I have been involved in the last few months in the project Umbrella Objective.
With a wonderful sponsorship from Brolly Bucket, I had 20 massive white umbrellas to hand out to artists.
I aimed to reach a wide range of art disciplines and cities with this project. Artists involved included ; Lydia Leith - a graphic designer who created quite a stir with her Royal Wedding sick bag designs this year , Rachel Maclean - an artist who works in film, working most recently on the Errors music video and Lesley Barnes - an illustrator and animator working from Toad's Caravan studios no less.
I sent out umbrella parcels and asked the artists to simply see the umbrellas as a canvas. Then I waited. One by one the umbrellas started arriving back, from Paris, London, Edinburgh,Glasgow and Dundee! It was a very exciting time unwrapping umbrella parcels every few days with Christmas day feelings of delight. Every umbrella is so different and unique.
I then took these to Artfusion at the Gibson street Gala. Artfusion is an event I was involved in organising. This is where we had the Umbrella Objective Showcase Parade. This was a great way to showcase the umbrellas together. I asked local children to take part, it worked out perfectly as the children where the perfect height for everyone to see the umbrellas from above! I also ran Furniture Objective. This was a one off live sister project to U.O.
I then took the project to Solas Festival for a bit of 'site vibing' , decorating the main stage and the tent where Umbrella Artists, The Grey Earl and Greer Pester ran workshops. I ran a workshop myself on some more donated umbrellas, lots of children drawing on them. A very successful weekend, already been asked to come back with next years project!
The next steps are making a film to document all the finished umbrellas. . Watch the trailer here. Then its off to Doune the Rabbit Hole for one final festival outing.
Follow the project on Facebook to keep up to date with all the umbrella adventures. I would like to thank all the artists involved, i was very inspired and touched by all the enthusiasm the project has received. Although, many apologies, I think I have cursed all of Glasgow with all this opening of umbrellas indoors. Summer Monsoon are upon us.
So, until the next project! Please get in touch if you are interested in being involved with any future projects.
