Tuesday, October 11, 2016



The Gallery Of Gilded Frames

a Pocket full of Treasures 
The Fallowfield Loop 
Levenshulme 



























A Pocket Full of Treasures – The Quadrants, Levenshulme Sunday 9th October 2016 11am-2pm.


What a splendid day! We had a really good turnout and were busy all day. The overall feel of the day, in the gorgeous October sunshine, was a buzzing community event.
The Friends of the Fallowfield Loop helped out enormously preparing the land in the run up to the event, making it look really welcoming, with David Beetham, Pam Flynn and Costel Harnasz helping out on the day and talking to people about the group. Incredible Edible Levenshulme weeded the community vegetable beds before-hand and Fiona Mitchell and Pauline Johnson were offering planting to children and adults on the day making the event feel really special. A huge thank you to all those involved and for the support from Sustrans! 
As people arrived they spent time chatting to Ali Gadeema and Martin Visceral, our spoken word artists, who helped them to create poems that accompanied their treasures in our ‘Gallery of Gilded Frames’ that Sharon Campbell was curating. Rachel Ramchurn offered some hands on clay experience making tiny treasures inspired by nature that could also go in the gallery. The works of art were made by a huge variety of ages, one of the golden frames even had a prized pair of football boots and a pack of cards in it for about half an hour, accompanied by the poem:

Grab a spade
And dig for Treasure
Precious as a Diamond

Brand new boots
Joining the club
Play to his hearts content 

Its Ace-The King!

Farooq

I think the day is best summed up by this poem that Ali and Martin created on the day:

Sunday morning and
A Pocketful of treasures
Bless my day's journey

Tiny pirate chest 
A pocketful of treasures
A sky full of sun

Mellow chords and beats
A pocketful of treasures
Ears full of music

Increadible Feats
A pocketful of treasures
Soil full of Life                                                                                                                          

Moulding the magic
A pocketful of treasures
Hands full of soft clay

People connecting
This is the real treasure
Immaterial

Sunday morning and
A pocketful of treasures
Bless my day's journey

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

'A Pocket Full Of Treasures'...A poem by Jonathan Power.

The Head Teacher at Chapel Street Primary School agreed to write a poem for us using the words that children from the Reception and Nursery classes came up with during the workshops.

A POCKET FULL OF TREASURES

Beautiful, curvy sculptures
so cozy and cute,
spiral on sharp-edged rocks…
There’s a snail !

…and a lovely golden flower
with green leaf lines,
so smooth…
…NICE, I like it!

Now an angry, big slug
crawls in the woodland
with caterpillars and a spider,
on the dirty, scaly cracks
of tough, spiky rocks..
…INSECTS!!!

Shapes in the garden
bendy and round,
as the moose and owl
circle leaf imprints
by the flowery trees
so rosy,

and we open our hearts
to the spiky patterns
on yet another flat leaf…

…So SPECIAL – because I made it myself.


Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Workshop at the Quadrants, on the Fallowfield Loop.


We are running a workshop for the public on Sunday the 9th October 2016 at The Quadrants, The Fallowfield Loop, Manchester with funding from Manchester City Council's Neighbourhood Investment Fund, working with Sustrans, The Friends of the Fallowfield loop, The Friends of Highfield Park and Love Levenehsulme to make the day a great success.

The Finished Sculpture!

Installed over the summer 2016, the sculpture is now in Chapel Street EYFS playground, a lovely addition for the children's imaginations to run wild!


















Thanks To Jana McBeath at River Medlock Photography for these great pictures!


The Resin Treasures...

We knew that we wanted the children's Treasures to be incorporated somehow and after some deliberation came to the conclusion that Resin would be a robust material that could house the treasures, some resin shapes even becoming the treasures themselves!They are so tactile and gorgeous to look at, we were very happy with the results that came after much experimentation by Sharon. Magnets have been added inside the resin so the treasures attach to each other and the sculpture.













Carving The Sculpture...

Rachel's method of working is to use the final maquette as a focus, but to then also  enter into a 'conversation' with the wood and her tools. It becomes an artistic event in its own right, with woman, wood and saw all working together until finally the sculpture presents itself, then it is sanded down and oiled to be super smooth and incredibly tactile.













 We decided to add bolts to the sculpture for the resin treasures to attach to. There are also some bolts running on the underside of one of the curves on the sculpture.