Devon Open Studios bursary winners announced
Devon Artist Network with Chagford-based sponsor, Helpful Holidays is delighted to announce the winners of the Devon Open Studios “Emerging Artist Bursary Scheme.”
The Bursary is running for the fifth year and aims to nurture and encourage new talent to take the next steps in their career by helping to fund their participation in this prestigious annual open studios event. We are grateful to our key sponsor, Helpful Holidays, which has grown to become one of the UK’s leading holiday home agencies, for funding this initiative which will support five emerging artists living and working in Devon.
We at Helpful Holidays are delighted to again be invited to sponsor the Devon Open Studios,” says Moray Bowater, Managing Director of Helpful Holidays, “This year’s bursary award winners are a good selection of artists that are all so different from each other. We are looking forward to seeing more of them. Each year we watch this festival of art grow and grow and are delighted to be part of it. Devon Open Studios allows everyone visiting and living in the West Country to see some incredible work and to visit artists in their own studios which is a delight.”
The bursaries are aimed at those beginning their professional arts practice, returning to creative practice after a career break or change, or currently taking their art in a new direction. Applicants must be based in Devon and have registered for Devon Open Studios 2015. All art forms were considered by the Devon Artist Network panel which was drawn from volunteers who serve on the Network’s management committee. Joanna Radford, who chairs this, said, “Our panel, which included both a retired art director of BBC books and a professional multimedia artist and video maker, was impressed with the variety of the submissions and the exciting work produced by the successful candidates”.
It costs £150 to enter DOS, Helpful Holidays donates £100 to each artist.
This year the winners are: Leah Edwards, a multi-disciplinary artist from Lustleigh; Jacob Bodilly, a potter from near Wellington; Natasha Smart, a textile artist from Exmouth; Hepzibah McLeod, a multi-media artist from Dartmouth and Ruth Sutherland, a calligrapher from Ashburton.
Bursary winners:
Leah Edwards – Teignbridge - multi-discipline/sculpture
Jacob Bodilly– Mid Devon – British Studio Pottery
Natasha Smart – East Devon – multi-dis/textiles
Hepzibah McLeod – South Hams - screen print and multi media
Ruth Sutherland – Teignbridge - calligraphy
1. Leah Edwards
A multi-disciplinary artist, distinctive work using appropriate media, exploring how we experience and construct our world.
Starmead, Knowle Road, Lustleigh TQ13 9SP 01647 277469 leahedwards@btinternet.com
Leah specialised in fine art and sculpture at University, and explored other mediums from dance to film to printmaking since she graduated in 20 11. She worked a year as an intern for famous West Country sculptor, Peter Randall-Page and has recently returned home to Devon after a sabbatical in New Zealand, to re establish her artist career. Her aim for the Devon Open studios is to create a new series of work focusing on collage, stone and ceramic sculpture along with some video and media work. “Winning the bursary is a great help financially, I am always struggling with costs for materials and equipment hire it would give me a leap of confidence I begin my new direction. I am keen to immerse myself in the local Devon artistic network, to organise my own exhibition and to connect and meet fellow artists in the area.”
2. Jacob Bodilly Pottery
Jacob Bodily uses his formidable pottery skills to create some of the highest quality British Studio Pots.
Eden, Greenham, nr Wellington (but in Devon)
TA21 0JY 07866 801802 jacob.bodilly@gmail.com jacob.bodillypottery.blogspot.co.uk
Working in the Leach tradition, this 28yr old potter has dedicated 8 years to become an independent maker. When Jacob left university he went to work at the Leach Pottery in St Ives where he spent two years training to be a production thrower and a professional potter, working with many influential ceramic artists. Everyday was spent studying pottery, art, food and music. He was able to start working on his designs for functional pottery and began practising his own processes of technique. After training in St Ives Jacob went on to revive Boscean Pottery, where the old master Scott Marshall had made his pots, in St Just, Cornwall (the place where his grandparents bought their pots in the 1960’s) Scott had passed away and Jacob was asked to fulfill the task of finishing his last pots. Marshall had been a major inspiration in his path to being a potter, he was honored to be involved in the project. With the permission of Scott Marshall’s widow, Beth Marshall, he set about producing the old shapes and glazes. Customers began returning in earnest, which gave him the stand point to begin his own homage to the traditions practiced at Boscean Pottery.
In 2014 he set up his own Jacob Bodilly Pottery and relocated from Cornwall to Devon. During the epic move of all his pottery equipment (approx. 20 tonnes), last spring, he could not produce any work for over 8 months.
He has since received several major commissions, including work within the Eden Project and English Heritage. He plans to build two new kilns and make a move towards wood fired kiln with support of local timber yard, which will change the nature of his practice dramatically. He has also recently extended his studio to allow for tuition and craft workshops and hopes to engage with people about his subject, though seminars and talks.
“Now my Pottery is in a new place a, I hope to put my studio and showroom on the map in Devon, providing a cultural setting for people to interact with the magic of pottery, and to enlighten people to the subject of Studio Ceramics.”
3.Natasha Smart
Beach and shell-inspired felted and embroidered textiles, from artworks and homewares to jewellery, handbags and other accessories.
22A Windsor Square, Exmouth
EX8 1JY 07534 527737 natashasmarttextiles@gmail.com www.facebook.com/NatashaSmartTextiles
Natasha is a textile artist and felt maker, and for the last ten years has been developing her art in her spare time whilst commuting to London in her work as a civil servant. With a move to Exmouth, she is now taking the opportunity to become a professional, full-time artist.
She is embarking on a period of experimentation in order to develop her artistic voice and direction, focusing less on the medium and technical aspects of textiles and felt-making and more on the exploration of ideas and themes, which she hopes will include her emotional response to coastal living.
“My first step towards developing my artistic life in Devon was to sign up for Devon Open Studios 2015. Winning the Emerging Artist Bursary is a fantastic opportunity to develop my work in a supportive environment, as well as give me a clear focus. Devon Open Studios will give me the focus I need, but the added incentive of being an Emerging Artist will help push me further in the right direction.”
4. Hepzibah McLeod – South Hams
Contemporary drawings, negotiating the distinction between human and animal, and fantasy and reality, with nostalgia for myth in modern culture.
Lower Flat, Hillsdene, Totnes Road, Street, Dartmouth
TQ6 0RU 07866 306066 hepzibahmcleod@mail.com
www.hepzibahmcleod.com
Hepzibah is a practicing artist who is now taking the first steps to building a business from her passion. A graduate of the University of Brighton four years ago, she is now practising in her home county, Devon. She has worked in many mediums from tattoo design to freelance illustration and her love for fine art and the desire to make it more affordable and accessible has led her to produce a small range of stationary products and, more recently, clothing.
She hopes over the coming months and years is to develop and build her own screen-printing home-studio, to produce one-offs, or short runs, of beautifully illustrated clothing that breaks the away from the norm of the generic high street and into the realms of artistic expression, using a blend of the traditional and the contemporary.
5. Ruth Sutherland (sharing a studio with Philippa Newport)
Beautiful, creatively illustrated letterforms, combining traditional materials and modern techniques. Lavishly embroidered, unique hand-felted accessories, inspired by antique textiles.
The Studio, 29 Eastern Road, Ashburton
TQ13 7AP Ruth Sutherland 01364 653945 sutherlandruth45@gmail.com
Calligraphy is the art of beautiful writing and is a very intense craft, using traditional methods and materials, and Ruth is excited at this prospector sharing her passion for lettering with others through Devon Open Studios. Visitors will be able view Ruth’s wide range of skills from work using of gesso gold leaf, and vellum to modern papers, pastels, ink, watercolour, and even pencil work. Ruth feels strongly that this craft needs to continued in a traditional manner and that the many new fonts available on computers, offering quirky styles and colours, cannot replicate the joy and pride that letters ‘written with ones own hand ‘ could possibly achieve.
She is hoping that having her work on display will encourage people to feel inspired to ‘have a go’ or even on a personal level, just to sharpen up their handwriting which is such a joy to the recipient.
“I am now looking forward to the next few years, being able to develop my own skills, by having training days with the Exeter Letterers, and to have the opportunity to hold workshops for others.”
