Four Tenterden artists returned for a second time to stage their exhibition at the Rye Community Centre over the last May bank holiday weekend. They invited ten other guest artists to make an intriguing show representing very diverse talents. Besides paintings and original prints, there were sculpture, ceramics, glass, textile art and jewelry all on display and for sale.
The group included several award-winning artists, who have previously exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and at London galleries. To name a couple, Brenda Harthill, who lives in Udimore, has a national reputation as a print-maker and is well known locally as a member of the Rye Society of Artists. Jane Cordery is known for paintings based on imagery of the cliffs of the South East and its surrounding waters. I talked to each of the four group members in turn.
Alison Olorunsola uses felt, not paper, as her base material on which to create landscapes. Using carded wool, for example, she needle-points coloured wisps into the fabric almost like line-drawing to achieve remarkable images of seascape and cloud.
Birgitta Wilson is a a print-maker, and creates collagraphs, a collage of materials glued on to a square of cardboard (the printing plate).
When the glue is dry, the plate is shellacked or varnished so that it can be painted with acrylics. Paper is then pressed on to the surface to produce a print. “I enjoy using the medium of collagraph to explore the texture of trees and individual plants,” she said. Birgitta has used the print-room facilities at the Creative Centre, New Road. She also teaches art groups and runs workshops at Smallhythe, near Tenterden.
Sue Fields, ceramicist, has a workshop in Camber. She has developed away from making highly-coloured tableware towards creating more figurative, non-functional art forms. Her current fascination with the colour turquoise reflects inspiration from her moving closer to the sea.
Vincent Matthew, a retired architect who lives in Northiam, is a member of council of the Society of Graphic Fine Art (SGFA). His etchings and ink drawings are based on sketches from Rye, Dungeness and Romney Marsh; scarcely a day goes by without him drawing in his sketch book, he told me.
Felicity Flutter, guest artist and water colourist, is also a member of SGFA. She is chairman of South East Open Studios, whose series of exhibitions runs June 9-25 in individual artists’ studios across the south east as the name implies. The brochure is now available.
This is far from an amateur show. They are an eclectic group, deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources. The Community Centre venue responded well to their use of display boards and created a visually satisfying environment for their exhibition.
Alison Olorunsola wrote following the event: “Thank you for coming to visit our exhibition and spending time with us. There was a flurry of sales at the last minute on Monday just before we closed! On the whole we were very pleased with our exhibition and we had a lot of positive feedback from visitors. We feel that Rye is an excellent place to exhibit as people are open to innovative work. We believe that the lack of sales of expensive items reflects the current uncertainty about the future. We look forward to returning to Rye next year probably a little earlier, and will certainly be in touch with you two to three weeks before the exhibition”.
The group is planning another exhibition later this year at Tenterden Town Hall.
Photo: Kenneth Bird