Posted on

Leigh Art Trail 2023 event – Autumn by Nicky Roach

In September 2022, SEVEN exhibited sketchbooks in the Leigh Art Trail. The Art Trail also runs a Secret Auction (where artists donate a piece of work and the proceeds go towards running the Art Trail).

For the Secret Auction, SEVEN offered one winner the chance to attend one of our regular creative sessions at Metal. Our winning bidder was Nicky Roach, a local artist and maker.

In the session we began to look at the theme of ‘seasons’, in particular autumn. We worked through some of the processes, we often use to get a sketchbook started. At the end of the session we invited Nicky to come back and share how she’d got on with her sketchbook.

When Nicky returned, we were so delighted with the way she had developed her book…using narrative…characters…objects…even burning pages(!)…all within a 3D format. We thought we have to animate her book to bring this fantastical story to life!

Click below to play/enlarge the stop-frame-animation….Enjoy!

Autumn by Nicky Roach 2023

Posted on

Leigh Art Trail 2022

Join us for our exhibition of handmade art books at this year’s Leigh Art Trail 2022.

Come, take a peek and discover how one theme – in this case, silver – has been explored and expressed in five very different ways.

Why Silver?

2022 marks 25 creativity-crammed years of the Leigh Art Trail, so for this year’s theme we chose silver.

“Silver (Ag), chemical element, a white lustrous metal valued for its decorative beauty and electrical conductivity.”

Slick. Stylish. Modern. Shimmering. Reflective.

From silver screens to silver bullets, silver is brimming with uses and associations — as you’ll see, each SEVEN member has picked a particular silver thread and run with it.

How to find us

Where: Venue 13, The Refill Room, 15 Elm Road SS9 1SW

When: Sat 3 September to Sun 11 September 2022

Visit www.leigharttrail.com/seven-collective for opening times and full details.

We look forward to seeing you!

Posted on

Audience Feedback – Sharing Our Altered Books At Leigh Art Trail

While for some artists exhibiting their work is partly motivated by making a sale, for SEVEN it’s simply about sharing our books. So after the pandemic hiatus a return to the real life Leigh Art Trail was pretty exciting – what would people say?

Our comments book

Spreading the Sketchbook Love

“I love this[.] Would prefer to have a sketchbook than a piece on the wall. Beautiful, ever changing work – I love it!!!” – B Dred

Mention selling the books to Jo and she turns all shades of white.

For us the Trail marks the culmination of our yearly project – individual explorations based around a central theme. This is the end of the journey, a point to pause, reflect on, share our work and hear what you have to say.

A visitor quote

From Confusion to Curiosity

This year Trailers were invited to zero-waste grocery store The Refill Room to peruse our altered books. And, because our host venue is all about, well, zero-waste our group theme was Reclamation and we used altered (or reclaimed) books – find out more about that here.

Being old pros at this LAT exhibiting lark, nowadays we know to expect a variety of responses from backing out the door in befuddlement to Trailers who come specifically to see our books:

“Wonderful work – each one is so individual. A joy to finally be able to handle work again – especially such joyful, tactile pieces. Love what you did with my mum’s book Juliet!” – Anne L

Provoking People

We aren’t trying to be Bansky or Tracy Emin or anything…

Yes, our 2020 project began with the oh-so-serious zero-waste theme – really it’s shocking how much we waste! – but our yearly theme is simply a launchpad for creative exploration. That’s why we called our project Reclamation – the word gave us something beyond issues of waste to play with.

But, still, the very act of reusing old books proved provocative:

“Really liked what you’ve done with the Girl annual, but I struggled with it as well. If it had been done in an Eagle annual it would have annoyed me intensely, but maybe that’s a (small) part of the point…?” – Anon

And, if you haven’t checked it out already, find out more about books and landfill here.

A visitor quote

Words Matter

So some Trailers come specifically to see us (colour us honoured!). Some stumble upon us. Others back away looking a little bemused. While some stop and pour over the pages with a kind of child-like wonder.  Whatever the response – well, sort of! – we love to hear what you have to say.

Thank you to everyone who came along to Leigh Art Trail (2020) 2021 and took a look at our SEVEN art books, we can’t wait to see you again!

Pages from our comments book
Posted on

No Art Trail, No Art Journal? – Creativity + Lockdown

Now the Leigh Art Trail has a 2021 date SEVEN looks back at losing and finding creative motivation over Lockdown. In a year without our key event to work towards what happened to our productivity when the 2020 Trail was cancelled?

Creative Goals

The first thing SEVEN did when we formed was set ourselves a goal – we applied to show at Leigh Art Trail (LAT). As a creative sketchbook collective we were the first group to be accepted onto the popular Trail – yay!  But we didn’t just enjoy sharing our sketchbook creations with interested Trailers. The yearly Trail gave us something to aim for (Kim made countdown calendars and everything!).

Then there was 2020…

Our Pre-Covid Plan

So, pre-Covid, every September we’d reconvene after the summer break, decide on a project and work steadfastly towards it. And September 2019 was no different. What was different, however, was our 2020 venue. We were excited to be moving to a more central LAT location, The Refill Room – a waste-free, eco-friendly grocery store.

Taking the store’s zero-waste ethos as our starting point we agreed altered books – aka books no-one wants anymore – would make the perfect art journal to work in. What’s more, we had a project title we could all get behind: Reclamation. (Check out this blog post for more on our plans for this altered book project…)

We were ready to art journal our way to LAT 2020!  Until the Trail had to be cancelled due to a global pandemic that was. 

The Pros + Cons of Zoom Creativity 

Of course, Covid meant no in-person meet-ups, so along with the rest of the nation we got Zooming.  Which, while better than nothing, meant we were often catching up rather than doing. Plus, there’s often something lost in translation online – a lagging wi-fi connection, screen fatigue, or just plain blahness, to name a few issues we experienced.

Ultimately, we lost our Reclamation art journaling thread. And, with no new date in sight, our altered books got put on the back burner.

Banana Bread + More

I mean, it’s not that we were just baking banana bread between then and now. We actually completed two SEVEN art journals, and started another:

But these had more imminent deadlines and so, inevitably, they’ve taken precedent. 

Reclaiming Our 2020 Art Journals

Now we have a 2021 date for the Leigh Art Trail – September 2021! – we’re dusting off our altered books and reminding ourselves just where we were when we left off. Some of us were already immersed, others were just feeling their way into their creative flow, but all of us need to reclaim – call back, rediscover – our creative selves with regards to this SEVEN project. 

Turns out Reclamation was a more apt project title than we had first imagined…
Check out our current projects over on our SEVEN Instagram .

Posted on

Journaling fun – back to our roots!

The Water Replies

SEVEN are really excited to be involved in Metal’s public participation project for this year’s Estuary Festival 2020. It’s right up our street, a journaling project!

Metal and Cement Fields are asking members of the public living and working on the Thames Estuary in South Essex and North Kent, to create a journal responding to ‘The Water Replies’ and providing free workshops in journaling and poetry writing.

We attended the first journaling workshop led by artist Heidi Wigmore, our mentor and champion and we’re delighted that we got a special mention on the night!

Chalkwell Hall was buzzing with activity, groups of people gathered around tables ready to create!

Loved the first prompt, the opening page of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness ready for us to alter. There are no rules here, we were given these ideas and asked to think about the flow of the water:

  • Highlight words, circle words, cross out text
  • Make a new thread or sentence
  • Stream of consciousness, see what words pop out at you!
  • Cover the rest of the page with paint, collage, marker pens whatever you like

Here’s my page added to the journal, and we’re off!

Amanda’s first page exploring Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

We were each then given a small section of map that included sections of the Thames to stick into a page of the journal – look at the lines and marks on the map:

  • Add to them
  • Extend the lines
  • Extend lines of the river across other pages or the whole journal
Amanda’s page – extending lines on a map

All in all a great start to this project. We will fill our journals and return them to Metal for display in a library/reading room.  It will be exciting to see everyone’s responses in September!