Jane Barwood Art

Tag: Visual art

  • “Illuminated by Shadows” Library Installation

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    (Click on images to view larger)

    Last Saturday, 20th June 2015, I installed my work “Illuminated by Shadows” in the Central Library in St Helens.

    The panel explains my motivation and ideas for the work.

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    The themes come from my research for a larger commission that I am currently working on, funded by Heart of Glass, St Helens. I always knew that St Helens was important to the industrial development of the UK but I didn’t realise how important. I would like others to recognise the innovation, creativity, community and sheer hard work that is evident in the town’s history. I feel that many people have been ground down and lost their pride in the town and the belief in their ability to facilitate change.

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    The installation features two illuminated picture boxes with back projections. One box depicts miners leaving Sutton Manor Colliery, the painted shapes and illuminated side-panels represent coal. The image of the colliery is projected from the back of the box onto the wall behind.

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    The other box depicts glass workers in their woollen safety suits outside Pilkington Glass Works. The painted shapes and illuminated side-panels represent cullet (waste glass chippings). The image of the glassworks is also projected from the back of the box onto the wall behind.

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    The other installation piece is a revolving shadow lantern. The four sides depict well-known St Helens buildings grouped by theme – town centre, leisure, glass and coal.

    The ghosts of the past drift across these scenes, in the form of silhouettes. The silhouettes are inspired by a film I discovered on the British Film Institute’s website of workers leaving the St Helens Pilkington glass factory in 1900. The film clearly shows many children amongst the workers, the great-grandparents of St Helens’s present-day population.

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    The installation of my artwork was designed to coincide with the Cultural Hubs pARTSticipate event involving many local arts groups and performers. Senior Arts in Libraries Officer, Owen Hutchings, kindly introduced my work to the attendees.

    While I was setting up the work an ex-miner recognised his old place of work in my colliery picture box. He told me some interesting stories about the dangerous and often scary working conditions down the mines.

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    Thanks to Owen Hutchings and Jess Bowstead from St Helens Libraries for giving me the opportunity to make this, to Stephen Wainwright for allowing me to use information and images from his brilliant website http://www.suttonbeauty.org.uk/ to Liverpool John Moores University staff Lol Baker (FabLab Liverpool) for laser-cutting the panels and Martin Gee for helping with construction of the plinths/boxes and most of all to AJ Malone for helping with construction, technicalities and installation.

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  • “HEART OF GLASS” FAMILY ART CLUB – SATURDAY 4th April 2015

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    This Family Art Club session was led by Nicola Ellis – a sculptor, originally from St Helens but now based in Manchester. Nicola creates non-representational sculptures using unusual and experimental materials. She arrived at the art space with two huge sculptural armatures constructed from wire and decorators expanding foam, and several buckets of premixed papier mache.

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    The participants were shown how to mould and apply the paper mache to the armature, mixing colours and moulding the shape as they liked. New arrivals were initially reluctant to put their hands into the cold, sticky paper mache mix but as soon as they overcame this they began to experience the tactile enjoyment of it. This activity was suitable for all ages and everyone from toddlers to adults was able to have fun with it. At several points throughout the afternoon I noticed a quiet concentration on the faces of everyone involved.

    As the workshop progressed the armatures began to disappear beneath a mixture of pastel colours. We had a couple of problems with lumps of paper mache dropping off, where they had been applied too thickly by over-enthusiastic participants, but this was easily repaired. From time to time we had to carefully lift and turn the wet sculptures so that the entire shapes could be completely covered. By the end of the session the sculptures were complete and resembled organic forms. The texture reminded me of pumice rock but in pastel colours.

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    It was an excellent activity session that perfectly filled the time allowed. It especially appealed to younger participants who sometimes find the more process-involved activities quite difficult.

    The hardest part of the day for us, as facilitators and instructors, was cleaning up afterwards!

    Please click on images below for larger view.

  • “Heart of Glass” Family Art Club – Saturday 6th September 2014

    I was fortunate to be selected to work with artist Gemma Latham for this week’s Family Art Club session. The art club is now running regular fortnightly sessions in the activity space of St Mary’s Market in St Helens.

    Gemma‘s practice is not concerned with producing finished artworks but rather with encouraging public participation in making and creating using traditional crafts.

    I met Gemma earlier in the week to look around The World of Glass museum in St Helens for ideas and inspiration. She was interested in developing an activity that drew upon the town’s history of glass innovation and production. There are a few examples of beautiful stained glass in the museum’s collection and Gemma had the idea to recreate stained glass patterns on the floor of the activity space using stencils and coloured sand (sand being a key ingredient in glass production).

    When Saturday arrived Gemma had prepared a few stencils and brought along lots of different coloured sands. Gemma demonstrated the activity and myself and the other assistant Jacqui both created repeat patterns using the stencils and sand.

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    This started to create interest before we were due to open at 12pm so despite the town centre being especially quiet we had a few excited participants eager to start. We introduced them to the idea of stained glass and our intention to reflect this in the patterns on the floor. As usual, the children grasped the method and ideas very quickly and began making their own creations.

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    We had several returners who had attended and enjoyed previous Family Art Club sessions and stated they would definitely be back in the future. It was a successful and very enjoyable day for all involved. The children and their parents all had fun with the activity and were thrilled with the results. I love participating in the art club sessions. They are always good fun, rewarding and a learning experience for me. I hope I get to do more in the future.

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  • “Heart of Glass” Family Art Club – Saturday 17th May 2014

    “Heart of Glass” Family Art Club – Saturday 17th May 2014

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    This was the second Family Art Club session in this summer’s series that I was employed as Assistant Artist. I previously worked with Lead Artist Robyn Woolston. You can read the blog post for the first session here. On this occasion the Lead Artist was Claire Weetman and the other Assistant Artist was Hannah Bold.

    I was already familiar with Claire’s artistic practice, having worked with her before and having seen some of her exhibitions. Her work involves innovative ways of drawing and I was looking forward to seeing what exciting ideas she had developed for this workshop.

    As Assistant Artist I hoped to learn from greater experience of Claire’s practice and perhaps pick up some ideas and tips that I could use in my own work. In addition, I was keen to see how she had prepared for and how she ran the workshop throughout the day.

    Claire’s theme for this Art Club session was mazes, streets and houses. We sometimes speak of a “maze of streets” and it is easy to get lost in the unknown streets of an unfamiliar city. I believe that the idea for this workshop initiated from Claire’s residency in Shanghai, China. Claire often found herself lost in the streets of Shanghai where the street signs were not only in a different language but using a writing system incomprehensible to a westerner.

    For today’s session Claire brought along neoprene squares and wood blocks for people to make and design their own house stamps with which to print. We prepared a large maze on the floor of the workspace by drawing the maze onto paper using coloured tape. More mazes and labyrinths were projected onto another large sheet of paper fixed to the wall. There were also examples of mazes and stamps for the participants to look at and try out, along with lots of paper, coloured pens, stencils and inkpads for everyone to use.

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    As people arrived we showed them how to design and make a rubber stamp by drawing onto the back of the neoprene squares, then cutting out the design and sticking it to the wood block. They were encouraged to design their own mazes and use their stamps to make streets. After working at the tables on their designs they then added to the floor and wall mazes with their own stamps and mark-making ideas.

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    The children were very enthusiastic about making their own stamps and lots of the adults seem to enjoy it too. Some children went on unprompted to take the themes and ideas in new directions. One little boy decided to make the large maze into a game. He painted in a start and finish line and explained the rules to the others. Children began to make stamps of flowers, trees and animals as well as houses. One of the parents even made a Doctor Who Tardis stamp!

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    Many of the children were proud to have their drawings put up on the wall of the art space, while others wanted to take them home to show to parents and grandparents. Most of the children took their stamps away with them too.

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    It was an enjoyable day for artists and participants. It also inspired me to think about other methods of printmaking that I may use in my practice.

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  • New work on the way!

    Lately I’ve been so busy with other stuff – holidays, selling my house and workshops (photos to come) – that I haven’t done a lot of painting. Here are two small landscape studies that I finished recently just to let you know I’m still alive!

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