Talks & Demonstrations
Saturday Afternoon Meetings
(See the "How to find us" page for the location of the Kings Fellowship)
These are held monthly through the Autumn and Spring at the King's Fellowship (King's Factory), Unit 4, Smithton Industrial Estate, Tower Road, Smithton, Inverness IV2 7WL at 2.30pm. The library of books and DVDs is available at these meetings, and tea is on hand afterwards. Library users are urged to be meticulous about returning books and DVDs! The talks and demos are invariably interesting - speakers sometimes visit us from quite a distance, so please come along and support the events.
These have resumed from October 2021. The meetings start at 2:30pm with a guest speaker/presentation and then a chance to catch up with other members.
All members are welcome and you just need to turn up and friends are also welcome to join. Meetings are free, and please bring along friends at no charge.
The first meeting of 2022 was:
29th January, 2:30pm - Susan McCreevy gave a demonstration of her Gelli Printing process. You can see some of Susan's work at: https://www.susanmccreevy.com
On Saturday 26th March a talk was given by Jonathan Shearer on "The History of Scottish Landscape Painting" (from an artist's point of view!). This was very much appreciated by all who attended, and we learned that Scottish painters had had much more influence than is generally acknowledged on the development of impressionsim and post impressionism in the late 1800s / early 1900s. These meetings are free, and please bring along interested friends at no charge.
23rd April, 2:30pm
Our next meeting, which was scheduled for Saturday 23rd April, was a talk by Catherine Carr who enjoys working with glass, textiles and print. Sadly this was cancelled for health reasons, but we hope to reschedule it later.
Catherine says:
I have always been inspired by the importance of women in textiles, especially by my grandmother who taught me her needlework skills and bequeathed me her personal tools & designs, alongside my mother who worked in the now obsolete textile mills.
Currently, I draw on the iconic crocheted ‘Pineapple’ patterns of the ‘doilies’ & ‘antimacassars’ beloved by previous generations, to push the technical boundaries of glass, to create an innovative range of Crocheted & Knitted Glass Vessels, which are still recognisable, but transformed into contemporary glass objects.
I choose to work primarily in glass, a supposedly rigid material rather than with traditional flexible textiles as I want to challenge people’s perception of the historically, low valued skills of women & communicate some of the stories & meanings behind each piece.
On Saturday 28th May, members enjoyed a Demonstration by Thomas Keyes
Using materials and techniques of early medieval insular scribes to create contemporary manuscript art on parchment, taking inspiration from Gaelic origin legends and a range of contemporary themes.
Again, the event was free and non-members were welcome to attend for free.
Saturday 19th November, 2:30pm
Kenneth le Riche will talk on the subject of "Formalism, Subject Matter and Content."
Saturday 10th December, 2:30pm, AGM
ASI member, William Mather will accompany the AGM with a talk on ’ Art, Life and Play’. He aims to be both informative and entertaining!. It will be an illustrated Powerpoint presentation with personal reflections on struggles with paint in different spheres of life. There will be a spiritual element and how the artist can bring both revelation and celebration at home and abroad. It is also about the fun the artist can have with places, people, landscapes and portraits.
