Launching the art workshops
It took a while to find Aberbeeg community centre, the venue for our series of workshops, for the Saturday morning launch event, but when we did I was so impressed by what a good space it offered for the kind of thing we had in mind – a blend of a bit of art history and hands-on art-making. The banners advertising the workshops were eye-catching, and there was even a good blank wall on which to project slides! The other really encouraging aspect of the morning was to meet some of the people who had already been involved in getting this project off the ground, and some of the potential participants in the sessions, who had lots of questions about what we had planned, and whose enthusiasm to get started was palpable. They also told me a lot about Aberbeeg and the surrounding area, which suggested plenty of possibilities for visual exploration of local heritage in addition to those I had already researched.
First week – Wednesday morning
It was good to meet artist Andy O’Rourke beforehand, having already been in touch to discuss this first workshop. The fact that this was half term meant we had a broad age range in attendance. Once the necessary paperwork was out of the way, we started with a slide presentation based on the ‘Pitmen Painters’, a group of miner artists in north-east England in the 1930s and 40s. I chose this as an interesting story in itself, which could connect with Aberbeeg’s local mining heritage, and also because there seemed to be connections between what the ‘Pitmen Painters’ did, and what we hoped to achieve in our workshops. Andy then took over, and we set to work on making ‘metallic’ plaques based on local imagery and the area’s industrial heritage, and incorporating the letters of Aberbeeg, with a view to starting to build up a collection of work that can be exhibited. This was a really good starter activity introducing a technique that was new to participants, but one that everyone could join in to produce a piece of work they could be pleased with during the time available for the workshop.
Second week
Despite persistent flooding that closed one of the roads locally, and threats of snow, we all got there, and welcomed Andy’s colleague Kate who came with the materials for participants to try a printing technique. With than in mind, my art history talk was about artists’ printmaking, and including a print of the Chartists in Newport which got people talking. We had a slightly different group this time, but equally involved and enthusiastic. The prints the group made were a mix of local images, like the Guardian figure in Six Bells, and more general ones, such as flowers. Again we had some impressive results which would be good to include in the exhibition. There was also time to discuss with a couple of the group, with the help of a few slides on the laptop and a large painting/collage work that Kate had done with a different group, thoughts about how some aspect of needlework or textiles more generally could be incorporated into the workshops, bearing in mind time constraints.
Third week – Friday afternoon
While the floods are abating, we get rumours of coming pestilence. There were fewer participants this time, maybe because of this, or maybe it’s not such a convenient day/time. In terms of art history, we looked at the genre of scenes of everyday life historically – there was definite interest in works that can be seen locally, e.g. in National Museum Wales, and in possibilities for a group visit. Lowry’s painting of Six Bells in particular got a lot of discussion going. We also looked at Andy’s mock-up for how the work we’re making could be displayed for exhibition, and that received positive support. Some participants have decided on longer projects with the help of our collaborating artists, e.g. Barbara’s life-size painting of a Celtic warrior princess. Others took the opportunity to do some smaller paintings of local scenes with Andy’s support and advice. It was interesting, from an art historian’s point of view, to see the resonances of the Lowry we’d looked at in these. We were delighted to have the chance to see some superb needlework done some time ago by one of the group, Hilary: a panel depicting Aberbeeg incorporated in a large cape.
