There is art on sale this week in an exhibition at St Nicolas Church. Any pictures sold will have part of the proceeds donated towards equipment at Abingdon Hospital.
The pictures are displayed in the pews and are well worth viewing.
The Abingdon Artists usually stage two exhibitions a year, and their summer exhibition runs from 23 Jun- 30 Jun (10:00 – 17:00) at St Helen’s Church.
St Helen’s Church is well known for being as wide as it is long. Since the redevelopment a few years ago that extra width in the Outer South Aisle can be used – flexibly – either for adding chairs for services or concerts, or for refreshments, exhibitions, charity sales, or lectures.
The art exhibition takes place in that south aisle, and is open all week.
This is also a good chance to look round the rest of the church building whether you are new to St Helen’s or not . The painted ceiling – from around 1390 – of the chapel off the North Aisle must be seen.
This afternoon we went to the Abingdon and Witney College Foundation Art Exhibition. It is on until Friday – up to 5pm each day. Go to reception at the Abingdon College, and they’ll give you a visitor’s badge and point you in the right direction.
There is a great diversity of works. Each piece is surrounded by sketch books to show how the artistic ideas developed. This work is called Stalking the Stalkers and is a study of bird watchers at Otmoor on the other side of Oxford.
This display was very impressive as were the sketch books. There were four screens showing images which were also captured on a framed etching above. There was movement on the screens below, like people emerging and disappearing out of the grass, that had a more sinister feel than the etchings above.
These artifacts were used by one artist in a painting – the first time I have seen a full book of green shield stamps since the 1970s. They were the sticky back equivalent of nectar points.
We did not get to see everything as in one room there was a special tea party for next year’s students. Their summer starter project is to design venetian style masks before going on a trip to Venice as part of an art field trip. It is a great course to do for anybody wanting to go on to degree level art.
(I have had a few gremlins in recent days and twice have switched traffic to the mirror site abingdonblog.net. I’m asking the company hosting this blog to check out what could be wrong and should hopefully soon get a solution.)
This is the week when the Oxfordshire Arts Weeks moves focus from Oxford to the South of Oxfordshire including Abingdon. The nearest exhibition to the town centre is at St Ethelwold’s House where The East St Helen’s Group are exhibiting.
The house and garden make a lovely setting apart from the artwork.
Down the bottom of the garden Emma Cavell has a studio and creates Contemporary Mosaics from broken pieces of pottery. She also teaches from this very relaxed setting, and at Sunningwell School of Art.
The full list of Abingdon exhibitors can be found on the Art weeks website. But here is a short list …
373 The White Horse Leasure Centre – Active Arts
374 Abingdon Health and Well Being Centre – Mixed Media
375 OLA junior School – Mixed Media
376 Alison Jones – Ceramics, Glass, Jewellery, Sculpture
377 St NIcolas C of E Primary – Mixed Media
378 East St Helens Group (Featured)
379 Catherine Pumphrey – Painting