still life

Yet another early morning, half-blind, still life. Without my glasses on, this appeared, bleary-eyed and interesting, supporting my jumping out of bed to grab my camera from another room and attach a macro lens to it. While the post is titled “glasses,” both my glasses and the bottle behind are, in fact, made of plastics.

Shielding

A tabletop covered with miniature beds arranged in rows, each with striped bedding, on a textured surface. — Regency Town House, Hove

by Anna Dumitriu.

A description of the artwork 'Shielding', exploring the impact of COVID-19 on women facing domestic abuse, inspired by Virginia Woolf's essay 'A Room of One's Own'. It discusses the paradox of home as a safe space during quarantine and incorporates traditional feminine crafts and digital reconstructions of hospital beds.

Chairs

More work playing with the macro lens and the sunlight on and through plastic furniture.

Artists’ Tools

A variety of hand tools mounted on a white wall, including pliers, a hammer, a screwdriver, scissors, a tape measure, a level, a stapler, and a sanding paper. — Brighton, UK

It wasn’t just paints and brushes. Some artists pile their paints and brushes somewhat haphazardly, others keep their work tools in serried ranks.

Painters’ Studios

A close-up view of two trays filled with various colors of paint tubes, along with a used, paint-stained cloth and a paintbrush. — Brighton, UK

Throughout May we progressed through Brighton and Hove’s Artists Open Houses and I photographed their paints, palettes and brushes.

Hove Flowers

Close-up of vibrant pink gladiolus flowers with elongated petals and green stems. — Hove, UK

Walking from one Artist Open House to the next in Hove we passed lots of front garden flowers (gladiolus above, purple Jerusalem sage below).

A close-up view of green plants with clusters of small pink flowers blooming among the foliage.

Growth Chart

A chalkboard wall listing famous artists and their respective scores, including Kandinsky, Basquiat, and Frida Kahlo, among others.

An amusing gloss on the artists’ own height chart in the next doorway at Studio 28a on our Hove Artists Open Houses tour last month.

Artists’ Tools

A creatively arranged artist's workspace featuring various jars of paint, paintbrushes in a holder, and watercolor paper with swatches and color samples. — Lara Bowen Contemporary, Hove

One of the pleasures of touring Brighton’s Artists Open Houses each May is seeing the artists’ tools, paints, and brushes and other craft paraphernalia. At Lara Bowen’s studio we saw a set of colour swatches she created in the depths of lockdown, capturing (and labeling) the emotions of those times.

A wall display featuring various painting brushes of different sizes and styles, some with paint stains and wear, arranged in an artistic manner.

Nature and Art

A close-up view of vibrant succulent plants with reddish-brown leaves and green centers, accompanied by a decorative glass flower stake featuring blue hues, set against a blurred green background. — The Hidden House, Fiveways, Brighton

Another weekend another Artists Open Houses neighborhood to explore, this time in Fiveways.

Inkpots

A stack of colorful paint buckets in various shades of blue, green, and black, with some paint splatters visible on the containers. — Industrial House, Hove

To reach Eunju Lee, a South Korean female luthier (last post), we walked through Inkspot Press and saw the screen, relief, letterpress and etching presses, and other paraphernalia.

Still Life

A decorative ceramic duck figurine placed on a table, with a vase of small pink flowers and various birdhouse miniatures in the background. — Hove, UK

May was the month of the Artists Open Houses in Brighton and Hove and we spent our weekends visiting lots of them – too many to remember where each picture was taken. But here’s a table in one of the houses, laid out interestingly enough that I thought it might make a picture.