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    Blackburn’s National Festival of Making Celebrates Collaborations Between Art and Industry

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    Morag Myerscough in collaboration with Crown Paints. Photos by Robin Zahler. All images courtesy of the artists and the National Festival of Making, shared with permission

    Blackburn’s National Festival of Making Celebrates Collaborations Between Art and Industry

    July 9, 2025

    ArtCraftDesign

    Kate Mothes

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    Every year, in the town of Blackburn, Lancashire, a vibrant festival erupts with creativity in a celebration of art, craft, and industry. This year marked the seventh edition of the National Festival of Making, organized along the theme of “Art in Manufacturing.” Acclaimed artists and designers teamed up with industry leaders to create works using a variety of materials, from Morag Myerscough’s collaboration with Crown Paints for a vibrant new mural to Liaqat Rasul’s partnership with textile producer Herbert Parkinson for an optical installation.

    Locality played a central role in the festival, as artists were paired with manufacturers in Lancashire. Matter at hand, the design practice of Lewis Jones, teamed up with Darwen Terracotta and Faience, which focuses on traditional glazed earthenware for home products and restoration (faience is a type of tin-glazed pottery).

    Liaqat Rasul in collaboration with Herbert Parkinson, “Umeed (Oh-meed) امید – Gobaith – Hope”

    Matter at hand created a large-scale installation titled “Poured Earth,” which takes an architectural approach to materials in the northern transept of Blackburn Cathedral. The piece invites visitors to walk through an archway of wooden crates and around cast elements in various shapes and sizes, emphasizing the timelessness and continuity of earthen building materials and styles.

    Morag Myerscough transformed a corner building into a characteristically vivid, geometric floral mural with complementary garden boxes and a water tank. Rasul’s piece, a multifaceted textile assemblage suspended in the Blackburn Cathedral crypt, features a friendly face made of independent elements that merge into a full visage when viewed from the front.

    Titled “Umeed (Oh-meed) امید – Gobaith – Hope,” the piece was created from scraps salvaged from Herbert Parkinson’s factory floor in addition to the artist’s own archive. Rasul tenderly embroidered the Urdu, Hindu, and Welsh words for “hope” amid various found elements like cord and safety pins.

    The National Festival of Making features a program of more than 100 workshops, performances, artist talks, markets, and more across more than 20 Blackburn venues. Emphasizing the power of collaboration, cross-disciplinary exploration, and community, the festival aims to empower people of all ages to lean into curiosity and get making.

    Rasul and Lewis’s work will be on view through July 12, with Myerscough’s mural intended for long-term display. Find more on the festival’s website.

    Matter at hand in collaboration with Darwen Terracotta, “Poured Earth”

    Matter at hand in collaboration with Darwen Terracotta, “Poured Earth” (detail)

    Morag Myerscough in collaboration with Crown Paints

    Liaqat Rasul in collaboration with Herbert Parkinson, “Umeed (Oh-meed) امید – Gobaith – Hope” (detail)

    Matter at hand in collaboration with Darwen Terracotta, “Poured Earth” (detail)

    Detail of a mural by Morag Myerscough in collaboration with Crown Paints

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      in Art

      Greg Corbino’s Fish Puppets Made from Reclaimed Trash Migrate Along the Hudson River

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      2022 performance of “Murmurations”
      at the River to River Festival. Photo
      by Robin Michals. All images shared with permission

      Greg Corbino’s Fish Puppets Made from Reclaimed Trash Migrate Along the Hudson River

      June 21, 2025

      ArtClimateNature

      Kate Mothes

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      Beginning in the Adirondack Mountains and flowing south into New York Harbor, the iconic Hudson River stretches 315 miles through scenic valleys and creative towns. It’s also a migration route for numerous species of fish, from sturgeon and bass to herring and eels, which head upstream every year to spawn. Contending with habitat destruction due to pollution and the effects of the climate crisis, the survival of these fish is increasingly imperiled. Fortunately, art and activism have a way of bringing these urgent issues to light while also bridging local communities.

      Last weekend marked the inaugural Fish Migration Celebration organized by Riverkeeper, an outfit devoted to protecting and advocating for the health of the Hudson River watershed. Unmissable amid the festivities were a series of large-scale puppets by artist Greg Corbino, part of his ongoing sculpture-meets-performance series, Murmurations.

      2022 performance of “Murmurations” at the River to River Festival. Photo by Robin Michals

      Corbino designed a larger-than-life gold sturgeon to adorn a sailing ship that led a flotilla from Chelsea Pier in New York City up to Croton-on-Hudson, home of Hudson River Music Festival. Corbino’s papier-mâché marine creatures, ranging from oysters and sturgeon to a seahorse and a whale, performed their own migration, parading along the riverbank in both locations.

      The artist describes the collective performance as a “puppet poem of city and sea” and creates each work from plastic trash he removes from New York City waterways and beaches. Through partnerships with events like the Fish Migration Celebration and New York City’s River to River Festival, he aims to highlight the impacts of climate change and raise awareness of increasing plastic pollution in our oceans.

      See more of Corbino’s work on his site.

      Riverkeeper’s Fish Migration Celebration. Photo by Priya Shah

      Riverkeeper’s Fish Migration Celebration. Photo by Rhiannon Catalyst

      Riverkeeper’s Fish Migration Celebration. Photo by Priya Shah

      2022 performance of “Murmurations” at the River to River Festival. Photo by Robin Michals

      Riverkeeper’s Fish Migration Celebration. Photo courtesy of Riverkeeper

      2022 performance of “Murmurations” at the River to River Festival. Photo by Robin Michals

      Riverkeeper’s Fish Migration Celebration. Photo courtesy of Riverkeeper

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      in Art

      Evoking Fire and Air, Intricate Paper Masks by Artist Patrick Cabral Honor Filipino Culture

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      Art

      #festivals
      #masks
      #paper
      #Philippines
      #sculpture

      March 15, 2021
      Grace Ebert

      Detail of “Lupa.” All images © Patrick Cabral, shared with permission
      Encircled by oversized crowns of paper, two new masks by Patrick Cabral celebrate Filipino culture through elaborately fashioned works defined by their colors. Titled Mananayaw ng Langit at Lupa, or Dancers of Heaven and Earth, the ongoing series was commissioned by the Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art for the Dinagyang Festival. The cultural celebration is held annually the last week in January with the Ati Tribe competition, which involves warrior dancers performing to loud chants and drum beats, as the main event.
      Preserving the tradition in paper, Cabral’s masks both mimic the performers’ costumes and draw on the detail and intricacy of his earlier animal figures. “Lupa” is brilliantly colored and embodies the passionate spirits of a dragon or crocodile, representing Earth, fire, and light. “Langit,” on the other hand, is more subdued with bird-like features, peacock feathers, and a quiet expression. It symbolizes air, flight, horizons, and dreams. “Both animals are important because birds are used in ancient sea navigation, which our ancestors are known for, and the crocodile is the biggest animal native to the Philippines…I want one to look calm and the other chaotic. One is a feather. One is fire,” the Manila-based artist says.
      Cabral currently is working on an exhibit for the Philippine Pavillion at the World Expo that shares the “courage of our ancestors, the people who brave the angry ocean from Taiwan to the Batanes Islands.” Follow that project and explore a larger collection of the artist’s painstakingly constructed works on Behance and Instagram.

      “Langit”

      “Lupa”
      Detail of “Langit”
      Detail of “Lupa”
      Cabral with “Langit”

      #festivals
      #masks
      #paper
      #Philippines
      #sculpture

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    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in Art

      This Too Shall Pass: How Spanish Artist Escif’s Meditating Woman Lit Up Valencia

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       All images © Escif, shared with permission The beginning of Escif’s Instagram post reads, “Yesterday the meditator’s body was burned. With it many things were burned. 4 tons of wood were burned. A year of intense and wonderful work was burned.” Attached to a darkened image of glowing flames, his words are simultaneously reflective, […] More