The Art Dresser
We have the pleasure in presenting 'The Art Dresser' a group show by eight artists from the Second Floor Studios in Sevenoaks.
Follow our instagram page @the.open.dresser.gallery for the show.
Artists:
Ann Bridges
Sue Evans
Sally Eldars
Christina France
Klaudia Kobelentz
Sarah Victoria Spence
Franny Swan
Made by Mice
Ann Bridges
Ann studied at Yale College and Glyndwr University (The North Wales College of Art and Design) obtaining First Class Honours in Design. She specialised in Illustration through drawing and printmaking.
Projects include:
Artist in Residence at Chester Zoo, making artworks of the Aquarium, the Twilight Zone (bats) and the gardens.
Spinning a Yarn, an exhibition based on the life cycle of the silkworm recorded through drawing.
The Ladies of Llangollen, a visual diary residency in the house and grounds of Plas Newydd, Llangollen.
Ann is a keen keeper of sketchbooks and observational drawing.
Instagram: @annbridgesartist
Found on the Ground
A concertina style sketch book of objects that have been discovered by a detectorist using a metal detector. Over the span of a year he would bring Ann the objects he’d found, mostly trinkets that have fallen into the grass on sites where boot fairs have been held. She drew them all, in precise detail.
"Observational drawing is always a challenge but an enjoyable one, an activity that requires concentration and sharp pencils!" Ann Bridges
Found on the Ground
Sue Evans
After studying Fine Art as a mature student Sue has enjoyed developing 3D work using textile materials and threads as mark making material for wall based work. Fabric has an independent quality and efforts to control it can often end in unexpected ripples, folds and slumps. It can be risky and unpredictable. This tendency she likes to use as a metaphor for the theme of uncertainty, faith, belief and doubt that is the springboard for her work. Reliable geometric shapes find themselves in a state of disintegration or collapse.
Instagram: @sue44evans
Sally Eldars
Sally is a multi-disciplinary visual artist, her mixed cultural background and identity informs her work and ideas. She was born and brought up in Cairo, to an Egyptian father and British mother. Her work examines and conceptualises social-political, cultural and environmental issues which she makes intuitively and spontaneously using different techniques and materials.
She is also the curator @the.open.dresser.gallery
Instagram: @sallyeldars
Home Schooling
A comment on child refugees' access to education.
Christina France
Christina is a visual artist working with print, drawing and a combination of the two. Creating embossed drawings and prints as a response to light, water, the skies and reflections she offers the viewer a contemplative respite from our fast moving world.
As a printmaker, she responds to the medium with spontaneity, connecting to the haptic nature of the process. She has a painterly approach, using unconventional methods in order to achieve the layering and translucency she strives for. Gold and silver leaf or dust is sometimes gilded onto the surface of the work.
Instagram: @christinajanefrance
Lunar-Rouge
Original is an etching with gold dust 50cm x 70 cm
Klaudia Kobelentz
Klaudia Kobelentz
Is a painter and illustrator working with oil paints on board and canvas. She has loved creating since a young age, always illustrating to pass the time. She studied Art at Northern Illinois University, where she fell in love with oil painting. She is German American, living and working in Chicago, Hamburg and now London.
In oil painting she has found her love of vibrant colour mixing which soothe and excite at the same time. Her illustrative pop style a common theme. Her primary subject matter include oceans, harbours and rivers with choppy or calming reflective waters, as well as villages and terraced rows illustrated in cosy proximity. Her paintings are occasionally visited or rained upon by the odd illustrated creature. Her work is light hearted meant to provoke a smile or illicit calm from the viewer.
Instagram: @klaudiakobelentz
Sarah Victoria Spence
Sarah is a mixed media artist and painter. She also works in digital, collage, charcoal, small sculpture and encaustic wax medium. She predominantly deals with social, cultural, ecological, feminist and political topics - with a twist. She looks at her subjects in the ethereal space of a parallel universe, a place where reality and the imagined become confused and unsettling, morphing into the realms of fantasy and at times the grotesque. Sarah has exhibited widely in London and has a studio space in Sevenoaks, Kent.
Instagram: @sarah_victoria_art
www.sarahvictoriaspenceart.com
Maidens
Is representative of what is perceived to be the most beguiling, tempting, and corrupting image of all throughout history, the naked female form. She remains a constant in the history of art as the ultimate muse and has satisfied the male gaze for millennia. Sarah wanted to address gender stereotypes and inequalities in response to a bound delicate female figure she found painted on an 18th century painting hidden in the vault of the archives of Maidstone Museum. Just one of many relics, passive and silenced in cabinets and vaults in what seems to be a conspiracy of forced containment. Her maidens are bound to metal grills, in their micro world, like meat, waiting to be saved, enslaved, or just admired, entrapped in an eternal cycle in what is a never-ending struggle for emancipation. The figures are in wax, pins, paper, glue, packing tape, all materials that are used to bind, confine and inhibit representing the condition of many women in the world today.
Maidens
Franny Swan
Franny is a multimedia, installation and project artist. Her work explores narratives of time and place set against universal themes of memory, memorial and loss.
Instagram: @frannyswannartist
Warrior
13cm H
Clay with bronze resin finish.
‘Warrior’ talks of the macho culture of feuds and battles that continue down the ages. Back view his more feminised hair recalls a more ‘magical’ warrior persona of ancient myth and storytelling.
Warrior
Made by Mice
Made by Mice
I’ve heard it said that the art of millinery is to make the ordinary extraordinary.
With careful expertise, traditional techniques and an expert eye, a piece of straw becomes a wearable sculpture; fabric blossoms into exquisite hand made sprays of flowers; a delicately positioned feather sits perfectly on a client’s chignon, and she feels a million dollars: a unique hand made hat is infinitely more than the sum of its parts.
You can see the mice's work @millefleurshats