We’ve just had our spring open studios at Rye Creative Centre. This is an important event for us. We plan ahead: organise the publicity, book the local Ground Up café and find helpers to serve drinks and greet visitors. Then, in the days before the Friday opening, we spruce up the centre and our studios and get ready to welcome visitors. It’s an event that brings us together.
It reminds us of how special Rye Creative Centre (RCC) is and of how lucky we are to be part of this local artistic community.
Visitors start to arrive at 5pm on Friday. They are often surprised at how many of us are here and at the range of work on view. They wend their way around the corridors of this former school expecting to see paintings. They see paintings aplenty but they also find a designer jewellery workshop, sculptors, textile artists, book art, photography and prints. They see demonstrations in the print room and have coffee and cakes in the art room. The former Freda Gardham school is familiar to some visitors as they were pupils or visiting parents here.
Like the school we continue to fill this building with learning and creativity. As well as over thirty studios, many artists here share their skills by running classes and workshops for the local community.
I moved into my studio in 2012. I was 60. I’d retired from local government the year before and started a part-time fine art course in Hastings. Having my own studio was heaven. A small space where I could sit, think and make art. A space to myself, but also – as I occupy a ‘pod’ in one of the large classrooms – a space to share with other artists. My studio is one of the smallest but, in my biased view, it’s one of the best. Lots of light, a view of fields of sheep, of fishing sheds along the Rother and of Rye on the skyline.
Over the years, being here has given me the opportunity to develop both my art practice and my friendships. As visitors to my studio discover, I am into rocks and stones. I collect earthy materials and use them in my work – rubbing them on to paper and grinding them up to create ink and egg tempera paintings. I’ve used chalk from old pits in north Kent, found pigments of many colours on my travels in Australia and New Zealand, used old red sandstone to paint mountains and rivers in Wales and gathered yellowy London Clay from woods in north London.
My latest venture has been to produce an artist book. Notes on a River Afon Llynfi contains paintings and stories of my walks tracing the journey of this small Welsh river from its springs to where it meets the river Wye. Over the past year, I’ve been privileged to snatch a few hours here and there in Kate Williams busy schedule. Kate is RCC’s resident graphic designer. We’ve designed the book together and I’m now selling it in support of Friends of the river Wye, a charity championing the plight of polluted rivers in the Wye catchment.
These days, the view from my studio includes the new flood defences. I watch VolkerStevin’s bulldozers trundling back and forth shaping and compacting the orangey clay to make the new embankments. I welcome this. Creating an overflow area for the Rother is a good solution to flood risk and I can see that the birds are already finding this new landscape attractive.
But my own interest in watching these works progress is bitter-sweet. When they finish, our site becomes suitable for housing development. We’ve known about this possibility for a long time, but this doesn’t make it easy to accept, especially when there are no firm proposals for where we go next. I understand the need for local housing. I just wish we could see something forward looking and environmentally innovative developed here. A plan that avoids demolishing a sound building with its beautiful, refurbished gallery and performance space and instead provides affordable and sustainable houses for local people alongside studios and art facilities for the local community. A resource not only for now but for future artists and makers in Rye.
Events like open studios reassure us that we have lots of local support. This is very welcome. Many visitors to open studios agreed that the closure of the building would be a loss. We remain hopeful that a solution will be found. Meanwhile we continue to organise a full programme of events for the coming year. Up next, on July 11 to 13, is our first print fair. Then the annual exhibition and autumn open studios on October 16 and 17, followed by the Christmas fair on November 23 and 24. Get these dates in your diaries. Come and visit and support us.
Image Credits: Beverley Thornley , RCC .