Exhibition with a parrot on its head

Yesterday I put up an exhibition at Pickled Pepper, Crouch End’s specialist children’s bookshop. I framed eleven of the screenprints I made for my first picturebook, The Girl with the Parrot on her Head, and they’ll stay on display all summer, until August 31st. It’s great to have a chance to show the artwork, especially in Pickled Pepper’s lovely event space.
Exhibition at Pickled Pepper Books

The first week of the exhibition coincides with the Crouch End Festival (5th-14th June) so there are lots of other things to see and do if you visit then, including a Girl with the Parrot on her Head reading and craft workshop on Saturday 13th June.

The pictures are hand-made screenprints, and prints from the same editions (so almost the same as the framed/published prints) will be for sale. If you’d like to read more about the illustrations, I wrote a guest blog for Walker about making the book.

An update: now there’s a Girl with the Parrot on her Head window too!
Window displayPickled Pepper window

Monsters again


Eeshk, because I finished a book, I now have to make a new one – this is like actual work with my brain, or should be. It is quite scary to be back in the early development stages again, after over a year, although (with a lot of help from most excellent people at Walker) it is just beginning to feel like it might possibly be possible in the end.

These monsters were originally invented for our MA show catalogue, but now they need another book to live in. For one thing, a brand new mountain of amazing graduates is about to take over the world: their London show is at Candid Arts, Islington, from 11th-15th February.

Mail Art exhibition

My birds envelope, and C5 envelopes by a person or two that I know, will be part of the Mail Me Art Short & Sweet show in London this week (30th of July to 3rd of August). There’s a book of the project too (shown below), with some mighty strange post in – I like this one and this one today. Tis a very various thing, and the pricing is fairly arbitrary, but I do like a decorated envelope yessir.
Mail Me Art book cover

Mail Me Art

I do like to draw on an envelope yessir, so I decided to take part in Mail Me Art 3: Short & Sweet, in which 200 people send decorated envelopes to Mail Me Art, and then there is a show in the summer and a book. You are supposed to not mind when bits fall off your art in the post, but probably it is rash to stick so many bits on in the first place?
My mail art after postingI was trying to make a collage in the way I make screenprints, taking the shapes from photocopier-enlargements of tiny doodles. I originally drew these birds on the back of an envelope, which seems nicely circular.

Pictures from the show

Publishers are grand, obviously, and I wouldn’t be without my auntorage – or, indeed, the other lovely family and friends who came to our MA show – but you can’t really beat the kind of visitors who properly test your toys and write things like this in your comments book:
From my comments book 2It was amazing how many people came to see – I honestly do value the over-tens very much too. Below are a few pictures in case you couldn’t make it, although the show will be up again in Cambridge from February 27th until March 14th.
My work in the MA show at Foyles


My shelf in the MA show in FoylesMA show in FoylesMA show in FoylesMA show in Foyles