Ewen Hyde’s ‘Autumn Leaf Pangolin’ sculpture

This is the first of two weekends of the SITE Festival Open Studios 2022 here in the Stroud valleys. On the two Saturdays and Sundays there are six separate ‘Trails’ for visitors to follow in and around the Five Valleys on which Stroud is formed. It has been an annual event since 1997 organised by the very dynamic Stroud Valleys Artspace (SVA) based in John Street. If you want you can view the SITE Directory showing all the artists and the Trails here.

There are also several tied in exhibitions and events linked to the festival. Yesterday I blipped from the opening night of an exhibition in Lansdown Hall Gallery by the Stroud Artists Cooperative. Today they extended the Cooperative’s exhibition with a show of sculpture in the adjacent St Laurence’s Church.

Woodpeckers and I popped in to view it after our indoor market at The Shambles, which is held in the Church Hall next door. The church has for some years been transforming into a venue for many mixed faith events with all the old permanent seating removed to create open space. There were some interesting paintings as well as sculptures. I agreed with Woodpeckers and we’ve blipped the same exhibit, Ewen Hyde’s ‘Autumn Leaf Pangolin’, which is what it says – a ‘pangolin’ formed from an outer collage of autumn leaves. You can see her Blip here, which gives a wider view of the sculpture. I’ve also added an ‘Extra’ showing some more traditional nude figures.