Crowborough Arts

Crowborough Arts supports the arts, and arts practitioners in our area.

During the current COVID-19 outbreak, like so many other organisations, we have had to suspend our programme for the time being. However, we've decided to use this website to keep in touch, and to create a space for use as a showcase for our members' work. So we're inviting you to contribute - perhaps a new painting or photograph you'd like to share, a poem - your own or one you think might strike a chord at this time - or perhaps a short story. We'll also be including the latest news about CA's planned activities for later in the year, for example, Open Studios.

Please do get in touch if you'd like to contribute. The page will take shape over time, but please email Gaye with your suggestions and ideas. In particular, if you'd like to be featured as an artist, with a picture of you or your work, and would be willing to give a short telephone interview, we'd love to hear from you.

Now see what we've put together so far, and make sure to scroll all the way down!

Summer is Icumen In

Jo May and Sarah Matthews, who form Intarsia, have released a beautiful new song composed by Sarah. Released on 21st June, it celebrates the summer solstice and is called 'Sol Sistere' (the sun stands still). Singers from around the world were invited to contribute harmonies, and 28 of them did just that! Click here to hear the song and watch the video.

Jo was booked to play for CA with another of her bands, Stepling, right at the beginning of the lockdown, but of course that couldn't go ahead. Here's to next year, when we're hoping to re-book as many of our live musicians as possible!

It's a Sign!

This is the latest from Alice Rose Barnard, who has taken part in many of our shows over the years. She writes: 'So for the past few months I’ve been training with the English Folk Dance and Song Society as a music leader. Obviously our last term's sessions have all been online and we’ve had to adapt. Here’s a video I made (with clumsy Makaton!) as part of our sessions. It’s a beautiful Sussex folk song “The Man in the Moon.”'

Click on the picture to see the video.

Inspired by Art

'Waiting for Bats' by Barbara Murray

Over the lockdown, Christine Roberts has been running 'Inspired by Art', an online course designed to inspire the reading and writing of poetry as a response to the visual arts. The course proved challenging and fruitful for participants and a debrief via Zoom took place at the end of May. Christine has written an article about her course which is available in our archive (click here).

Barbara Murray has gone one step further in responding to her own painting 'Waiting for Bats' above), and her poem is right. All the poems and paintings are available here and it's well worth taking a few minutes to enjoy what has been produced.

'Bats''by Barbara Murray
Watching an Indian dusk
while sipping illegal beer
particularly cold on this balmy evening.

Velvet air envelopes distant hills
Darkness falling
The only sound a child’s voice
calling across the water.

All at once a disturbance of vision
Bats!
Ducking and diving after
unfortunate insects
at alarming speed.
And now heading straight for us.

Our calm disrupted,
unable to move,
we sit transfixed as they dart.
The fear of a collision and
small claws becoming entangled
in the hair is intense.

The memory of echolocation however,
comes to our rescue.
Calm is restored and
eventually, leaving the bats,
we retreat inside
hair intact.

Paintings from the Lockdown

Jeannette Towey writes: "Attached is my most recently completed painting. It's the stream in Crowborough Country Park, oil on A2 sized canvas. I love painting streams as I'm captivated by light on water, especially where the water is trickling over rocks."

Susie Rotberg sent in two new paintings. "The first is an acrylic painting of a cherry blossom Tree that I found randomly blooming in the woods near me on Ashdown forest - I have never noticed it before on my walks and I thought I knew every nook and cranny. The second is an oil painting in the bluebell wood behind our house - the bluebell colour makes a very tricky palette and I spend a lot of time every spring experimenting with colour harmony. Those very first vibrant Spring greens are hard to capture and they only last a couple of weeks. My favourite time of year ..."

Click through to ...

Because we've been unable to go ahead with our plans for Open Studios this year, our visual arts members have been invited display their work via an online exhibition. Each artist has their own page with pictures for sale. Click here to go the site.

Rewind ...

We're getting so many contributions, we've set up an archive for earlier items. Click here!

Brighten Up with a Mini-Shawl!

Frances Durtnall has shared these images of the delightful mini-shawls that she's been working on during isolation. She usually sells them at various markets, but of course that's not possible at the moment.

Frances' mini-shawls might be just the gift to cheer up someone you know. If you'd like to get in contact with her, please email Gaye and she will put you in touch.

CA People: Erica Adams

Another long-term CA member, Erica is probably best known to us as a visual artist. However, here she tells her story of how she came to publish her first novel:

Part 1: The Conception of The Pig and I
In 1994 a friend gave me the book Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Al Zuckerman. Eagerly, I had read every word and made copious notes. At that time I was writing a novel set one hundred years in the future and I incorporated what I had learnt from the Blockbuster book into its planning. I had written a detailed synopsis and the first seven chapters and, full of excitement, I sent Twenty Ninety-Five to Al Zuckerman’s Writers House Office in New York. Surely he would be interested: I had followed all his guidelines.
Read the rest of Erica's story here.

Booklovers Update

As physical meetings are not possible at the moment, members have been meeting via Zoom, Click here for the latest titles and to find out what they thought!