Sally Booth Artist in Residence at the Bluecoat

Open Studio 25 April 2009 12-5pm with artist talk at 2pm

The Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX 0151 702 5324

Artist Sally Booth is the 2009 recipient of the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary which this year includes a 3 month residency at the Bluecoat, in partnership with Shape and with support from Tate Liverpool.

Come and meet the artist and see her work inspired by Liverpool cityscapes and her residency in the studio; including panoramic and transparent drawings, photographs and collaborations. Refreshments provided. Lift Access.

For more information about the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary: http://www.adamreynoldsbursary.org.uk/

For more information about Sally’s work: http://www.sallybooth.co.uk/news.html

For more information about the Bluecoat: www.thebluecoat.org.uk

A busy two weeks of visits from Shape and my family. I made the mistake of taking my mum on the ferry the one day it was very choppy – oh dear!

I ran two workshops for the Bluecoat over the Easter weekend inspired by the gallery windows overlooking the gardens, and another with the outreach worker for a group of children in North Liverpool. All a bit chaotic, but we did spot one of participants putting up her transparent picture against the window of the chippy afterwards.

I have just got permission to draw up the top of the radio city tower in the centre of Liverpool. The view is so enormous and there is so little time left that this feels quite daunting, but am having a go.

It is still freezing but the clocks have gone forward at last.

In my studio, the first real chinks of real sunshine are coming through my windows in the early evening, and I can now potter round the docks after work and meander home in daylight, which is a real pleasure.

I had a trip up north to visited MIMA, with Bluecoat staff, to see the new drawing show that will shortly transfer to the Bluecoat. I’ve also started an experimental project collaboration with artist Tristan Brady – Jacobs, who makes panoramas with mobile phone photography.

We have been out on expedition on Sundays, him with various contraptions to suspend mobile phones and me with a pile of balsa wood. A big breakfast to fend off the weather and then long walks along industrial landscapes of the docks.

As a visual artist usually based in London, the opportunity to spend 3 months away concentrating on my own practice in a city as visually and culturally stimulating as Liverpool was an exciting prospect.

The scene was set from the beginning with a rather surreal and magical initiation to the city. I arrived to a day of horizontal snow and when I ventured out to try and find the Mersey in what seemed   like a bit of a blizzard, I felt as if I was walking through a still from a New York movie or a Whistler painting. The Liver Building was veiled by impossibly giant snowflakes and the river and usually distinctive skyline were almost invisible and indistinguishable from each other. This theme has continued through my residency with an interest in making work that explores transparency and obscurity.

The Studio,  Making Work and Experimentation
The open remit for the Adam Reynolds residency allows valuable time and space for experimentation and development of work without a prescribed outcome. After an initial flurry of meeting people at the Bluecoat and the Tate, local radio and open studio, and getting lost just about every day for the first two weeks, things settled down to their own rhythm. I had the time to explore the city, wear out my walking boots, and think about what work to make at my own pace.

One of the main things I wanted to do during my time in Liverpool was to make work directly inspired by my experience of the city itself, and the studio at the Bluecoat. I have used these to explore light, and incorporate transparency and obscurity as part of my drawing practice and the way that I see.

In the studio I have taken a series of photos of the light and shadows cast by the oval windows, both at night and in the afternoons. As the days slowly lengthened, and glimpses of developing work appeared in the background, this has reflected the passage of time over the course of the residency.

With a home made idea for a washing line system erected in the studio, I have experimented with making transparent drawings in a number of layers, which has developed my previous practice of drawing on acetate.

In a quest for a building with a panorama, I spent many windy and not too successful days trying to draw from the top of the tower of the Anglican Cathedral, in the company of Frank, who sits in a hut up there. Back down at sea level I had strategies for dealing with the weather for drawing on location.  I made a collection of long balsa wood drawings (light and portable – a new discovery) in collaborative excursions to the docks with an artist who uses mobile phone photography, and compiled an acetate sketchbook for drawing on the bus when it rained.

Over the course of the residency I spent time getting to know staff and artists at the Bluecoat and the Tate and using the facilities available. This included a trip out to MIMA with staff to see the drawing show, meeting and working alongside the participation team, time spent in the print room experimenting with monotypes and learning new print techniques, meetings with Lindsey Fryer at the Tate, and attending and participating in events and workshops, such as Explore.

You can see more of my work at the final open studio event.

For more information on my work: www.sallybooth.co.uk
For more information on the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary: www.adamreynoldsbursary.org.uk

Forthcoming events:
Saturday 25th April 12 – 5pm ,Studio 7, 3rd Floor, Bluecoat Open studio with examples of work and process from the residency period. Accessible by lift.

Past events

Easter Weekend
Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th April 12 -4, Bluecoat Gallery
Transparency drawing workshop with artist Sally Booth, using the surroundings of the Bluecoat as inspiration. Open to the public, all ages and experience welcome. Level Access. Part of the Explore programme.

Saturday 14th February, 12 -4pm
Open Studio, Bluecoat
This event offered the opportunity to see the studio, meet the artist and see examples of her previous work at the commencement of her residency. Visitors were invited to mark destinations in Liverpool to explore and work from, which would directly influence the drawings made during the course of the residency.

After a return to London to sort out Access to Work claims, a pile of post, leaking washing machine, and “computer say no” problems, I am back in the swing of things in Liverpool and the pace is now hotting up for the second half of my residency.

There is an upbeat mood in the city since the recent football results, and constant replaying of Gerard’s hat-trick on City Talk radio.

I have been making real time drawings of the skyline from the moving ferry, and have returned to make drawings of the city from the top of the Anglican Cathedral, having got the go ahead from Cannon Hawley.

At the top of the tower (110 steps) there is a man called Frank, who sits in a little shed. I think his job is to check nobody falls off or has a heart attack on the way up.

I have been trying to grapple with the practicalities of drawing from up there -an extensive panorama from very high up, with lots of detail and rather a lot of wind. I suspect the practicalities and the distance from the subject might defeat me, but I am currently still persevering until I can hone it down to something simpler.

Today Frank was replaced by Amie, a student who is practising her singing for a concert tonight. (rather atmospheric and lovely). It feels rather surreal and special to think of these characters in their shed at the top of the city.

I am feeling very at home in the studio, though time already feels like it is going very fast. I have had constructed a series of hanging lines to experiment with layering my transparent drawings on top of each other. Not sure what will happen to them yet.

Sally Booth's art work

I’ve been working hard here in Liverpool on my residency  – here are some of the prints I’ve been making at the studios at the Bluecoat.
http://adamreynoldsbursary.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=53

Sally Booth drawing in a street in Liverpool

Weeks 3, 4 and 5

I am now starting to feel like I am settling in, have stopped getting lost about 10 times a day, and now know where the mystery bus that stops outside my house goes.

Work-wise, it’s been a bit bewildering knowing quite where to begin. To get me started, I have been going to the drawing destinations suggested to me by the public at my open studio event. I have been sent to some weird and wonderful places, including a folly at Allerton Towers, a falling down greenhouse at Calderstone’s Park, and somebody’s favourite bar!

It’s been a great way to explore all the different areas of the city and look for possible subject matter. I have also been doing huge long walks along the docks by the river, trying to draw the weather, (rather hard as everything blowing away). I am in danger of getting fit and windswept.

Back at the studio, I have been in the print room getting messy and feeling like a pig in shit. I’ve been making some monotypes inspired by my oval windows. Done nothing to write home about, but I have enjoyed being shown how to do it properly.

I am hoping to get permission to do a drawing from St Johns Tower, which has a good view of the city and also to work with the Education/Outreach team here, so watch this space.

Sally Booth's art work

In addition I have attended the following meetings and events

• 5th Feb Meeting with Lindsey Fryer, Head of Learning, Tate Liverpool

Lindsey has given me a flavour of Tate Liverpool and its history of a close relationship between exhibitions and education. She has given me some introductory information about the cultural organisations in Liverpool, and has signposted me to contact individuals at Fact and the Biennial. We have arranged a further meeting on 2nd March when she will visit me at the studio.

• Informal cultural events
Attended 3 talks at the Bluecoat performance space by artists working with the public and currently showing at the Next Up exhibition, Liverpool based artists working internationally, and attended a “slide slam” run by local artists at the “A” Foundation

• 10th Meeting with Laura Edwards, Participation Coordinator, Bluecoat
To visit the Blue Room participatory group and discuss possible involvement in workshops in the future

• 10th Feb Induction to Print Studio with artist and print technician Emma Gregory
We have arranged regular slots for me to use the print studio following this induction

• 11th Feb Live interview with Dean Sullivan, City Talks radio
To give information about Adam Reynolds and the bursary set up in his name, and to tell people about the residency and the open studio. The radio station may give me permission to draw the view from inside the City Talk building; I am hoping to pursue this, as it would be a very challenging task.

• 12th Feb Live interview with Clare Hamilton, BBC Radio Merseyside
As above. The producer has expressed interest in following the progress of the project as it develops. These interviews were arranged by Rachael Eades, Marketing dept at the Bluecoat

• 14th Feb, 12 -4pm Open Studio, Bluecoat

I held an open studio at the Bluecoat as an introduction to my residency. I showed examples of my work including a couple of films which were shown on the projector or computer. As part of this informal event I also invited the public to make suggestions for destinations to find in Liverpool in order to make drawings. These were signed and marked on a map and will form part of my practice here.

Ideas for work over the period
In between settling in, meeting people and trying to find my way round, I have been out and about to get a feel of the city and start to look for a focus for my work over the period.

I have no real idea at this stage what the end outcome will be, but I have decided to use locations and the architecture of the city itself as a starting point to push further my interest in working with transparency and obscurity in my drawing practice.

I am currently looking for one or more buildings, with a window and some sort of outlook, panoramic or close up, magnificent or the opposite, to undertake site specific drawings.

I am making a number of walks to destinations in the city both from my own exploration, and also stipulated by the public. I hope to formulate a series of drawings by this method, which may form part of my final open studio.

I am taking an ongoing series of photographs of the studio at night. The studio has two stunning oval windows and overlooks the entrance to the Bluecoat. These windows cast distorted shadows through the course of the afternoon and evening across my studio.

I have met Emma Gregory, artist and the print technician at the print studio at the Bluecoat. I have already made a couple of bad prints, and have arranged with her to use the studio over the period of my stay, in order to develop my skills in monotype prints. I hope to be able to transfer these skills as an extension of my drawing practice after the residency, as in London I have access to a press and no real knowledge how to use it.

Photo of Sally Booth's visual art work

Welcome to my blog.

This is my first entry.

Have landed in Liverpool to horizontal snowing! See pics from my first walk – nearly nil visibility by the Mersey, all rather surreal and like being in a film, not like in the guide books!

Finding my feet and lots of new stuff to get used to.
Everyone has been very friendly and all staff at Bluecoat have been lovely.

Bye for now.
Sally

Photo of Sally Booth's visual art work

Click here for more information about Sally.
For more information about  the Adam Reynolds Memorial Bursary
Click here for more information on the Bluecoat