Next Steps: from Ice Cream in Utopia to Meringues in Macclesfield

I made that bit up about the meringues. Mind you they are one of my favourite snacks available from Macclesfield's Treacle Market! 

I've just put in a proposal for the Barnaby Festival 2016 Open Commissions. Who knows if the people will like it, but I enjoyed gathering my thoughts around it.

I want to make a series of glass postcards that act as love letters to the town and people of the town that say something of what Macclesfield means to me (and perhaps to us), and also what it doesn’t and can’t mean however much we want it to.

The work would extend my 'Ice Cream in Utopia' piece that I made for a CGS exhibition at the International Festival of Glass (see image). The postcards will explore the imaginative power of a tiny space expressed in 10 x 15cm format. The pieces will draw on the power of the postcard to represent and misrepresent a place and our experience of it – to represent reality but also augmented reality and wild and unattainable dreams.

With a nod to opulent Japanese lacquer work that tells tales of life using images embedded in the surface of a box or container, the postcards will be layered semi-dimensional mini-dramas.

We'll see what happens next. Barnaby Festival is such a great thing. I have taken part as a curator, but would be delighted to take part as an artist.