Portraits

Getting someone to sit for you while you paint them with some cheap poster paint is quite a weird thing for both the painter and the painted (wow I used the word paint a lot just then). I’m trying to paint a lot of people who are in my life, here are two out of five of my housemates:

Don’t worry I plan to paint the other three soon, in the meantime whist we wait for those, why don’t you listen to a cool playlist I made for my friends. Now you’ve visited this site, we’re practically friends too.

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Birds I view: EOTR (2015)

‘Birds I View’ has been a dream of mine for a little while now, and with the help of my two buddies (Gosia and Kizzie), last summer it became a reality. 

But what exactly is it? Well, it’s a little difficult to explain, but here we go…

Birds I View is a small, flatpack, homemade bird hide, with three little illustrators/artists sat inside. It is surrounded by bird feeders and the gentle sound of bird song drifts through the air to attract festival goers, who are then observed and catalogued. By catalogued I mean drawn, as strange newly discovered birds, with cool latin names. Then they are released back into the wild unharmed, with proof of their avian alter-ego in hand drawn picture format. 

In 2015 we took Birds I View to End of The Road festival where we had a brill time and were even mentioned in Clash Magazine! Sonny Malhotra took some great photos of the hide too…

This summer we are setting off to Greenman Festival, see you there our feathery friends!

If you are interested in having Birds I View (or something similar) at your event, drop me an email: lilylilylolly@gmail.com

You can also check out our Facebook and Twitter, look sometimes people even tweet us:

No. 1 Papa

So sometimes I make paper mache busts of my friends and family (for my friends and family). Here I present to you my favourite photo of my dad (I keep it on my desktop at all times so I can open it if I feel sad) and the corresponding paper mache version…

(fun fact about me: I flippin’ love paper mache)

RAF Upper Heyford: Screen Prints

Using a collection of studies and field notes from my time spent at RAF Upper Heyford, I created a series of three prints…

RAF Upper Heyford: Cats

Okay so you may be thinking to yourself, ‘why would you make so many ceramic cats Lily?’ and to be honest, I’m not quite sure what the answer to that question is.

The cats began as one aspect of my RAF Upper Heyford Project, when on one visit I brought a china cat from a couple of girls trying to raise money for charity. I used it to make a slip mold and from this made about 50 cats (and counting). Most are raku fired, meaning they were burnt in a home made kiln outside (with lots of marshmallows).

I gave ten back to Heyford Park, the residential section of RAF Upper Heyford…

With raku firing you never quite know how the glaze will come out (or if the cats will just explode, exciting right?), that means no two cats are the same. Here are some of the crew…

 

RAF Upper Heyford: Exhibition

RAF Upper Heyford is an airbase located a few miles away from my hometown of Bicester. It was occupied by Americans from the 1950s into the early 90s, but the United States Air Force abandoned the site in 1994. Since then it has been left in a transient state, a sort of limbo between belonging and rejection. But in the middle of this uncertainty lies Heyford Park, a small residential area, where the inhabitants live amongst the relics of a different world. My work attempts to somehow preserve Heyford Park before it is engulfed by a housing property development. Its history, ignored for so long is now being stripped away to be replaced by standardised, manufactured houses, most of which are too expensive for the local community to afford.

Although this project will never be finished, its progress can be displayed in the form of an exhibition of collected ephemera and my own responses to Heyford Park. Things of interest which can or cannot be placed on some shelves are:

• 19 hand made ceramic cats
• A short animation of Harris Road
• Hut signs salvaged from the building sites
• A pot plant
• A forty minute recording of an interview with Alan, a local
• Three screen prints
• A piece of old carpet

This project won best in show at the end of year exhibition. Some of the photos below were taken by Neil Mabbs, some were just taken by my mum:

This here is a short animation of one of the roads in Heyford Park, playing over the top are extracts from my interview with Alan (that local)…

A Collaboration With Lighthouses

Inspired by a random prediction from the shipping forecast, I sent twenty postcards to twenty lighthouses across the UK. When arranged together they form the phrase “good occasionally poor”.

I got quite a few responses, but below are two of my favourites…

Of course, not all of them made it back to me, here are some that have been (probably, maybe) lost at sea…