Out amidst the artists

The annual Arts in Action show was held near Oxford this weekend: it highlights the visual arts with experts showing and creating their works.  I’m partial to the sculpture and painting, but the ceramic tent was particularly good this year.  There are mini workshops (a watercolour hour for 6 gbp) and tents with materials and foods.  With the sun finally out, it was a nice break in the  park from work and travel.

There were a few pieces that I particularly enjoyed: Graham Muir’s “Breaking light waveform” and Aimee Fischer’s “Wiggle”.  (The latter reflected the manta “I need my space”: is it personal space to contain my things, or exterior space holding society away?)

 

 

I also liked thumbing their sketchbooks of observations and ideas.

 

The highlight was the artists themselves, though.  It’s fascinating to watch hands and faces, intent on bringing a work out from blank media.  Bill Moyer’s “Language of Life” poetry series examined people who were very thoughtful and insightful about the world, but who viewed it through a much different prism than I did in math and sciences.  Similarly, here, artists spoke of hours contemplating a scene, analyzing why it caught their eye, what they wanted to convey about it, what feelings it should evoke in the viewer. 

And then they go and do it.