IMAGE CREDIT: WISE OWL: Lino cut, Val Racher, 2017
Arts Diary: Val Racher
Val Racher, business manager of the pilot Pevensey arts and literature festival joins Bay Life as our writer with the arts.
Utilising the moniker ‘Wise Owl’, she looks 360 degrees around the world beyond the Wallsend Road scanning local exhibitions, and features on the arts scene both here in beautiful Pevensey Bay and in Sussex.
As well as being the co-founder of the arts, crafts and photographs exhibition held here in Peveney Bay annually over over two years, as an artist, Val has seen here work displayed in cafes and hotels and in exhibitions in Pevensey Bay. Eastbourne and Bexhill.
Val is currently working on a series of ideas which include bringing together the small but thriving arts community in Pevensey Bay with an initiative that would see their work developed on a collaborative basis. The new Makery in Eastbourne, the Open House arts movement that began in Brighton in 1982 and the Chalk Gallery in Lewes are all sources of possible inspiration.
One of her key interests is to see a gallery for local artists established in Pevensey Bay.
Here in the first of her monthly columns, she turns to the Charleston Festival to fire some thoughts about the artists and writers that will be featured in the show at is now celebrating a 29th year.
More information about the work of Val Racher can be browsed here.two sisters, one platform, www.rachersoncnvas.co.uk
Arts Diary is available both in print in the Pevensey Bay Journal and here online on Bay Life.
MAY ARTS DIARY: Val Racher
ART MATTERS!
CHARLESTON FESTIVAL “Where Books, Ideas and Creativity Bloom”
This year’s event takes place from 18th to 28th May. Charleston was from 1916 the home of the Bloomsbury group artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Pioneers of early 20th century British art, Bell & Grant created a hub of artistic and intellectual activity. It was home also to Clive Ball and John Maynard Keynes, guests included Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry, Lytton Stracey, T S Eliot and E M Forster.
The Charleston Festival is a fundraising event in aid of the Charleston Trust, a charity set up in 1980 to restore and maintain the home of the Bloomsbury Group artists for the benefit of the public.
This year’s participants include Sir David Attenborough who in a festival highlight on Monday 21 May will give a talk before accepting the Charleston-EFG John Maynard Keynes Prize which honours an individual of exceptional talents.
Charleston is halfway between Brighton and Eastbourne, only six miles east of Lewes, off the A27. Full details of the event can be found on www.charleston.org.uk/festival
