A 2023 Review (Madeleine memories)

Memories Are Made Of This

The year 2023 had a quite gloomy start for the art scene. The coldest Winter for several years, combined with a 'cost of living crisis', and ACE funding slashed for many UK arts organisations, left the arts community feeling quite bruised.

Promotional image for the madeleine zine, with a list of contributors (including myself)

My initial sense of artistic salvation came via Mastodon, the Fediverse micro blogging service that I joined last year (see previous post). On this site, I discovered a lively arts and writing community. The latter led me to re-start reading a book that had been lying idle on my shelves, called The Artists Way. Whilst this book isn't really about contemporary art, it is all about turning on the creativity tap and restarting the flow of creative output. When I found a few writers talking about it online, I decided to give the process another go. This led me to try out the 'morning pages' exercises, to get my creativity restarted. 

My aim was to create more artwork but I soon spotted a writing opportunity that was just up my street. It was to write a short piece for a one-off zine on the topic of memories and comics, which was also fundraising for dementia support. I loved my experience of comics fandom many years ago, when I was actively part of it, and the fundraising aspect tied in with my experience of having become a carer for a parent with dementia.

There's more I could write about that but, to keep my piece simple, I started at the point where two UK fandom subcultures first overlapped in my life. That ended up being about 900 words about the way the science fiction and comics communities were interlinked and how that was important to my memories of the comics boom of the 90's. As a bonus, I found myself listed with several comics creators I admire, including Paul B. Rainey - a Milton Keynes comics artist who took a trajectory to fame in 2023, after his dystopian domestic drama proved a hit with reviewers. 

The zine project, called 'madeleine' (a reference to Proust's madeleine memory), was a project led and designed by Simon Russell, an artist/designer posting on Mastodon and Instagram. As well as rounding up 28 writers*, Simon created a successful funding campaign on Kickstarter, which found 108 backers. With Simon in charge of the editing and design, eventually the zine project turned into a small, smart-looking book. After deducting printing and postage costs, Simon was able to donate £411.19 to Alzheimer's Research UK. 

My personal 2023 domestic drama was an experience of recovering from burnout. More about that in the next post. 

Click here for more about the Kickstarter madeleine zine project.

* Madeleine was made by Brad Brooks: Nick Bryan: Dan Butcher: Dan Charnley: Lee Christien: Ben Clark; Eamonn Clarke; David Cranna; Oliver East; Hannah Eaton; Shari Emerson; Tony Esmond; Martin Feekins; Sam Hardacre; Alan Henderson; Nic Ho Chee; Paul Hudson; ILYA; Guy Lawley; Iestyn Pettigrew; Alan Purdie; Paul B. Rainey; Suzanna Raymond; Simon Russell; Jon Sapsed; Dez Skinn; Giovanni Spinella; Myfanwy Tristram.
* The book has been edited, designed and illustrated by Simon Russell

Sketchy Plans 2019

My first sketching event was outside the newly refurbished MK Gallery

A Short History of Drawing Around Milton Keynes

It turns out that 2019 became the year I started running events for a Milton Keynes sketch group. This is a Facebook group that I initially took over from local artist Dave Hilliard, who had run a few events before I showed up. As another local group had ground to a halt after three events, I knew that if I wanted to see more events in the area I had better start running them myself. So I took the opportunity to try and create my first local arts programme for sketching in urban spaces.

My intention was to run a few events using my community engagement experience. I was also aiming to shed more light on the benefits of urban sketching, activities that were proven in more established groups in Bedford, Northampton, London and other areas. Taking a  few pointers from Dave, who had been part of the Northampton group, we made a start around the time that the refurbished Milton Keynes Gallery was due to re-launch.

Our first event took place in Margaret Powell Square, which sits just outside MK Theatre and the art gallery. Our second event was inside the galleries, taking advantage of the first exhibition called "Lie Of the Land", which seemed quite appropriate for an urban landscape sketch group.. In August we made it to our landmark fifth event. This means that I have now run more urban sketching events in MK than any other local organiser. I've taken a short break, to attend to other matters, but I hope to get back to scheduling more local events soon.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Suzanna Raymond (@srfirehorseart) on Jul 21, 2019 at 1:44pm PDT

A Day Trip to Regents Park

To make sure I understood the basic model for sketching events, I joined the Urban Sketchers London group in July for an all-day sketch trip around Regents Park. This was a fun, informative event and I even got one of their badges! Their 'Draw London' event ran from 11:00 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon. These sketch gatherings were run as free events with no booking required.

As I arrived in Regents Park a little late, due to misjudging how long it'd take me to get to the start point, I was worried I'd miss the group. However, the group leader had stayed by the inner circle gates long past the start time to direct latecomers. As a bonus, I also ended up meeting local contact Sophie, who had started the Bedford urban sketchers group, and she gave me a few pointers. We formed a small group with a guy visiting from Hamburg and London member Elvin, who knew the group leader.

Our group went looking for a spot to sketch from and ended up diving into the Benugo cafe when it started to rain. We had two other sketchers join us at our table. As I wanted to know why everyone was there and what kind of sketchers they were, I was keen to chat to everyone. In the end we learnt a lot about each other while were sketching. After lunch, when we relocated to the next meeting point, I had a similar experience seated next to another sketcher on a bench facing a fountain.

Sitting in a central public space also turned out to be a good way to meet up with people you know, as I spotted graphic novel legends Paul Gravett and Peter from Comica London and Escape books taking a stroll around the Triton Fountain. We had a bit of a catch-up chat before they continued on their way.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Suzanna Raymond (@srfirehorseart) on Jul 23, 2019 at 11:32am PDT

In the end I stayed for the whole thing, including sketchbook throw-downs and group photos. From my point of view the event was a success, as I found out that my events are run in a similar format to that of a more established group. I also found out a lot about how and why these groups are run and what else may work for drawing sessions in my own area.

It turned out, from speaking to others with more experience, that becoming an official urban sketchers group is something that'll have to wait until we have more active members. Otherwise, we seem to be doing fine, albeit with less strict guidelines about what members post to the MK group. I look forward to hopefully enticing more people out of their homes with a sketchbook to explore their local area.



Links:

Drawing Around Milton Keynes (Facebook)
Urban Sketchers London chapter

Eventful sketching

MK Lit Fest 2018

MK Lit Fest 2018 announcement

Residency

It is the second year of the new literary festival for Milton Keynes and this year the organisers have selected me to be their artist in residence. This will be a new experience for both of us, so I'm excited to see how it'll work out. I'm always happy to sketch indoors with tea and books on tap, so it should be fun.

Last year I went to MK Litfest mainly to see how the event represented diversity and I was pleasantly surprised. I ended up enjoying the talks more than I expected and took some sketch notes at the event which I shared on Instagram, tagging in the event's authors and publishers.

The organisers liked my drawings so much that they've asked me back as their artist in residence. I'm looking forward to sharing my best sketches with everyone via Facebook and Instagram. I've already shared a sketch I made at one of their 'taster' events at MK Gallery.

I'm also looking forward to seeing a print copy of 'MinK, their new 52-page literary zine, at the launch event on the 21st September. There should be an online version too for those unable to attend the festival.

This year's event runs from Friday 21st through to Monday 24th September at the Holiday Inn in central Milton Keynes. You can find out more about it here: https://www.mklitfest.org/

Location sketching

If you want to see examples of other people sketching on location I'd recommend Dutch illustrator Maaike Hartjes for a cartoon (comics) based style, Canadian journalist and war artist Richard Johnson's line drawings, artist and author James Gurney for painting on location, plus a whole raft of urban sketchers.

Maze Life

Twists and Turns in 2018

One time I attended an event in a hotel that had some amusing notices posted up by a witty attendee. These read ' YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE'. This phrase, I later learnt, has its origins in a computer game developed for the PDP-10 * about which you can read more here.

My feeling about most of the first half of 2018 is also summed up by the above phrase, which is why I haven't written any updates until now. If I wanted to get more philosophical I might reference Plato's allegory of the cave but I think that can wait until another post.

In June - July I had my first exhibition of the year, for Arts For Health Milton Keynes, with MKDAD 2018-You See Me-moving forward. In this I was happy to show a bright, bold paper collage of mine that I'd made as part of an MK Gallery workshop with the English National Ballet. You can see more about the show on my Instagram feed here.

In July I also hooked up with Avant-Gardening and Lisa Cheung, who are artists running some art-linked outdoor play events this summer, as part of the MK Festival Fringe 2018. You can read more about their events here.

Anyway, things have started to pick up again now and so my next bit of news is that I made a new page of artwork using some of my urban sketches. This was put together specially for a new Milton Keynes literary zine called MinK, which is linked to the second MK Lit Fest literary festival. My page was selected and will be included in the zine but ...

.. if you'd like to make sure there is a print version (and bag yourself some rewards) then please support the MinK zine Kickstarter campaign by 4pm on the 8th August. They're most of the way to the target and just need a few more supporters to reach the goal but there's only 3 days left!



* many years ago I programmed a PDP-11, so I know the kind of kit they refer to

Tarting About

A post shared by Suzanna Raymond | (@srfirehorseart) on Oct 13, 2016 at 9:49am PDT

T'Art Zine

The T'Art show for International Women's Day 2017 has opened at Bones & Pearl Studios, in London. It's a group exhibition celebrating International Women’s Day with participatory zine making!

Following the Sweet 'Art group on Instagram led to me spotting an opportunity to contribute to the T'Art zine that forms part of this year's event. The page I submitted is the same one that has appeared in Girl Frenzy to Crone Frenzy but it will hopefully get a new audience at this event.

The T'Art show runs 7th - 9th March, with an opening event in the evening on the 8th March. See more about what they do at http://www.wearesweetart.com/

The CAS PostIt Exchange

Following up a link I saw on Facebook, I'm pleased to say I have been selected up to take part in the Chapel Arts Studios Post It Exchange. The CAS project, based in Andover, is about putting together artists to collaborate on items they post to each other. The results will be shared on Instagram with the #CASpostitexchange tag. My Instagram name is @srfirehorseart.

The project has just launched in pilot and they're still open to including more artists. More info on the project is on their website:  http://www.chapelartsstudios.co.uk/events/event/pilot-cas-postit/

Seventy Percent Admin

As has been observed elsewhere, an artist's life is only somewhat about creating wonderful things, the bulk of it is everything else. That means working to pay the bills, filing, submitting your tax return, DBS updates, insurance, networking and so on. After all that you may be able to squeeze the creativity into the last 30% of your time.

Likewise with my own life. So I've just updated my CV and artist's statement and have applied to another MK Calling exhibition at MK Gallery, this time with some of my urban sketches. Wish me luck!

Pecha Kucha MK

A photo posted by Suzanna Raymond | Artist | (@srfirehorseart) on Sep 6, 2016 at 11:05am PDT

Creatives Talking

Since recovering from a bout of illness, I've dived back to the fast-flowing stream that is 2016. Last week I attended the local gathering for comics and zine creators and indie publishers hosted by Milton Keynes Gallery.

It was great to have such a buzzing session where everyone seemed to find someone to swap ideas and stories with. The idea was to have a space where the kind of creatives that attended MKomix in 2012 could meet up. We're making use of the existing MKomix Facebook group to keep the conversations going after the event and a similar opportunity to get together should happen again early in 2017.

Pecha Kucha MK

Even though I thought I knew what Pecha Kucha was, having heard the term applied to a couple of gallery events, I didn't realise it had an international and licensed format. Milton Keynes now has an official license to hold Pecha Kucha events, with the interesting twist that the creator of this format and platform used to live in Wolverton, Milton Keynes, where the first talk will be held.

The first event will be free to attend and I will be one of its speakers. My slide show (20 slides, 20 seconds each) will talk about my experience as a new emerging artist. The presentation will cover my creative interests in urban & social landscapes, contemporary art. urban sketching, comics and zines.

The first PK event will be on Wednesday 19th from 7pm, see this link for more details.