Rye has a rich culture of creativity and a growing community of artists and craftspeople keen to share their skills through courses and workshops, and Rye News will be regularly featuring the artists who are offering workshops to share their skills. This week we feature the artist Eloise Dethier-Eaton of EDE Projects.
EDE Projects, an art studio, gallery and project space, has just been opened by Eloise Dethier-Eaton on the corner of Cinque Ports Street and Ferry Road. With a background in photography, painting, printmaking and paper marbling, Eloise has many skills and disciplines in her armoury and she has exciting plans to share her artistic skills and her exhibition space.
In her studio, surrounded by her paintings, Eloise describes her work. “Most of my paintings belong to the still life genre. I’m really drawn to the decorative and I like to tell the complex stories behind seemingly superficial patterns and objects in my work.”
After a BA in Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths and an MA in Fine Art at City and Guilds of London Art School, Eloise developed the painting style and the themes that are now at the core of her practice.
“My style tends to lean towards realism and trompe l’oeil (which means ‘trick of the eye’ in French), but I also like to play with different perspectives in my compositions, which can create an uncanny feeling, which hopefully encourages viewers to spend a little more time looking at the work and decrypting it.“
As well as painting, Eloise marbles paper. Paper marbling involves floating ink or paint on water, usually with thickening in it. The colour can be dropped onto the surface, blown or swirled used specialised tools to create a pattern. Paper is laid on the surface of the water to create a print. Whilst at Goldsmiths she tried paper marbling using oil paints and a bath of water thickened with methylcellulose, “which was good fun and made for some interesting results, but it was difficult to control.”
After graduating from her BA, Eloise did an apprenticeship in South East London with a professional paper marbler where she learnt to marble with acrylic paints and a bath of water that is thickened with Irish moss. “The results are still somewhat unpredictable, and that’s part of the joy of marbling, but at least I have a much greater understanding of the process now.”
The process originated in Japan and China, then travelled through Central Asia, India, Iran and Turkey and reached Europe in the 17th century. In Europe marbled paper is used on book covers and endpapers. In the 19th century, marbling the book edges of accounts ledgers became a way to show if pages had been removed and to avoid tampering. Paper marbling continues to be a popular craft in Venice where marbled paper covers notebooks, photo albums, pencils, boxes and other objects.
“I went to Venice many years ago and remember being charmed by the tiny stationery shops filled with gorgeous, marbled goods. That’s certainly something to aspire to… “
On the weekend of 14 and 15 February Eloise taught her first two marbling workshops in her studio in Cinque Ports Street which went very well. “We gradually learnt how to make more and more complex marbled patterns, but also how to weather the trials and tribulations of marbling, so that the participants can focus on the many joys of marbling instead. I’ve taught paper marbling workshops in various creative environments before, but these first two at EDE Projects were trial runs to see how well the space could cope with hosting lots of people, and whether anything needs to change going forward. Admittedly, a few liquids were spilt within the first half hour of the workshop, and some lessons were learnt along the way, but it was smooth sailing after that and we had a great time marbling together.”
After the success of these first workshops Eloise plans to do more half day introductory workshops and would like to add some for people who have tried marbling before so that “they can simply have a play on the day”. In addition, she would like to offer full day workshops where people can also learn about the preparation work needed to marble so that they can do it themselves at home.
Getting her studio set up during a very wet and miserable winter has been challenging she says, but has been helped with the support of the local community. She is excited about the future and her plans and can now add the title gallerist to her job description. “There are lots of projects in the works, including a series of group exhibitions with local artists in partnership with South East Open Studios, which are coming up in the spring.
“I’d also like to work with other artists and makers in the local area who can teach creative workshops at EDE Projects, like bookbinding or pigment making for example. I am particularly keen to organise a programme of workshops which support our curatorial programme at the gallery, in order to create a rich, diverse experience for visitors which’ll hopefully leave them with lasting memories of their visit to Rye.”
You can book a workshop here. You can also follow Eloise on Instagram at @eloisedeaton and @edeprojects, or sign up to her mailing list (via her website) to stay in the loop with upcoming events.
Image Credits: Eloise Dethier-Eaton .