Flyer for Light Box Exhibition

This was yesterday’s job, 4 hours of flyer design. Is that fast? I’m not sure, but i’m really pleased the the outcome. I nipped around cutting textures and shapes out of magazines, looking at other flyers for inspiration, scanned the best texture and the best shapes in, used a photograph of our painted pistachio shells, in a triangle formation (which links brilliantly to the content of the exhibition) 5,000 being printed right now, and will be looking at you from tables in various Bristol locations soon

 

 

 

Sketchbook Scans: Collage

Fantastic new studio (photographs soon) and a successful Light Box mean that life is good. Here’s some stuff I’ve been making in my sketchbook recently. Now I have some big space and a fortnights holiday, I plan to make some big things, get out of the sketchbook and onto the floor.

 

Here’s the Collage stuff. I can’t get enough. I have some beautiful origami paper from Muji which supplies the vibrancy.

 

 

Staff profiles for Light Box

Working on the staff page, a little profile of each of us, and maybe a little face too.

 

Here’s the finished page

Roughs for web staff profiles

Playing around. I’ve had ‘create my staff intro for website’ on my things to do list this week, for Light Box. Then I realised, I am creative director of this! The words come easy, but what about what this page is to look like. So I made this, and it’s so nice to get my brain out of ‘admin mode’ where the page format is correct and the printer keeps getting paper jams.

Meditation Instructions

A little analogy here for mindful meditation. For Light Box.

Pictures from recently

• A birthday present, both wrapped and unwrapped
• Sobraine cigarettes as birthday presents
• Chair painting for Light Box

VIA Character strengths

Authentic Happiness is a brilliant website full or resources and questionnaires about the very broad subject of happiness. I completed the VIA test on Character Strengths, which takes about 15 minutes of your time, and provides you with a list of your character strengths – in order – so you can see your top and your bottom strengths. It’s really interesting, and the website saves your results so you can go back months later and see if you’ve gained any new strengths. All three of us here at Light Box completed the test, and turns out that we are all sharing some strengths. Myself and Kath have 4 of our top strengths in common!

Light Box: April timetable

With winter almost through, the Light Box Project is now running full tilt towards bringing the Happiness Workshops to the Mall shopping centre in Broadmead this April.

Each workshop is 2 hours long: 40 minutes of introduction to the workshop theme and group discussion, followed by 80 minutes of creative activity.

Spaces are limited to 12 per session. We strongly recommend booking to avoid disappointment.

• Email: bookings@wearelightbox.co.uk
• Phone: 07814 094227 (during working hours)
• Website: www.wearelightbox.co.uk/page/contact and fill in the ‘contact us’ form

All the workshops are free and suitable for ages 14+

Here are the workshops we are offering:

Gratitude: Book binding and decorating (using typewriters, drawing inks and wooden letterpress) gratitude cards and a ‘5 good things’ journal.

Appreciation of Beauty: Taking photographs using Lomography cameras and making camera lenses from vibrant acetate.

Character Strengths: Creating a ‘strengths board’, blind-drawing portraits on paper and balloons.

Goals: Making collages depicting goals and aspirations symbolically.

Nurture and Kindness: Selecting, smashing and mosaic making using reclaimed tiles. Potting an avocado plant and taking it home to nurture.

Savoring and Flow: Creating mobiles using collage, drawing inks, shells, feathers, flowers and lamination machines.

Humour and Playfulness: Dismantling and reconstructing toys to make hybrid characters with personalities. Kinetic drawing in booths using drawing straps loaded with pastels.

Confidence: Making a large scale, multi-colored paper sculpture.

Vitality 1: Using papier-mâché to create and smash up a health food piñata.

Vitality 2: Creating a drawing spinning-top, using pencil gloves and mouth sticks to draw on wall-mounted paper, and making bouncy ball drawings.

Making Booklets

This week, I am making the booklets for the Light Box workshops, which start in April. Plenty of time, but I want to get this job DONE so I can get started on buying the arts materials. Lots lots lots to do! Here are some scans, hoping to use most of these images in the booklets.

 

 

 

 

Thomas Forsyth’s drawing tops

Thomas Forsyth is a genius AND a nice man. He creates these:

 

 

A spinning-top, that uses a pen as the spindle, represents many of the core ideas behind my current work. It is recognisable, un-intimidating, and invites people to interact with objects that can lead to unpredictable results, or an emergent property. Simply through indulging in the enjoyable process of spinning the top a bi-product is created. Where the pen marks the surface, a beautiful map of the experience and events that have occurred is produced. I am able to draw, but I am not particularly talented at it and yet found that, through the interaction with these objects, I have created drawings that I am more proud of than any I have done before.

Have a look at his video here which gives instruction on how to make your own drawing top using very simple materials. I want to use drawing tops in my art workshops for Light Box: The Happiness Project. Here’s my trial using a DIY drawing top:

Thomas’s Drawing Tops are now available to buy at:
www.folksy.com (UK) www.etsy.com (UK & Worldwide) Art-s-talker

Oh and here is his blog

Painting on chairs

 

An idea for painting chairs came after seeing some of Hernan Paganini‘s work. He uses a lot of natural materials and this installation: ‘Anthill’ gave me lovely ideas of re-painting old wooden chairs, a bit of restoration so they don’t squeak and groan, then delicately painting rings around the legs, and strips of color across the seat and backs. There will be lots of white, just tiny accents of selective colours. I can’t wait to get to it! These chairs are going to be found from the reclaimers and used for my Light Box workshops. We need about 30 of them, eek! Time to hunt for volunteers!

 

Light Box film prep

Working on a short promotional film for Light Box. These posters will be held up in a Bob Dylan manner for the intro of the film

How Light Box worked for David

Light Box: The Happiness Project took place in an empty shop space in Bristol’s City centre during March 2010. 


We recently caught up with one of our case-studies to see how he’s doing and ask if the Light Box workshops he attended have made a lasting impression.

I created this short video today, and feel very excited about the work Lucy Duggan and I do as Light Box.


http://player.vimeo.com/video/16431427
Light Box – How Light Box worked for David from Lucy Barfoot on Vimeo.