On Sunday we went to the Open Gardens Day, In Nottingham's Park Estate.
Several houses opened their gardens to the public. For a £5-00 charity donation per person, you strolled through the private residential housing estate that sits in the shadow of Nottingham Castle. Victorian architecture, beautiful mature gardens, cream teas, string quartets, strawberries and cream, champagne and bubbles , art and crafts. Very English and a feel good factor. Well recommended when it returns in 2019
One of the gardens had an art display by Rachel Carter. Rachel creates woven bronze sculptures.
Rachel was sat in a quite corner of an established garden among some of her sculptures.
I struck up a conversation about Rachel's impressive collection of sculptures and asked her is she had had any sales from the exhibition. Rachel told me that sales at an event like this was a slow burner process.
Rachel's sculptures have exhibited at Chelsea Flower Show and various high profile stately homes.
Rachel has a studio just outside Ilkeston and has actually done workshops in my daughters school (my daughter is a teacher).
I explained to Rachel about my strangers project and as you can see from the image, she agreed to sit for me. Rachel is holding one of her pieces of art. She asked me if I wanted to handle any of her art, but I was nervous about dropping them as they were worth more than the two cameras I had in my camera bag !
I thanked Rachel for her time and we exchanged cards and I told her I would email some pictures to her.
I encourage you to have a peek at Rachels website and social media links, to see the diversity and creativity of her art.
http://www.rachelcarter.co.uk/
This picture is number 89 in my 100 strangers project. Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
https://www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers/
My own strangers can be seen here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/57144254@N08/albums/72157657822400168
Your narrative is also interesting and I've enjoyed myself looking at other examples of Rachel's work. I see she does more than woven sculpture (which as a lover of woven, whicker balls, I enjoyed very much) and love her Pod and Seeds installation in Mickleover too.
A very interesting lady and addition to your project, Phil.