drawing

Finding Solitude – an exhibition of drawings

| Claire

Venue:
The Coffee Stop Café, St Mary’s Market, St Helens, WA10 1AR
1st February – 30th March 2024
9am-5pm Monday – Saturday

You can also view the works in an online space if you are unable to make an in person visit to St Helens.
View the exhibition in an online space here

Claire Weetman presents a collection of drawings of chairs that invite you to sit down, but that time to rest alone is just out of reach.

This collection of pencil drawings, created by Claire in 2023 and 2024, began by thinking about how time alone either physically or mentally is difficult to achieve as a parent. Chairs are perched precariously on branches or balanced on top of a tottering tower of bins that need emptying. The chairs are inviting, you’d quite enjoy that seat for yourself, but ultimately, all of these chairs and their offer of rest are unusable. 

Each chair is based on a real chair. Three of them were seen abandoned outside while walking to school with her children. Other drawings feature real chairs that have been moved to a more surreal setting to elaborate on the feeling of never being able to find time alone. 

Claire started making this series of drawings during an artist residency in 2023 with Wild Rumpus and (M)other Collective, where she and a group of artist-mothers stayed in the woods for 4 days. While sitting on an old wooden dining chair in the middle of a field she read Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida. In that book he compares familiar landscapes with the maternal body. “There is no other place of which one can say with such certainty that one has already been there.” Within these drawings, Claire has aimed to capture the familiarity of a chair and to set it in a location that we feel we might have visited. But within each drawing there is some barrier, either physical or emotional, that prevents us from sitting down in peace. 

Finding Solitude - never disconnected. A pencil drawing of a wooden chair in a field of long grass. A telegraph pole is visible in the distance.
Finding Solitude - precarious balance. A wooden chair with an arched back support is balanced high up in the branches of a tree.
Finding solitude - pilgrimage to the bins. A wooden chair sits on top a tower of three metal rubbish bins.

The original drawings are available to purchase at a cost of £150 each, and prints will be available at a cost of £15 each. Please use the contact form on Claire’s website if you wish to make a purchase.

The Art of Motherhood: An Exhibition of Resilience and Strength

| Claire

Saturday 7th October 2023, 11am-7pm, Sunday 8th October 2023, 12-4pm.
Stretford Public Hall, Chester Road Stretford M32 0LG

Three of my Finding Solitude drawings that were created during a residency with (M)other Collective at Wild Rumpus’ Whirlygig Woods in July 2023 and my Landing Lights window blind feature in this exhibition in October 2023. The exhibition showcases art, photographs, music, recorded histories and performance that capture the experiences of mothers during World War II and the Covid-19 pandemic.

The opening event on 6th October features a special performance by the cast of Motherhood Unscripted of scenes and songs from the show, as well as a drinks reception with nibbles.

This exhibition is part of Mothers in Crisis: Then & Now, a two-year-long creative heritage project delivered by enJOY arts with mothers from across Trafford. Delivered with support from Stretford Public Hall and the People’s History Museum.

Constellations of Kindness – Thatto Heath Primary school

| Claire

I tested out a few new things for my Constellations of Kindness work this month. I’ve developed how the project can connect with themes within school, using a selection of prepared images to tie in with the school’s Around the World themed week. Two Y5 classes worked with me to create two globe structures that you can fit your head inside and are now installed in the school library.

Black circles of card hang in front of a window. Words are written on each card with tiny pin holes that form the letters. Fragments of words meaning peace, love, and kindness in english, polish, arabic, french and japanese can be seen.

We also took an opportunity to develop mass participation with the pin-pricking technique with 11(!) KS2 classes, which required a busy night for the Cricut machine that cuts out all the shapes. The whole of the juniors of this 3-form entry school heard the story of Hoshi and the legend of the lucky stars, before returning to class with instructions on how to make their own mini constellation of kindness. A selection of words about kindness and community were translated into the languages of the countries being studied, plus the languages spoken in school and each child was able to create their pin-pricked contribution to the community installation. The result is a window installation of approximately 300 circular constellations, all connected and suspended from each other.

A black background has drawings made of dots of light. Drawings include a happy cartoon-like frog, the Japanese flag, a silhouette of a figure holding hands and the word Japan.

One of the classes I worked with were studying Japan, and whilst hanging these, they felt like fortunes, blessings or hopes for the future that might be found in a Shinto shrine. I think there could be something in this process for when I hopefully expand the project into one with the wider community.

Thanks to Thatto Heath primary for the space to try this out.

Chester Contemporary Schools Programme

The base of a glass cabinet has small books made from paper that are printed with colourful architectural shapes and feature words including "quote, stage, performance, feel good"
| Claire

Chester Contemporary is a new visual arts event curated by artist Ryan Gander. For the Contemporary, international and Chester-based artists, emerging talent, and the city’s people have been invited to make and show work for Chester’s unique places and spaces, inspired by the theme ‘Centred on the Periphery’.

The base of a glass cabinet has small books made from paper that are printed with colourful architectural shapes and feature words including "quote, stage, performance, feel good"

I’ve been working on the schools programme as part of this new festival with Mickle Trafford Village Primary School creating ‘The City Unfolds’

Chester’s city centre is characterised by its secret passageways, hidden staircases, buildings on multiple levels and interesting places to be discovered. Year 5 pupils from Mickle Trafford Village School have shared some of their favourite places and studied the architecture of the city with artist Claire Weetman to create artist-book sculptures combining paper folding techniques, printing and poetry.

A black wood framed glass cabinet is painted deep purple inside. Suspended inside are snaking shapes made from coloured paper.
Two sculptures made from coloured paper - one is arch shaped, the other like a wheel laying flat on a shelf. Reflections of the city can be seen in the glass of the cabinet that they are in.

Inspired by both Claire’s artist-book practice and Unfurled, a University of Chester exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum (which ran until 2 July), the class have explored how to use the text, images and storytelling that can be found in books. They’ve combined these book-making elements to create their own sculptural artwork that reminds us of places in the city, including Chester Cathedral, the Rows, the Walls, dance and musical performances, the sound of food being served at the new market, and their top tips for the best pancakes in Chester! Their work can be seen in the display case outside Waterstones on Eastgate Row.

Thanks to the staff and pupils of Mickle Trafford Village School, Mickle Trafford, Cheshire.

Find out more about Chester Contemporary here

Constellations of Kindness

| Claire

Sutton Oak Primary School
February 2022

Claire returned to Sutton Oak Primary School with her Constellations of Kindness workshops which explore how art can be used to express kindness and empathy.

Beginning by passing our positive actions around the class with a symbolic handful of light, we worked to create a number of art installations which take the idea of stars and how we view them collectively in constellations as a metaphor for how a community can work together. The story of Hoshi and the legend of the origami lucky stars inspires a creative activity where the classes worked together to create their own jars of paper stars.

One night while watching the stars, something happened in the sky that made her sad and she began to cry. The stars were falling out of heaven like a shower. So many of them were falling that she was afraid there would be no more.

The story of Hoshi

With magazine cuttings, found text and images pupils used compositional skills to lay out a design that created a message linked to emotions and kindness, then used drawing pins to prick holes into segments of a black card sphere along the outlines of those shapes. The sphere segments were joined together to create a suspended orb that you can duck underneath and view the pin-pricked drawings from within – the light shining in from the outside creating a universe-like experience, full of symbolic objects and positive text.

This was the first time creating these pin pricked drawings into a 3-dimensional form at such a human scale, and the hope is that more works like this can be created in other locations forming a universe of kindness.

This project is available within St Helens schools via Cultured St Helens, or contact me directly if you want to create more universes of kindness where you are.

Here – Cultured St Helens

| Claire

Since they opened back up in March 2021 it’s been great to get back working in schools. ‘Here’ is one of those projects, delivered by Cultured St Helens. It uses new technology to create a portrait of St Helens, exploring the history, geography, social make-up and diversity of the town. Artists and performers (of which I’m one) have worked with schools to create artworks which Impossible Arts will bring together for a final outdoor augmented reality exhibition in October 2021.

I’ve been working with Rivington Primary, Mill Green school and Blackbrook St Mary’s Primary as part of the project, combining performative actions with drawing and print techniques as we look at the past and present of St Helens. What has also been great during these projects (and has happened a lot more in the last 12 months) is the opportunity to collaborate with other artists in the delivery of the work.

With Rivington Primary I’ve worked with Mako Create, who took charge of green screen filming, and Altru Drama, who led a creative writing session, as we created a work about the traces and echoes of Victoria Park. What will happen when children from today bump into King George V and Queen Mary during their 1913 visit? Will they ever get unstuck from the climbing frame? Their drawings, words and actions form a video work that will be part of the AR trail around St Helens in November.

The sessions at Mill Green school have been a chance to work with artist Dave Bixter who combines his drawing practice with music and technology. We’ve looked at the skylines of St Helens, layering drawings, shapes, movement, print and sound to create and audio-visual work that will sit against the real skyline of St Helens.

Blackbrook St Mary’s have done most of their work with Henry Iddon and Jess Wheeler, connecting to their cross-school project about the conservation of rainforest habitats. I was invited in to run a print session with year 1 where we used stencilled screen-printed slogans devised by the pupils to print onto T-shirts. The children made studies of leaves in their sketchbooks and created rubber stamps out of them to make each of their t-shirts an individual representation of the rainforest.

You’ll be able to see more of these works once they’re out on the Augmented Reality trail in the Autumn.

Wishes on a Dandelion – Sherdley Primary’s 50th Anniversary

| Claire

Every Dandelion you see today grew from the seed from another dandelion. Maybe the dandelion seed was blown by the wind, or maybe it was blown last year by one of the children from Sherdley Primary.

The seeds that grew last year’s dandelions might have been blown by another child who’s grown older and gone to high school now. Their dandelion’s seed might have been blown from it’s stem by a parent when they went to school. Dandelions can grow in all sorts of places and live for more than 10 years, so maybe, just maybe the dandelions we see today can be traced back to a child who was here when Sherdley Primary opened 50 years ago.

This is the premise on which a whole-school programme of arts activity was based to celebrate Sherdley Primary School’s 50th Anniversary in April 2021. Using something that we can see now in the present, to celebrate the past and make wishes for the future. Children from every class were invited to make prints onto a postcard and to find a dandelion clock and make a wish for Sherdley Primary’s future, with each class from Y1 through to Y6 taking part in additional art workshops that led to the designs for an anniversary mural and garden in the grounds of the school.

Delivered in partnership with Cultured St Helens these workshops included observational drawing of natural forms, stamp-making, experimental drawing using gestures, shadows and spotlights and workshops plus workshops by partners UC Crew which connected Hip Hop Arts and its values to those of the school community.

Pupils hands were covered in chalk and charcoal as they created larger scale drawings of each other’s shadows expressing emotions, seed-filled sculptures were constructed, sketchbook pages filled with drawings of flora and fauna that was gathered from nearby greenspaces, and spray can techniques were practiced in the sunny spells between April showers.

All of these elements were brought together into a design that uses stenciled elements that I have used in my previous works such as Keep the Pavement Dry and Migrate combined with the graffiti art skills of James from UC Crew. This was complemented by the beginnings of an anniversary garden in front of the mural sown with perennial flower seeds, dandelion clock sculptures containing more seeds and golden stones with drawings of dandelions edging the planting areas.

Two trees, hands and leaves are spray painted onto the side of a storage container. Petal shapes are formed on the soil in front, edged by golden stones.