Kirkby Stephen Poetry Walk - workshop

Today was our much looked forward to workshop with John Ward - on the Kirkby Stephen Poetry Walk. A series of 12 stone carving marking a year in the life of a sheep farmer, the lettering is carved by Pip Hall, a local artist to Cumbria.

Below are some of the examples from John's stone rubbings, you can see that he traces the letterforms from the original rubbings and then uses these to develop a piece of his own work.





After tracing the letter forms that John had produced from stone rubbings, we then looked at constrasting the large letters with the rest of the poem (or just part of it). Cutting the letters out and messing around with the layout is a great way to get a feel for what works, taking pics on a digital camera lets you move words around and keep a reference each time - brilliant time saver!







John also talked us through the use of vellum and he had brought with him some stunning examples of work which I'll add to the blog over the next week....

North Yorkshire Scribes

I was emailed just recently by Sarah from North Yorkshire Scribes who meet over in Yarm each month - they have a new blog so if you are interested then click here for more information.

April Open Day and workshops

We had a great day on Saturday - with a full day in the Penrith shopping arcade, talking to a few people interested in commissions and interest in joining the group! Thanks to everyone who helped out and came along.

At the meeting room we were also joined by Beth, who was on her Easter break from Uni, and hopefully she'll keeo coming along whenever she is able to.

Our next meeting in May is a tutor workshop with John Ward - We'll be looking at the Kirkby Stephen poetry walk which I'm looking forward to.

April Open Day and Demonstrations

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Saturday 10th April
United Reform Church Hall, Penrith
and also at the Devenshire Arcade, Penrith
10am - 4pm

We are holding on open day with workshops, demonstrations and an exhibition - all for free!



We're hoping that if you are in the area and interested in seeing what we do then we'd love for you to come along and meet the group.

We will have an exhibition space in the Devonshire Arcade in Penrith town centre and also demonstrations and further examples of work at the United Reform Church Hall, on Lowther Street in Penrith.

We're hoping it will be a fun and lively day and the opportunity to try your hand and have a go yourself!

Kirkby Stephen Poetry Walk

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If you are ever in the area of Kirkby Stephen I'd recommend you visited the Poetry Walk, a signposted public path taking you through 12 months in the life of a hill farmers year. The Poetry Path is a celebration of the hill farmer's ancient and enduring relationship with the beautiful landscape in and around the upper Eden valley.



Along the circular route of public paths there are twelve short poems written by Meg Peacocke which have been superbly carved into stone by Pip Hall, a lettering artist. It's a lovely walk taking you either side of the River Eden and not too long.

We are focusing on the poetry walk in our May workshop with calligrapher John Ward which I am looking forward to. I'm not sure what we will be doing on the day yet but the letters carved are a lovely inspiration.

March Meeting and Handwriting competition

It's been a while since my last post, we had our AGM in February and have now confimed our agenda for the year, we have three tutors coming - John Ward in May, Terry Johnston in September and Sarah Colgate in November. It's shaping up to be a really exciting year.

We welcomed two potential new members at our March meeting yesterday, Linda and Heather. I hope they both enjoyed meeting the group and their first taster session.

We also judged the Northern Pen Show Handwriting competition for the second year running. Five schools entered, again with three age groups (8-9yrs, 9-10yrs and 10-11 yrs). A piece of literature had been pre-chosen for each age group so that they were all judged fairly.

We picked a commended and highly commended for each school and age group plus and overall winner - like last year, all the winners will be announced on the day so I'm not going to spoil the suprise!

Best of luck to all the kids who entered!

Penrith Devenshire Arcade Project

We've been able to take advantage of a project happening in Penrith with Eden Arts - they have been using empty shop windows to display art. This is such a brilliant idea, and much better than seeing empty shops everywhere. Eden Arts is an independent charitable trust, carrying out arts developments in Eden on behalf of Eden District Council. This is a great way of supporting local art groups and showing what is happening in the area. If it sparks a bit of interest then that's only a good thing!









Thanks to Peter for taking the photos for us.

Quarto Jan 2010 meeting

Yesterday was our first meeting of the year for Quarto - this is the quarterly book arts group that I joined last year, it meets at Sunderland so it's a trek over on the train but well worth it!

The theme for this meetings book swap was Seasons - as usual there were no two books alike and it was great to see how the theme was interpreted.

I has decided to focus on Vivali's The Four Seasons - there were Sonnets written to match the music so this provided me with the content for each page. I decided to do the book pages shaped as violins which sounded great but was a bit tricky to cut out! Luckily it seemed to work ok.

In Loving Memory of Mary

We've had such sad news with the group this week, one of our longest members passed away suddenly after a stroke last weekend.

Mary Burton was such a lovely bright person, a mother and grandmother - and a wonderful silk artist to boot. Although Mary wasn't a regular at our meetings any more due to her silk painting we always loved to see her when she popped in to say hello.

Our thoughts and best wishes go out to her family at this time xx

With love
Alison

A star is shining brighter in the sky tonight

January 2010 meeting - cancelled due to snow

Happy New Year to everyone, I hope you've all had a great festive season. I'd like to say a quick thank you to everyone who looks at our blog and comes back to visit us each month. We do appreciate it and hopefully you see something that inspires you!

***UPDATE****

Our AGM meeting is cancelled due to the bad weather. Our next planned meeting is now Saturday 13th February so we will be starting this with the AGM.

We will be finalising our agenda for this year and getting workshops confimed. I'll now post information on this in February.

***UPDATE****

We always welcome new members so if you are in the area and interested then please pop along and meet us (from Feb onwards!). We meet 10 times a year (Sept through to June) on the second Saturday. If you would like more information then drop me an email at mrstopham@hotmail.co.uk

Hope to see you soon!
Alison