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February 2012
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Archive for the Uncategorized Category

New Blog for Art, Ecology and Learning

From December 2010 I will no longer be adding to this blog but will be blogging from a new site at -

www.jamesaldridge-artist/blog

You can continue to visit here for information on past projects, but please update your bookmarks or sign up for email updates to keep up to date with my new blog.

Both my website addresses will remain the same -

http://www.jamesaldridge-artist.co.uk

http://www.creative-ecology.co.uk

Journeys - An Installation: College Lake, nr Tring

New View Exhibition - Bath Artists Studios Gallery

I’ll be showing two pieces at BANA’s (Bath Area Network for Artists) New View group exhibition next month, Field and Snail, both framed mixed-media work, and both for sale.

New View will run from Friday 29th October to Saturday 6th November, and is open from 11.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m.

The show will be held at Bath Artists Studios Gallery, see here for how to get there.

Bumble Bee

bee.jpg

 

I think its a queen buff tailed bumble bee, but I could be wrong… http://www.plantpress.com/wildlife/o441-bufftailedbumblebee.php

(Have to remember to take my camera not just my phone to the studio next time)

Adam’s Grave on the Pewsey Downs

A beautiful cold day yesterday up in the Pewsey Downs NNR. Lovely to get back up above everything and breathe in the wide open spaces.

Taken into the low bright sun, I like the way that the phone photos distort, blur and change the colour slightly, taking on a more painterly, dreamlike feel, with the tonal quality of an old faded postcard.

adam.jpg

jon.jpg

rays.jpg

There’s more info on Adams Grave longbarrow on Walkers Hill and the surrounding area on the Natural England website - http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/designatedareas/nnr/1006120.aspx

Fyfield Down

I went to Fyfield Down again recently. Set up above Avebury, I used to walk there sometimes when we were living Marlborough.

It is a much more wild and windswept feeling place than most of Wiltshire, and the Sarsen boulders lying along the hillsides really give it the feel of an upland moor in Wales or Cornwall, rather than a patch of the Wiltshire countryside.

The visit linked in well with the work that I’m doing around Stonehenge, with its huge Sarsens from this area and the smaller Bluestones from west Wales.

www.wessexarch.co.uk/projects/wiltshire/boscombe/bowmen/stonehenge_bluestones.html

This time we walked along the Ridgeway to get there, on a misty and drizzly morning. Very atmospheric and pretty soggy… here’s a few photos from my phone.

fyf-grass.jpg fyf3.jpg

fyf2.jpg fyfield1.jpg

For info on how to get there, see…

www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/designatedareas/nnr/1006057.aspx

In the Detail

There is such a wealth of life and beauty all around me at this time of year… insects flying and crawling on every surface, plants growing up and exposing flowers; the details in the landscape that mix, meet and flow.

Sometimes its enough to notice things, to pay attention to the amazingly intricate world that we depend on, to watch and wonder - to me that is as much of being an artist as any making, paid work or exhibition.

bug.jpg

bfly2.jpg

wasp.jpg

 

Twitter

giving twitter a bit of a go if you fancy looking me up… jamesaldridge4

and if you wonder why… so did I but I thought I’d try it and see. Let me know if you’re on there too.

bm-figures.jpg

image from British Museum

Marks and Signs

railway-sign.jpg

I took a walk around the village yesterday and took some photos of the different drains, manholes and signs that are dotted around the road sides and surfaces.

sign.jpg

I am attracted to the combination of the ‘man-made’ imagery and the worn and corroded surfaces, which link with the appropriated natural history imagery and cut/stitched/distressed materials in my work… a link between the image and object, man-made and natural.

hole-in-road.jpg

For me these things are an expression of ‘one-ness’ and highlight the beauty to be found in the everyday.

manhole.jpg

Pieces of the Puzzle

I think my work has always aimed to gather together seemingly disparate elements… crossing perceptual barriers and making connections. The way I make artwork echoes this and the way I have come to see the landscape does too… fragments linking together to create a whole that we are too often taught not to see.

post.jpgpaintmetal.jpg

plain.jpgleaf-puddle.jpg