Update Chandelier NEWS or how cold can you go!

layers and too cold



moving day

In studio, a teaser of the structure

 

the cold, setbacks and moving forward!

Setbacks: the usual would be having a virus, or ill kids at this time of year, well or course we did that, and added a few extras challenges, A studio to cold to move our fingers in, Lauren recovering from a broken wrist, handy (excuse the pun) considering our work, having to buy new car (second hand) and a couple of the machines used by the designers building the structure broke, and the chain suppliers rather confused!! And we have still made progress on the beautiful Chandelier (I've left out a few things) SO any potential employers out there, we are awesomely skilled at working within challenging situations and overcoming hurdles!

The Beginning of Jan and a Happy bloody breezing New Year and our first Job was to move studio!! No mean feat. Our own Studio had become so cold that we could only manage 2 hours before retreating to a cafe to warm through and then do another couple of hours. We realised that our fingers just couldn't manage the dexterity needed for 2500 odd earrings.



Amazingly and Thank you, Lime Art came to our rescue, after exhausting all other options and were about to consider using my home, not really a viable option with two children, sitting around the the all purpose dining table in the main room would have given a whole new meaning of 'being consumed by ones art work'.




Now happily cosy and ensconced in temporary new studio, thought it would be time to share photos and where we are up to.

The electrics are in the Yard of the hospital, which will be the chandeliers first home. A big thank-you to Dawn of Lime Art who pushed this task through for us. I should explain that Lime Art is an award-winning arts charity within the Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and has supported us from the beginning of the project.

We have had help from friends and family to put chain on parts of the structure, (little give away of how final sculpture might look) and to adjust earrings so they can hang, as well as fixing any broken earrings.
We now appreciate the enormity of attaching the row upon row of chain.........
Particular thanks to two Photographers Sara Duncan and Aine Porrill Poulton who have come in and helped to document the earrings and our work in their creative way.

Despite the set back with the structure, machines don't seem to understand deadlines, the structure is in the studio! Having tried various design combinations layouts with the earrings, and  much tweaking of the design  and how earrings can hang, we are very keen to start trial all of this on the final structure - exciting!

ps we have jinxed the heating here at Lime........oh no the Victorian boiler has broken!

Kirstie's Vintage Home Channel 4-Art Deco Fan Lamp

Not a bad hair day insight!

Lights Camera action - filming day at our studio

We had very positive feedback about our part making an tiffany style art deco lamp in Kirstie's vintage homes, last Thursday on Channel 4, thank you everyone.
Friends have said we were 'naturals' on the telly.......we are open to programme offers!  I have to keep saying channel 4, as I can't yet believe we were on national telly.
 It was quite a process though, with us both being test filmed first, all bit worrying as they could have said NO, and we'd felt like wearing paper bags for the rest of our lives.

More importantly
Check out the scrap book page for a picture of what we made with Iman, and their Art deco living room has turned out a treat. I especially like the Sunburst mirror.

http://scrapbook.channel4.com/programmes/kirsties-vintage-home   
we are episode 5 Iman and Heather.

So if you would like to make an Art Deco Fan lamp like this, You Can. 
We are now running one day courses starting in the new year. Buy one for yourselves or buy a Course as a Christmas Gift. 
We sell Christmas Gift tokens www.manchesterstainedglass.co.uk

The final art deco lamp before its rushed off for the Final reveal in Iman and Heather s Living room.

You too can make a lamp like this one!

Kirstie Allsopps Vintage Homes – Channel 4

This is an exciting time for Sagar and Campbell, well possible 2 minutes of exciting time, we are on Kirstie Allsopps, Vintage Homes show tonight, on Channel 4!!

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/kirsties-vintage-home

Showing off our teaching skills making a Tiffany style Art Deco Fan Lady Lamp, with Iman, whose house is being treated to a vintage maker-over.

Art Deco Fan Lamps

This is another part of our work, and also our starting point as artists, we both trained as stained glass artists and for as long as I can now remember have taught stained glass and related glass techniques to Adults, Community groups and School Children.  

Lauren at work in our studio

So we were very excited to be invited onto Kirstie’s show, to demonstrate and help make a lovely glass fan lamp for the living room.

We run Stained glass weekends at our studio in Manchester, and are now running a new one day workshop making an Art Deco Fan Lamp, the course dates and booking info can all be found on our web site, follow links www.sagarandcampbell.co.uk, and also look at our progress with the Chandelier of Lost Earrings while you are there.

This was our first experience of being filmed for TV, a fascinating process, with much preliminary planning and filming giving a few minutes of fabulous telly!  And with the filming being in the middle of summer in our studio with the window closed (too much noise from outside) and camera studio lights on, an incredibly hot experience. The Raise the Roof production team all the way through the process were great, supportive and much fun, and work incredibly hard, their day seemed too started at about 5am, and I personally had never seen my studio at 6.30am before!

We would definitely do it again. Unless of course I look like I’m having a Bad Hair day on the telly tonight!! After having hair cut before filming, I tied it up (the heat) and for continuity had to leave it up, how vain.

Fantastical Earring Workshops

Having finished holding Earring Collection events, next on the agenda was the ‘fixing and mending and creating of fantastical earrings from all the donated beads, jewellery and broken pieces workshop’, not a very catchy title! The idea being that all the collected gifts can be hung on the chandelier. 

So a workshop title more simply put, ‘Earring Fun’ bringing out the playful and creative in us all. The participation in this art work has been Key all the way through; the art work doesn’t exist without the donations of earring and peoples stories.

We held workshops, in a ‘Drop-in’ Fashion, at our Studio in Rogue Studios, at the Whitworth Art Gallery and the surreal one at St Mary’s hospital, where the Chandelier will hang in its first home in the courtyard.

The pictures are from workshops and also showing sets or collections of earrings, we wanted to get our heads around all the different types of earrings donated, before we start the construct the chandelier proper.

 

Surreal workshops  - or where a workshop should and shouldn’t be held, a lesson learnt.

In St Marys hospital the main women’s and maternity unit, and where the concept of the chandelier began, we were to hold a drop in session for staff over a three hour period around lunch time.

We were set up in a teaching room, on the 2^nd floor, maternity wards, with weird and wonderful hospital paraphernalia around us; a hospital bed, a plastic model birthing canal and lots and lots of glitzy jewels (that’s us).

We didn’t expect a fast crowd of people to run in, hospital staff are busy people......but it was devoid of sound, people, crying babies or even footsteps........like we had entered a different time zone... finally one man walked past.....twice,  probably thinking , ‘did I really just see a jewellery factory shop?” He didn’t come in.

So lesson learnt, we should have taken a tip from the TV show ‘Location, Location, Location’. Although it was advertised, and we know staff and nurses were interested, we had chatted to them about it at the collection events; we were not in a main thoroughfare or on the way to anywhere, as the expression goes ‘out of sight, out of mind! But fortunately we worked, made up lots of single earrings and had a laugh making up stories of where everyone had gone.

Flower Collections

Heart Collections

Sparkling Collections

Pear Drop threaded Collections

Just Lovely

Events (The University of Manchester)

 Follow this blog for latest events at the Whitworth, and very soon we of Lost earring will be an event to0.


Events (The University of Manchester)

Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester

Tuesday 4th December from 1pm - 3pm.  

Another visit to the Whitworth for the Chandelier.

Come and help fix and create earrings for The Chandelier of Lost Earrings! Join us the artists, Sharon Campbell and Lauren Sagar in the development of this Arts Council England supported sculpture.

Come for 5 minutes or an hour. You don't need to bring anything except some imagination.

http://whitworthadultprogramme.wordpress.com/ 

http://www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk/

The Chandelier of Lost Earrings | Project blogs | Artists talking | a-n

The Chandelier of Lost Earrings | Project blogs | Artists talking | a-n

Morning at Levy Market Marketing!

I have to start with an Earring,  photographs of Levy market ones will follow on another blog day

A remarkable much needed sunny Autumn Blue sky day for handing out the last of the Fliers Appealing for all those lost, lonely earrings.
The place for this, my local Market, a new development since spring, a colourful vibrant market, with much home made and crafted goods, livening up Levenshulme - Levy for short to all those who live here and love it. What a lot of L's in that sentence.

 The next market is on Saturday 24th November.http://www.levymarket.co.uk/

I did have a good time handing out fliers, as people and stall holders were all so receptive to the Chandelier. And also I received earrings from two stall holders, very lovely ones, thank you to you both.

I did also managed to fit in (after working) a coffee and catch up with friends, in our Local independent cafe POD, its in the old levenshulme post office, hence Post Office Deli.

Strange and coincidentally.....

Art and Design POD of Liverpool John Moores University, is also the name of the the Designers who are collaborating with us to create the structure and helped to create the fabulous font for the Chandelier.  I would reveal drawings and images of our work together, but feel this would spoil the pleasure of the surprise. Suffice to say we are very much enjoying collaborating together!

 

Press releases and PR skills

Last few weeks have concentrated on this area.
A steep learning curve of necessary skills and lack of experience, none of it related directly to art, bit of a shocker......a key area of this project is the PR! We know what it is and have done it before in minor ways, but a big push was needed.
Radio, very local and regional, Press again local and regional and even TV local northwest news tonight, these were the aims and all these need personal contacts and the sending of Press Releases. The art of writing a Press release that is read!  After much dithering about the etiquette of writing said Press release the decision that again Action over no Action, wins......JUST SEND IN SOMETHING!!




And Lauren has Triumphed, Women's hour, and Invited!! We are awaiting this to happen.
We achieved Local press and an afternoon interview with Liz Kershaw and a live phone in appeal with Andy Crane on Drive time, both with the BBC Manchester, for before our Open Rogue Studio event.

It seemed like it was going to be an unsuccessful, non-appearance on Northwest tonight, we were bumped off at the last minute.....I even know the PR lingo now. But then without warning three days later, we appeared on Northwest tonight, in our studio talking about the earrings, for nearly 10 seconds, blink and its gone.

Result lots of lovely lone earrings for the chandelier.

Much bustle and activity

      It has been GO GO GO.......

Getting the ACE awarded funding (have successfully added logo and link, only 2 attempts that's good for me) has been like a Green light, for collection events, workshops, marketing and planning the structure with POD's excellent team from JMU John Moores University.

We have now been to Victoria Baths, had a large and positive response at Rogue Artists Studios Open Day, planning two workshops to be held at the Whitworth Art Gallery........

And onto Marketing or PR......a 10 second slot on regional BBC Northwest Tonight news!

The Chandelier is taking off. This is so exciting because its a public art piece that can only work if the public are involved in it and want it, with the human thread of stories and earrings there will be no lit Chandelier.

Many thanks to all who have participated.



I have started another blog
New blog on Artists Talking from the A-n web site  it will have a slightly different feel but is still about the chandelier and its progress.

Earrings Collection and the press

Last weekend Lauren and myself were at the Victoria Baths Manchester Heritage Open Day, letting people know about the Chandelier and collecting earrings.
Had a good response, chatted to lots of interested people and collected some lovely lost ones, also meet a Rogue studio artists, (that is where our base is) who had collected Hats and there stories for a project.

Then this Thursday we hit the papers, the MEN (manchester evening news) with an appeal for earrings and a big hooray we have Arts Council England funding.

And the result.......
thank you.....and for some reason will only load side ways, so all those viewing with a i-pad will be ok

The Best most Fabulous News!

The Chandelier of Lost Earrings.......

won its Arts Council England Funding!

To say both myself and Lauren are excited would be an understatement. This will fund its design, materials creating it and installation.

I know this isn't a Grammy award.....but....without the mass support we have received with, lost earrings sent in and financial donations, this project would not have been possible,  

THANK YOU 

OK better get busy we have a chandelier to make... back to business..

Next Collection of Lost Earrings will be at Victoria Baths Manchester Heritage open day, Sunday 9th September.

Bring your lost earrings and stories along, be part of the Chandelier!

Read previous posts for the history of the project and lovely pictures and check out
FB Chandelier of Lost Earrings

Lost Earring stories arrive with an International theme

The Chandelier has received lost earrings from my relatives in the USA, thank you Beth and Auntie Maureen, a great supporter of the arts. And international reaching story is the 'lost' bracelet' from Korea, sent by Ruthie, Lauren's niece. An international and supportive family theme!

Earrings arriving from Cousin and in Florida

Attached story of the lost earring and bracelet

a lovely earring sent from friend Jules.

Museum of Science and Industry - Makers Faire weekend

the famous earring that got a mention on BBC radio manchester Heather Stotts 

Both Lauren and myself had a great weekend collecting earrings and meeting the people who donated them and hearing their stories, Thank you!
 The response to the 'Chandelier of lost Earrings' project was fabulous, confirming our believe that public art at its most successful should be participative, and that people should 'get it'.

A BIG thank you to MOSI and all the people who organised the event.

Here are some of the pictures taken during the weekend, tweeted, and then appearing on our Twitter wall.
We are embracing social media, well Lauren already has and did a grand job on the twitter wall, I am relative beginner.

setting up, with the screen for the twitter wall

these earrings arrived wrapped in this newspaper - love it

(Please note that the display board for showing the earrings as they were donated, is purely for display and not how the final Chandelier was appear.)