Knitted Poem - The Price of Art in Luton (by sarah)

Yesterday I went back into Cheltenham to photograph some more of the events at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival which was brilliant! But before they started I popped over to the Waterstones to see the knitted poem that Centre Arts has had all the local knitting groups taking part in. The poem is The Price of Art in Luton from the John Hegley - part of the Dog collection.

There is also has a knitted homeless guy and his dog on it.

I believe it is being auctioned off at the end of the festival! Alaric being from Luton examined the poem more closely - though in my opinion from the wrong angle!

A Style A Voice A Choice (by sarah)

Something I forgot to mention in my previous post about the Art Exhibition was that people were surprised at how much of it was mine with comments such as, 'I would never have thought those pieces were by the same artist' and 'wow that's a lot of variation in style.'

People who actually know me could pick out which ones weren't mine with the comment that there was something me about all my pictures. It was mainly the fractals that gave them a pause for thought with, 'They aren't yours are they?' No they were Alaric's - my husbands but I chose the selection and no they weren't digital renders of my 'fractal style drawings' though that mistake was understandable.

Again I am against the concept that you should choose one specific thing to be your style at least for a couple of years at a time. People expect artists to have phases what they don't seem to be able to cope with is someone who takes photos in the morning, draws in felt pen in the afternoon and knits in the evening and then does painting at the weekends or someone who thinks that mediums and styles are something to understand and learn to add to a tool box of skills.

I love mixing things up as well.

And it is not just with the visual arts or the crafting it is my writing as well. It is hard to know what to push sometimes with me writing novels, short stories, flash fiction, essays, articles, how to stuff and some for adults and some for kids and kids groups in different ages and some of it needs my art and some of it doesn't. And even within something like poetry I have several different types I write from political, to comedic to kids to sci-tech to gothic and abstract.

I love brining visuals and audio into these creations making them something multi media that I'm not sure there is a word for yet.

People who read alot of my stuff again say they can hear my voice in it all but many coming to it for the first time find it hard to connect me to such a lot of 'voices' and this makes it hard for them to recognise me.

Now people in the publishing and arts world and science for that matter have always told me I have to choice to get anything done. And I can see why but I am not like this because I haven't thought about the consequences - I made a choice and that was to be ME and me is a person who likes and is interested in a lot of stuff and who has found it all feeds off of everything else.

I get a new skill it may get a bit rusty but it is easy enough to polish it up again if I need it or want to mix it with something else I now have.

And because I do all of these things I find myself being asked to do lots of strange and lovely and exiting things. Stuff that I wouldn't have been ended up doing if I'd focused on one area.

In the last fortnight I have been described as someone who sits on the divide between art and science and who is a brilliant crafter and a teacher and I sing as well. Such glowing praise made me blush and hide behind my camera to take more photos. A poet and writer, an artist, a knitter and baker and a craft maker.

Then I had a moment when having had a lovely rejection, a not so lovely one and an acceptance with editing and one without of poems and someone I respect as poet tells me I am an Experimental Poet - and I thought YES! that's it isn't it?

My voice, my style is experimental that's my choice.

Now all I have to do is deal with the fact that not everybody is nice about achievement and some feel I am too prolific or a hack or any of a number of other things.

Molecular Knits (by sarah)

As part of the Science-Art Exhibition and to celebrate National Science and Engineering Week I wrote up the pattern to my knitted Bucky Ball. I illustrated it with photographs of the process and took them into the weekly Knit and Natter group that meets at Centre Arts in Cheltenham every Wednesday.

This resulted in a triumph for Science Communication - I ended up explaining what atoms and molecules were to a lady who did not know. And on top of this I now have a pattern written up I want to add in some Bucky Ball facts and then release it on Etsy and possibly in other places too (it is already 4 pages long! Though that is with instructions on how to knit oxygen and hydrogen atoms too).

Centre Arts is also knitting a poem for The Cheltenham Poetry Festival which I've been too busy to knit any of. I got to see the title line whilst I was there

Of Chocolate and Art (by sarah)

Tuesday Morning we went for a stroll around various bits of London on the way to Paul A. Youngs Fine Chocolates in The Royal Exchange. I have to say that a) I was surprised the Royal Exchange was a shopping centre and not a bank or something and also it was quiet boring as shopping districts go but there was lots of pretty buildings and statues around it to photograph.

The Chocolate Shop itself was something else! I was could have just spent all afternoon photographing the chocolates to be honest! Plus the shops were obviously designed with me in mind - see even the bags are purple and the boxes tied up with little purple ribbons - tell me why there is not one of these in Cheltenham? Next to the Cheese Works would be best - just saying.

I may have ended up with a book on cooking with and making chocolate etc....

Alaric is going to try and get it signed for me at some point I'd really wanted to go and look in the kitchens or do the tempering course but when we looked they seemed to only be for Chocolate Week But I have coffee beans covered in chocolate - t my mind there is slightly too much chocolate on the bean but it is a lovely roast! Alaric got a Marmite bar. The chocolate still contains soya lectin unfortunatly so I can't exactly eat a tonne of it - but then shouldn't really anyway

I then took more pictures of London

We headed over to the Institute of Contemporary Arts to have lunch and meet a friend. This statue was on the way and is of Uri the first man in Orbit!

I didn't even know the ICA existed!

Lunch was veggi curry of butternut squash and chick peas for Al and tarragon chicken with mushrooms for me

It was really tasty!

We looked around some of the exhibits the main one was The House to Die In which had a large narcotices theme running through it though I thought the structures looked like space ships. We found the perfect present for mum but had fortunatly had already gotten her a sketch pad as the blanket was £450!

We mainly sat in the coffee shop with all our stuff and wrote things and drew things and designed things and made things.

We had tea and ginger bread men and chatted lots to Dez who I some how failed to get a photo of :/ Though I took this sequence...

Alaric kept moving his eyes about which was funny

We then headed over to Padington Station to make our journy home - I filled up my dragon note book mostly on this four day adventure And I haven't arted Alaric out - I think he almost Artied me out and I've ended up with a set of Tech/Net/Web/Geek tarot cards from the ICA which I love and am going to write so many stories from. Al broke the 10K barrier on his novel and me the 40K barrier which is just fantastic

Polyps Together the Colony Unitied

Me Bucky Balls and All (by sarah)

Thursday the 12th of July saw me at the Grain Barge performing geek poetry, throwing knitting and inflicting my sense of humour on people.

We turned up and there was some classical science equipment set up - which is always 'ooooo do you think there will be fire and explosions and glowing stuff?'.

The show got started with the comedic Steve proclaiming he had super powers - he the guy who organises and entertains between the acts.

The first act was Jim Bell with his spiders which the brave Suze who is very scared of them, managed to hold momentarily with lots of squeaking.

Then it was time for the fire and glowing stuff but alas no explosions

Then it was on to Sophia with her set on why parents are so annoying.

At some point a red nose appeared just to remind me that Clowns exist shudders

Then we had Joe Wright and a very funny sketch and video about Darwin - including all the mistakes in the video

Then we had Nicole Slavin and opera about STIs.

We then had a break were instead of talking to the people who had come to see me I was hovering waiting for a laptop to work so that my first power point in 6 yrs could be shown and to make it worse it wasn't actually a power point :/

But then we had the Science of Cocktails and me being me I announced to the room that I like the frothy head :/ Which Suze who was doing the talk gracefully sailed over.

Then there was Sam Phippen with his funny stories of Robots that kids build.

Then there was me - I was so nervous

Here is the video

And yes I corpsed and yes I got flustered and yes someone nicked my knitted bucky ball!

Then we had a talk on Viruses!

And then to finish off we had the halarious nerd rock of Mark Lewney.