Melanie Honebone (with Ellie Roberts) - Sets, Series and Ensembles

Melanie Honebone

Welcome to Sets, Series and Ensembles, an exhibition of art in public places. Accompanying each public art placement is a 'First Response' for you to read here on the website. As artists and writers we are constantly collecting ideas, objects, themes, and sentiments. We are often searching for the connections and narratives that help us understand both our lives and our art. 

Regular CollectConnect followers will know the artistic exploits of our next exhibitor, Melanie Honebone (formerly Melanie Ezra). She has been one of our most treasured and long serving CC artists over the years, and it is fitting that Time is one of the themes in her artwork for Sets, Series and Ensembles. In contrast we welcome a new writer, Ellie Roberts, to CollectConnect and hope she will be a contributor for many years to come. Read her response to Melanie's artwork below.

Melanie Honebone artwork, Hertfordshire

Ellie Roberts

Time has been on my mind

Time has been on my mind
Is it really past the 11th hour?
There was a ’rose garden’* but I know not to return
Time is now not then
that cycle of destruction and creation, reaching into the earth for renewal
feeling the pulse of the friable soil replete
with cosmic gold
Post war efforts
of urban forests falter
Lining Chandos Road
Giant slender fronds grapple with tarmac- concrete upturned knuckles of life burst
through their dark enclave
Little hands in mine
Time of my life
‘Look Nonna - the tree died, was it old?’
‘No, trees don’t die-it fell-felled………
Trees know when it is day and night
Trees know when it is hot or cold
Trees have memories’
‘Will it grow again?’
‘Maybe in time but not the same’


*T.S Eliott Four Quartets

Melanie Honebone

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Melanie Honebone is a Wales-based fine artist. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. Melanie openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential. In her spare time she produces music videos and photography for Stone Letter Media, is attempting to learn Welsh, and likes to stroke cats.
https://melaniehonebone.wordpress.com/

This is a first appearance for Ellie Roberts in a CollectConnect exhibition.

Melanie Honebone - Translocation Dislocation (words by Maria Woodford)

Welcome to the Translocation and Dislocation exhibition, a selection of eclectic artworks that have been placed or screened beyond the tradition gallery walls. Alongside the art, you can read written works by our First Responders. We will choose a different location for each artwork, the art might be placed in a complementary location (to add to the narrative) or juxtaposed against a competing backdrop to create new meaning.

A truncated mini monument sits high upon the hill, a new deity ready for her worshippers. Our very own Gower Goddess Melanie Honebone is the creator, the artist who specialises is dissecting the world and then putting it back together, always with new narratives and insights. Our First Responder today is an exciting debutant for CollectConnect, writer and photographer Maria Woodford. Read her contribution below.

Melanie Honebone

First Responder: Maria Woodford

view from the hillside

a mid autumn morning. the patchwork fields unfurl like
a ribbon wound endlessly from a single spool. onwards
and onwards and onwards. from here, she watches
with a wide myopic stare - the jigsaw of farms and houses,
the clouds matted in their thick grey knot. she
feels that the town must still be sleeping. (she hears
that the birds are long awoken.) in the middle distance,
a clock chimes an uncertain hour. but still:
her eyelids never
flicker. 

---------------------------------------------------------

Melanie Honebone is a Wales-based fine artist. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. Melanie openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential. In her spare time she produces music videos and photography for Stone Letter Media, is attempting to learn Welsh, and likes to stroke cats.
https://melaniehonebone.wordpress.com/

Photographer and writer Maria Woodford was recently one of only five poets shortlisted for the  Telegraph Poetry Prize in 2024. A graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge in 2022 she has been a performer on the London poetry circuit from a young age, including at the Poetry Society.

Alertism - Melanie Honebone

Welcome to the Alertism exhibition, featuring artistic and literary works that were inspired by the Emergency Alert test message that was sent to people with a mobile device on Sunday 23rd April at 3pm.

We love working with such a broad array of artists, but the first name often on our team sheet will be that of Melanie Honebone. An artist willing to embrace all aspects of the creative game, from painting to sculpture, often with a conceptual edge. The artist formally known as Ezra has been exhibiting with us since Rarities in 2011. When she took a train from Swansea to St Leonards-on-Sea to attend the opening of the exhibition on Hastings Pier. She really does go the extra mile! Melanie's First Responder is an artist who is very much in the Honebone mould, comfortable across the artistic disciplines, it's our co-founder Dean Reddick. He has provided a multi-media response, see it below (we have also included a transcript of the words underneath).

Melanie Honebone

First Responder: Dean Reddick

Dean Reddick

We were already partially decontextualised when they arrived before breakfast half falling through the door
Local pressure was high they were already mostly gone 

Who else knew who else could respond what were we to do
We tried diagnostics references were off the scale legends appeared and disappeared several versions manifested faded blurred reinstated 

Mapping led to further disorientation boundaries bled away islands formed static interfered everywhere

 

Melanie Honebone Now Panic Melanie Honebone Panic Melanie Now Honebone Panic Now Melanie Now 

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Melanie Honebone is a Wales-based fine artist. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. Melanie openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential. In her spare time she produces music videos and photography for Stone Letter Media, is attempting to learn Welsh, and likes to stroke cats.

https://melaniehonebone.wordpress.com/

Dean Reddick is an artist and an art therapist. He frequently works with casting process and loves drawing trees. https://deanreddick.blogspot.com/

Small World Futures - Last Day

Thank you to everyone who has visited the Small World Futures exhibition on the streets or who has joined us online throughout February. The exhibition draws to a close today amongst the melting snow around London Bridge. Many of the mini sculptures have already been picked up but we'll try and visit all the locations in the #unsettledgallery over the next month to find if any still remain. You can see a full portfolio of the street placements HERE.

As this is the last day of the exhibition we're placing all the sculptures that we couldn't quite fit into the 28 days of February. That means no imagined worlds from the writers but some fantastic treasures to find around London Bridge. Thank you to Kevin Acott, Dean Reddick, Natalie Low, Rebecca Lowe, Ed Arantus and Alban Low for your diverse and evocative writing throughout the month.

#unsettledgallery locations

The artists have given us a real insight into what future worlds could look like. The project has been a genuine success and a joy to organise, it is one that we would like to develop in the future. The next chance to see these miniature dioramas is in Aabenraa, Denmark from the 3rd May until June 2018. Eskild Beck will be organising this Small World exhibition and we'll post up some images when the time comes.

Thank you finally to all the artists involved - Sara Lerota, Ann Kopka, Bryan Benge, Bethany Murray, Wayne Sleeth, Dean Reddick, Lesley Cartwright, Melanie Ezra, Natalie Low, Stella Tripp, Tracy Boness, Jill Hedges, Jenny Meehan, Francesca Albini, Alan Carlyon Smith and Alban Low.

Below are today's Small World Futures.......

Bethany Murray at unsettledgallery No.3

As an artist Bethany Murray takes seemingly empty space, juxtaposing it with physical matter in an attempt to make the intangible tangible. Through the use of cast space, poetry and found objects she attempt to describe a sense of ‘otherness’. Exploring the distinction between the known and unknown that is directly linked to her research of the ‘sacred’. These mere encounters with material and language sit in the hinterland between that which is considered earthly and the ethereal.

http://bethanymurray-artist.blogspot.co.uk/

Bethany Murray

You can find Bethany Murray's Small World Future where the pavement meets a brick wall on Melior Street (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.3.

Dean Reddick - #unsettledgallery No.7

Dean Reddick is an artist, an art therapist and a lecturer. He uses a range of media and enjoys experimenting with casting processes using plaster, metal and resin to explore the tensions between organic and geometric forms, positive and negative space and the distortions that occur in producing casts. As an artist and art therapist Reddick has a keen interest in the role of art as a cultural phenomenon and as a container for inter-personal meaning. He enjoys working collaboratively and has been a regular exhibitor at Walthamstow's E17 Art Trail as well as exhibiting with CollectConnect. Recently he published Art Therapy in the Early Years: Therapeutic Interventions with Infants, Toddlers and Their Families (pub. 2016, Routledge) alongside co-editor Julia Meyerowitz-Katz.

Dean Reddick

You can find Dean Reddick's Small World Future at the bottom of a brick gully on Magdalen Street (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.7.

Wayne Sleeth - #unsettledgallery No.8

In his mature work since moving to the Lorraine region of France in 2001, Wayne Sleeth reiterates and re-explores the source and schema of his more formative sensations; the big skies above the flat lands of both the Lincolnshire coast of his father and the polders of maternal Flanders, where he also spent his childhood. The Lorraine region for this confirmed European is not only geographically strategic, but offers an echo of that very play of horizontality and verticality where the artist draws freely on “l’espace” as he knows and feels it, as far as the canvas edge…

http://www.waynesleeth.com/

Wayne Sleeth

You can find Wayne Sleeth's Small World Future behind a pick pillar at the back of the Greenwood Theatre on Snowsfields (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.8.

Lesley Cartwright - #unsettledgallery No.1

Lesley Cartwright was born in Liverpool but later moved to Essex to run a Hostel for homeless teenagers. She made her name in the commercial graphic field and music photography until she developed MS and now paints portraits from her Billericay studio. Cartwright is a multitalented artist who is not bound by genre nor convention. The work you see here is an extension of a fabulous Pokémon Go project where she knitted small versions of Pokémon characters and left them in public places for collectors to find. Cartwright has been exhibiting with CollectConnect since the Cardboard City exhibition in 2013.
https://twitter.com/ley9

Lesley Cartwright

You can find Lesley Cartwright's Small World Future between two concrete bollards where Weston Street meets St Thomas Street (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.1.

Ann Kopka - #unsettledgallery No.4

Ann Kopka studied Fine Art at Central St Martins College of Art and Design and the City Lit. She has studied The Practices and Debates of Modern Art and graduated with a First Class Honours degree from The Open University. She has also studied Museum Curating at Tate Modern. Kopka has exhibited in London, the UK and USA. Her work is held in private collections in France, Spain, UK, Australia and Australia. Her experimental work engages with the research, process and transformation of discarded everyday ephemera and disposable objects of little or no intrinsic value. Through the concept of ‘making something out of nothing’ Kopka seeks to draw attention to the throwaway nature of consumer society and question our perception of its value systems.
http://www.artcontemporary.co.uk/

Ann Kopka

You can find Ann Kopka's Small World Future inside the orange dispenser on Snowsfields (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.4.

Melanie Ezra - #unsettledgallery No.1

Melanie Ezra is a Wales-based fine artist who works using her own original photographs to create beautiful and intricate collages. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. She considers herself a specialist in the deconstruction of time and the extension of the moment. Recent works have evolved her practice to include three dimensional mixed media art forms based on dolls, mannequins, and the human form. The theme is always deconstruction and reconstruction, whether this is through a photograph or through her mixed-media works. Ezra openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential.
https://melanieezra.com/

Melanie Ezra

You can find Melanie Ezra's Small World Future sandwiched between a corrugated wall along Weston Street where it meets St Thomas Street (London Bridge) at #unsettledgallery No.1.

Goodbye everyone, and see you in the future.

Don't forget to send us your images for the Art of Caring exhibition (deadline 6th April) - More details HERE.

Year 5012 - Melanie Ezra - Small World Futures

Melanie Ezra, #unsettledgallery No.1

Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world.

Today we discover the Small World Future of.... Melanie Ezra
Last Age: Year 5012

Open Line: 22,017 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; perplexed.
'What is/was/would be this [undesignated] physical carbon structure'
     Open Line: Singular Mind. Designation: Teaching, sub emo; excited.
     'House/Home for soft bodies before Separation Event'
Open Line 21,123 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; clarifying.
'Soft bodies resided in House/Home (archaic)? Shell designation?'
     Open Line: Singular Mind. Designation: Teaching, sub emo; excited.
     'Shell designation probable. Safe environmental condition sought for
soft bodies'
Open Line 76,541 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; excited.
'Shell designation House/Home provides environmental conditions for soft bodies.
Confirmed Authentic?'
     Open Line: Singular Mind. Designation: Teaching, sub emo; triumphant.
     'Confirmed Authentic:
     Ref 209876-4758 {Research: Anthro/Arch; Ancient prehistory}'
Open Line 185,987 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; wonder.
'Research Artefact Accepted. House/Home Environmental Shell object for pre Separation Event
soft bodies. In what forms does Artefact exist?'
     Line: Singular Mind. Designation: Teaching, sub emo; cautious.
     'Artefact exists in Prime Material Existence'
Open Line 2,903,305 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; disbelief.
'Artefact exists? Confirm [imperative]. Explain resource acquisition
[imperative]. Describe Locations.'
     Line: Singular Mind. Designation: Teaching, sub emo; defensive.
     'Artefact exists; confirmed. Resources reclaimed [permit:
     307-RED099-carbon/wood/metal]. Artefact is placed on
     Planet Earth in Prime Material Existence only [permission requested]'
Open Line 87,5678,873,902 joined. Designation: Curiosity, sub emo; terror/fear.
'Permission denied for Research Artefact House/Home Environmental Shell
object for pre Separation Event soft bodies to BE in Prime Material Existence.
Citation: Non Proliferation of Objects. Report to Closed Line. End'

Closed Line 7 IMPERATIVE.
'Close Line:
Remove Singular Mind.
Expunge would be Research Artefact House/Home Environmental Shell object for pre Separation Event soft bodies.
Classification: Heresy.
Clause: Pollution of Prime Material Existence.
Sub Clause; Improper Use of Reclaimed Resources.
End.'

Dean Reddick

Melanie Ezra

You can find Melanie Ezra's Small World Future located behind the railings at the top of Weston Street, London Bridge at #unsettledgallery No.1. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Melanie Ezra is a Wales-based fine artist who works using her own original photographs to create beautiful and intricate collages. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. She considers herself a specialist in the deconstruction of time and the extension of the moment. Recent works have evolved her practice to include three dimensional mixed media art forms based on dolls, mannequins, and the human form. The theme is always deconstruction and reconstruction, whether this is through a photograph or through her mixed-media works. Ezra openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential.
https://melanieezra.com/

Dean Reddick is an artist, an art therapist and a lecturer. He uses a range of media and enjoys experimenting with casting processes using plaster, metal and resin to explore the tensions between organic and geometric forms, positive and negative space and the distortions that occur in producing casts. As an artist and art therapist Reddick has a keen interest in the role of art as a cultural phenomenon and as a container for inter-personal meaning. He enjoys working collaboratively and has been a regular exhibitor at Walthamstow's E17 Art Trail as well as exhibiting with CollectConnect. Recently he published Art Therapy in the Early Years: Therapeutic Interventions with Infants, Toddlers and Their Families (pub. 2016, Routledge) alongside co-editor Julia Meyerowitz-Katz.

Year 3262 - Melanie Ezra - #smallworldfutures

Melanie Ezra, Magdalen Street, London Bridge, #unsettledgallery 7

Small World Futures is a collection of 38 miniature sculptures depicting what life could look like in years to come. Each of these small artworks will be placed in public spaces (

#unsettledgallery) around London Bridge. Every day throughout February we will be featuring one of these worlds here on the website. A writer will also use the world as inspiration to create something new and fresh, their words describing the shape of a new world. 

Today we discover the Small World Future of.... Melanie Ezra

The year is 3262

We piece together the past with these artefacts. Belonging to a world thousands of years ago. Or so we believe.
Found in the Lea Valley of the Kings, deep within the Pyramids of Leytonstone, the grand palaces of the ancient kings and queens.
Time has not been kind, preservation is a game of chance. Synthetic bright coloured clothes and golden shoes give us a glimpse of their impeccable taste and beauty.
The first tomb contains the remains of DAVID.
David is a hero, he slays giants, he is a king.
His queen lays embalmed in the second chamber.
Bound and tied, her arms surgically removed to accentuate her Venus.
It is a sign of love to wrap her so tight.
Next to her, sheets of papyrus. Cosmopolitan words that talk of Beauty, Sacred Ecstasy and Sexual Pleasure. She is perfect.
Pinned to her strapped body is a sign.
It reads....I used to be Posh Spice.
She was a Goddess.
Or so we believe.


Alban Low

Melanie Ezra

You can find Melanie Ezra's Small World Future located at the bottom of a brick indentation on Magdalen Street, London Bridge at #unsettledgallery No.7. If you can find it then you can take it home, or perhaps you will leave it for someone else to discover.

Melanie Ezra is a Wales-based fine artist who works using her own original photographs to create beautiful and intricate collages. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. She considers herself a specialist in the deconstruction of time and the extension of the moment. Recent works have evolved her practice to include three dimensional mixed media art forms based on dolls, mannequins, and the human form. The theme is always deconstruction and reconstruction, whether this is through a photograph or through her mixed-media works. Ezra openly describes herself as a ‘renegade arts experimentalist’ and is happy dabbling in anything that pushes her work to the limit and broadens her own potential.

https://melanieezra.com/

Alban Low is involved in many creative projects, these include album artwork, publishing chapbooks, making films, maps, conceptual exhibitions, live performance and good old drawing. He is artist-in-residence at the School of Nursing, Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education at Kingston University and St George's University of London. Low spends his evenings in the jazz clubs of London where he captures the exhilaration of live performances in his sketchbook. On Wednesday evenings he sketches the performers on the radio show A World in London at Resonance FM. He is about to open an exhibition of these drawings at the Yehudi Menuhin Concert Hall on the 14th February 2018.

http://albanlow.com/

Art of Caring 2016

 

Last Thursday, 12th May, we celebrated International Nurses Day 2016 in our own heartfelt way. This is the second year of the Art of Caring and it was even bigger and better than last year's exhibition. This year we exhibited 330 postcard sized artworks and poems from over 180 artists who sent us their work from around the world.

Eskild Beck and Alban Low

The launch party saw several artists come from far flung places including Eskild Beck from Denmark and CollectConnect favourite Melanie Ezra from Swansea. It was a glorious early summer's day in Kingston-upon-Thames and the streets outside teemed with a suburban buzz. Inside, the refreshments flowed feely and it was not only a good opportunity to delve deeper into our thought provoking selection but also to meet old and new friends alike. Photographer Bill Mudge was in attendance and you can see his full portfolio of photos HERE.

Thanks to everyone who came and exhibited their work, we couldn't have done it without you. Thank you to all at Kingston University and St Georges, University of London who have supported us both financially and with their time and expertise, especially Dr Julia Gale, Karen Norman, Paul Newcombe and Carmel Blackie. Also the hanging committee of Paul Newcombe, Nikki Yun and Bryan Benge who got all 330 postcards on the Rose Theatre walls.

The exhibition is open until the 24th May 2016 in the upper circle bar/foyer gallery at the Rose Theatre, Kingston-upon-Thames, so go and see it.

Don't forget our main event on the 23rd May 2016 in the main auditorium that includes poetry, performance and insights into the Nursing profession. If you don't know what to expect then watch last year's performance here.

The Empowering Melanie Ezra



Art of Caring 2016 - Melanie Ezra

The first entries have started to arrive at the Art Of Caring this year. We would like to shine our modest spotlight on some of the artists who dedicate their time to art and make our exhibitions such a success.

Melanie Ezra (left) and Rose Davies (right)

We've exhibited the work of Melanie Ezra since our magnet Rarities exhibition along the Hastings and St Leonards' seafront in 2011. She is not only a regular contributor but also supports a network of international artists who use her as a conduit to the UK art scene. Ezra continues to be the poster girl for the Swansea art world, her photography based work is often spliced and cut using her trusty scalpel but inside you can still find the beauty of the Gower Peninsula. Last year she published a map, Swansea: On the Map: An Artist's Walk with Rose Davies that continues to this day to be a bestseller for publishers Sampson Low Ltd.

Unfortunately last year Melanie Ezra wasn't able to submit her work to the Art Of Caring so we are very pleased to welcome her into the fold in 2016. Ezra's Art of Caring artworks are based on photographs taken during her mindful photography workshops. The workshops explore self-improvement and empowerment through the use of the camera. They are often delivered through community organisations to aid people who have suffered life-changing events. She works with blind charities, drugs agencies, and other community and hospital based groups. Ezra's participants have shown great resilience in overcoming their problems and her workshops often inspire them to learn other new skills and tackle other obstacles in their lives from a new position of strength.

From left to right: Céline Pellerin,

Esperanza Tielbaard, Melanie Ezra in Manhattan, 2014

 (Photograph: Esperanza Tielbaard)

I and others from CollectConnect have written before about Melanie Ezra and her personal resilience in the Art world. No distance is too great to traverse so that she can meet and help fellow artists, or share her artwork with the public. It has been truly inspiring to watch her work spread throughout he world and feel the glow from her growing reputation.

If you would like to submit your artwork to the Art Of Caring this year then visit the Submit page of this website.

AL.

On The Map exhibition

On The Map Exhibition

Welcome to the On The Map exhibition from CollectConnect artists. Earlier this year publisher Sampson Low Ltd commissioned 12 new maps from a group of exciting contemporary artists. Each map was designed to be printed as an A3 fold out sheet with 4 supporting pages on it's reverse side.



The Sunbury Dice Game
Alban Low and Harvey Wells

There is an inherent beauty in maps, like the Dwell book that proceeded this exhibition maps are a 2 dimensional rendering of a 3 dimensional form. They are often interpretations of the real world in a graphic light with motifs and lines that help us find anything from roads to windmills.

Artists are natural observers and organisers who like categorise through visual means. This map exhibition gives us the chance to see the world around us through the eyes of 14 artists from around the UK.

The artists were asked to consider 3 criteria.
Their map should be set in the real world, somewhere in the UK.
That it should include a route which could be walked.
The walking of the map shouldn't cost more than £10 (train fares, entrance to museums, lunch)

Sampson Low Ltd have printed them all in colour at an A5 (21x14.8cm) size with an A3 fold out map incorporated. They will be selling the maps at an affordable £2 (+ Postage and Packing) so that anyone can try one of these artist's walks or frame them on their wall.

The artists are -

Bill Mudge
Melanie Ezra and Rose Davies
Bryan Benge
Robert Good
Peter S Smith
Dean Reddick
Tahira Mandarino
Alban Low and Harvey Wells
Phillip Cribb
Stuart Simler
Jill Hedges
Glyn Walton

The exhibition runs from 14th April to 10th May 2015
Private View - 23rd April, 6.30-8.30pm
at
The Sunbury Embroidery Gallery
The Walled Garden, Thames Street
Sunbury-on-Thames, TW16 6AB
http://www.sunburyembroidery.co.uk/index.htm

All welcome. We hope you can find your way there.
If not, I'll draw you a map!

AL.

We would especially like to thank Robert Shaw, Barbara Robertson, Tahira Mandarino at the Sunbury Embroidery Gallery. Also Spelthorne Borough Council for their support of the exhibition.

Melanie Ezra - Caer Hecsagon

Caer Hecsagon in front of the Tower of London

Welcome to the Dwell exhibition and book. For a whole month we will be taking each artist's page and transforming it into a 3 dimensional dwelling. Each one of these small sculptures will be exhibited in public on the London streets.

Today's sculpture comes from Melanie Ezra, a frequent exhibitor with Collect Connect and active participant in Collect Connect exhibitions.



Structured Chaos’ 12″ x 12″ layered paper

'Melanie Ezra is a UK-based fine artist who works using her own original photographs to create beautiful and intricate collages. She often works in series, providing visual responses to external stimuli such as literature, science, and music. She considers herself a specialist in the deconstruction of time and the extension of the moment.'
http://melanieezra.com


On Melanie's website we read that she is currently exploring the world of theoretical physics with its sub atomic particles and string theory; a world of quantum uncertainty where probability rules supreme and where the simple act of viewing irrevocably changes the thing being viewed. One can get a sense of this from the first art work in Melanie's 'Structured Chaos' series, pictured here. The image is alive with strings which seem to seethe in mind boggling complexity. At the same time we can resolve this highly energetic and dynamic image to see a serene landscape which suggests solitude and peacefulness. If we try seeing both at the same time perhaps we get a glimpse of the paradoxical nature of the quantum universe.

Melanie's net 'Caer Hecsagon' is a tiny castle complete with outer wall, keep and portcullis. It belongs to a time when stone walls and a company or two of pike men and bowmen provided a statement of security and power (or fear and oppression). Such concrete certainties are no longer so easy to come by and I wonder what the modern version of the castle is.

We photographed Caer Hecsagon (we love the name!) in front of the Tower of London which is  one of the oldest palaces in Europe and remains, to this day, a symbol of power in the heart of London.

Don't forget to have a look at the next Collect Connect project, 'The Art of Caring' exhibition at The Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames. The theme is Caring/Care and it is FREE to enter.

To buy the Dwell Book for £6 then follow this LINK
.

Dwell book published by Sampson Low Ltd

The latest publication from CollectConnect artists is being released in February 2015 by Sampson Low Ltd. London based artist and art therapist Dean Reddick has brought together artists from around the world to publish a book of 30 practical Nets. Each black and white page is easy to photocopy and ready for all ages to build themselves. The Nets are graded with completion times and building tips. A magical book about 2D plans with the potential to become 3D dwellings that can be adapted and coloured by the reader.

Dwell: A book of Nets
Published February 2015
ISBN 978-1-910578-00-1
64 pages A4 Softback
Author – Various Artists
SLB0008

Click on the BUY NOW button below to buy
Dwell: A book of Nets for £6 (UK addresses only +£1.60 Postage and Packing)

Authors
Alban Low Scrunchy Shed
Beth Davis Hofbauer Castle in the Sky
Bryan Benge City Scape
Catherine Wynne-Paton Raft at Sea
Dean Reddick Shelter One and TreeHouse
Eleanor Bedlow Container
Ella Klenner & Fausto House by the Wild Sea
Eve Allsop Home
Gavin Blackhurst 46 Malbet Park
Helen Hunt Thoreau’s Room
Holly Daniels Fairy Dwelling
Jane Hellings Shipping Container
Jay Snelling Pyramid
Jessamy Low Ocelot Villa
J Masson Abri
Keziah Reddick Dream dwelling
Kim Reddick Crates
Lisa Howes Flat Pack
Malc Dow Escape Dwelling
Melanie Ezra Caer Hecsagon
Mike Russell Negated Obstacle
Natalie Low Dwellow Submarine
Nick Gammons Castle
Rajaa Khalife Paixao Confessions of an artist
Sabatin Bascoban The Caravan
Sara Lerota Table as a place..
Steve DT The Sistene Chapel
Stuart Simler Trojan Horse
Tamara Jelaca Little house in Prairie

Melanie Ezra & Lesley Cartwright - Bridging the gap

Lesley Cartwright

Today the artworks from the Cardboard City exhibition are hidden away, the first from Lesley Cartwright (above) is under the arches of Cannon St Bridge, beside the legendary Clink Prison. Our second offering is snuggled down in a phone box atop Southwark Bridge where Swansea Superblogger, Melanie Ezra, is calling collect.

Calling Melanie Ezra

Although Ezra has been exhibiting with us for a relatively short time she has made a noticeable impact on our artistic landscape. Never one to let geography get in the way, she can often be found traversing from her home in Wales to the south east of England, all in the name of Art.

Melanie Ezra
Open

At heart she is a photo-artist and printmaker who works using collage by deconstructing her own original, previously unpublished, photographs. Her collages and prints challenge ideas on truth and memory, and ultimately question the veracity of the nature of the way we record Time.



Melanie Ezra - Blind Eye

Even though Ezra's work has been exhibited around the world in these few short years it is on her own doorstep where her enthusiasm is most keenly felt. We have seen the benefit recently with more and more Swansea artists participating in our exhibitions. She understands our ethos at CollectConnect, recently she responded to our exhibition brief with a piece on her blog,

"Art should not be elitist and exclusive. This exhibition is about restoring an imbalance and giving the right of inclusivity to anybody and everybody who wants it. These little artworks in their throwaway homes will be there for everybody regardless of the glittering chaos that takes place around them in the build up to Christmas."

Lesley Cartwright - Cardboard City

Lesley Cartwright is a new artist in our ranks but one I'm really happy to get acquainted with. She was born in Liverpool but later moved to Essex to run a Hostel for homeless teenagers. She made her name in the commercial graphic field and music photography until she developed MS and now paints portraits from her Billericay studio.

Cartwright has had first hand experience, unlike many of us, as she was homeless with a small child in her twenties. Her lifeline was a live-in job at the aforementioned hostel so she feels a resonance with the exhibition's theme of 'Together Alone'. Lets hope she will be a regular contributor to our exhibitions and that she'll never be cast adrift again, at least not artistically.

AL.