the market well enough in terms of colours and styles.
16th June
Feathers
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| Feathers screen, ready to print |
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| T shirts, drying in the sun |
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| solid white ink |
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| pink and white inks mixed on the screen |
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| colours mixed on the screen again |
Cockerels
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| screen drying before masking with tape |
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| t-shirts drying in the sun |
So now I have a choice of 3 t-shirts to wear to my gallery opening this coming Sunday, the cockerel has become the emblem of the show so that seems the most obvious choice although with over 30 stenciled in one room this might be considered overkill!
Yet more cockerels
10th July
I was commission to stencil another pair of cockerels in another beautiful town house in Vejer
the owner is delighted and thinking of having yet more....
End July
More screen prints, this time on a denim jacket
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