A forty minute drive along the coast road brought us to Salthouse, a tiny Norfolk village with a big annual Art Exhibition held in it’s beautiful flint church which stands on a mound above the village, over looking the sea.  We were lucky enough to book onto one of the art event courses which run alongside the Exhibition, two days of Experimental Printmaking.

There were ten of us and, as is usual with these things, all female. It’s really strange, print making is hardly a girly thing!  The main skill we were being taught was Collagraphy, a relatively new form of print making which is much more user friendly than etching etc which requires noxious acids and other things with Health and Safety issues.  You’re pretty safe with PVA glue! The basic plate is a collage of different papers, textures and textiles, glued down firmly on to heavy board and varnished to create a plate which can be inked and run through a printing press, with amazing results if you are an expert like Laurie Rudling.

 By the end of the weekend I felt I had learnt an enormous amount but was pretty underwhelmed with what I’d actually produced, especially as some of the other students had produced amazing stuff worthy of framing and putting in a gallery. I was green with envy! Laurie, bless him,  had  positive things to say to everyone at the final ‘Show and Tell’, even me.  I felt so much better after he’d referred to my effort as ‘reminiscent of a piece of Roman Wall’, so I might not hide it under the bed after all!

Having revealed my print, I must now show how high the standard of the rest of the group actually was, despite my embarrassment!  Considering many in the group had no experience in printing it’s great when a good tutor like Laurie Rudling is able to draw out people’s hidden talents.  I’ve taken note of the fact that Laurie has a course coming up at Broadland Art Centre at the end of September which could well be just what I need!

Having fitted in a look round the Exhibition we wandered down to the little stream which runs alongside the road through the village. There we admired the cows and the view and enjoyed the icecream cornet and flake with which we rewarded ouselves after all the hard work of the weekend.

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Was back in old haunts on Monday, Jen and I went to look round the Degree Show at Norwich University College of the Arts from which we both graduated in 2005.  I was particularly impressed by the Visual Studies and Textile work and not just because those are my own fields of particular interest.  There was such a high degree of skill and expertise displayed, areas which seem to lose out when the drive is towards ‘Conceptual Art’, and the concept is considered communicated by an unmade bed or a thumbprint in a blob of Blu Tack.  Any way, all grist to the mill from my point of view of getting back my thing, oooh don’t know the word, but I had it when I left Art School and then mislaid it!   All topped off with lunch in a shady garden and a catch up on the gossip, lovely!

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