April Meeting

The Winchester played host to a wealth of talent on Wednesday 21st April as Bournemouth Creatives held a Creative Showcase, inviting members to 'show and tell' their talents.

Before the showcase proper began, there were a few announcements.

Christine Aziz invited people to get involved with the Mary Shelley festival on 1-3 October 2010. Mary Shelley has been overshadowed by the men in her life, Christine said, and the aim of the festival is to celebrate her life.

Diane Samuels, a playwright from London, was writing a play which was to be read at the Bournemouth Natural History Centre during the festival. The Arts University's events department is also involved in the festival and there will be a children's event. Christine is interested in hearing from anyone who would like to help with the festival, and is particularly interested to hear from poets and writers from other communities and under represented groups, including asylum seekers, women and other minority groups in Bournemouth.

Hazel Evans talked about the latest exhibition at Walford Mill Crafts in Wimborne. Walford Mill promotes contemporary crafts and arts and is currently hosting an exhibition entitled Colour and Form. Print maker Martyn Brewster, glass sculptor Phil Atrill and ceramic artist Peter Hayes are the three very different but complementary artists whose work makes up the exhibition. It runs until the middle of May.

Elanor McBay reminded everyone about The Arts Bank, an online community and monthly magazine that helps, advises, reviews and supports, local artists and venues and new talent. Showcasing work, providing the venue to bring ideas to life, and championing art and culture in Bournemouth and surrounding areas, along with a local business networking side. You can vote for The Arts Bank in the Barclay's Take One Small Step competition here: https://www.takeonesmallstep.co.uk/Entry/View/244

Elanor kicked off proceedings in the showcase by telling how she turned her love of maps and cartography into an art form and a creative business. She told how she began by enjoying OS maps as a child and after starting out as a freelance cartographer she moved into map art, mostly watercolours of aerial views. She also produces business cards and flyers, as well as doing knitting and crochet to make brooches. See Elanor's work at www.elanormcbay.co.uk.

Jane Skellet is a local poet who often performs as her alter ego Bag Lady, accompanied by Bad Bunny. This evening Jane talked about performing as a persona and read her latest poem, and election piece called An Ode To Voting. She also talked about the mental health charity Mind's Time for Change campaign and invited other creatives interested in or with experience of mental health issues to get in touch.

Carrie was up next, another poet who had been brought along by Jane at the last minute. She performed her poem In The Bleak Mid Spring, which, she says, she wrote to avoid talking to someone at a party.

Geoff Jarvis described himself as a 'graphic designer who hates computers'. He is also a photographer but tonight shared a showreel of his latest CGI graphic design work. His 3D graphics, largely done in Flash, included aeroplanes, helicopters, cars and tanks. Geoff also has some of his photography work on show in the Full Gamut Cafe in Weymouth.

Kathleen Inglis is the other half of the Bad Bunny/Bag Lady partnership. She is a writer and poet who runs Bournemouth Writers', a fortnightly creative writing group at The Winchester. She read her latest poem, a 'crap rap' called In Love with a Slacker, and invited people to come along to her other project, The Silly Army, a non-serious adult games club, which can help get your creative juices flowing.

Frank Bayes runs an art class in Southbourne and is into creating art around faces. He has created 'face casts' and uses lighting and atmosphere to create some really powerful pieces. One of the most stunning pieces he showed was a 'reverse face' that with different lighting had the effect of looking in opposing directions. Frank also showed a self portrait in the style of 1960s pop artist Richard Hamilton, achieving an eye catching effect by painting complementary colours beneath the top colours.

Fred was up next, his first public reading of a poem, before being joined by his friend to talk about their art project,‘Shop’. They are part of the Outisde In Creative Collection and are running a free art installation project. A total of seven artists have revived an empty shop with satirical products. Their “real fake” shop will be open from 30th April to 3rd May in Burlington Arcade in the centre of Bournemouth and the Collective invite people to come and take part in their “sitcom of shopping.”

Marylyn Cropley from The Arts Poole and Freeplay took to the stage to sing two folk songs. She told how she had embarked on a journey from being a shy singer to recording her own CDs, and how she wants to take other singer songwriters o the same journey. Marylyn performed two songs, both with a political bent, one from early in her songwriting career and one modern piece.

Hazel Evans talked about her jewellery business, hazelcollections.com, in which she makes and sells eclectic statement jewellery. However, Hazel is currently in transition from being a jewellery artist to being a visual artist. She studied contemporary art at university and is now painting and branching out into a project called Artefacts, an exhibition of art on the theme of keepsake objects. Hazel creates characters and stories around these objects, and will be putting them together for an exhibition in Poole's Lighthouse as part of Poole Literary Festival in October.

Hazel showed her first piece for the exhibition, the character of Catherine Elliot, created around an old piece of her own jewellery. In addition, Hazel will also be opening her own front room as a gallery as part of Dorset Arts Week.

Carol Childs is another artist in transition. She has been producing hyper-photorealistic paintings for commissions, featuring dogs, babies and the like. However, she has now started to experiment more with things that capture her interest, including sunsets, flowers and reflections. For Carol, 2010 is the year of shaking things up and adopting a looser style. You can see her work at http://www.passionartgallery.co.uk/.

Matthew Rogers is an illustrator and artist who works on children's books and greetings cards. Fantasy features heavily in his work and he is particularly inspired by Oscar Wilde, fairy tales, the weather and seasons. Matthew mostly works in oils and acrylics, as well as producing character sketches. You can see Matthew's work at www.matthewrogersillustration.co.uk.

Francesca Whetnall is a watercolour and collage artist whose work has a botanical theme. She paints in an expressive style and is moving towards mixing watercolour and collage together. Francesca brought a large collection of her work to showcase and got half the audience up on stage to assist her!

Fiona Julian is an artist and writer who took time to tell the group about Poets' Republic, which meets in Bournemouth once a month, and Poole's Creative Cabin project, which enables artists to make short term use of empty shop spaces in the town. Fiona has also written, illustrated and published her own children's story, featuring a mouse. She has published the book on lulu.com and encourages others to do the same if they have a story to tell – there should be no limits on publishing. Fiona works for community radio station Hope FM and has recorded an audio version of her book too.

Roland Nichols caught everyone's attention as he launched into his comedy performance by dropping his trousers and singing the Monty Python classic Sit on my Face. He was joined on stage by Johanna Lawrence for a comedy double act, starting with a very funny ventriloquist show (with Roland as the dummy) then did a few improv sketches, involving audience participation.

Andrew McCutchion is a pianist, who also runs local charity Tibet Culture Trust. The charity educates Tibetans in exile and is supported locally by the Butterworth family, who are hosting an auction later this year. Andrew invited artists to donate pieces of their work to the auction for this very worthy cause.

The next meeting will be on 19 May and is a big poetry event. Local poetry groups and writing groups have been invited to perform and is also the deadline for the Bournemouth Creatives poetry competition.