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Art Allotments
By: Heather Prescott
Art Allotments is our collage exchange project where we regularly send each other envelopes containing our rejected art work of drawings, roughs, prints & abandoned ideas together with interesting emphera and text.
One extra condition that we made for ourselves is that once a package is opened the contents must be used to make a collage as quickly & intuitively as possible.
Heather Prescott
We are Angela Martin an artist and cartoonist & Heather Prescott a print maker. We use our artists compost piles to create new ideas ... hence our name Art Allotments. After several months, four exhibitions and a break the project continues .....
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Bird Hat
# 31 [11 February 2011]
Well I have, at last, made a collage from the last envelope of stuff - I began with the coloured pile. and an extra piece of strong colour that had got overlooked. It became the all important starting point.
Bird imagary has crept in. I have resisted it up until now as I see so many birds in cages in design & art work and to use that motif always feels a little like plaigerism.
However, this bird, hat & figure arrived spontaneously from a conversation with Angela and refused to be rejected so it has stayed with a multiplicity of meanings and associations that can be choosen by the viewers.
This will be the last collage for the time being. On Monday the exhibition goes up. ... 10 artists, 30 plus pieces of work and more in browsers. Then on Tuesday it quietly opens.
Where will art allotments go now ......?
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The wall in progress
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A postcard
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An exploding (growing) postcard
# 32 [26 February 2011]
Today was the last day of a really good two weeks of the Art Allotments exhibition. It has been open in the Visual Arts Network community Gallery in the (new) market hall in Shrewsbury which is is not the easiest place to find located on the top floor. Even so 80 visitors came through on the busiest day.
The feed back was really positive and exciting. many were excited by the idea of one artist having fun using another artists reject work to make some new work of their own. Already others have taken up the idea. A small group of jewellers are now organising a scrap metal art allotments and A quilter immediatly saw the possibilities for textile artists.
Lots of people of all ages stopped to chose an envelope of collage and make a postcard size art work to hang on the wall. We also received emails of thanks saying how much people had enjoyed themselves which was a great feeling after all the work we had done.
Here are just a few images to give a taste of the project
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Comments on this post
Thanks to Heather and Angela for a rewarding half hour or more at the exhibition. I enjoyed tackling the “envelope” and it was an opportune moment to give me impetus for starting some collage projects as part of my ongoing degree course. As you have documented so well in this blog, the collage process is absorbing and inspiring. There are, often surprising, ways in which it opens out thinking in use of colour, texture, pattern and many other compositional elements, but most importantly for me right now, negative space. So easy to lose sight of the power of negative space. The original concept for exchanging raw materials and reject work to develop new ideas is wonderful. You are now at a point of wondering where the project may go next. I would be intrigued to see the results of all sorts of different art allotment exchanges such as: * Intergenerational – eg artwork and materials could be gathered by school children and a group of more “senior” artists for exchange; * Intercultural – between artists of different ethnic or national origin – how would their respective cultural references emerge and combine? * Between high profile artists – how fascinating to see how quite different pairings might interpret each other’s material, and would their respective styles be apparent. One of the key things for me, is that the exchange of visual material to create a new art work is a non-confrontational, collaborative approach that could help form new links between quite disparate groups that may not normally communicate with each other. It would also be interesting to see how the same set of materials could be used and interpreted by a range of different artists. However, that would mean creating copies which, besides the technical difficulties, is going away from the original principles of using spare and reject materials. Good luck with which ever way you go next.
posted on 2011-03-16 by Andrew Howe
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Some post cards cast shadows that added a new suprising aspect.
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A surfer & shark
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# 33 [13 March 2011]
Yesterday was the official opening of the exhibition at the SPARC centre Gallery in Bishops Castle. A steady flow of visitors of all ages came and saw the exhibition, made a postcard & ate cake.
The exhibition will be up until the end of the month.
As the wall of images built up over the morning people became ever more creative. It was a strange feeling to think that this part of the project which we had been involved in for nearly two years was coming to an end. Angela & I have resolved that we will continue to share collage envelopes between the two of us and wait and see - what next. We still have a basket of envelopes left - so who knows what we will use them for in the future. Ideas, I feel, are already rising to consciousness.
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"Go Cancer"
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# 34 [17 March 2011]
Here are a few more images. More good feedback keeps coming in but one postcard was very moving. Someone took an envelope away and then returned the flower image she had created writing on the bottom edge of the card "Go cancer" It brought home to me again how "art can seriously improve someones well being"
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# 35 [2 February 2012]
Although this blog virtually stopped for months on end the project carried on. There were more workshops and occasional exchanges of envelopes between Angela & myself.
However 2012 has brought new ideas, new enthusiasm, and new plans for workshops and exhibitions.
The reason Art allotments keeps going is the positive impact the collages have on creativity. When ideas flag, a project hits the wall or a design gets stuck and generates rejects and a lot of recycling it helps to put it to one side and open an Art Allotments envelope instead.
The alternative is abandon a current piece of work and change direction then put the rejects in an envelope and put in the post.
Here are the most recent results.
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