• My next shows will be:
     Honfleur Potters' Market, at Easter (not yet confirmed by the organisers)
    Festiva Mondial d'Art Naïf, Verneuil-sur-Avre
     See my calendar page for more information.
January 2010
HAPPY NEW YEAR
to all my customers and visitors to my website.
2009 finished with success at the potters market in Le Mans.
Lots of people came despite the awful weather!
August 2009
 
Too much work on at the moment to update my news.
Good news eh?
Chicken order finished and delivered on time:
W.I.P. More hippos:
June 2009

I have just got back from a ceramics festival in Village Mouffetard in Paris. I worked hard to get a batch of hippos finished to take with me and it was worth it as I sold a lot of them. I had two hippos ordered and one very nice one that sold to one of my regular hippo collectors before I even reached Paris.
He collected it on Saturday from my stall. It is called "The Hug"

This is it when it had been made but was only just dry enough for me to stand it upright:
The weather in Paris was cold and often rainy, which was a shame after having hot sunny weather all week.

photo Yves Le Petit Laborde
I still did well though, and demonstrated making frogs to go with the weather.
Here I'm making a pair of bookends:

photo Yves Le Petit Laborde

photo Yves Le Petit Laborde
Mai 2009

NEW

As a change from ceramics I did an
 Interlaced Knotwork Hippo.

It is available an two versions, dark and light,
as greetings cards, prints, and posters.

You can buy them here Buy my art
April 2009
  • The two exhibitions that I'm currently participating in are both under way and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for their success.
  • At Verneuil-sur-Avre I'm taking part, fout the fourth year, in an international "art naïf" festival info
    This year I have chosen to exhibit camels, birds, mice, and my new horses.
    I don't yet know what the reaction of the visitors is to my new design but I'm fairly confident it will be positive.
    The exhibition finishes on the 10th of May.
  • Next I went down south of Angers where I'm exhibiting my work as part of the season-long exhibition of "Daily Rural Life and Agriculture From 1945 Onwards".at the Musée de Métiers of St Laurent de la Plaine info
  • On the opening day of the exhibition I ran a modelling workshop for the children, where we made chickens, pigs, and other animals which will stay as part of the exhibition and be collected by the budding artists at the end.
  • My first horses are out of the stable so I've made them a page in my gallery.
    You can find them here
    I'm sure there will soon be more to add to the herd.
  • The potters fair season started well with the Honfleur potters market at Easter. After a small amount of rain Sunday morning the weather dried up and on Monday it was almost nice. Lots of holidaymakers and local people came to admire the varied work on the stalls and they enjoyed watching my animal modelling demonstration. It was also nice to see a lot of my colleagues again for the first time this year.
  • Unfortunately my beautiful dragon from my last entry didn't survive his first firing. His head split and fell on the foot of the dragon next to him. It was a bad week for firings. In the previous firing I had exploded a cow body by forgetting to put the ventilation holes into the interior of the body. Of course an exploding cow does lots of damage to the things around it too! It's rare for me to have this sort of problem nowadays but fate wasn't on my side that week.
March 2009
I'm currently working on dragons,
and a new design that I'll unveil later if it works well.
 
February 2009 - updated

 

"Daily Deviation" award 25th February

Having finished my latest hippos I put a few of them on my DeviantArt page. Yesterday one of them,
"Mummy's Little Bundle"
was featured as a Daily Deviation (DD for short).

DeviantArt is the world's largest online art community. Each day the various gallery moderators choose works that they think worthy of highlighting and award them Daily Deviation status.

Yesterday they chose thirty seven things from the site including one of my hippo sculptures. Since the site has tens of thousands of new submissions every day this is a great honour, even more so because your work is being appreciated and featured by other artists.

This is my second DD. I had another one in September 2008 with "Two Silly Cows"

 
 

I have also just been featured in the hippo blog of Hippo Mojo - a website for everything hippo.
My feature
Hippo Mojo - a site for everything hippo.
Thanks Karen.
 
February 2009

The hippos I was making are finished and the ones that weren't ordered are now on my new page

My hippo collector customers have already bought a few of them.

Now I'm working on several orders and on the preparation of pieces for three exhibitions that all start at the beginning of April.

  • I'm making farm animals for an exhibition all summer at the Musée des Métiers de St Laurent de la Plaine (Maine et Loire). The exhibition is about daily rural life and agriculture from 1945 to the present. I will be running a modelling workshop for children on the opening day of the exhibition, Sunday 5th April. There will be some pieces of my work on show at the library of St Laurent from the 15th March until the 4th April
  • For my 4th year of participation in the International Art Naïf Festival at Verneuil-sur-Avre (27) I am again making different animals to the ones I've exhibited the previous years. This year I'm making mice, dragons, and another new idea that I'll unveil when my tests work out OK.
  • The third will be making a few pigs for an exhibition at the faïence museum in Malicorne-sur-Sarthe.
Dr Richard Leaky and National Geographic's appeal for support for Wildlife Direct.
 
January 2009

*Happy New Year to all my friends, customers, and website visitors*

  • Apology
    The end of 2008 was difficult with the death of my mother. I apologise to anyone who came to the potters' fair at Ancenis to see me. I was sadly away in the north of England and had no access to my website files, so I couldn't update my news page or my calendar to say that I wouldn't be there.
  • My next event will be participating in the animal art exhibition at the Natur'Armor Festival at the end of January. This year the festival will be in Dinan (22). Details can be found on my calendar page.
  • I'm currently working on making a batch of hippos. Most of them will be for my hippo collector customers in the USA.
October 2008

I've just got back from a wonderful trip to Chicago, where I attended the 9th annual Hippolotofus Convention. Hippolotofus is an international group of hippo collectors and hippo lovers.

I did a demonstration of hippo modelling
for the group and an attentive and enthusiastic audience watched me making a hippo sculpture which we collectively named "Wrigley and The Bean", two references to Chicago.

In the evening they were auctioned to
raise money for the protection of wild hippos on the Congolese side of
Lake Edward in Africa.
It was bought for 600 $ by Joe, who will give it to his hippo collector wife Diane.
Thank you Joe.

 
photo David Soto
The piece will be biscuit fired by
Dana Lusher and sent to the
auction winner when finished.
Thank you Dana.
This is Dana's slideshow of the making ofWrigley and The Bean.
(for Internet Explorer, authorise pop-ups)

"The Bloat" is a pod of 11 hippos
that I took to Chicago with me,
also to raise money for the wild hippos.
It went into a raffle for which other
artistic members of Hippolotofus
also donated hippo items.

Thank you to everyone who donated something.
Between the raffle and the auction we raised a wonderful 1,800 $
Thank you to everyone for their generosity.

September 2008

I'm preparing my trip to Chicago in the U.S.A. I have been invited to the annual Hippolotofus reunion. Hippolotofus is an international group of hippo lovers and collectors.

I'm doing a hippo modelling demonstration for them. The resulting hippo will be auctioned, with the proceeds going to a hippo protecting project on Lake Edward in the Congo.

Of course there will be a few hippos in my luggage too.