North Bristol Artists News

North Bristol Artists are thrilled to find we've been given an award for our website by Activ Bristol, (www.activbristol.com), an internet guide to Bristol and part of the Activ UK network.

Ian Bullough, general manager of Activ Bristol said "We are proud to announce the launch of the Activ Bristol Awards 2010.  The idea behind these awards is to give credit where it is due to some of the best websites serving the Bristol community." 

The NBA site won a Best Website award for the art category... "Any website casting an insight into the art of Bristol, whether that's a gallery, artist or art lover."

Activ Bristol awarded North Bristol Artists the Activ Bristol 2010 award "for art and your organisations brilliant work in helping the 100's of upcoming artists in and around Bristol." 

Thanks to the hard work of Michael Butler, Jemima Lumley and Simon Baines the NBA website continues to stay fresh, interesting, up to date and continually evolving with new ideas and goals.

Well done and congratulations to the NBA website team.

NBA artists Mary Collett (printmaking) and Feona Ness (paintings) are joined by Gloria Armstrong (textiles) and Angie kember (paintings) as they exhibit their diverse work at the Royal West of England Acadamy, Queen's Rd, Bristol.  

The exhibition will be held in the New Gallery from 3rd July until 1st August, with a private view on Sunday 4th July 2-5pm.

 On Tuesday 11th May, Bob Antell and Lee Kellgren gave about 40 NBA members a great insight into their personal experiences of the world of print and print making and how things have changed over the years. Afterwards most people stayed for over an hour to view different print mediums and art works and of course, to just catch up with each other.

Bob Antell has worked in design and print since he was a teenager and has experienced huge changes in the print industry over the past 30 or so years. What once took a 5 year apprenticeship to learn can now be achieved much more quickly through smart computer software!  The industry now has many smaller publishers where it was once dominated by a larger few. Indeed, Bob now runs his own print business with his wife: Mockingbird press.
Many artists find the choices with regard to print, print quality and runs of limited editions baffling. Bob was really illuminating in his discussion about giclee prints, print quality, numbers of runs and how the process works from taking the original piece of art to producing prints. 

Lee Kellgren went on to describe the different processes involved in art print making such as linocut, engraving, screen printing, photo etching and copper plate etching. The processes are very involved and although the print runs are small each piece is hand-made and thus slightly different.

Both Bob and Lee brought pieces of work to demonstrate the different processes and a lot of questions and discussions were generated in the group as works were passed around.

Our thanks go to Lee and Bob taking the time to prepare and deliver two interesting and informative talks.

On  3rd May 2010, North Bristol Artists had a stall at the popular Redland May Fair. The  fair on Redland Green was packed with local families  on this sunny but breezy day. There were  stalls from many small,  creative  businesses and local organizations. The  strolling band played and the atmosphere was lively and friendly.

Always popular, the NBA stall was larger than in previous years. It was staffed by artist members displaying artwork and information about the coming art trail in November, playing an important role in the organisation as a whole.