Another connection with long roots is the dark, uncompromising graphic work of Tony Évora. From the Cuban design studio that produced the iconic design of Che Guevara, he was a part-time tutor on my graphic design course. Especially for this show, we traced him to Madrid, where he now lives and works (thus making him The First Gallery's most far-flung exhibitor!) Some of his images from this period (the 1980s) are a fusion of birds and people. Also new to us is artist-blacksmith Charles Normandale, whose natural sculptural forms typify the essence of Flights of Fancy. His Swallow design is a distillation of flight, rather than a depiction of it.
E-mail: sisters@calypsodesign.co.uk Website: www.calypsodesign.co.uk
We ran across Al Baker (not literally!!) on our Millennium trip to Scotland. By day, as it were, he works for Greenpeace (in a non-activist role, I gather) and his "green" outlook influences his use of found deer-horn to carve, which necessarily restricts the scale of his work. He is self-taught.
Allan Bennett is another 'find' through the R.M. Smith circle. Trained at Kingston Art School in the late 40s, he spent the next 45 years as veteran of diverse locations and vocations (some not exactly artistic, such as milkman and cycle-repairer!) while acquiring various practical skills, most relevantly, welding. Now based in Cornwall, he recycles cast-off items into wittily observed sculptures. Although preparing a substantial one-man show at Ramsgate (see newsletter) he readily agreed to make a major piece for this exhibition. He has shown at venues across mid- and southern England for about 20 years and has work in a public collection. Second Vision, held here last June, was one of his biggest solo outings to date. His work is shot through with humour: dark, light, bittersweet, you name it!
Alvin Betteridge is the longest-serving member of our craft "Cabinet", being the only non-family exhibitor for our first Christmas shows (which were our sole events at that time). One of the unsung treasures of the wider ceramics-world (more fool them!) his meditative and organically evolving work conceals much more beneath the surface, a feature reflected in his own persona. He's so modest that, if I give him more page-space than this, he'd probably kill me!!
H.M. Clarke is the person known to most of you as Margery (H.M.C. is her 'painting-name'). She has painted since childhood, but took it up seriously on National Service in 1947, under the tutelage of L. S. Lowry, whom she knew better (and certainly more insightfully) than anyone still living. More works were planned for this exhibition but, as they're not signed, I wasn't sure if they were finished.
Richard Eurich RA (1903-92) lived most of his life on the edge of the New Forest. The paintings here represent both his main facets: a rather surreal clarity and, later in his output, the use of pointillist / impressionist brush-strokes. We met him in 1987, while seeking his son Crispin's photographic work for an exhibition. We are one of several venues marking Richard's 2003 centenary with a show.
Although a "new face", Tony Évora has long links with us. Cuban-born in 1937, he studied art in Havana and Prague. Back home, he became the Cuban Book Institute's art director, designing the widely reproduced images of Che Guevara. In Prague again in 1968, he got caught up in the protests and, rejecting Castro's backing of the Soviets, he exiled himself, eventually to Britain. After designing books, doing an MA in Printmaking, and lecturing at several art colleges, from 1985 he headed the Design Dept. at Oxford Polytechnic. A TV documentary on his life and work was made a year later.
In 1992 he left for Spain, where he is now a musicologist. For over a decade, his imagery used birds to express the fragility of human freedoms. Recent work explores Cuban musical rhythms and Santeria beliefs: he is busy on a show in Miami next Spring. It is 14 years since he has shown in the UK.
Barbara Franc comes recommended by Rachel Bebb of The Garden Gallery, Broughton (praise enough!) Born in 1954 of European origin, Barbara came to art fairly late, in 1988, after a career as a BBC cameraman. Current works combine wires, scrap metal, resin, and weather-resistant paints, so are at home indoors or out. she describes working with wire as "like drawing in three dimensions" because you can change its shape so freely. She has exhibited widely and frequently over the past 1l years.
Mel Howse' stained glass has graced our space at least annually for over five years. Winner of several First and Second Prizes, both as practitioner and student (on the renowned course at Swansea Institute, where she was chosen as Artist-in-Residence after graduating). A recipient of a Prince's Trust award in 1996, she set up her current workshop, outside Chichester, in 1998. Mel works almost entirely to commission, but because she likes our set-up, she makes things specially for us.
E-mail: enquiries@melhowse.co.uk Website: www.melhowse.co.uk
We met Jim Labbett through the Eurich family and he disappeared from our orbit as suddenly as he arrived. In his mid-30's (?) by now, he initially used to call just to talk and get deep-rooted feelings off his chest. Living totally on his emotional nerve-ends, he fits everyone's mental image of tortured artistic genius: talented, driven, intelligent, solitary, misunderstood, and needing to talk about life's spirituality. He is widely and deeply read, his intense, enquiring mind encompassing both art and literature.
Jacqueline Mair has exhibited with us for over ten years. Working in a variety of paper- / collage oriented media, she has reverted to painting in acrylics for her latest show in Marseille. After an MA in Printmaking at the RCA, various grants and awards enabled her to study-travel in France, Italy, India and, lately, Mexico, where her solo show inaugurated the new British Council HQ. She lectures part time, initially at Falmouth, currently at Portsmouth, where she now lives. Jacqui also designs giftstationery and illustrates books: a volume of children's Mexican Fairy Tales is due out in 2003. E-mail: JHMair@aol.com Website: www.jacquelinemair.co.uk
Peter Markey needs almost no introduction. His card cut-outs and, more recently, designs for wooden versions (under the TimberKits brand) are now widespread in gift-catalogues, toy-shops and at craft-venues. Initially trained in art, he introduced almost single-handedly the graphic, pared-down simplicity of design into the field of automata, for which he is best known. Our long-running tour The Anilmated Eye, focusing on his paintings, established him in many people's view as an artist of equal stature. Long resident in Falmouth, he returned to his native Wales in 1985. His utterly irrepressible enthusiasm and endless fount of ideas seem as vibrant now, at 72, as when we first met 25 years ago.
Niki & Phil Marr and Ykke Sayer design and make jewelry, wall-decorations and gardenware in the form of insects, birds, etc. The Marrs set up their E. Sussex workshop in 1992, after first meeting at Camberwell Art School on a silversmithing & metalwork degree course. Hand-making everything, they follow "traditional low-tech methods applied to contemporary designs". Niki works in brass & copper (the clock is hers) Phil in silver, gold and stones. Ykke is Dutch and "helps Phil make the dragonflies"!
E-mail: philandniki@zoom.co.uk
Elizabeth Nash lives and works at Broughton, in the Test Valley. A printmaker of impressively versatile technique, she has recently branched into fabric-painting. Trained at W. Sussex and Bristol in the late 60s, she now regularly exhibits and teaches chiefly across Wessex (though she has been in mixed shows in Glasgow and London). Her larger silk-paintings are mainly for theatre-companies, but two hangings, designed specially for the exhibition In Praise of Trees at the 2002 Salisbury Festival, formed the backdrop to concerts in the West End of the Cathedral. She participates in the Test Valley Open Art event each year and was involved in the Millennium community project, Broughton Banners.
After a full apprenticeship and work at a large commercial concern, Charles Normandale set up his Wheely Down Forge in the Meon Valley in 1984. While producing mainly to order, he submits to many competitions and exhibitions, as well as appearing widely in print. This is only his second "toedip" into working especially for a gallery setting. Recently, using the (for him) unfamiliar medium of wrought iron, Charles made all the street-furniture for Fareham's Henry Cort Millennium Exhibition. (Cort owned an industrial complex there and devised large-scale processes for manufacturing and treating wrought-iron, giving Britain the edge in the Napoleonic Wars and during the Railway Age).
E-mail: wheely@dircon.co.uk
David Orchard is Cornish and has worked with wood all his life, although he is totally self-taught. Before retiring, he was the technician in the Civil Engineering Dept. at the University for many years, in which capacity he made the former Fine Arts Dept. showcase in the Nuffield Theatre foyer. David has shown here since at least the mid-80s, and has made his stylised, pyrographed ("hot-needle") carving almost a hallmark. His book Techniques of Wood Sculpture was published by Batsford in 1994.
Robert Race has held three very successful exhibitions here. His background as a science-teacher served him well during his transition to full-time toy-making. He pioneered, in automata-circles, the use of driftwood as a medium in the mid-gos. He has a full programme: early last year, he was invited to Japan (where they know a thing or two about moving toys!) for a month, exhibiting and researching. Each July he runs a week-long course at Oxford Summer School. He is also the owner-operator of a real working carousel, which he runs at outdoor events, during gaps in his frenetic schedule.
Taja is a disciple, if not a pupil, of Sandy Brown (the ceramicist who shook up the rather staid North Devon craft-world in about 1980 with her brightly coloured wares, and ditto... um... Lifestyle!) Of Oriental extraction, like Sandy's former husband, Takeshi Yasuda, Taja pots from a small studio in Moretonhampstead on Dartmoor, a town becoming quite a mecca for pottery-lovers. All his work (though probably not his lifestyle!) exhibits the quirky element evident in the candle-holder on show.
Chris Williams began taking photographs when, aged seven, he was given a Zeiss Ikon Nettar camera. His life-long interest in wildlife images has intensified in the last decade. His aim to succeed in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition has so far netted a "Special Commendation" in the British Wildlife Section of the 2001 event, so his work has been exhibited, toured worldwide and published. In daily life he is a highly respected member of the medical scientific community.
Trained as a painter, Cardiff-born Clive Bowen turned to potting in the mid-60s, partly lured by the possibility of seeing more of the daughter of Michael Leach, the man who trained him!! (This must have worked, as he later married her). Concurrently, he became part of Michael Cardew's circle of potters, helping out with firings at Wenford Bridge in Cornwall. Clive still lives and works at the same site where he first set up in 1971, evolving at a 'human' pace and weaving new strands into and out of what was, at the time, the moribund North Devon pottery tradition. Widely considered the finest slip-trail decorator of his generation (a skill informed by the fluidity of his painting technique) he remains true to himself and his materials, unfazed by such accolades as a solo exhibition at Tate St. Ives.
Long defunct, The Chagford Gallery on Dartmoor (run by the lady behind the absolutely must-see Mythic Garden exhibitions) was the source of most of our early pot-buying for several years. Our very first purchase of a "real" pot was a Clive goblet, before we even knew his name, in about 1973, about the time our Christmas Shows were restarting in a new guise.
Geoff Gill lived in Cornwall and died prematurely in the 1980s. A zoologist or vet (I can't recall which) he turned to making his beautifully observed mobiles for a living. Adapting a traditional mechanism he used his ornithological knowledge to vary the weighting of the wings, so each species flaps naturalistically.
We have shown John Maltby's work for nearly 20 years. Yet another artist who has settled in the West Country, his work was also among the earliest items of contemporary "craft" pottery we ever bought. Constantly exploring new directions, John had his last creative change forced upon him by heart-trouble, preventing him from making large pots, which were a risk for him to lift. In the early 1980s he was making serial use of very simplified archetypal images, e.g. stained-glass windows, ships, the moon, childlike flowers and the "crow" motif featured on the lidded box and two tiles on display. The models are earlier, part of a parallel, more light-hearted side, which is rarely seen together with his so-called "serious" work.
I met Suzie Marsh by chance at her art degree-show, while visiting those of ex-fellow graphics students from the year below me. I bought one piece (in similar vein to this) on the spot. In 1984, we mounted what I believe was her first (almost) solo show — as a "Special Feature" in our Annual Show — and continue to be enthusiastic supporters of her progress. She began her art-training at Brighton on a textiles course, but when she switched to Exeter, the staff tried to dissuade her from pursuing animal sculpture (inexplicably, as the College seemed to have a fine tradition of it). In reaction (probably unconsciously) Suzie produced a whole series of wrapped creatures, with the 'fabric' described in clay with this "embryonic sac" effect. Post-degree, she had a period of work with commercial / industrial scale mould-designers, the results of which (plus endless copies, some of dubious merit!) are still to be seen, as decorative soaps, desk-ornaments, etc. in the form of curled-up sleeping cats, in gift-shops and catalogues, country- (and possibly world-) wide. she set up her current business in Cornwall some ten years ago and now lives entirely by the fruits of her labours (and, unusually for a craftsperson, without supplementary teaching).
Eric Meadus (1931 - 70) was born and lived most of his life in Southampton. Prodigiously talented (musically as well as artistically) he died suddenly, aged only 39, just as his vision was beginning to fruit. He and Margery were great friends, at a time when both were finding that intellectual and painterly kindred spirits were thin on the ground. The First Gallery, which has a major collection of his work, would probably not have started at all, were it not for the tantalising goal of gaining Meadus' work the recognition it deserves. The images on show well reflect his quirky, idiosyncratic sense of humour.
Paul Clarke, Curator, Flights of Fancy