Jo Delafons

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Delighted to be showing my work at Aymer Arts as part of Brighton 's artists open houses, on the West Hove Trail. The house will be open each weekend throughout May. This is a beautifully curated house, in its 11th year, with a huge variety of fantastic work by over 30 artists. There is a huge range of high quality work from painting, sculpture, papercuts, ceramics, jewellery, lighting and more.There is also a lovely garden to enjoy tea, coffee and cakes in, sold in aid of charity. Do come along! I will be there from 11 till 2.30 the first weekend on both days and again the following Saturday till 2.30
...meet Zilla! The most adorable puppy ever, pre and post her first haircut. Zilla belongs to my great pal Jen, Shoreham's #chocolatician, and the lovely Andy Gibson from #tindogs.
This is a piece I've been working on. I wanted it to suggest the movement of starlings flying as Shoreham has had a mummeration that started this summer and i woukd warch every evening from my balcony. Originally these were masts but I made them power lines as I felt it had more interesting contrast and energy. Not sure the original idea is conveyed but it does have an energetic swoop within it.
Another small piece for Brighton Artists Open House at #aymerarts ( West Hove trail) on at weekends throughout May.
Shocked to hear Nigel Farage is launching his new Brexit party at Shoreham airport tonight. Come to object , meeting from. 6.15pm at the airport, believe he addresses his supporters at 7pm
Think I over crowded this by time I left it last night. Still need to look more carefully at the composition of it . Can see this morning it's better simpler and far boat on left needs moving.
Still busy preparing for open studio, doing a few small fun pieces as I need a range of price ideally.
I've added taller sailboats to this bouquet of boats. I don't normally do such colourful work but I made this a year ago to celebrate how I felt about moving to Shoreham by Sea. You can't see there are white angled abstract sail shapes here, though the wire sailing ships are just empty outlines.
Not my normal work... Two tiny presents for friends. One, glass artist @louisevdurham, has an incredible allotment and is celebrating finishing building the most magnificent greenhouse ever on it. This mini greenhouse is to bring luck, ensuring everything grows well in it. Another friend, Jac, runs brilliant sewing classes at my studio and has just built a fabulous shed in her garden to sew in, hence the cotton reel suspended on a needle and a lightbulb for inspiration.
I've just re-jigged the boats on this piece ( see second pic for it previously) to emphasise the curve of the nail stack and sense of uplift. It represents my ideas taking off like a flock of birds. I never had the time or energy to do much of my own work when I taught full time so it's a celebration of being here, feeling the freedom of a new life ahead and of being filled with a surge of creative energy. I'm getting ready for Brighton Open Houses and will be showing at the fantastic @aymer_arts , 2 Aymer Road on the West Hove trail ( near Hove Museum). It's a stunning house with around 30 artists. Its beautifully curated by the painter Lisa Green who somehow displays plenty of work by each artist without her stunning home ever looking over crowded! There's a lovely garden and delicious cakes too, so do come along if you can! Its open weekends throughout May. West Hove is a lovely trail with some other great houses nearby.
This one now has been changed a bit. I made a solid paper cast of the scissors and hope to turn this into some sort of print.
I hope this suggests water lapping, an uneven path walking and elements of landscape such as spindly trees, seaweed, and foam on water. It's made of thread , wire and paper on a burnt book and now mounted on a charred oak base. I'm thinking about titles for all these pieces, any suggestions are very welcome.
One more, a wild thing! God knows how I'll get this one properly mounted, its just balanced at the mo. I shouldn't post so many together but it was so nice to see the work properly against a white wall yesterday. My studio is so crammed I can't tell what I am looking at half the time!
This piece is now properly mounted. I had to reinforce with a blackened steel bar in the middle and the oak was so hard to drill down into so 🤞it's in deep enough. The piece previously sat on root / ripple - like wires above the cardboard but there was no way a 1mm drill bit would go into the wood far enough without breaking so I poked the wires through in one direction and rested the piece on the cardboard. I was going to cut the roots off because I thought they muddled and detracted from the cardboard base. Now I'm not sure... one side doesn't have them but i think I like them poking through and may add them to the other side. Going to live with it for a bit and decide.
Great to have photographer Zlatko Brdanovic in again today to record my last year's worth of work before Brighton Open Houses. He is an absolute star- lovely guy and great photographer, with amazing kit who has kindly photographed my work twice now for free! He and,his wife, drove down from London today at really short notice as my work is needed for Brighton Open Houses earlier than i expected.
This one isn't fully resolved yet. I like its slight resemblance to a mussel shell.
Tried this piece on top of the layered base in last post. I've tried it on one of the charred oak blocks I made yesterday at Si Uwin's. He had used this wood behind work he was chain sawing. I really like the random marks the saw left in it.