Sarah

Last Thursday, Sarah made a final visit to see Charlie at Project Art Works to see her finished artwork and make a recording of a conversation between Charlie, Katie and Patricia all of whom are in the painting.  We placed the original photograph taken during the lockdown years beside the painting.

We are designing the final exhibition with our web designer, Oli Pyle and working with the audio of conversations that describes the artworks, why they were made, how they were made and why they matter so much.  You will be able to listen and read these in the final exhibition.

It was wonderful in our last session to find out that Izzati has included so many of us in her mandala pictured here. Zu is in the middle as the constant flower, then surrounded by Armani.

Then Sarah is there with pink elements, then Charlie with yellow and green.

Thompson and his blues with dark strokes and where is Andi?

He’s around the circumference!

In sessions three and four, we’ve been sharing our metaphors together and how they relate to our leadership styles and motivation. We have explored Izzati’s butterfly but also what the flower means in her artworks. Thompson’s lava lamp clearly illustrates his nature and the way he approaches things. Ferb is Andi’s metaphor and we can see Andi when we watch the animation episodes! Charlotte’s lightening is something that bolts with challenge but also joy!  We are learning all about each other in sharing our metaphors. Sync always does this whatever the programmes we run!

Wonderful to share Pixel Kim, a dear artist friend from South Korea as an example of a quiet, charismatic, collaborative leader.

Pixel’s art making is infectious. When he starts making, other artists come and join him and start making too. This week we started to explore the different ways we approach making artwork in our session. It was so good to do that together.

Izzati shared that she has many pieces on the go at any one time, it keeps her happy. Charlie shared the inspiration for her new work as part of the residency, once she’s found the image, she goes straight to canvas. Thompson uses pencils to explore the work before he starts to paint. Andi is still thinking about where he might focus his thinking and artwork on at this time. He has many followers and many ideas he wants to realise.

So great to see so many posts appearing in our artists’ studios and see the ideas and art making shared as it happens.

That’s the joy of an online residency, we can understand more about what drives our artists to make art. In our second session we were thinking about what motivates us. For some it’s keeping well, finding joy, bringing joy to others.

For others it’s about raising awareness about what is not fair and what needs to change. We had a talk about money too. Why not? Of course it’s great to make money from our artwork. Other’s do! Many of our artists have followings and fan clubs from their art exhibitions and publications.

We had a wonderful time at our first session with Armani and Sarah welcoming our 4 artists to the programme and their supporters.  Harvey Cash who made the artist intro films joined us to say hello. Oli Pyle, who designed our website, took us through how to upload posts to our studio spaces and Annalees Lim made illustrations of all the reflections, ideas and leadership thinking to remind us what happened.

Sarah and Thompson at Action Space in London.

I hadn’t met Thompson since 2018 at his exhibition in London pre-Covid and at an Action Space Board meeting. It was great to see each other again and have an interview about his work and his leadership thinking.

Thompson is making exciting new work, making drawings first at home, then bringing them to life. His work is very reflective about people’s experiences in our busy world today.

Charlotte stands infront of her canvas in her studio space.

So wonderful to meet Charlotte Stephens again at Project Art Works (PAW) in Hastings and share the thinking behind Sync Shorts and the Syncing Space artist residency platform. We had an interview and using her artwork made a 90 second intro film for the new website.

Charlotte showed me around, meeting other studio artists.

Our first meet with our Sync Shorts Malaysian Artists and supporters

It was wonderful to meet together today to say hello. Annalees Lim, our associate Sync artist met with Andi Miranti and Izzati Sharin from Malaysia artists.

Annalees shared her ‘live scribe’ work with us and we all started to talk about the artist residency and leadership training and how we are going to work together between now and April.

Our first all group meet will be on the 13th February and we are making short introduction films for each artist for their studio page.