Why don’t you come on over, Valerie?

Well, Open Studios is over for another year, but I just wanted to show you our greeter-lady, Valerie.

I have a folder full of display ideas, but I really wanted this one – a lovely vintage lady standee just like ones I had seen here on Nicky Grace’s blog.

Mum set to work and found the original on google images, she was a Jantzen advertising girl.

We blew her up to just over 5 feet tall (from about 12”) and used a free website called blockposters.com to print her out tiled onto A4 sheets. Mum added a skirt and also a half moon to the bottom to help her stand up and to strengthen those little ankles.

Mum transferred the image to a sheet of 1cm thick MDF (£6 from Wickes for 2’ x 6’). Transferring an image onto a soft material like wood is easy – place the template over the top and redraw the lines, pressing hard with something like a ballpoint pen. When you remove the template you should be able to see the groove left behind by the pen.

The cutting out is the only bit I did! Mum’s not a friend of power tools, but I am. A quick whiz with the jigsaw and we had this:

And then mum did her painting thing:

You’ve got to admit, she’s very good at it!

And here’s Valerie greeting visitors to our workshop!

Isn’t she amazing?

Beccy

Working like a demon…

I’ve been working very hard to make things for York Open Studios – I’ve pretty much got everything made and fired (bar a few stragglers!) but I still have to do all the decoration.

Once my work has been bisq and glaze fired, there is one final step – adding the decals. Decals are water-slide transfers that fire on to the glazed ceramic and become a permanent feature. The decals that I use are all reproductions of vintage images – I’ve even seen some of them on original vintage plates! – that I buy from a family company that has been producing them for a long, long time.

They come in a large sheet which you cut up then soak in water to release the decal from the backing paper. Then you slide it onto the glazed area and fire it in the kiln. Aren’t they beautiful? I must admit I can’t resist buying them.

I realised yesterday that I had about forty things to decal!

Half of them need the vintage decals and those little pots in the foreground will have custom decals that I’m waiting for (shouldn’t really have ordered them during the Week Of Bank Holidays!)

Well, I’ve managed to get the vintage ones done this morning. Tomorrow I’m going to make some little wheels for my little houses and as soon as the custom decals arrive, I’ll be applying them like mad! Then it’s all fire, fire, fire.

I got some gorgeous packaging delivered this morning so I need to brand that too.

It’s all go round my house!

Beccy

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Last week, our boss decided to take us on a daytrip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. This is a place we normally take the students at least once a year, so it was a bit of a busman’s holiday. On the other hand, it was nice to actually get to see the sculptures rather than spending all day herding the students out of the cafe and towards the art!

It has rained non-stop for weeks now so it was a pleasant surprise to have nice weather for a change.

There are two huge galleries (showing Miro and Anish Kapoor at the moment) and the park is so big you have a choice of a trek or a shuttle bus from one gallery to the other. It’s a nice walk though with lots of huge sculptures on the way.

It’s a shame you can’t take photo’s in the galleries, but the nice staff will inform you that you can’t take photo’s in the park either (but that no-one will actually stop you!)

In case you were wondering, here’s how you clean a Miro sculpture – with a sweeping brush and a bucket of water. We normals aren’t even allowed to touch this one.

The park stretches right over to the other side of the valley.

They were erecting a life-sized inflatable replica of Stonehenge that morning. It’s a bouncy castle made by Jeremy Deller and titled Sacrilege but we didn’t get a go on it. Boo.

A short video of them trying to get it up *chortle*

If you find yourself anywhere near Wakefield, it’s definitely worth a visit (although give yourself four or five hours!).

Beccy

Busy, busy, busy!

I’ve been very busy since Open Studios getting ready for my next exhibition, ‘Traces of Elsewhere’ which opens this Saturday 5th May at Studio Eleven in Hull.

It’s very exciting to be exhibiting – I don’t want to sound melodramatic, but maybe this is one of those life-changing experiences I’ve been waiting (read probably procrastinating) for? It happened out of the blue. One day in October I got an email from the lovely people at Studio Eleven asking if I would submit some work for an exhibition. Of course I said yes and last Saturday I delivered several boxes of ceramics to the gallery.

I can’t expect that to happen every week though! I know we make our own opportunities really and if I want to reach my ideal of being self-employed then I need to get off my backside and approach galleries myself, and maybe get good at talking to people in real life! It’s scary but I can’t just let the weeks fly by while I while away the hours being cosily domestic, only producing ceramics when occasion demands it – I need to take some chances.

So if you’re in the Hull area it would be lovely to see you on Saturday (go on, introduce yourself) and you can let me know afterwards how good I am at talking to real people.

Beccy

York Open Studios 2012

I’ve been very busy over the past few weeks getting ready for Open Studios. I just thought I’d share a few photo’s of our (unbelievably tidy) workshop all set up for the show. I also need to say a big thank you to my mum for all her help setting it all up. Thank you!

If you’d like to know (or see) any more, you can visit my website www.beccyridsdel.co.uk.

Beccy

 

I made an exhibition of myself

I just wanted to show you some photos of the Night Scented Stocks exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York that featured my work last month.

This was really my excuse for going to New York in the first place!

More information here, and here

Beccy