Following the success of last year's local artists' showcase event, we will be running the event again throughout 2022. We have slots available so do let us know if you or anyone you know creates work (sculpture, painting, mosaic, photography, textiles...). Please pop in to have a chat with us. The commission for any sold pieces will be 20% (and we will donate all of this money to charity at the end of the year).

These are the artists who will be displaying their work in the coming months:

January

Catherine Boyne-Whitelegg – Pottery

Catherine runs her own small Pottery Studio in Heworth.  She graduated with a BA (Hons) in Ceramics many years ago and now pots and teaches.

She makes both raku and smoke fired animals as well as slipware pottery. Find out more on Catherine's website.

 

Lin Taylor – Feather Art

Lin is a member of York Art Society and has been painting regularly for 25 years. Her inspiration comes from nature and walking in landscapes worldwide. Recently, she has experimented with painting on real feathers, having seen the Indigenous South American people painting on Dream Catchers.  It can be quite a challenge to paint on the mini canvas!

She uses feathers from molting birds and works with acrylic paint and tiny brushes to imply detail.  They are then mounted and framed.  She feels that her feather paintings capture the imagination, linking the art to the spirit of the birds.

You can find out more on Lin’s Faceboook page.

 

February

Brenda Christison - Textile Art

York born and bred, Brenda has been a primary school teacher and leader for 30 years, recently deciding to follow her passion for textiles and needle-felting.

She makes creatures, pictures and decorative items with British wool, incorporating embroidery to add detail and depth, aiming to make you smile!

Her latest project is the creation of textiles-based memory books to mark those special occasions and people in our lives.

Each piece is unique and commissions are welcome.

You can find more of her work on her Facebook and Square pages.

 

 

Richard Wright - Wood Creations

Richard has worked with wood over the last 4 years.  He started out making knife handles and now enjoys creating wooden and resin chopping boards, tables, tea lights and other items.  He is happy to take on commissions.

March

Emma Coleman - Handmade Gifts

Emma originally from beautiful Scotland has called York her home for the last 8 years. She has been making jewellery for about 15 years first getting into jewellery when she got a job in a bead shop in Aberdeen.

Making cards is the main craft at the moment and has been doing that since she can remember, as a child her mum would make cards with her saying it is more thoughtful to be given a handmade card than a bought one, so Emma has never bought a card since.

She now enjoys not only the cards and jewellery but reusing and recycling products to create one off upcycled pieces and seeing a new life in what would be normally discarded. She also loves the challenge of doing personalised commissions set by a customer.

Christine Rafferty - Pottery

Christine originates from the beautiful banks of the River Clyde on the west coast of Scotland.

She is retired and moved to Heworth in York in 2013.

She is a skilled baker and sugar crafter and has a portfolio of beautifully decorated wedding and celebration cakes.

During Lockdown, Christine diversified her artistic skills into making stoneware pottery.  Her work ranges from everyday practical items like mugs, bowls and plates through to decorative home and garden pottery.   She specialises in colourful hand painted underglazed designs, making unique one-off pieces.  She also takes private commissions for bespoke ceramic pieces.

Christine’s full range of work can be found on her Etsy shop.

April

Laura Welch - Handmade Cards

Laura started making cards for family and friends as a child, when she was given a Christmas card making set, and has been making cards ever since.

She usually starts the process by choosing an occasion or colour, then building a card from there, selecting papers and embellishments to complement each other and arranging them on the card until she is happy with the layout. The off cuts of paper from one card may then form the basis of the next, and so on. Sitting down to make one card can quickly turn into an evening of making many cards. No two cards are exactly the same, but she often makes several on a theme.

Conscious of environmental impact, many of her cards are made using recycled card and envelopes, and she is always looking for ways to make her cards more environmentally friendly.

You can find out more on Laura's FacebookEtsy and Instagram pages.

Tracy Ostle - Fairy Houses (from recycled and natural materials)

Tracy starting developing her fairy houses during lockdown.  She takes inspiration from nature and the need for us all to have a bit of fantasy and joy in our lives.

She leads on the Foss Fairy Trail project but also makes fairy houses for individual tastes and they come in a variety of shapes, sizes and styles.  Lighting and internal structures can be added to create something that’s extra special!

The main materials are sourced from local woodlands and recycled materials discarded from renovation works.

She has recently started making miniature fairy houses in a tiny glass jar environment from used candle jars.

The message they portray is to keep the planet green, enjoy the simple life and keep us all (including us adults) smiling.

May

Jen Dring - Linocuts

Jen is an artist based in Heworth.  She predominantly creates using linocut; carving in relief on a block of linoleum then hand printing onto a variety of materials.  Her prints are translated from original pencil and ink drawings which are inspired by her faith.  Creating an image in lino means it can be printed onto a variety of different surfaces in any colour.  Jen loves both the process and the flexibility of working in this medium. In 2019 she began a project of artistically exploring the names of God in the Bible.

To find out more about Jen’s work visit her website, Facebook and Instagram pages.

 

Lesley Peatfield - Photography

Lesley enjoys landscape photography, street, abstract and whatever catches her eye.  She really enjoys the process of capturing the digital image, processing it and making the final print.  She has always enjoyed developing her skills and loves the technical aspects of photography.

She tends to be a traditional photographer when it comes to landscapes using a tripod and all the lenses and filters needed, but is not fixed in her ideas and happy to experiment in all formats.

Lesley has, however, recently started to use her iPhone more and is in the middle of a project called Parallel Lives which is a series of multiple exposure images made using the PhotoSplit app.  These are proving very popular, and get people talking about her images which she loves as it enables her to talk to them about her passion.

In October 2020 she was delighted to be awarded the ARPS (Associateship of the Royal Photographic Society) with the Parallel Lives series concentrating on the York and surrounding area which make up a lot of the upcoming display.  She has just started to experiment with some film cameras from the 1940s, and has a future project in mind - exciting times!!

You can find out more on Lesley’s website and Facebook page.

 

June

Caroline Turner - Pottery

Caroline (aka Kokepotmama) is a local ceramacist who loves experimenting with clays and glazes.  She makes bespoke pots and is happy to take orders.  Please contact her via her Instagram page.

Sue Butler - Photography

Sue Butler lives in Heworth and is a self taught amateur photographer who enjoys macro photography, photographing the beautiful Yorkshire countryside and creating Cyanotypes, cards & prints.

Cyanotype is an early photographic process creating images without a camera.  Each of her pieces is unique and is created with plants and flowers exposed using only the North Yorkshire sun (when we get it!).

You can find out more on her website, Facebook and Etsy pages.

 

 

 

July

Sophia Cheng (Handmade Cards) and Lenka Havlickova (Needle Felt Art)

Sophia and Lenka are plant biologists from Yorkshire with a love of all things natural.

Sophia's innovative use of dried real flowers and other plant material on paper to make one-of-a-kind greetings cards is widely celebrated.

Drawing and painting are her passions and she uses a variety of different media including watercolour, acrylics, pastels and pencils to provide a unique finish to her greetings cards.

Lenka is a passionate felt maker.  Surrounded by art while growing up, she draws inspiration from her particular interest in animals and continues to explore new techniques.  She uses natural sheep wool, sometimes combined with wire, to create small handmade felt animals and other three dimensional products.

Anna Tash - Painting

Anna’s paintings draw on her love of the great outdoors, especially the land and seascapes of Yorkshire and the North East. Anna paints with acrylics and loves mixing and playing with colour.  This series of miniatures are little windows to favourite places, which she hopes you’ll enjoy too.

Raised in the Midlands, Anna now lives in Tang Hall, works in healthcare and relishes regular art days to create and play.  Anna is happy to take commissions and often works on much larger canvasses.

August

Ann Hart - Original Hand-painted Greetings Cards

Being creative is a way of life for Ann.

Since moving to Heworth, much of this creativity has been directed towards renovations of their house but now completed, this energy is producing lots of artwork.

Experimenting with different styles and media is always exciting as the outcome can be surprising.  Placing some of these creations onto cards means no two will ever be exactly the same.  Every card is original and unique and some come with mounts, ready for framing if desired.

Ann is always looking for ideas and she finds that Glen Gardens is always a source of inspiration, from the individual flowers to the colours of the evening setting sun.

Chris Hart - Wood Turning

Chris is a self taught hobbyist wood turner living in Heworth.

He has always admired good quality turning and always fancied “having a go”.  Chris bought his first lathe about 12 years ago but due to work commitments it was only used occasionally at weekends.  Being self taught, he had plenty of failures but slowly managed to produce what he thought were quite acceptable pieces and has managed to keep four fingers and a thumb on each hand.

He hopes people will find something to admire in his varied collection of objects which he only sells to service his hobby.  He is not trying to make a large profit or a business out of his hobby but if he can cover the costs and hopefully find someone who can admire the beautiful wood as much as he does then he will be more than happy.

September

Nina Kouzmina - Illustration

Born in Moscow in 1984, Nina Kouzmina moved to the UK at the age of 10, when her mum and stepdad went to work at the University of York.  She spent several years in York, studying at Lord Deramore’s and then Fulford schools.

Later she moved back to Moscow, where she graduated from Moscow State University of Printing Arts becoming a Member of Moscow Artist’s union (Printmaking section).

She works as an illustrator and makes linocuts, works with graphic art and painting, and participates in exhibitions.  Her works are in personal collections in Russia, UK, Europe and USA.

Nina has illustrated a number of children’s books, art gallery guidebooks (children’s guides to Moscow State Tretyakov Art and Garage galleries), newspapers and magazines.

One of her favourite themes is celebrating the beauty of everyday objects. She shares her time between Moscow and York, and loves the North Yorkshire Moors and the seaside.

Nicky Brunger - Cross Stitch and Handmade Book Covers

Nicky is a maker and cross stitch designer based in Heworth.  She has colourful cross stitch kits suitable for beginners and more experienced stitchers alike.  She makes unique book covers and zipped pouches using fabric scraps such as William Morris and Liberty prints, and up-cycled denim.

You can see more kits, plus the full range of DMC stranded cotton, cross stitch fabric and more on Nicky's website.

October

Chris Gallagher - Photography

Chris Gallagher is a York-based freelance journalist and photographer.  He began taking photographs with his father’s Box Brownie and fifty-odd years later, he is still shooting and uses a range of cameras, both film and digital.

His interests centre on nature and landscape, increasingly moving to impressionistic, expressionistic and abstract realisations of how the passage of time is recorded in the still image medium.  He is also interested in familiar and local images, where there is an interface between the timeless and the new.


Nicola Harper - Textile Art

Nicola’s work reflects a love of both the clean lines of architecture juxtaposed with the organic forms of nature and landscape.  As a textile artist, she is fascinated with how the two both contradict and enhance one another when intertwined and threaded together in accumulated mixed media form.

Her focused small-scale pieces are a layering and crafting of mainly recycled, texturally interesting fabrics, yarns and thread.

Using a combination of techniques including free motion machine embroidery, appliqué, hand embroidery and painting with acrylics and Inktense, each piece is bespoke, blending both colours and textures together to create an embellished and sculpted piece.  She believes this organic process of collation and free hand crafting brings life to photographs in a unique and refreshingly vibrant way.

She takes inspiration for her pieces from both her urban, rural and natural surroundings of her home in North Yorkshire, England, as well as across the UK and abroad.  Through the making process, she enjoys seeing how the work cultivates and builds over time and is able to recreate a precious moment captured in photographs, of her travels, coming alive in the intricacies of cloth, wool and other fibres.

She was accepted as a member of The Society for Embroidered Work in 2020 and a member of York Textile Artists in 2021.

Commissions welcomed.  You can find out more on her Facebook and Instagram pages.

 

November

The Knit and Natter Group - Knitting and Sewing

The Knit and Natter group was set up in the St. Leonard's Hospice charity shop in Heworth and became very popular due to it's relaxed friendly atmosphere.  When space became a problem, it moved into No.3 where it is currently based.  The knitters make a variety of items for sale, the proceeds of which are donated to local charities like York Against Cancer, St. Leonard's Hospice, Diabetes, Alzheimer's and the Yorkshire Air Ambulance.  They also donate hats and scarves to the homeless and recently have sold knitted pin badges in blue and yellow for Ukrainian charities.

Gill Oakes - Glass Artist

Gill was born and brought up in York and has lived in Heworth for the last 18 years.  She adores her job as a Driving Instructor but found herself unable to work for many months due to the Covid restrictions.

For the 16 years before the pandemic Gill enjoyed creating beautiful hand-crafted glass pieces purely for the enjoyment of her family and friends.  Having more free time on her hands during the first lockdown Gill decided to make herself a glass rainbow to put in her window.  Within a week, two neighbours asked if she would make rainbows for them, and by the end of the second week more orders came her way.  She soon found herself busy in her studio almost every day until driving lessons were allowed to resume.

Gill has continued to produce small pieces when she has the time and has a real passion for working with glass.  She often takes her inspiration from nature, loving the whole process from the initial design work to the satisfaction of seeing the finished piece.

For more information, please visit her Facebook page Heworth Glass Studio.