Just a handful of talented UK women

I've got some really talented friends. Not the one's I've worked with over the years (though boy there's amazing talent there - I'm so lucky) no, I'm talking about friends who live locally to me and have just become friends through schools and streets really...

There are a huge amount of amazing women out there in the UK creating wonderful things and I am lucky that my friends are amongst them. Wish I could say the same!

So I am unashamedly going to introduce you to four of them here, all of them who have brought up children, run households and are fabulously creative.

Cheryl Powling

Cheryl keeps and hatches chickens as a sideline - check out her blog Mucky Hen. But her real talent lies in stained glass and as we are an Edwardian area there's lots of it that needs restoration and replacing so she is always busy. She also runs workshops for those who want to learn the art of stained glass. She's also quite mad (again see her blog).
Here is something she made for me for my birthday with handpainted glass (all her own work too). She knows I love bees (I have a tattoo).

Oh and she also does a bit of mosaic when the fancy takes her...

Then there's Tami Hedley. She also works with glass using fluid dyes on the reverse of glass bowls and dishes to create the most wonderfully vibrant pieces which are sold all over the world. I love the colours she produces and she also works as an Art Therapist with youngsters who need help and a creative outlet. How beautiful are these?

No list of my talented female friends should be without commercial artist, Pauline Hazelwood who produces large paintings, smaller watercolours and illustrations. She is an acclaimed artist who has had her work displayed at the Mall Galleries and the National Gallery. I love her children's book illustrations which I first learned about from a set of greetings cards which I came across on sale. One day I will treat myself to one of her painting classes (especially the one's she runs abroad and in the sunshine - sounds like bliss) where she will learn how bad a painter I actually can be. Needless to say her sons seem to be following in her footsteps with amazing success.
Here are just a few pieces of her work...

and here is one of her children's book illustrations which I love...

And last  is Helen Masacz whose portraits have been hung in the National Portrait Gallery and whose star is very much on the ascendant in the portraiture world. I am proud to say that I was one of the first people to commission her to do portraits of my girls - now I can't afford her which is a good thing for her but bad thing for me (though she is still very affordable for what she does I hasten to add). Anyway she too has brought up children and created a business from home - here is a taster of her amazing work...

She also has produced a series of wonderful still-life paintings too...

We all have talented friends so if you want to let me know about your's I'll certainly blog about them here - would be delighted to showcase more amazingly creative women of the UK!

Death at the Wellcome Collection

Tete de Morte Postcard 1910 - Richard Harris collection

All the years I've lived in London and I've never been to the Wellcome Trust which is just opposite Kings Cross Station! Flicking through a magazine an advert for an exhibition on Death caught my eye and as husband had been nagging for ages to take me to the Wellcome Collection, we decided that this was the perfect place to be on a disgustingly grey afternoon in November.

Death in  all its guises - from our portrayal of death to our markers for the deceased is all found in this small but beautifully put together (and free) exhibition.

Skeleton Puppet - Richard Harris collection 

Collected over the years by Richard Harris, a former antique print dealer in Chicago, the exhibition includes illustrations, aretfacts, rare prints by the likes of Durer, Goya and Rembrant along with war art and antique metamorphic postcards. There are 5 themed rooms, Contemplating Death, The Dance of Death, Violent Death, Eros and Thanatos and Commemoration. 

Richard Harris says 'The collection was from the beginning meant to be shown as an exhibition to the public, never as a private, personal statement for my eyes only. I hoped to create a body of work that would chronologically and culturally capture the essence of Death through its iconography, from masterpieces of fine art to the incidental'.

You are also free to wander the galleries of the Wellcome Trust collection which has even more amazingly weird and wonderful pieces like a lock of George III hair and a Chinese torture chair. There is a great bookshop and lovely cafe with freshly made cakes - well worth a wander on a Sunday afternoon.

'Death: A self-portrait, the Richard Harris Collection' runs from 15 November 2012 to 24 February 2013 at Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, NW1 2BE.

David Cerny's London Booster

This popped into my inbox yesterday and amazingly it's not a photo-shopped picture but an actual piece of sculpture featuring a real London bus manufactured in 1957. The sculpture of this incredible transformer bus, the 'London Booster' is by Czech artist David Cerny for London 2012 Czech House currently at the Business Design Centre, Islington who are hosting the Czech Olympic committee.

David Cerny is one of the Czech Republic's most controversial artists, and this is what he has to say about this particular piece which has had heads turning,
'The obsession with sport, the frenzy it generates, sometimes even ending in street war and regularly in a dependence on the activity, always amazed me. And the only sport which I'm able to watch passively is pole dancing. Although objectively speaking, I'm quite sporty: biking, swimming, flying, certainly I would not call myself an athlete. I'm probably obtaining dopamine from other physical sources. Press-ups are a particular physical exercise which every athlete does, but they also form part of a military drill and sometimes are forced on prisoners as punishment.'
Read more about David Cerny on Art Daily.

Will have to go down to the exhibition centre as there are daily exhibitions and things happening - all to do with the Czech Republic of course!