Blog

New products for a NewYear  and 2012 is going to be the best ever !!

From the delightful and quirky Swans and Blackthorn fabric these lavender bags are a must . Put one under your pillow for a restfull night sleep or amongst your clothes for delightfull scents of French lavender and protection from those pesky moths !Backed with cotton ticking and with the Rowena Ardern label .11/11cms

Next is the Robin and Finch panholder at 17/17 cms and filled with a heat resistant wadding a must for any kitchen for those hot pan handles or lids ! Digital print on cotton from a design created in Cornwall drawn at the delightfull Trebah Garden .If you ever get the chance to visit go to the cafe and sit outside by the garden wall and enjoy the visiting birds and the beauty and tranquility .

 back viewfront view

but each one will be different but just as beutiful.

At only £8 for either item on Etsy

or direct from my website email rowenaardern@googlemail.com.

Just a snapshot of my stand at Vintage on the Bay in December at Arnside .For more information about future events go to the link .

With three more events planned this looks to be a very popular venue .the next is on Sunday, February 12, 2012 from

Another amazing exhibition/installation is that of

Sheena Graham-George: Lullaby

Orkney Museum, Kirkwall, Orkney, until 29 October 2011

YOU HEAR the Irish lullaby very quietly before entering “Lullaby” in the temporary exhibition gallery at Orkney Museum and so just for a moment before seeing the installation, you are able to shift gear from what is the rest of the museum, and your awareness of what is to come is heightened, writes Clare Gee.

"Sheena has created quite simply the most beautiful and most moving exhibition I have seen in a very very long time, and she has done it with a level of simplicity that belies the depth and layers of the subject that has inspired it.

15,000 butterflies have been cut out of the pages of children’s books, and have been pinned to the walls of the gallery in a wonderfully beautiful way. The butterflies undulate and swarm, some drift away from the rest, some are alone.  They all look white, but move in closer and you see the delicate change in colour, and delight in recognising the books that have been used – Robinson Crusoe, Alice in Wonderland – characters you love from your own childhood emerge and then disappear again in this mass of life.

The exhibition has emerged from a long term interest Sheena has been developing and immersing herself in, since a residency on Achill Island in Ireland in 2009.  She became aware of Cillini, the non-consecrated Catholic burial grounds for still born and unbaptised babies and children.  This discovery has led to a long and detailed research for Sheena and some incredibly sensitive and thought-provoking pieces of work.  Lullaby is the most recent and the first to be shown in a public space away from the residencies Sheena has undertaken.

If you view the exhibition with the knowledge of its history and motivation, it, for me at least, becomes quite overwhelming.  Each butterfly describing a life, a precious life, each one different and individual.  I read it on the level of all the children buried in the Cillini, but also of individual children known to me that had had very short lives, the people I know who have lost children; this exhibition can be uncomfortable and difficult as well as beautiful and celebratory. "

I have just donated the piece of work I made for the Schiffli Exhibition to the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester to be held in their collection as an example of how the machine could be used in the 21st century . Unfortunately the fate of the machine is still in the balance so if anyone knows of a collector of such machines who may be interested please let me know as it would be a tragedy to loose it .

Please go to the link for a reminder of this fabulous exhibition .