Air Mail.

Some photos from the Hollie and Jack pop up shop/exhibition I took part in during the long Easter weekend. The Parlour Showrooms, a very central gallery space, was used to showcase the clothing range of Hollie and Jack which until now had just been an online store, but in a one off event brought the collection to the people. Myself and two other Bristol artists, Lilliana Kielczewski and Charlie Dennis, were invited to install our own little exhibitions within the space as well. 

(Source: laurabeavendesign)

Book sculpture number four: Trying a different technique.. instead of playing around with illustrations from within the book and creating new narratives, I’ve focused on the manipulation of just the paper itself, keeping it quite simple and including quilling methods. I really like the little glimpses of colour and sugary sweet clues to the recipes inside. 

(Source: laurabeavendesign)

Book sculpture number three: This 1940’s nurses guidebook is on a much smaller scale compared to the other books I’ve been working with which meant that this sculpture was a bit more of a challenge. The content of this book is amazing, but I was especially drawn to the repeating appearance of the man in the photos, mostly because of his expression, I think.

(Source: laurabeavendesign)

Book sculpture number two: From a small book of children’s short stories, I cut out a selection of illustrations from the various stories and turned them into an entirely new scene within the book. It may appear to be an innocent sea-side scene at first, but on closer inspection is actually a surreal and slightly sinister portrait of the relationships within the food chain. 

(Source: laurabeavendesign)

Any Bristolian reading this.. Get yoursef down to The Hare over Easter weekend, the lovely little pub where I work. Four days of extra special beers (as well as our usual top notch drinks selection), a tasty hog roast, live music, and pub quizness. Poster designed by yours truly. Follow us on twitter! @TheHarePub

Further progress on my book sculpture. I cut out any illustrations from the book that suited the theme of pond/water life and created a 3D scene next to the butterfly page, ultimately creating the look of a typically British garden. I really loved just working away at this for a few hours, carving out the ‘pond’ and seeing it take shape was especially enjoyable.  

(Source: laurabeavendesign)

Sculpting some second hand books in conjunction with my final major project

This is my entry for the Hermione Hammond Drawing Award. The rules of the competition state that you can draw basically anything, witnessed or not, as long as it’s a representational drawing. So after discarding a few ideas I decided to do a portrait of a mugshot taken of a young guy called Edward Blake in Minnesota 1966. I found his mugshot on a great archive site called These Americans and for some reason I just felt particularly drawn to his. I like the fact that he looks very fresh faced compared to most others in the archive, I also thought he revealed so much just with his eyes, which are notably slightly cross eyed. Still waiting to find out if my uni have entered my drawing to the competition, so fingers crossed for the next few days! 

(Source: laurabeavendesign)

This is my poster entry for BrewDog’s artwork competition. I had the idea of illustrating a wild mythological creature gasping out of dehydration, and showing a hint of excitable madness upon finding a flowing waterfall of BrewDog beer. In the end I realised that I actually had more fun drawing it, and so have decided not to get too touchy about the amount of Facebook ‘likes’ it receives in the voting process.