We love Medway Open Studios and Arts Festival (MOSAF). It’s a chance to fling open the doors of Intra Arts and invite the public come in and find out the answer to the oft-heard passer-by question ‘What is this place?’!
We do lots of things at Intra Arts, and the people that usually come to us have booked courses, printmaking or glass art sessions to use the equipment that lives in our building, or joined us for projects such as The Cut Of Her Cloth, or festivals like Pride Fringe or Ebb & Flow, or come for a look at the exhibition currently in our windows. We also work with a lot of fantastic artists, so during MOSAF, it makes sense to showcase the projects we’ve been working on, the facilities available with us, and the work of artists we love. Here’s the round up of what was on offer for the July 2024 Open Studios at Intra Arts. To see the entire line up of artists across venues through Medway, take a look at this year’s festival brochure.
The Cut Of Her Cloth
A big project for us over the last two years, involving hundreds of people across the Medway Towns. On the first day of MOSAF, we paraded the project’s beautiful embroidered and appliquéd banners through the high street as part of Chatham Carnival, and then we showed them off to visitors to MOSAF. Intra Arts directors Philippa Hornsby and Xtina Lamb both worked on the project, celebrating ten women leaders of Medway.
Read more about The Cut Of Her Cloth
Paul Jerome
A regular for Open Access sessions, Paul was showing people around the etching press room, where he was working on a set of prints featuring (sort of) friendly giants Gog and Magog, guardians of the City of London. There were also plenty of his familiar linocut themes of birds, the folk calendar, and exploits of various critters on show, as well as a selection of his green man design ceramics.
You can see more of Paul’s work on Instagram.
Sarah Crouch
Showing with us for the first time with us, we welcomed Sarah and her wonderfully lively pots and cat sculptures, to Intra Arts. Everyone needs a hand-thrown earthenware Poppxi pot in their life, or maybe several.
You can also find Sarah’s work for sale at Store 104 in Rochester.
Shona van Aswegen
Shona frequently uses our Risograph machine during open access sessions to create prints and cards featuring her delightful mushroom and animal characters. Designed under the name Bob & Bee, her owls, cute moths, fungi making friends with slugs, playful dogs, cheeky pickles, leaf people and butterfly girl prints are hard to resist. Every one of them has a story to tell.
Mick Hampshire
Another debut – Mick’s oil paintings on wood and canvas look amazing in the window, and we love his ‘figurative abstraction with a dash of fervent
wiggleism’ style.
We’ve left most of them in the window a little longer as we can’t quite bear to take them down yet.
See more of Mick’s art on his website.
Kristiina Sandoe
Kristiina works with textures across a variety of print methods, including collagraph, Gelli monoprinting and Risograph. Her work often focusses on landscape, and she works from her sketchbooks to conjure the most incredibly atmospheric representations of natural and built places.
See more of Kristiina’s art on Instagram.
Scrapstore
We also soft launched the new Scrapstore in our basement – a work in progress that we hope to launch fully at the end of September. Materials donated by companies and individuals, that can be used in creative projects, are collected by members who sign up for membership. During MOSAF, visitors were able to select a basketful of random arty treasure for a fiver.
We had a great response to the Scrapstore, with much excitement to join later in the year. Have a look here if you’d like to take our Scrapstore survey or receive updates on the scheme.
Intra Arts 