Three Peaks of Pendle

Three Peaks of Pendle

Photographs by Lee Johnson
Haiku poems by Sarah Lee

 

 

Lee Johnson and Sarah Lee have explored the countryside on and around Pendle’s three significant hills:  Pendle, Boulsworth and Weets.  This new exhibition of photographs and poems includes some of the little known places which lie in their foothills.

Haiku is a 16^th century style of Japanese poetry made famous by Basho in his collection The Narrow Road to the Deep North.  Haiku are written in simple language using few words to distil moments in time.  They are inspired by the natural world, capturing changes in the seasons.

 

 

Here are Sarah and Lee, further details of the exhibition are below.

 

Three Peaks, A Pendle Exhibition featuring poetry and photography

Three Peaks

 

Three Peaks is an exhibition of Poetry and Photography by Sarah Lee and Lee Johnson. The three peaks in question are all in Pendle and are; Pendle Hill, Boulsworth and Weets.

 

 

 

Sarah and Lee work together and have known each other for 7 years.  They are both passionate about the landscape and one day starting talking about putting images and words together.

 

The inspiration behind three peaks was to explore places less often seen. Pendle Hill as an image is quite iconic and seen a lot, but the places around it less so. In effect it’s an exhibition around hidden Pendle.

 

Sarah and Lee set off on a series of walks together with the aim of capturing moments. These moments are then expresses in a photograph with an accompanying Haiku. The moments aren’t always simultaneous, sometimes the Haiku expresses the moment before the photograph was taken or the moment after.

 

 

 

Sarah and Lee both have busy lives too, so sometimes Lee would go out alone and take photographs. He would make lots of notes and send these to Sarah and then on some of the images the poem was created simply by looking at the image rather than being there.

 

Lee tends to work with what is happening around him, he doesn’t necessarily have a plan, but likes to capture the feel of the place as he is there, particularly to show the weather. Some of the images represent beautifully sunny days and others are misty and more brooding. He starts with the big landscape image and then goes down into smaller more detailed views, which are often a landscape in themselves, albeit in miniature.

 

Sarah takes notes while she is out, but then writes the Haiku later. A Haiku is a short poem designed to capture the moment, a sense of the present. They are often 17 syllables long, but there are no hard and fast rules. Haiku has been around for quite a while, since the poet Basho took a journey and wrote poems on the journey, entitled Narrow Road to Deep North, it was published in the Sixteenth Century. You can read more here

The aim behind the Haiku is to capture the atmosphere.  When writing the Haiku, Sarah will look at her notes, at images, and she is particularly inspired by maps and place names. She says “They are often really atmospheric in themselves”. Some are quite spooky, some witchy. For example:

Above Burnt House

And Wicken Clough

You watch in fading light

 

Lee thinks both him and Sarah have a dark side!

 

The project was a new challenge for Lee. He didn’t know Weets at all, although he spends a lot of time on Boulsworth. He also tends to shoot in black and white and these photographs are in colour, and he had to learn more about Haiku to make the project work.

 

The images were all taken fairly recently with the majority being from November 2013. This brought challenges too; weather and light. But you can’t organise nature.  One plan had been to capture the horses at Castercliff but when our intrepid duo arrived, the horses had been moved.

 

Another image:  Slaughterstones on the top of Boulsworth, we discussed in more detail.

 

It was a cold and misty November morning, and our photographer (him with rucksack, 2 cameras and spare lenses) and poet (her with pen and paper) spent two hours walking on Boulsworth. At one point they experienced a standoff with some cows who had been causing trouble with many walkers. As a result the image feels a little like the landscape is pressing in, and the Haiku also has a sense of threat.

 

 

 

So as always, I hope you get the chance to come and see this exhibition in person. The names of the places are all on the labels, so you can go and visit them for yourselves if you want to.

 

We’ll end with a quote from Sarah, who says “Why not have a at doing this yourself? Take a photograph and write a poem about the moment. It’s fun!”

 

 

Thanks,

 

Kirsty

New Year, New Exhibitions

Our first reception exhibition for 2014 is Nigel Holt.  

Nigel won the popular vote in the Open section for the 2013 Pendle Open Art Exhibition. His prize was a solo exhibition and here it is.

 

 

 The winning entry was ‘Breaking all the Rules’…. 

 

This is a watercolour and is based on a football match, the match between Burnley FC and West Ham in fact, which saw Burnley go up to the premiership.  

West Ham have the nickname of the Hammers, and in this picture are reimagined as hammer sharks, the whole piece is a play on words and names; look out for Chris Eagles as a seagull and the Bob Lord Stand become a Cod Law Stand.

 

 

Nigel’s son owns the ‘award winning’ fish and chip shop, Holt’s in Nelson so this also gets a mention. And, for those of you who like a Chippy Tea, there is a print of this work in the shop – which is decorated in Claret and Blue – natch!  

 

Nigel is a Pendle born and bred man, who currently lives down the road from us in Barrowford. He comes from an artistic family where his grandfather and father were both artists. His Dad came along to help drop the work off and was telling me all about his sculptures. They sound great and hopefully I have convinced him to enter the sculpture category of the Open exhibition this year. But, back to Nigel! He is, by trade a metal polisher, but has always drawn and painted since he was a child.  He first was inspired by album covers, Pink Floyd in particular, and used to copy them and then expand on them and make them his own.

Now his inspirations mostly come from looking  at other artists work, particularly RogerDean  and Rodney Matthews.  

Nigel works in his front room, often with the TV on and music in the background, he doesn’t need peace and quiet – the more distractions the better. He drafts the work first, then turns it into a drawing and then works it up. He tends to work in either airbrush and ink or in watercolour and his works all include lots of detail.

 

 

His work is fantastical, but it just comes out of his head, sometimes he has a plan as to what the finished work will look like and sometimes he doesn’t, it can just happen.  He tends to work weekends mostly and one work can take several months.

 

 

So here are the other works Nigel is exhibiting… 

 

Nigel has entered and won Pendle in Paint (the old name for the Pendle Open Art Exhibition pre 2003, I think) a few times in the past. He likes to support the local ness of the exhibition and doesn’t enter any other opens. We’re lucky aren’t we!

He has shown work in libraries before but this is Nigel’s first show in a few years. He had a fairly big gap in painting between 1997 and 2005 when he started concentrating on making music. Nigel has a recording studio at home and writes and plays instrumental rock music on his guitar. He still does this and his next project may involve putting some of these together, showing his artwork and music at the same time.

Hope you enjoy the exhibition.

Thanks,

Kirsty

 

 

New Year, New Exhibitions

Hello 2014.  

It’s going to be a good one isn’t it! 

We’ve made some changes here at The ACE Centre Gallery. We’re going to be having more exhibitions. As of, well now really, we are going to have our main exhibitions on the First Floor and some smaller exhibitions in Reception. It won’t be like this every month, but we’re going to try it out and see how it goes.  It does mean that we can offer more artists the opportunity to exhibit and that we will be posting more on this blog.

I hope that gets a thumbs up.

 

Thanks,

Kirsty

A retrospective by John Rickard

You may recognise the name, even if you don't know his work...

He has won a few times in the annual Pendle Open Art Exhibition, mostly in the landscapes and Pendle in Paint category and that gave John the spur needed to apply for a solo exhibition at The ACE.

We hung the exhibition yesterday, his first solo show in almost 20 years. John had an exhibition at Townley Hall in 1986, which mostly featured watercolours. So the show here, which has a mix of watercolours and oils shows lots of work that has not ever been seen before.

When I was chatting to John he explained that many of his works feature boats, water and often triangles, so keep your eyes peeled for triangles in the composition.

John has always loved painting, since he was a child. He experiments a lot. He gives demonstrations to art groups regularly and also makes films. His films are great, I'm trying to convince him to pop them on Youtube, so I can share the link here. (Watch this space).

A little bit about John; he was a printer - a job he loved as it included machinery, colour and artwork. He joined Pendle artists back in 1971. He used to love motorbikes, then moved onto a campervan in the 1980s and later on to Motorhomes. He said "the vans got bigger as the years went on". He loves to travel and the mobile homes have seen him go all over the UK and see much of Europe.


Some of the oils are painted like watercolours and are transparent on a white background - where the background colour becomes the highlights...


Like this one...

Called Colne Evening, there is no white on this picture at all, the windows and streetlights are made by leaving the canvas to shine through there.

In one of his films, 'Footsteps' John talks through the whole process of making this artwork...

He was inspired by Turner and encouraged by Turner's paintings about Venice (click here to see it) to experiment.

He starts with a drawing on canvas, then paints all the light parts with white acrylic and lets it dry - he puts more paint on the really light parts like the streetlight. Then he covers the work with liquin mixed with yellow ochre (sidenote - isn't ochre a lovely, ever so evocative word!) and covers the whole work. He lets that dry and then adds the colour to the rest of the painting and ends by scratching away at the painting to reveal the lighter colour underneath.

Sometimes John uses a palette knife and applies the paint more thickly, like this one...

A painting inspired by a trip to France, the Dordoigne - again in the Motor Caravan.

Sometimes he uses pen and wash,  a bamboo piece and Indian ink, to give a rough line.

Here in Mousehole, Cornwall - John uses the same technique he described earlier where the whites are scratched out while still wet. Do you recognise this picture? It was one of the winners in the 2013 Pendle Open Art Exhibition. This work was done from a composite of 3 photographs, imagined at low tide and inspired by John's trip this year to Cornwall in the Motor Caravan.

This painting is a previous Pendle Open Art Winner and is called Knowsley Street, Colne. It was created from memories of riding the streets in the 1950's around six o clock as the light was fading... John had a part time job, while still at school as a delivery boy for the butchers. I wondered if that was the butchers in the picture, but John told me Holt's was actually a grocer.

John often paints from memory and he often includes archival footage (his own) in his films. You can see why I want to share them with you!

I hope you get chance to see the exhibition. A few people were looking today as I was taking photo's and aswell as talking about the pictures, they were reminiscing about the streets and where they were. It was a nice experience to hear them.

 

 

This exhibition is open until January, free entry, and The ACE Centre is open from 10am until 4pm, Mondays to Saturdays.


Thanks,
Kirsty

Remnants

Hello all,

The new exhibition is up, it's called Remnants and is a photographic exhibition by Lee Johnson....

Today we shall bring you the interview first, and then the images....

Tell us a little about yourself and how Photography came about for you?

 

As a young boy Lee was always intrigued by the camera his Grandfather would take out with him on family day trips, not that he would ever let young Lee get his hands on it. His love for cameras progressed and at the age of 25 he got his own SLR camera.

 

 

 

Why did you choose to photograph Lancashire and how did the process and planning if there was any begin?

 

 

Lee told us how the project came about by pure mistake, he went to photograph ‘The Atom’ at Wycoller, and was struggling to get the shot he wanted and decided to return another day to try again. In his attempts to try and get the shot he tripped over a loose stone on the ground that he noticed had chisel marks on it. Once he got home and looked at his shots he wasn’t happy with the colour of the pictures, he began to think about the stone he had tripped over and how we the public walk passed stone everyday without thinking about its history, this led Lee on a 3 month exploration of the history that lay in the stone around Lancashire.

 

Lee described how his regular process when embarking on a new project included, precise organised planning of an idea that he would research and then begin to take preliminary test shots however with Remnants the nature of the project very much determined the process, ‘Remnants was more spontaneous’.

 

 

 

Do you have a favourite photographer and does their work inspire your photographic style?

 

Sebastiao Salgado and Fay Godwin are photographers that have inspired Lee and he is influenced by their monochromatic style. Dark looking black and white pictures are Lee’s favourite type of photography letting the environment determine the kind of pictures he takes. Remnants was a nod to the icons that have inspired Lee.

 

Has your work been exhibited before, where and where is it going next?

 

This exhibition has been up in Dolce Vita in Colne, after The Ace Centre it will be time to put Remants into storage so that Lee can focus on his new project.

 

 

How are you involved in photography in general do you have any other sideline projects or is it more of a hobby?

 

Lee is a semi professional photographer that does private commissions; he loves to concentrate more on fine art photography and regularly talks about his projects and musings on his blog. In his spare time he is the editor of online magazine Pixel and president of the Blackburn camera club.

 

Choose 2 of your favourite pieces – describe them in detail, why did you choose these ones, what do they mean to you?

 

Lee names his lead shot of the Vaccary, the 3 Arches and Pine Street amongst his favourites, if you look carefully at Pine Street you will see a cat having its 15 minutes of fame as it was caught in the photo. Lee named these as his favourite pieces in the series because the natural light compliments the overall mood of the pictures.

 

 

What do you want the viewer to gain from your exhibition?

 

Lee wanted the viewer to go on journey through the story of the stone, from Pagan worship to Christianity, to the Victorian Mills and Capitalism.

 

 

You can seem more detail when you are here, so, as ever, we hope you can come along and see the work in person.

 

The ACE is always open  Monday to Saturday from 10am until 4pm.

 

Ta Ra

 

 

Kirsty

 

Pendle Open Arts, Judges and Winners

Sorry it's a bit late folks, been a busy week! Lost blue cushions and pink bags mostly!


So here are the winners of the Pendle Open Arts Exhibition as voted for by you - and by our panel of judges - The Dream Team of myself, Joe Hesketh, a painter, and Richard Davies, owner of Dyson's Arts.

Here are the judges in action...

 

And now the winners full list...

 

 

Category	Textiles and 3D   Where the judges and the public agreed on our first place…
Judges 1st	Giraffe by Paul Graham
Judges 2nd	Untitled by Kathryn Sutton
Popular Vote 1st	Giraffe by Paul Graham
Popular Vote 2nd	All that Jazz by Juliet Tomkins

 

Category	Portraiture
Judges 1st	My Sunshine by Lindsay Sharp
Judges 2nd	Mick by Joyce Kerton
Popular Vote 1st	Woman in Fur by Julie Amos
Popular Vote 2nd	Spray Paint Madonna by Laura Shoesmith

 

Category	Pendle in Paint
Judges 1st	Nelson in a New Light by Sarah Glover
Judges 2nd	Club House, Nelson by Harry Robinson
Popular Vote 1st	Birch Hall Lane by Michael Kirkbride
Popular Vote 2nd	Waterfall with Pendle Hill in Background by Colin Kay

 

Category	Young Artist 7-11
Judges 1st	The Tree Swing by Ella Jordan
Judges 2nd	Splat Galaxy by Imaan Shah
Popular Vote 1st	One Man and His Dog by Harrison Wareing
Popular Vote 2nd	Splat Galaxy by Imaan Shah

 

Category	Young Artist 12-16
Judges 1st	Lily by Isabel Whittle
Judges 2nd	Essence of Flower by Erin Rose O’Connor
Popular Vote 1st	Calypso by Hannah Lauren Wareing
Popular Vote 2nd	Essence of Flower by Erin Rose O’Connor

 

Category	Open
Judges 1st	Meet the Wall Cow, Get Preserved in That! By Alistair Isle
Judges 2nd	Curly Wurlies by Susan Hermansen
Popular Vote 1st	Breaking all the Rules by Nigel Holt
Popular Vote 2nd	Meet the Wall Cow, Get Preserved in That! By Alistair Isle

 

Category	Photography Natural   Where the judges and the public agreed firmly on both first and second place!
Judges 1st	Puffin with Sand Eels by Lewis Imeson
Judges 2nd	Looking for Brian by David James
Popular Vote 1st	Puffin with Sand Eels by Lewis Imeson
Popular Vote 2nd	Looking for Brian by David James

 Oh and I need to add a huge congratulations to Lewis, as he is only a child and to compete against adults and win, well done!

  

Category	Photography Edited   Where the judges and the public again agreed on our first place…
Judges 1st	Who’s visiting Who? By David Lord
Judges 2nd	Untitled by Rafal Konat
Popular Vote 1st	Who’s visiting Who? By David Lord
Popular Vote 2nd	Baby Kacper by Kornelia Rozycka-Konat

 David's winning photograph was sold too, what a lovely piece to own! 

 

And last but not least….

 

Category	Landscapes
Judges 1st	Hebden Gill to Yarnbury by Bev Parker
Judges 2nd	Mousedale, Cornwall by John Rickard
Popular Vote 1st	Trees by Michael Kirkbride
Popular Vote 2nd	The Lizard by Eileen Hobson

 

It was a really busy time, but I managed to take some pictures of some of the winners.....

Here is Paul (the Giraffe's creator) and Juliet and Kathryn...

Julie Amos, winner of the Popular Vote in Portraiture, who wins a solo exhibition in The ACE.

Nigel Holt, winner of the Open Category who also wins a solo exhibition.

Our youngest artist and winner, Harrison age 7!

Eileen who came second in landscapes with The Lizard.

Lesley Sharp who won the judges award for her portrait.

 

 

And, finally, a couple of snaps of all the winners together with the Mayor, who presented the awards...

 

 

That's Lewis at the front, who won an adult category - I think we need to keep our eyes on him! Future star...

 

 

So, once again, we've enjoyed our time for the Open and have been very pleased to see the amazing talent in our borough.

 

Thanks to all who took part.

 

Kirsty