Crafts Alive Sculpture in Rodmarton Gardens
The invited artists all use the natural plant and flower forms as a basis for creating outdoor sculptures. From sculpting and replicating them to using them as a relief, depicting them in picture form or creating something for them to thrive in. The 'Flower and the Maker' Garden sculpture show exhibits works that sit within the garden.
Curator Jesse James
Dan Rawlings
Dan Rawlings installation "Delays expected" was first presented by the Saatchi gallery at the RHS Chelsea flower show in 2021.
The work was conceived as a commentary on environmental policy being patched over and ignored, which is unfortunately just as relevant to us today.
The installation features a work van set in an eerily deserted patch where human work has stopped, and nature has reclaimed its position.
Dan Rawlings is a contemporary British artist born in Watford in 1979. He is known for his large-scale installations and intricate plasma-cut metal works. A sympathy for discarded objects and an admiration for nature’s resilience inspire him to create visions of a future where man’s impact is slowly reclaimed by nature. Notable recent projects include: ‘Future Returns’, a plasma-cut reclaimed oil tanker housed inside a 19thcentury church in Lincolnshire’s 20-21 Art centre, and ‘Short Haul’, an elaborately hand cut light aircraft shown at the Urban Nation Museum in Berlin.
Ellie Drake-Lee
Ellie designs and creates beautiful, contemporary stained glass sculptures for outside spaces. Her bold panels are inspired by her love of nature and mostly have botanical themes. They are set in bespoke steel frames and are fully weatherproof. Ellie loves the way the light plays with the colour glass.
She uses traditional techniques to handcraft her sculptures incorporating exquisite textured and coloured glass, giving a quality of depth and life as the weather and seasons change. Her art draws in the observer, instilling a sense of calm contemplation as the sculptures nestle in harmony with nature.
Ellie loves the contradiction of working with brittle material like glass, to create soft, curvaceous natural forms.
Having obtained a BA Hons Visual Arts degree, she went on to gain her teaching qualification. Ellie has created art throughout her life and has been an avid crafter, she combines this with her teaching career.
Judith Hobbs
Studio Potter
Judith has followed her passion for working with clay for over 25 years. She originally trained as a teacher and then as a potter on the Harrow Studio Pottery course in 1983.
Since then, she has worked as a pottery technician and manager and has been running her own business since 1995.
During this time, she has applied her skills in many directions. She has worked teaching pottery in a Young Offenders Institution; she has helped groups of pupils to create both indoor and outdoor installations, (including decorative fountains, a phoenix mosaic and life size figures dancing across walls); she has made domestic and decorative pottery that has been sold through various galleries. She is also a trained mediator and has worked with neighbour disputes and has assisted in training new mediators. Her largest ceramic piece was helping to build an adobe (mixed clay and soil) house in the desert.
Judith has always looked for development and change in her work. Her current pots show her enjoyment for the interplay of strong clear lines and edges, and she is experimenting with this interaction to create pots that 'own' their space.
https://www.judithhobbs.com/
Corinne Hockley
Corinne is a mixed-media textile artist with a background in costume and stage design. A member of the Gloucestershire Guild of Crafts and based in the textile studio at Stroud Valleys Artspace. She creates intricately stitched and embellished narrative pieces, exploring themes of freedom and constraint, ritual and romance – reflecting archetypes and the fragility of life. A red thread often runs through her work, in which you are likely to encounter paper corsets, caged wings, dancing shoes and roses made from the pages of old fairy tales. Often incorporated are the tools and motifs associated with the age-old practice of making textiles - scissors, spindles, pins and thimbles...
Corinne also invents magical textile installations and costumes for performance - pushing the boundaries of textiles through exciting cross-arts collaborations.
Davy & Kristin McGuire
Davy & Kristin McGuire, directors of Studio McGuire and associates of Ridley Scott Creative Group, are celebrated mixed-reality artists renowned for their immersive art, storytelling and digital projections. Winners of awards like the Helpmann and Samuel Beckett Theatre Awards, their work has been showcased in over 100 venues across 38 countries, including SXSW, Perth International Festival, The National Gallery of Singapore, The Royal Shakespeare Company and The Barbican. Their collaborations with Dior and Mikimoto have appeared worldwide in Shanghai, Tokyo, Paris, London, and New York. Combining Davy’s theatrical expertise with Kristin’s Cirque du Soleil background, they create captivating experiences praised by The Times and The Guardian for their "magical, jaw-dropping universes."