Dulwich Open House Art

It’s spring and all over the UK, local festivals are starting to bloom. In my small suburb in South London, the Dulwich Festival is taking place 12 - 21 May. It will be a week long celebration of art, music, literature and local history.

Some brave residents are turning their homes into art galleries, open to the public, to display paintings, sculpture and textiles by a range of artists. Stephen Henden and Neil Ellis are opening their house to show art by Jamie Samuels (metalwork), Joss Smith (stone masonry), Paolo Giardi (fine art) and others. Neil, managing director and founder of Plan (www.planarama.com), a window dressing company, told me: "I work with a lot of creative talent and artists. I wanted to give them a chance to show off their work to a wider audience."

One of the artists, Paolo Giardi, has created a series of sketches of people at parties called "Party People", embellished and crafted with this fine art skills. Paolo says that the series is an ironic reflection on the genre of society portraiture.

Across the road, Ingrid Beazley and her husband Tom are exhibiting sculpture and ceramics, including the work of Iain Nutting. A crane will be delivering two giant metalwork scuptures (a reclining male nude and a howling wolf) to her suburban front garden on Monday. Ingrid told me that she saw the Open House Art project as a way to show the work of local artists she really likes. Some of Iain’s animated sculpture already live in her home - a gibbon leaps onto guests as they enter her living room and a pair of ibises copulate next to her pond!

3,000 brochures for the Dulwich Festival have been distributed across South London so conceivably, Stephen & Neil and Ingrid could find thousands of people trooping through their living rooms…

To find out moare about the Open House Art project and Dulwich Festival go to http://www.dulwichfestival.co.uk/.