Laura Wellington

Laura Wellington is a designer that loves colour, pattern and shape.

Laura created the Totem lights whilst designing the Sheaf St Cafeteria bar. She wanted each light to have its own character and style and for the viewer to have a favourite, least favourite or multiple favourites. 

Tasked to create a light that combined shape, colour, pattern and a choice to build your own was what inspired her.

Fun Makes Good

Fun Makes Good’s distinctive homewares bring joy to a space through an exuberant mix of pattern, texture and colour. 

The playful designs combine a love for geometric shapes with a contemporary colour palette and dynamic composition.

In addition to producing the signature range of homeware Fun Make Good have collaborated and worked with a range of clients from retailers to architects and cultural trusts including The Barbican, Made.com, Wahaca, The Touring Network and Culture Perth & Kinross, to produce a body of commissions ranging from limited edition products, large scale curtains and hangings to murals and public art pieces. 

https://www.funmakesgood.co.uk/

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/FunMakesGood?ref=l2-shopheader-name

Lubaina Himid talking about patterns on Mary Anne Hobbs Radio 6 Music

I really enjoyed listening to Turner Prize nominee, Lubaina Himid talk about patterns in her paintings.

She was speaking to Mary Anne Hobbs as part of Mary Anne's Radio 6 Music episodes about The Turner Prize. Interviews with the other nominees are also featured.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09g0qf1

Simon Morris - Pause paintings

Artist Simon Morris is interested in geometric abstraction. This covers object based paintings, installations and collaborations with other people. Within the context of the paintings, it allows him to think about how to make a geometric image in a way that allows him some opportunity to set the parameters of what these paintings are going to be but also let him make a painting where a system or formula helped him make decisions about what to do next.



He enjoys the unpredictable nature of this way of working. He uses black because it is a reductionist colour and focuses the attention on the pattern as opposed to the colours. I also enjoy working in this way - perhaps because I feel confident that I know that I am producing something even if I do not know what I am producing! Getting a balance between chaos and control is the challenge.



Pause 4.5 (2006) and Pause 5.5 (2006), are part of an ongoing series of paintings that have been produced by following a mathematical system.

The Power of Words in Art by Mark Titchner

Each year, Mary Anne Hobbs’ hosts the BBC Radio 6 Music annual art weekender, Art Is Everywhere. While listening to the radio programmes, listeners are encouraged to take inspiration from the words or the music and create an original piece of art which they then share online.

This year Art is Everywhere will be happening on Saturday 2 December and Sunday 3 December. The Saturday show will be broadcast live from Ferens Gallery in Hull, tying in directly with the 2017 Turner Prize.

In the run up to the launch of Art Is Everywhere, artist Mark Titchner talked to Mary Anne Hobbs about the power of words in art, particularly in public spaces.

Titchner's work utilises song lyrics, and words from creeds, treatises and political manifestos to explore different belief systems, and the way in which we 'receive thought and ideas'.

The artist reflects on how he first became interested in art using text, and recognises that the numerous notebooks that he filled with words were probably the starting point for him making work with words.

He is interested in the voice - how we share information, who gets to speak, who we listen to, where they are placed in the world. The majority of his work exists outside of the gallery, in the public sphere.

He began using text that he found, for example song lyrics or lines from books. His main concern was that the material had the potential to engage anyone.



One of his artworks, 'What I want more than anything else' involved Titchner talking to young people, aged 13-25, from across Hull, Burnley and Wigan. They were asked "What would you like more than anything else." Their handwritten responses were enlarged and made into banners, flags, murals, hidden bookmarks and on video screens that were displayed in the public. Each artwork was titled with the name of the individual who responded to the question.




http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05ng4x4

Cameraless Film-Making Workshop: Direct Animation and Collage with Hands on Film Lab

At the weekend I participated in one of the workshops ran by Hands on Film lab at The NewBridge Project. The workshop was to discover and explore the most immediate and satisfying of film-making techniques. Hand made footage, with no camera required! We used found footage, paints and various mark-making techniques to make a collaborative film on 16mm using the process of direct animation. We each made short film loops, and projected them. 

They will now be edited together to create a collective animation to be screened at Hands on Film's next evening screening: 

THE EXPERIMENTAL FRAME (December 14th, The Newbridge Project).https://www.facebook.com/events/487452228302642/

 

I experimented with various means of creating images; I made one film on clear film with leaves and petals. 

I was amazed how much detail of the veins can be seen in the animation.

Another length of clear film was drawn onto with various marks and colours, transparencies were cut and stuck on, and holes were made in the film. This was spliced with another film where I scratched into black film, and added coloured transparencies and inks. I used the hole punch to create circles in the film, and inserted coloured transparencies into some of the circles.

This little introduction has given me lots of ideas about ways that I can incorporate this method of working into my practice. Watch this space!

KOTA and cardboard lightshades

I frequently visit Grainger Market, not only passing through on my way to the studio, but regularly stopping to stock up on fruit and vegetables from the range of greengrocers. In and amongst the various eateries, clothes stalls and bargain shops you will find KOTA, Newcastle's first Scandinavian design store selling Scandinavian design, homeware, fashion, stationery, fabric and gifts. It's a favourite of mine!

KOTA is owned by Helsinki-born Krista Puranen Wilson, an interior specialist with a background in styling and desire. Krista wants to offer products by brands that are not already sold in Newcastle.

“I want to be able to offer things that are unique and not just for British people but also some Scandinavians who live in the region. We stock eco-friendly products, hand chosen and in small editions, so there’s very little chance anyone else will have the same item."

I am attracted to the pattern designs and the colours used in many of the products. I enjoy the choice of materials and the simplicity of the designs.



On my latest visit to KOTA I found the ideal range of lights to be installed with my 'Portion Control' publications. They are made from folded cardboard and have a concertina design so would complement the cardboard concertina stools.



https://www.kotastore.uk/

The Confidence Trick - Episode 2

In the second part of her three part series, Laura Barton explores the extent to which the schools we attend and our social backgrounds more generally play a part in determining our levels of confidence. 

She visits a state comprehensive school and an independent fee-paying school, both in the North West of England, to discover how much effort is made to ensure the confidence of pupils is actively developed, and the means by which that development might take place. She questions how far the network of influential contacts more readily made at private schools can help generate confidence in pupils as they set out into the world, but hears too how for many youngsters today a mask of confidence can often cover a sense of insecurity. 

At a visit to a comprehensive school, a member of staff tells her that in some ways it is easier to instill confidence in students at a comprehensive school rather than a private school because the students have the experience of talking to and interacting with students from a wide range of social backgrounds, cultures and classes. He believes the students are more tolerant and do not have a sense of entitlement that perhaps students from a private school may have.

He explains that the school tries to find something in every student that they can do well. For example, he has discovered that a boy who struggles with his academic school work has a real talent for fishing, and so he has encouraged the student to write about fishing for the school newspaper.

Laura speaks to figures such as Joe Queenan, Dreda Say Mitchell and Stuart Maconie about the ways the place you come from can influence confidence, whether that's the vast expanses of America, the East End of London or the industrial north of England. For Queenan, his own self-confidence comes from a combination of indifference to others' attitude towards him, and a childhood in relative poverty. Once you know you can deal with that, he says, such things as public speaking that terrify so many carry little fear.

Stuart Maconie acknowledges that private schools are meant to instill confidence in their students, but he thinks that this confidence is born of the absolute objective notion that you can't fail because underpinning that confidence is actual material and political power. He states that "if you are poor and you have no shoes, no amount of self-confidence will help you get on in life." It is understandable that those with a good education have a degree of confidence because they have a good reason. Certain opportunities will not be available to those of the lower classes or less well-educated. "No lower-class individual will have the opportunity to become the editor of a newspaper without any journalistic experience, in the way that someone such as George Osborne did because he had a particular network of contacts and a status."

Laura follows up her notion that an unexpected factor in determining is architecture and the built environment in which we're raised, asking expert John Grindrod how correct Winston Churchill was when he said that, "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us."

Stuart Maconie comments on the difference in confidence between counties. He recognises that Mancunians are generally confident, whereas Brummies are often self deprecating. He also speaks about how the St George's Hall in Liverpool is positioned directly in front of the train station, so that it is the first thing you see once out of the station. This building gives the impression of its grand status.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09czp4l

The Confidence Trick - episode 1

In this new three part series, Laura Barton sets out to examine the increasingly important part confidence appears to play in modern life, at the point when so many of us are beset by problems surrounding our own self-confidence. 

Over the course of the series Laura examines the key role of our background and education in determining our levels of confidence, teasing out the intricate interplay between aspects including class, gender, psychology and even architecture. 

She hears how our inclination to follow those who seem most confident can lead us into dark waters, and looks at the complicated connections between confidence and creativity. 

Laura also explores her own vexed relationship with this commodity that has so often proved elusive in her own life, seeking out an alternative to the brazen, pushy version of confidence that is currently so dominant. 

In the first episode, Laura speaks with the likes of Marina Hyde, Susan Cain, Katty Kay and high-wire walker Chris Bullzini to look at how we have come to be so in thrall to confidence and those most assured of their own opinions. She heads into the workplace to look at the ways the loudest and the cockiest most often rule the roost, and attempts being made to give more space and weight to the voices of those given to quiet reflection in order to maximise their potential contribution. 

Marina Hyde points out that it is surprising how quickly people are to form an opinion and have strong views about things that they know relatively little about. 

Writer and broadcaster Stuart Maconie is of the opinion that, "We've become obsessed with confidence and self-assertion.... it seems to be a new strain in our thinking. Isn't quiet modest competence a better thing?" He believes that confidence comes with knowing that you are doing the right thing. Maconie realises that being at ease in ones own skin is something that is hard acquired and comes with a long experience of doing what we do.

It is not just through the voice that we can give the impression of confidence. Wearing a uniform can instill confidence in people that you know what you are doing. For example, a pilot wearing a pilot's uniform can be deemed more confident than a pilot dressed in shorts and a t-shirt.

You get confidence by doing things that are challenging to you, but once you have done it once, you feel more confident to do it again.

There is research that suggests that you need three women to make a difference. Evidence of women underestimating their abilities is wide ranging. Men tend to overestimate their abilities by about 30%. Women apply for promotions when they have 100% of the skills set whereas men apply for promotions when they have only 60% of the skills set, thinking that they will learn those skills while on the job.

Susan Cain reported that in a typical meeting only 3 people tend to account for 70% of the talking. 

Social media and electronic means of sharing ideas can be a good way to encourage less confident people to participate. They do not need to compete with loud voices and are given credit for what they share - their contributions are in black and white and can be proven.

The first episode ends with a proposition from Susan Cain. She proposes that real confidence is when you know who you are. 

Do you know what kind of life you want to lead? 

Do you know who you are? 

Do you know what kind of decisions you want to make?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09bykhx

Foundation Press Workshop at Pop Records, Sunderland

The weekend got off to a great creative start as I participated in a workshop run by Foundation Press. Foundation Press is an experimental printing press, operating as a space for testing collaborative approaches to printing and publishing. It is currently run by Debbie Bower, Adam Phillips and Joe Woodhouse with students from the Foundation Diploma Art & Design course at University of Sunderland.



This was the first of two workshops to collaboratively design printed posters for upcoming gigs and events at Pop Recs in Sunderland, an independent record shop, cafe, arts space and venue.

Inspired by simple but iconic text posters like those made by Colby Poster Printing Co in L.A – Foundation Press will print a new set of posters exploring the colour blending possibilities of risograph printers and hand-made experimental typefaces.



Our initial challenge was to come up with our own band name. There were a number of photocopied bits of text that we could cut up and mix with other words to form interesting band name suggestions.

We were then to create hand-made letter sets, using a cut and paste method with photocopies, glue and scissors. We each picked a set of images that had been photocopied, and with these we were tasked with creating an alphabet.

The selection of images included various food items such as vegetables, meats and candy-canes, hair, bears, clouds, bubbles and more geometric shapes like the set I chose.

This is how my alphabet turned out:

Here are some of the other alphabets created in the workshop:

 Using candy-cane and hair imagery

 Using images of vegetables

 Using an image of a bear

At the next session we will be printing from these typefaces and will experiment with colour blending techniques. I'm looking forward to some riso-action!

On Saturday 18th November the finished posters will be displayed along with cut-offs and experiments in an exhibition at Pop Recs.