Open Studios - 9 and 10 November
As we announced in August, we will be hosting an Open Studios event on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 from 11 am to 5 pm (both days) at our home in Kings Heath, Birmingham. So, we are continuing to get work ready, collaborating with The Framers and organising our studios. On show will be new paintings, prints, collages and drawings of different scales, from postcard to wall-sized pieces. We hope to give visitors an opportunity to see how our work is made and the kind of things that inspire us as artists. We have been practising continuously as artists for almost 40 years, so there is cause for celebration, aside from the fact that we have both turned 60 in the last year or so. Most of the work will be for sale (from £5 upwards) with 50% of proceeds going towards All Saints Youth Project. Last summer we worked with a group of young people from ASYP who made a series of vibrant greetings cards which will also be for sale. So, you are warmly welcome to drop in any time during open hours; please contact us via the contact page for details of the address.
Gillian Lever
House and Garden
Last month some of my paintings were featured on the ‘House and Garden’website in an article about a scheme by interior designer Sarah Walter Boyd. Sarah was trained at Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, working for ten years under Wendy Nicholls, John Burns and more recently Philip Hooper (Managing Director at Sibyl Colefax and John Fowler). She has gone on to found a company of her own - Sarah Walter Boyd Ltd.
Sarah chose several of my paintings for her ex-local authority flat in Stockwell, south London. Feeling that the work would sit well in the modernist space. She bought some of the paintings at auction, then tracked me down and commissioned another! It was lovely to work together on the commission.
If you would like to have a conversation about commissioning
a painting please contact me.
Different Strokes Art Workshops
Last month Lever Arts was delighted to work with members of the Different Strokes Birmingham group, to offer a ‘Creativity and Wellbeing’ session at the ‘Living Beyond Stroke: Community and Connection” conference at Irwin Mitchell in Birmingham. The event was designed to bring stroke survivors and their loved ones together to share stories, gain insights, and build lasting connections.
Ingrid Ash, the Different Strokes Birmingham support group founder, was a keynote speaker at the event. Ingrid’s life changed dramatically in 2007, when pregnant with her second daughter, she suffered a multi-focal stroke. In addition to founding Different Strokes Birmingham Ingrid also serves on the Stroke Engagement Group at her local hospital and educates healthcare professionals on stroke patient challenges.
Different Strokes is a registered charity providing a unique, free service to younger stroke survivors throughout the United Kingdom. It is run by stroke survivors for stroke survivors, for active self help and mutual support.
‘Creative therapy is both hugely neglected and potentially massively beneficial. After a stroke a person’s sense of self-worth is immediately at risk and people find vulnerabilities in themselves that they had not previously known. The psychological and emotional fall out from an event like this is immense. Creative therapy therefore has a role in enabling re-orientation of an individual with a form of expression that doesn’t depend on verbal eloquence. It also has immense potential for stimulating neuronal plasticity and neural re-programming.’
Dr SG Sturman - Consultant Neurologist
Greenbelt Festival
Sew Far Sew Good
We joined our relatives Susie and Phill Hopkins for the annual Greenbelt Festival, held at Boughton House near Kettering for a weekend at the end of August. The theme of this year’s festival was Dream On, so our invitation to both adults and children was to create a personalised dreamcoat by upcycling cardigans and waistcoats that had been generously donated by people from church congegrations. Sew Far Sew Good is the family art collective created to organise these workshops which aim to encourage making of all kinds with needle and thread. Susie (Gillian’s sister) is currently training in Spiritual Direction having worked as a primary school teacher and Phill Hopkins is an artist. Children loved making magical capes whilst others created lavender scented pillows for sleepy creatures, diving enthusiastically into our extensive collection of fabrics to create garments to wear around the festival site. The adults really enjoyed the opportunity to slow down and sew, personalising garments with stitch, layered fabrics and printed words.