Reception Gallery
#Hatch - Definition:
to bring forth or produce; devise; invent
an artistic technique used to create tonal or shading effects by drawing closely spaced parallel lines.
to be born
an opening linking two spaces
At the start of 2020 five women arrived at West Dean College, ready to start a two-year Foundation Diploma in Art and Design. We hadn’t met before and came from very different backgrounds and experience. A bond was formed over a weekend of creativity, but we went back to our lives expecting to progress through the course and only keep in touch from time to time.
How different the reality turned out to be. We worked remotely throughout 2020, keeping each other motivated and sharing our diverse skills and knowledge. We have learnt from each other and produced a body of work which reflects our journey together. Rather than looking back at what was created in lockdown, we want the show to celebrate the future, as we emerge into the next stage of our creative journeys.
Our work covers painting, drawing, pastels, textiles, ceramics and jewellery, but what draws it together is the journey we have undertaken together to create it. Learning from each other, and taking inspiration from each other’s work, we aim to give a sense of moving forward, new life and new direction.
Artists
Pippa Hufton (@orieljewellery)
Pippa first started working with copper in her teens when she lived in Chile, one of the world’s largest producers of this beautiful and versatile metal. Over the years, she spent many hours creating jewellery with her father, whose workshop was a hive of jewellery-making activity right into his old age. She inherited this treasure trove, and many of her jewellery pieces re-use off-cuts and scraps from copper and silver jewellery made decades ago.
She loves experimenting with the effects of heat on metal, bringing out rainbow colours, unpredictable and unrepeatable, making every piece unique and original. Her designs are created by heating copper with a blowtorch and applying enamel, fusing silver or simply allowing the natural colours of the patina to emerge. The final piece is carefully smoothed and polished and protected with an invisible layer of wax. She is based in Farnham, a town steeped in creativity and England’s only “World Craft City”.
Wendy Whitaker (@wendywhitaker4)
Wendy finds inspiration in the human form, looking closely at portraiture and anatomy, and she has a real fascination for the various structures of the body, from skeleton, muscles and nerves to the drape and detail of clothes. She regularly attends a Life Drawing class in the local area which she enjoys, with a view to improving her work.
She uses a variety of media and loves to experiment. She tends to have a try and see approach and sometimes some of the best results are from happy accidents. Her portraits start off with the same basic approach, but with each one, she does try to capture the individual character of the person, and their unique expressions. She tends to work mainly in oils but more recently has started to explore the use of soft pastels to paint local landscapes.
Liz Pemberton (@liz_a_pemberton)
Since graduating from the College of Fine Arts, Sydney, with an Art History degree, Liz has been seeking her own creative voice. This path has led her down a number of forks such as printmaking and ceramics. She is currently exploring some wonderful avenues such as Japanese wood print and blacksmithing, with an overriding interest in abstract expressionism. Several different types of charcoal have been used in this series of artworks including Passion Flower Vine and Old Man’s Beard, sourced locally from Wildwood Charcoal at West Dean.
Paula Chuter-Baker (@chuterbakerart)
Paula is a semi-abstract artist working mainly in acrylics and mixed media creating atmospheric landscapes. She is inspired by wide landscapes and open skies, particularly the point where the earth meets the sky. This has come from many years living within the South Downs, walking on the fells of Cumbria and on clifftops in Devon and Cornwall. She is in awe of the wonderful natural world we live in and tries to capture the essence of this by painting what she feels, rather than just what she sees.
She works from her studio in Midhurst and uses sketches and photographs taken whilst walking which helps her to remember her “felt self” in a particular landscape. She builds up layers of paint, using different tools for mark making and creating textures, giving the painting depth.
Jess Skelton (@skej_vessel)
Originally training in a production pottery in the Lake District, Jess was distracted for several years by travel, music and theatre. Fortunately clay eventually made itself heard again through the din and while still influenced by (and grateful for) a solid grounding in the wheel-thrown tradition, she is increasingly interested in throwing perfection to the wind and allowing an undirected controlled collision between multiple areas of fascination and the material to see what emerges. She is presently fixated on porcelain and uses a combination of intent and non-direction to produce multi-layered textured thrown and altered pieces exploring the unconscious and relationship with self and other.