Another month has flown by, and here I am sharing my monthly moodboard for March. While many of last months flowers have disappeared others continue to bloom: Daffodil, Grape Hyacinth and Primrose spring to mind. Others are only just emerging, like the Tulip. For me this month is about Hyacinth and Euphorbia, two of my absolute favourites for the garden. Both seem to radiate an almost iridescent colour and magical presence: Euphorbia with it's little cup-like flowers in the zingiest of greens, Hyacinths with their heady scent and gaudy colours that rise up through the green grass.
Last month I mentioned I'd entered a couple of images from this series in our staff art show. Well they seem to have gone down quite well with my colleagues so I'm thinking of opening a little online shop, selling some prints, and perhaps some cards. I'll be sure to let you know if I do!
Once again I'm joining Karin and Åsa in this series of monthly moodboards.
Just a few snaps from my Instagram feed from the past week or so.
• pretty evening sky
• passing the time as I wait for the train
• gas holders - I love them! Don't you?
• a Lynn Chadwick sculpture in Harlow
• terrazzo wall in Harlow
• a Henry Moore you'll also find in Harlow
Hello! Hope you are all well. It seems ages since my last post. Life has been busy, especially at work; a staff art show I entered, book deadlines, getting stuff ready for the fairs and then this past week various events to participate in. It's all been a lot of fun, a fair amount of pressure and I can tell you I'm glad things there will be a little calmer over the coming weeks, but mostly I'm just looking forward to this weekend. I plan to relax, get out and enjoy some fresh air.
I really hope you all enjoyed my last post, I love the Creatives Series so much and hopefully I'll share a few more lovely and incredibly talented people with you soon.
If you follow me on Instagram, chances are you'll have seen some of these before, if that's the case I apologise!
• flowers from D, that lasted so well
• a box of delights and pide
• a happy hanger from the car boot
• flowers on a rather nice Ikea tray
• looking out the train window
It's been a while since the last post in 'the creatives' - a series of interviews you'll find here from time to time, introducing some of my favourite artists and designers to you all. This time I'd like to introduce Jo Waterhouse. I can't remember when I first stumbled across Jo's wonderful blog, but I've been following it intently ever since. Jo shares my love of rummaging at the car boot sale and has an incredible eye for spotting the beauty in objects that others might pass by, she's also a very talented printmaker, producing some fun and stylish products which I think you'll love.
So Jo, please tell us a little about yourself and what you do?
Oh jeez Polly, dive straight in with the tricky ones why don't you . . .
I live in South London and work from my bedroom and from East London Printmakers (which is in East London). I make prints that are simple - I like working in monochrome. I work on textiles and paper, I draw a lot, and write and I drive around buying old things for my stall and shop.
What's the first thing you remember creating and how old were you?
I was very little and wearing my swimming costume that had got to that stretched out/kind of see-through stage of wear - which meant it was really soft and loose. I had an old, crusty box of watercolours and I felt like - yeah, this is it, I have watercolours, I'm the real deal. There were lots of kids playing in the river so I squatted down on a little outcrop in full site of them all and got all self-consciously engrossed in my act of genius creation, dipping my brush in the river. Maybe it's sad that this memory isn't of the joy of creating but of the joy of being seen to be creating. Oh well.
What are you working on at the moment?
I'm working with a few designers to make patterns across all sorts of different products, that's nice, and scary. I'm also dead into my writing at the moment so I'm trying to combine words and textiles and pictures in new ways . . . that aren't naff (that last bit's tricky).
Where do you look for inspiration?
Car boot sales are brilliant, for shapes and for colours - it's a bit like being a curator, choosing the good stuff from the piles of stinking crud. And exhibitions, obviously, I love a retrospective - I like to tap in to work through the arc of someones life, it's when it makes most sense to me. Tate Modern and Raven Row are my best places if I'm stuck; I know they'll always have the goods.
What are your favourite magazines, and blogs?
I like Stylist, and Jack got me a subscription to World of Interiors for Christmas which I like a lot. I also like Apartamento, obviously.
I like a lot of blogs . . . Tea at the Vicarage, Junkaholique, Fine Little Day, At Swim Two Birds, Im Revolting, Freund von Freunden,
Bastis Rike . . . and Nice Kind of Blue.
If you could collaborate with anyone (living or dead who would that be)?
In recent years I've got much more politicised, I'm a devout feminist. I'd like to put some of my creativity into protest and awareness. I think I'd like to work with the Everyday Sexism project on something. I don't know what the outcome would be and it might be a real departure but maybe that's the fun of collaboration.
Do you sell your work? If so where?
I sell my work through my shop which you can find at www.jowaterhouse.com/shop and my stall at Spitalfields on a Thursday.
Where can we find you? (blog, website, Twitter, Instagram, etc.)
www.jowaterhouse.com. Come over and say hello any time.
Thank you Jo, for taking part in 'the creatives' series, giving us an insight into your work and what inspires you.
If you've enjoyed this post, I'm sure you'll enjoy meeting some more creatives here.
I'm a little late in posting this, I took the photographs last week, but have been so busy lately that I've only just managed to download this image from the camera. But what an abundance of flowers I found, so much more than last year! And I realise looking at this now I haven't included the Japanese Flowering Quince [Chaenomeles Japonica], that's blooming along our back wall, or the Cherry Plum [Prunus cerasifera] in our front garden - my eyes were obviously fixed too firmly on the ground as I picked these!
I'm enjoying this series of garden moodboards so much, and on the whole I'm pleased with how the images turn out, so much so that I decided to have a couple printed and have framed them up to enter in the annual art show we have at work. Depending how they go down with my colleagues I might get some more prints done.
Once again I'm joining Karin and Åsa in this series of monthly moodboards.
