Claire Brewster

25 Sept 2012

The First Cut - invite to the opening

If you are in Manchester, or fancy a trip do come along to the opening on 4 October, it should be a good night!

17 Sept 2012

The First Cut

I am rather excited to be exhibiting some work in the 'First Cut' exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery. The exhibition is the first major museum show of artists who work in paper. The list of artists they have exhibiting is amazing, so it is truly an honour be included.

The curators first came to see me over a year and a half ago, so it has been a long time planning and now I can't quite believe the opening is 3 weeks tomorrow! I am exhibiting 3 pieces in the exhibition. 2 installations and 1 framed piece. One of the installations is in the one of the Pre-Raphaelites Galleries (no pressure there then!) The other 2 pieces will be in the main exhibition room.

I will blog more about the other artists once the exhibition opens, in mean time you can find more information here and here.

The works I will be exhibiting are

The Harbingers, that I first exhibited last year at the Art of Mapping exhibition.

The Harbingers © Claire Brewster 2011

The second piece I will be showing is 'The Place In Between', a specially commissioned piece for the exhibition. I will also be showing another installation, which I don't have photographed yet and will post later, the is called 'An apocalypse of Butterflies'.

The Place In Between © Claire Brewster 2012

12 Sept 2012

The horse is back...

The lovely white horse that I blogged about before is back (in a different location), and so am I (not in a different location). I have been busy with lots of exciting projects and somehow blogging has taken a bit of a back seat for a while, but I have been missing it, so I'm determined to do some more regular posts.

There was some other street art where the horse is now, so I guess he will get painted over eventually but I was so happy to see him back.

And here's a cute cat I saw to end on.

3 Aug 2012

The Birds and The Bees - Part 2

So I promised to show you the finished pieces of my commission and here they are. Once they are installed I will be getting them photographed in situ. I can't wait to see them in their new home and to share that with you.

Each one is cut out from different vintage maps of London. It was quite tricky getting the maps as the pieces are 90 x 90 cm, so I had to bet a bit ingenious with the maps, but I think it worked.

I'd love to know what you think.

30 Jul 2012

The Birds and The bees - part 1

Well dear readers I promised to tell you what I have been up to recently and why I have been absent from this blog. Apart from suffering from a bit of bloggers block. I was working on a large commission for a new hotel in London, that is opening in August.

I had to make 5 large pieces, that reflected the hotel's location, near to of our best museums, The Victoria and Albert Museum and The natural history museum.

The pieces I created used a pattern from an 18th century textile that is in the V&A combined with birds and insects.

Here are the drawings I did for them. I use these as my templates for cutting, though I change bits as I go along and final arrangements only happen once all the cutting has finished.

I will post the finished pieces in my next post.

10 Jul 2012

A kind of madness

I'm sorry dear readers that I have been a bit quiet of late, but I have been working on a really exciting commission for a new hotel in London (a preview above). The commission has occupied my brain to the point when I haven't been able to think about anything else. Which is why I call it a kind of madness. After many late nights and early mornings I finally had the work finished and photographed (ok I was still pinning some of the pieces when the photographer arrived, but he was an hour early!).

But it got me thinking about the creative process and how it becomes so absorbing that the outside world barely exists. I become obsessed by the work and often loose all sense of proportion over the work, I don't want to look at it and feel like it will never end.

I was wondering why I always stress so much towards the end of a piece of work and realised, it's nerves and anxiety, this is the point when they will be shown to the world, my babies will be set free to face the world on their own. It doesn't matter how proud I am of what I have done, it's hard not to want the world to love them too. Of course I know not everyone will like them but they are a part of me and although I might put a brave face on it I am still anxious every time. It is worse with commissions because someone has already committed to buy the piece so there are expectations.

Anyway, normal service will resume shortly as I have lots of exciting things to blog about and am itching to share with you.

cx

11 Jun 2012

Mind the Map workshop

I ran my first proper workshop as part of the museum at night event at the London Transport museum. It was great fun. There were lots of keen people wanting to take part, there was even a queue at one point.

I had some templates of my birds for people to use or they could go free style. It was great to see how people took to it and made their pieces their own. Some people used my templates as a starting point and some people created their own thing. it was really fun and I hope I've inspired some people to take up paper cutting.