Sale Arts Trail 2014 : Friday 11th July - Sunday 13th July

An exciting new event to be held in Sale, Greater Manchester, Friday 11th July - Sunday 13th July : providing the opportunity to visit artists, studios and unusual display spaces in gardens, shops and cafes - all exhibiting and selling the work of professional artists and makers in the Trafford area along with some guest artist.  The weekend will include demonstrations along with the opportunity to speak to and buy direct from the maker.

I will have a selection of work at The Waterside Arts Centre (Venue A : 1 Waterside Plaza, M33 7ZF) and will be showcasing my work at ceramicist, Sarah Malone's studio (Venue I : 45 Stanley Mount, M33 4AF).

The Sale Arts Trail begins with an evening Preview Group Show at The Waterside Arts Centre on Friday 11th July 6-9pm (all welcome), followed by a weekend trail of art studios, art cafes and The Waterside show.

There is a wonderful Facebook album of all participating artists here and event details here.

For all information, find Sale Arts Trail on Facebook and Twitter @saleartstrail.

New Designs and Moulds : The Crystal Palace and Smithfield Market

For the past two weeks I have worked on new resin designs and a range of bangles inspired by The Crystal Palace and Smithfield Market, (working from archive film footage and photographs).  All of these are now at various stages of development from 3D models to part made up blocks.

©Jane Dzisiewski : Cut up photocopies of drawings - Smithfield Market

©Jane Dzisiewski : design produced from a collage of drawings - Smithfield Market

The Crystal Palace - ironwork and windows

©Jane Dzisiewski : Crystal Palace Design

©Jane Dzisiewski : bangle models - new sizes and designs

I also tweaked two of my existing designs and scaled new sizes from these and created a new bangle design for the Crystal Palace work.  The first blocks are now finished so I'll be cutting stones from these today and assessing what changes to make to the resin opacity and colours I've used so far.

©Jane Dzisiewski : resin block - detail

©Jane Dzisiewski : resin block - detail

For the colours I have been referring to the Pantone Colour forecasts for Spring and Autumn 2013 (see here).  I've also introduced references from The Grammar Of Ornament by Owen Jones as this contains the information he used for The Crystal Palace when he was overseeing the creation of the various exhibition Courts.

Owen Jones - The Grammar of Ornament : Moresque Designs - Alhambra Palace

I've been mixing various blues, reds, blacks, creams, off-whites and metal colours.  The image below I found on Tumblr gives an idea of the range of colours I have been mixing within this remit.

Pinterest : Tumblr image - no record of  citation

©Jane Dzisiewski : resin block detail after first sand

There's now two and a half weeks until The Contemporary Craft Festival in Bovey Tracey and much is still to be done!  For all festival information, list of exhibitors and details on advance ticket sales, please see their website here.

The Crystal Palace: An historical patchwork

Fuzzy photographs and lithographs. Piecing together research for the Crystal Palace is like trying to complete a giant jigsaw puzzle with most of the components missing.

A patchwork of information and a patchwork of pattern.

The Crystal Palace, 1851

The Crystal Palace: blurred images - filling in the gaps

The Crystal Palace, 1851

The Crystal Palace, 1854 - lithograph

©British Heritage The Crystal Palace, 1854 - The Alhambra Court : Owen Jones

Owen Jones’s interpretation of the Alhambra Palace inside The Crystal Palace is known as one of the best examples of Victorian Polychromy ever created.  It is virtually impossible to make out the individual patterns from Delamotte's photographs but Jones relied heavily on his collection of pattern "The Grammar of Ornament" when designing the various Courts inside the Palace.  This was the first book I purchased when I started my Printed Textiles Degree at Manchester Metropolitan University back in 1986 and it soon became my reference bible for pattern and has remained so ever since.

Below are three images of the Doha Tower, Qater under construction which depict a snapshot in my minds eye of how it must have been inside the Crystal Palace - in this case, the layering of Arabic forms over an ironwork structure. 

Doha Tower, Qatar - Jean Nouvel Architecture

Doha Tower, Qatar - Jean Nouvel Architecture: under construction

 

Doha Tower, Qatar - Jean Nouvel Architecture

Jane Dzisiewski - patchwork star

The Crystal Palace: a patchwork of pattern

Walking around this vast, 'Victorian Pleasure Dome' with exhibits from all over the world must have been a very overwhelming experience.  The "Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park - Facsimile edition of 1856 official guide" lists for example the following Courts:-

Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Alhambra, Assyrian, Bzantine and Romanesque, Medieval, Renaissance, Elizabethan, Italian, Stationary, Birmingham, Sheffield, Pompeian, Musical Instruments, Foreign Glass Manufacture, Ceramic, Sculpture Galleries (English, German, Greek, Roman, French, Italian, Gothic, Renaissance), Portrait Galleries (English, German, Greek, Roman, French, Italian), Industrial, Geology.

The Crystal Palace Guide Book listing 203 of the 217 sculptures within the Greek Court

Alongside the museum like Courts, there were also hundreds of market stalls selling goods from across all the Continents - as well as exhibits of industry, machinery and photography.  What photographs and lithographs there are were mainly taken for advertising purposes, so very little photographic evidence is in existence of the less high brow side to the exhibits within Crystal Palace, or even of the ironwork and glass structure itself.  I find this frustrating because I want to see the nuts and bolts and not just the shiny version of events.  Regardless of this, I primarily see what I always look for and that is pattern and negative space - and I see this everywhere.  I will be be bringing this to my work and filling in the gaps with my interpretation of how the Crystal Palace experience must have been for the visitors. 

The Crystal Palace - lithograph: Open gallery towards the garden

I've included the picture below because it is one of the few images I have seen which actually shows that the Crystal Palace was not just a place for the social elite.  The lithograph above depicts sedate Victorian society enjoying the Crystal Palace in virtual solitude, whereas the Palace was one of the most visited places with over 100 million visitors during its 80 year existence.  This painting by Blaikley is at odds with the normal paraphernalia produced and manages to capture the atmosphere and bustle within the Crystal Palace at the height of its popularity.

The Crystal Palace: Painting of the interior by A. Blaikley 1866