Save the date! June 1-3

Press Release

Digswell Arts Trust Open Studios

 An exciting opportunity to get to know your local artist community, to meet practicing artists, visit their individual studio spaces and purchase affordable works of art

The Forge, Hertford Road, Digswell, AL6 OBU

Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 June 2018

11 – 4 pm

Fifteen local artists from Digswell Arts Trust will be opening their studios to the public for the weekend in June 2018, some of them exhibiting for the first time at The Forge. There will be a wide range of new work on show –  paintings and drawings, collages and prints, ceramics, textiles and sculpture as well as refreshments and demonstrations. Visitors will also be able to find out about the printmaking facilities and workshops.

Digswell Arts Trust, which celebrated its 60^th anniversary in 2017, is an innovative charity that provides studios spaces and support for emerging artists. Current artists have exhibited at the Royal Academy, Mall Galleries, the London Original Print Fair and the Oxo Tower Gallery, have been shortlisted for the Artists and Illustrators Artist of the Year award, been featured in the Sunday Times, and have been awarded residency at the National Trust reserve at Wicken Fen.

The studios will be open between 11 and 4pm on Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 June 2018. The Forge is situated off Hertford Road opposite St Johns Church of England Primary School – signs will be visible around Digswell village prior to the event. Entry is free, parking is available, and the nearest train station is Welwyn North.

Contact Dave Nelson on 07801236257 or at dave@davenelsonart.com

for further details.
Additional information can be found at digswellarts.org

Participating Artists:

Hideki Arichi works primarily as a painter and printmaker as well as with ceramics. With an interest in Japanese art, he observes the marks and graphic information left behind by urban chance encounters.

Caryl Beach works in video, photography and abstracted mixed media, seeking to evoke through her work the transient nature of our world, it’s imperfections and impermanence, and Jane Bottery uses oil pastel, oil paint and plaster to create small-scale abstract works which have a meditative quality.

Mary Down makes one-off artist books which can be handled in order to explore the ideas they embody, and Jonathan Emmerson is an illustrator and printmaker, producing limited edition woodcut prints and hand-made cards. Suman Gujral is a printmaker whose work, deeply influenced by the use of colour in India, communicates intensity and joy whilst Julia Holt who is currently investigating dance and the figure, works with paint, pastel and inks in a variety of sizes, using observation and expressive mark-making to create a feeling of movement in her paintings.

Anne Houghton is a painter and printmaker whose delicate work is inspired by the natural world. Simon Langsdale draws and carves letters in stone by hand, working to commission and also creating his own pieces that are designed to emphasise the meaning in words that can sometimes be overlooked. Juliana Loveday is a printmaker and painter who works with etching, mono-printing and painting, providing artwork for projects and photoshoots for interior designers and stylists

Dave Nelson creates mixed-media landscapes that are distorted and naïve, evoking a memory of place and how things appeared on a day in time. John Plummer paints expressive abstract landscapes that reflect his love of colour and passion for the beauty of countryside and Kirke Raava explores ideas of nostalgia through the interpretation of found and everyday objects which are playfully reimagined as jewellery. Bob Spriggs is a sculptor and installation artist who uses science as the material from which he creates an intriguing synthesis of the scientific and the aesthetic and Sally Tyrie makes mixed media drawings, paintings and multi-layered prints which explore her passion for natural history and the environment.

1.Hideki Arichi: The Shape of Things acrylic on wood 21 x 29cm

2.Caryl Beach: Across mixed media 24 x 36”

3.Dave Nelson: Sackler Staircase, Royal Academy mixed media on  marine plywood 30 x 28 x 2cm

4.Sally Tyrie: Close of the Day (detail) mixed media art book   work 9 x 9cm