SUSIE MALLETT

My visitors today

Wednesday 3 March 2010

Always solving problems, always finding solutions, even in the art room!

Recycled trees

Raw materials

Under construction

Words of encouragement

Two hours later, low and behold a recycled forest!

"Never-throw-anything-away Susie"

I have several boxes in the arty-crafty cupboard at work, just like the two in the picture above . They contain scraps of materials of all sorts that I just cannot bring myself to throw away. You just never know when they could come in useful, and that's why I have been given the name "Never-throw-anything-away-Susie"

It is on days like yesterday that I realise that it is just as well that I hoard.

My arty client wanted to make a picture of trees on a green background. A big picture of trees at that.

We looked at the possibilities


I had no large sheets of green paper, actually I have no large sheets of paper at all at the moment strong enough to withstand a lot of painting.

I had just been sent a pile of old posters from the 2008 Conductive Congress in Munich but the paper was much to thin to paint on. So the only thing for it was to reinforce the thin poster-paper by making our own green background, using paper-scraps out of one of my lovely boxes.

We then found another box that had cut-offs of a foam material in it. We rummaged in there and sorted out all the dark bits.

I always have huge pots of glue and old paint-brushes, so we set to work.

I give the encouragement, throw in a few a few ideas now and then, sometimes assist with the gluing, smile a lot and enjoy the creating.

We were both very pleased this week with the result of our efforts.

The future

I am working on having a bigger project in hand, one that doesn't get taken home immediately it is finished, but needs several weeks working on it. My client asked about taking this art work home even before work on it has begun. I think it is very important for us to start having some long-term projects as well as the shorter, quicker art works.

As the nice weather returns we could get some huge canvases outside and slop the paints around a bit. Then we just need to find a bank or a hopistal willing to display the oversized pictures.

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