May has been quite a month and quite the experience…

It was a pleasure to be part of No. 12 on the Fiveways Trail, Jane Palmer & Friends. We ensured a warm, friendly welcome to all our visitors and plenty of artworks to feast the eyes and whet creative appetites.Photo credit: Stephen Engelhard — It was a pleasure to be part of No. 12 on the Fiveways Trail, Jane Palmer & Friends. We ensured a warm, friendly welcome to all our visitors and plenty of artworks to feast the eyes and whet creative appetites.
Photo credit: Stephen Engelhard

By the end of the four weeks of Artists’ Open House, the ‘clicker’ tally showed that No.12 had received some 2,000 visitors which seems a staggering number for first time ‘openers’ Jane and Stephen.

As a small team comprising of painters (Jane, myself & Laura), ceramist (Stef) and sculptor (Nigel), we chatted endlessly to curious visitors and buyers over the four weekends about both our work and the work of each other. In hindsight, it was a thrill to be asked questions about why a work was created, the inspiration behind it and the process that went into it. Incidentally, speaking of process, below is a video Stephen Engelhard created of our small team, prior to - and in preparation for - Open House, portraying each one of us; our practice and diversity, so please do dive in…

It might be useful at this point to give some background history to the Artists’ Open House because I knew very little at the outset about the festival and its beginnings.

This year some 26 houses in the Fiveways area of Brighton participated, opening their doors every weekend (some including Mondays) until the final May bank holiday. Overall, the AOH festival sees a couple of hundred houses and studios spaces open to the public, displaying a wealth of creativity here in the South East of England. Just looking at the AOH website, they write of ‘over 2,000’ participating artists and creatives. And so it was interesting to have Ned Hoskin arrive at our private view, the founder of the Fiveways Artists Group and the resultant Artists’ Open House movement back in 1981, some 38 years ago.

Chatting to Ned (now in his 80’s) on the sofa, I hear of his own artistic journey, his professional encounters with David Hockney and the seed of his ‘open house’ idea inspired from his time spent as an arts’ student backpacking round Europe in the liberal climate of France back in the day where doors were literally left open demonstrating the generous spirit of the French. Back home, to open your front door as a creative to invite and share your art, represents it would seem, an echo of that liberal openness. But says Ned, no money was parted back then; the art was not for sale. It was simply for looking at. It was only years later that the idea to sell art from one’s sitting room came into being.