Oxfordshire Artweeks opens today with as many as 500 venues to visit for free, stretching right across the county over the next three weeks (2-25 May). READ OUR ROUND UP OF WEEK ONE HERE
As the largest artist open studios and pop-up exhibition venues in the UK, there’s so much to see, from sculpture to jewellery, stained glass textiles, woodwork, paintings, ceramics, prints and more.
But if you don’t know where to start, follow the culinary theme running through this year’s offerings. Here are our favourite tasty treats:
Lizzie Waterfield (Artweeks venue 232) Lizzie’s art work is a colourful and fun world depicting any subject that catches her eye, rendered in her unique print and paper-collage style. Her art work begins as a drawing which is then transferred onto a rubber block, carefully carved with a scalpel and lino tools. Once carved the block is hand-printed with ink onto paper. She is selling her framed original art, prints and cards alongside a group of 15 fabulous and diverse artists and makers in Adderbury Church.
As the festival kicks off, with artists across South Oxfordshire and the Vale of the White Horse leading the way, head to Watlington where Lisa Ommanney (Artweeks venue 129) is showing her rustic and natural ceramic tableware. As she makes bespoke tableware for some of the world’s best restaurants including Michelin-starred Hide, Mirazur on the French Riviera, Moss at Iceland’s Blue Lagoon and George V in Paris, this is a rare chance to see her on her home turf, alongside other artists at Westfield House.
Over in Culham, Charlotte Storrs produces a range of white country ceramics for the kitchen-diner from plates and platters to bowls and bakeware and pottery ‘baskets and buckets’ with akebana vine handles for home grown veggies. Her rural pottery studio-cum-gallery stands in a garden with home-pressed apple juice for visitors, a hydroponics greenhouse and wide open views across Thames-side fields (Artweeks venue 74).
Down on the Ridgeway, for example, you’ll find, ‘soulfood crockery’ laid out on a giant table beneath exquisite textiles and paintings inspired by mythology, Renaissance and medieval art. These colourful plates and bowls, often with bold strong concentric circles, are designed and made for family dining by Julian March of Blewbury Ceramics (Artweeks venue 49).
Artweeks venues across the county offer a warm welcome and, often, a cup of tea and even a slice of homemade cake. Jane Tomlinson, however (Artweeks venue 191; Eynsham) has been inspired by this very British rituals, and her whimsical, imaginative and life-affirming paintings include a number focused on the joy of a cuppa, a vintage teapot or a plate of biscuits. And alongside original art, here you’ll also find prints, cards and tea-towels for your own kitchen.
Woodworker Jamie Spark Macfarlane (Artweeks venue 494) draws out the beauty of the natural world for the kitchen with spoons, butter knives, chopping boards, serving platters, and power carved bowls handcrafted from sustainable and reclaimed hardwoods, and you can visit him either at Appleton Artweeks, or, during the second week of the festival, Wise Investment’s pop-up exhibition at The Great Barn in Chipping Norton.
In Chipping Norton, you’ll also find Artweeks regular Judith Yarrow who is launching a limited edition of 100 new handmade artist’s books such as ‘All I want is a crowded table – Food for family, feasts, festivals and fun or just for one’– a folded structure with pockets for recipes and new artwork based on kitchens and food preparation. The book contains 33 recipes (in which her secret ingredient is often a teaspoon of local honey) and 18 watercolour, pen and pencil illustrations featuring local ingredients, dishes and classic cooking utensils. Artweeks venue 494.
Charlbury artist Elaine Kazimierzcuk jokes that her lunches match many of her paintings – her big bold stylised semi-abstracts depicting meadows and various natural habitats across the world, including a recent trip to Rwanda. Artweeks venue 309
Over in Sibford Gower’s charming Old Mission Hall, Rhiannon Evans is exhibiting solargrams and drawings that document an ‘experimental’ growing of heritage wheat at the Banbury’s Bridge Street Community Garden! Artweeks venue 254
Maia Ottenstein’s charming and unique ceramics at the Oxfordshire Craft Guild exhibition in Jericho, include the likes of this novel cow milk jug. Make sure you check out her work during the final week of the festival. (Artweeks venue 378)
And for delicious still life paintings, Joanne Sonnier in Abingdon, Kidlington’s Challoner Spokes, Alexandra Wright at Art in the Park in Middleton Stoney, and Barbara Harrison Caban in Summertown (Artweeks venues 23, 203, 213 & 415) all cut the mustard!
Margot Bell will be exhibiting with fellow, local artists in the beautiful church in Kings Sutton, where her woodcuts, collagraphic prints, water colour and oil paintings are inspired by places visited, objects found and chance shapes and colours in her abstract designs. (Artweeks venue 234)
Oxfordshire Artweeks runs from May 2-25. More info here https://www.artweeks.org
