Author Archives: Hope Fitzgerald

Hot Tin Residency and #100ColourMixDays Exhibition

#100ColourMixDays is a series of 100 small original works made over 100 days, contained in two sketchbooks.

The original #100ColourMixDays sketchbooks were displayed at The Hot Tin, St Saviour’s Church during opening hours from Tuesday, 19 February until Saturday, 2 March, 2019. A selection of 20 framed Giclée Prints on Canson Aquarelle Rag Paper were hung on the Hot Tin’s panelled walls.

As the first Artist in Residence at The Hot Tin, I spent each each Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 10-3 during the show making work in response to the wonderful space and building that is the Historic St Saviour’s Tin Church. Mike and Romana and their wonderful team have created a comfortable, inviting cafe and fabulous cultural venue, where they embrace everything from performance, film and music to literary visits. The coffee?…Yes!!  And I had plenty of it, so I can confirm that a good cup of Joe is no fluke at the Hot Tin! I loved getting the chance to be available to talk about the Colour Mix Days work as well as making new work inspired by my surroundings.

I’d decided to make a book-work of some kind before going into the residency. The double doors at the building’s entrance suggested a cover, and my helpful hoarding of wide corrugated packaging came in handy for a reference to St Saviour’s Church’s exterior walls.  I wanted to use the Dos-à-dos, or back to back, book form, so the central door of the entrance became the interior cover, shared by both the front and the back of the book. My only criteria was to show up and make work. I looked at the space for a vocabulary of marks. I spent time drawing straight lines suggested by the paneling inside St Saviour’s, rocking from my heels to my toes rhythmically to incorporate more body than hand and arm, and exploring the feeling of repetition and physicality of that action, in a space where people had once worshiped or kicked a ball around when the Church was used as a school gymnasium. I used Sumi-e ink for the first time, discovered that it has a distinctive smell, and was very helpfully told about its property of being waterproof when dry – a wonder! I talked with artists and visitors and children. I did some pretty ropey coptic binding, after abandoning a previous failed binding idea. I had space for art in my days. As is said, a change is as good as a holiday and it was a wonderful, engaging joyful couple of weeks, and I didn’t want to leave. The book doesn’t really feel complete – I was only able to spend about 40 hours on it, but I intend to add to it over the years in my visits to the Hot Tin for more of their wonderful coffee.

AND – did I mention there was a cocktail designed and named in honour of the Residency!? Gorgeous it is, too. Next time you’re dancing at the Hot Tin, be sure to ask Will for a “Hope on a Hot Tin Roof”!

To purchase any Giclée Prints of any of the #100colourmixdays small paintings, take a look at all of the work here and contact me by email: hope@hopefitzgerald.com with the name of the painting. Prints are £45 plus p&p and measure 254 x305mm page size with a central 100x150mm image, the actual size of the original.

All 100 pieces, details of the process, and sketchbook pages can be viewed by searching #100ColourMixDays or by visiting @hopefitzgerald_art on Instagram.

#tinybookcollaboration

The Tiny Book Collaboration is a long term slow art project.

As an artist and maker, I find the interaction with other people the most rewarding, interesting and inspiring part of making. This has developed slowly. While making A Bivariate Map, I found the conversations that happened during the making and viewing of the work were some of the best things about the whole experience. The relationships that took place, however briefly, were important. This was explored further during my year long residency as part of the AA2A programme at UCA Canterbury. The resulting Medium Memory installation and project invited visitors to contribute a personal memory to the work, with each generously contributed memory becoming an integral part of the whole work. The work itself was constructed and made with care, but the full essence of it would be incomplete without a relational contribution from visitors. I love this definition from the Tate:

“The French curator Nicholas Bourriaud published a book called Relational Aesthetics in 1998 in which he defined the term as:

A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space

He saw artists as facilitators rather than makers and regarded art as information exchanged between the artist and the viewers. The artist, in this sense, gives audiences access to power and the means to change the world.”

For now, the plan for the #tinybookcollaboration is this: Every month or so, I will be sending out 20 tiny books, anywhere in the world by request on Instagram @hopefitzgerald_art. Just send a Direct Message to take part. The intention is that the Tiny Book Collaboration will continue over many years.

It is an exercise in trust – I will send them out and they will return. It is an exercise in optimism – I will be here for many years to come to continue the project. It is an exercise in patience, and the slow flow of days – I wait for the post, and it arrives unannounced. It is an exercise in curiosity – what will a slow accumulation of small contributions look like collected in one place. I imagine it will be a beautiful thing – but I must wait and see. It is an exercise in perseverence – and the belief that small things can amount to something greater than the sum of its parts – over time.

Ultimately, the tiny books will live in my dear father-in-law’s old briefcase, which has been shuffled around our house for years since his retirement. The briefcase is a work in progress right now.  Imagine opening it, full of all these tiny unknowns. Thrilling!

📙How does the tinybookcollaboration work?📙
✨A tiny book will be posted to you, anywhere in the world.
✨Full it up with whatever you like – poetry, collage, drawing, shopping list, grievances, gratitudes, short stories, etc etc etc. Y’know, stuff that goes in books.
✨Send it back to be part of the collection and a very long term project.

Copyright and Moral rights always stays with the artist. For me the important thing about the Tiny Book Collaboration is its collective nature, so any one contribution carries less meaning as an individual contribution than as a small part of a whole collection. It is about the content to some extent, but it is also about other things – optimism, trust, connection, generosity. Copyright stays with the artist and will always be attributed when shared or used in any way. The work as a collection is mine and contributors sharing their work agree to the terms of the Creative Commons license below.

Creative Commons License
Work contributed to the Tiny Book Collaboration is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Thanks for reading!  📙📙

Hope

 

 

#100ColourMixDays

Over 100 days, colour and mark making were explored to produce two book works and 100 small paintings. These small works (10cmx15cm) are presented in two sketchbooks. Each piece is inside a glassine envelope, mounted onto its own reference page with the formula used to make the piece and colour mixing notes.

Two reference books were used.  The first 75 colours are taken from The Secret Lives of Colour (2016) by Kassia St Clair which tells the story of 75 colours through history.  All mark making is taken from A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, and Compendium of Useful Knowledge For Ornithologists. (1886) by Robert Ridgeway, Curator, Department of Birds, United States National Museum.

Medium Memory

A series of slides from travels in the U.S., Europe and Egypt between 1987-1990 have been scanned, printed and were exhibited as postcards. Exploring memory as a medium, visitors were invited to share words, poems, memories, and stories (factual or fictional) that might be inspired by the images.

Duplicate postcards were provided for this, and contributions were shared in future exhibitions and at http://hopefitzgerald2.tumblr.com/

“When pictures are taken, the intention is often to keepsake a memory — of a time, a place, or people we care about. They hold our stories in place, like Wendy Darling’s stitches reconnect Peter Pan’s shadow. Due to the passage of time, many of these images have lost their stories. Perhaps some stories that have lost images can be found here.”

Medium Memory invites visitors to contribute to the work through their own memories, or through stories, poems, fact or fiction.

A Bivariate Map

Making A Bivariate Map

Making A Bivariate Map 28 ft x 8ft approx.

A Bivariate Map with its Contingent Piece

A Bivariate Map made visual connections between selected passages in Darwin’s On the Origin of Species with the Old Testament of the King James Bible.  A Bible concordance was used to locate each word in the selected phrases and these words were highlighted with white gesso circles and joined with free-drawn pencil lines. A table of contents listing the words indicated the location of each word within the grid. Additional words not in usage in the King James version of the Old Testament were added into the spaces in the margins, highlighted, and included in the contents.

 

30 Books

still2 copy

Select the image above to view 30 Books. Link will open in a new window.

Plan drawing for 30 Books

Plan Drawing with Grid references for 30 Books

30 Books is a One minute film.  It was selected for the Whitstable Biennale, 2008 and screened at Harbour Books, Whitstable. The books selected were from my personal collection and have personal meaning for me. I was inspired by the times I have spent with books, alone and with people I care about, and wanted to present these pages and moments as specimens, fluttering and captured.