postcards will be sent

I have just received a rather fantastic invitation to the First Anguilla Sculpture Symposium, I think I am speechless, so more info when I have recovered from the fabulous shock. Offers of suitcase carrying and personal assistant are already being proffered, please form an orderly queue!!

out of the studio

Things have conspired to keep me out of the studio recently and thankfully mostly good things. I have been welded to the computer making applications by the score; there seems to have been a number of really interesting exhibitions and opportunities to apply for since Christmas. Results awaited and as usual you may well hear the cheers and hopefully not too many sobs. I am hoping that all the writing has made an improvement to my applications and it certainly does tone up the grey matter to talk about my sculpture coherently. I have just put an American artist chum on a plane to go home and we had a fab week doing the galleries and London has a lot of galleries! She did say that she had done enough art for a while.....
As it has been a tad chilly, being in a warm gallery is rather more preferable to a cold studio which is where I shall be again tomorrow. Having said that, we have had a glorious spring day and the first sight of crocus in bloom

Bronze casting, yay!

I have just spent the last 2 weekends in the company of the London Sculpture Workshop www.londonsculptureworkshop.org doing a ceramic shell bronze casting workshop. The LSW is a splendid resource for sculptors because it has all the big stuff equipment that we don't need everyday and certainly cannot afford. Great fun and thankfully good weather. I need to spend a bit more time filing my sculptures, photos soon

In progress

I did not do all of these! burning out

 after the pour

Porcelain

Back in Chelmsford College again and using the kilns. I have been busy working with porcelain which I loaded into the kiln where it will spend time drying out before firing. Potentially two sculptures if the firing goes well. Pity the kiln isn't in the studio as I would be warmer! 

all connected up

Having had a successful interview, I shall be teaching a few hours a week at Morley College in central London. All good. One the questions at the interview was about my attitude to social media. So kicking and screaming I find myself with a Twitter account Alexandra Harley@HarleySculpture, I constantly amaze myself!

padding and glowing

Meanwhile, back in the studio and it is freezing, thermals, padded shirts and two pairs of trousers were essential; in fact I was so well padded that had I fallen over, I probably would have bounced and I am not sure that I could have got up again. I was working with clay yesterday, so I wasn't quite so active as I am when I am carving;  I was preparing some porcelain for a new sculpture, this is a material I have never tried before so there are some exiting times ahead. This is assuming I haven't succumbed to hypothermia and/or frostbite in the cold of the studio.
My studio is hard by the Olympic park in east London,  and I see Anish Kapoor's 'Mittal Tower' from my studio, gleaming at me in the night, the red glow provides the only warmth

2015 - keeping on

2014 has been busy, productive as well as fun! That's a good result. New friends made in Kyoto, friendships renewed in Massachusetts and friends maintained here in the UK. I managed to get into the studio regularly and I have been involved in several great shows, so here's to 2015. Another 'Brancaster Chronicles' to look forward to and a new years resolution to keep going!