PoArtry 2021 Collaborative Art Exhibition goes live!
PoArtry 2021 Exhibition is live and you can see my collaborative work with Adrian McKenzie there!
In the previous physical exhibition back in 2019 and hosted in at an art gallery in Wolverhampton, I took part as a poet but this time I was the artist and I created a 3 dimensional response to Adrian's brilliant poem and performance piece 'Red Room' which resonated with me the first time I heard it!
The Red Room - 3D artwork by Jason Conway
The wonderful part of the process is that we are paired with strangers and are free to explore our creativity in response to their work. It makes for a challenging journey and a new friendship.
PoArtry is a brilliant arts project that joins an artist with a poet to create one new piece of art or writing in response to each others work. This year is a wonderful mix of creativity and a huge undertaking by Rick Sanders to pull together!!!
If you love art and poetry, then I urge you to take a look for some creative inspiration as this exhibition is crammed tight with talent and diversity :)
PS: This years show is so big that it needed two online galleries ;)
More about the artwork
The Red Room is a place that we go to to heal or nurture ourselves in times of pain or confusion. It births creativity or personal growth, brings change or solves problems. My artwork is filled with references to questions, caring, love, creativity and notions of self. My challenge was to work out how to bring the concept and the poem into a tangible, physical artwork.
The central focus of the artwork is a heart, created with a mesh of string as the outer shape and dotted with beads at fixed points of the stylised heart shape. The message from the red room, for me, is one of self love, in that whatever we retreat into that red space for, we leave it in a better state of mind, with purpose or self love.
This is the first artwork I have created in this manner and I’m thrilled with the end result. It has fuelled my need to follow this new style for future artwork around mental health issues and creativity. For me, the journey was a special one as it helped me to externalise the difficulties I was experiencing, personally, due to my father being seriously ill in hospital. The Red Room became a reawakening of my passion for creative expression and is a constant reminder of the power of positive change.
I hope you like the artwork and, by all means, tell me your thoughts about it.
Please take a look at Adrian’s two poems and also listen to his performance recordings. Links to those can be found via the online exhibition.
The Red Room artwork is available to buy for £1495. For purchasing enquiries, contact me at jason@thedaydreamacademy.com, or via my social media accounts.
Article by Jason Conway, a multi-award-winning creative designer, photographer, artist and writer based in Stroud, Gloucestershire UK. Find out more about him and his creativity at www.thedaydreamacademy.com.
