Well what a great weekend I have had! Was feeling a little down about the credit crunch/recession and that people have been spending less because of it. I realise as well as anyone, that feeding the belly has to come before feeding the soul. So money has been a wee bit tighter than usual. But I keep on creating my art for myself because it makes me happy - then this weekend I received such a boost - I was a runner-up in The Sefton Open Art Exhibition. I received a cash prize, plus The Atkinson Gallery are buying my piece for their permanent collection! Apart from the money being very welcome - as I can restock my clay supplies and get some more shadow boxes made-up, it is also an amazing confidence booster. To know that others actually get my art and I am not just making it for my own satisfaction makes me so happy. If you are in the Merseyside area in the next six weeks than do pop in The Atkinson Gallery on Lord Street Southport - it's a really interesting exhibition (though I say so myself.) You'll find it on the top floor and there are some wonderful artists exhibiting. It finishes on the 9th of November 2008. Below is the text that goes next to my piece.
Inside The Blue House by Leandra Holder
Inside The Blue House is a shadow box in mixed media – the doll is slip cast porcelain with real hair. The jewelled skulls are hand carved bisque fired porcelain and there are various found items used too.
Inside The Blue House is a shadow box in mixed media – the doll is slip cast porcelain with real hair. The jewelled skulls are hand carved bisque fired porcelain and there are various found items used too.
This piece evolved from the artist’s long standing interest in the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo and the annual festival of The Day of The Dead. The blue house of the title is Frida Kahlo’s house. Frida is at work in her studio – ignoring Diego Rivera at the window. On the windowsill are a fawn and an elephant – this is Frida and Diego – as are the love birds on top of the open cage. Littered around the studio are cigarettes, alcohol and pills – all used by Frida to help relieve the constant pain she was in because of the terrible accident she suffered to her back when young. On Frida’s back is a monkey – she had monkeys as pets and often included them in her paintings – but it is also symbolic of her understandable dependence on drugs. Frida’s diary was published after her death and that too is on the studio floor. There’s the Communist / Soviet Union army badge of the hammer and sickle on the back wall – this is to indicate Frida’s communism, but also her reputed short lived affair with Leon Trotsky. The mirror reflects Frida’s own image back at her and was used constantly in her art - as her pain and her own life were always at the centre of her work. There are American dollars peeping from behind one of the paintings – this is to show the constant struggle that Frida had, like most artists, as she tried to make a living from her art.
