Commission for Disney Wish

Beauty's Rose for Disney Wish

In 2019, I was commissioned by Disney to work on a sculpture, inspired by 'Beauty and the Beast' for the entrance to The Rose Bar, on board Disney Wish Cruise Ship.  

I made the small stack of the books that the rose, seemingly grows from. 

'The Rose' is made from pages of an old copy of Beauty and the Beast, and then painted red, and treated with a glitter varnish to make it sparkle. 

 

(Above) The artwork on display in the entrance of The Rose Bar

 

The Book Eaters Release

The Book Eaters, a gothic debut novel by Sunyi Dean, published by Tor Books is out now. 

Su Blackwell Studio was asked to create the atmospheric cover artwork for the US edition.

Photograph by Jaron James, UK 

 

Installation at National Trust Peckover House in Cambridgeshire 2019

Lord Peckovers Library Project 2019 opens at Peckover House and Garden.

Peckover House in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire

An exhibition celebrating Lord Peckover's life and his passion for book collecting. 

His collection of rare books and manuscripts were sold off following his death in 1919. To mark the centenary of his death, Peckover House and Gardens have received a lottery grant to find the lost volumes and bring them back to the library for the first time in over 50 years.

 An installation of my art-works compliment some of these returned 'lost volumes'. 

 Images copyright Su Blackwell 2019

I also worked with volunteers, making origami paper boats as a symbol for something they themselves had lost, and these are included in the exhibition.

 The Garden

The Exhibition runs until November 2109 

lord-peckovers-library-project-2019

New Work

'A Gentle Madness' is my most recent commission for a bibliophile and collector of rare, out of print 

Penguin Classics. 

Over the course of several weeks, Emma and I worked on hundreds of replica books in miniature., before setting them in a library, on shelves made from the pages of a book about 'book collecting'.

Photograph by John Reynolds 

Hide London

Hide London is a fantastic new restaurant, opening in Mayfair this week,
the brainchild of acclaimed chef 'Ollie Dabbous'.

I was approached by the interior designer 'Rose Murray' of These White Walls Studio in December to be involved in the project.
My brief was to create a large paper book art sculpture in a particular private dining room in Hide, called The Reading Room'.
The resulting book installation took 3 months to create, and photographer 'John Reynolds' was on site to capture us installing it. 

To see the full set of images, sign up to my newsletter for monthly updates. 

To see images of the finished sculpture, go to www.sublackwell.co.uk/set-design/

Hide 
hide_restaurant
www.hide.co.uk

TheseWhiteWalls 

www.thesewhitewalls.com

Coming Soon - A Festival of Tales

Follow my progress at 

#afestivaloftales2017

www.chapelgallery.org.uk

'The Little Mermaid' - New Commission

'Outside the palace was a large garden with trees of deep blue and fiery red; the fruit all shone like gold, and the flowers like a blazing fire with stalks and leaves that were never still. The soil itself was the the finest sand, but blue like a sulphur flame. Over everything down there lay a strange blue gleam; you really might have thought you were standing high up in the air with nothing to see but the sky above and below you, rather than that you were at the bottom of the sea'.

'The Little Mermaid' by Hans Christian Andersen.

 

With lights...

Plumlines Exhibition Opens at Croome Court Next Weekend.

At Croome Court in Worcestershire, setting up my new commission for Plumlines, 

which opens to the public on Saturday 19th November, 2016.

For more information, visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk/croome

'The Pearl' Commission

'The Pearl' is a short novel by John Steinbeck. 

This work, created from the novel, was commissioned by a husband to his wife to mark 

their 30th 'Pearl' Wedding Anniversary. 

  

Plum Lines Commission - Commemorating the Women of WW1

I've recently been commissioned by the National Trust to commemorate the work of women in World War 1.
: Jam-making

: Pershore Plums
My brief is to create an art installation at a National Trust property in the West Midlands, based on the poems of local people, which reflect upon the roles of female relatives during WW1. 

My research took me to Pershore in Worcestershire, in search of its famous Pershore Plums.
I timed my visit perfectly (by chance), as now is the time when the Pershore Plums are ripe on the tree. If I had left it a day or two longer, the fruit would have expired.  
My journey to Worcester took me to Clive's Fruit Farm, to pick the purple Pershore variety, and to Worcester Country Park to pick yellow variety of Pershore plums from a wild orchard. 

Plum Orchards in Worcestershire

 Purple Pershore Plum

Yellow Pershore Plum

 The recipe

An old Kilner Jar from early 1900's 

Perhsore Plum Jam

Drying out the stones 
I'm collecting all of the stones from the plums for my installation. With the fruit, I made plum jam.
I've never made jam before, but I followed the simple recipe (above), similarly to how women would have made jam at the start of the 20th Century. 

24 hrs later, the jam has set

(Chief Taster) Miki has given the jam the thumbs up!

The exhibition will open 19th November at Croome Court in Worcestershire.
For more details, visit https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/events/f170668f-2884-43df-a3ab-37790cf87999/pages/details