Five mystic makers to transport you this Halloween

As we gear up for the Cockpit Winter Open Studios, we’re looking at some of the threads that connect our wonderful makers.

This week, we’re getting into the spooky spirit with the Cockpit makers who sprinkle their work with a bit of magic… Read on for shamanic amulets, folklore monsters, mythic female heroes, ancient craft techniques and the power of sound energy.

Chloe Valorso

Award-winning jeweller Chloe Valorso uses jewellery as a shamanic language – imbuing it with history, symbolism, magic and spirituality. Designed to empower their wearers, her works inspire a connection to the self, others and the big wide natural world.

In complex and intricate pieces she brings together organic, manmade, seen and imagined materials, as well as ancient symbols, leitmotifs, modern-day youth culture and the digital language of today.  

Annalisa Middleton

Annalisa Middleton is a mixed media artist who uses goldwork and relief embroidery to explore her interest in the weird and wonderful. 

Her intricate and illustrative artworks draw on folklore, mythology, Japanese Ukiyo E, Ernst Haekel’s organic illustrations and sci-fi artwork by Jean Giraud (AKA Mœbius). Each piece explores the versatility of her traditional craft, with layers of materials creating the scenes of her wildest dreams…

Joy BC

Joy BC explores narratives around womanhood, classical ideals and precious materials with pure alchemy. Mythology and magic are (quite literally) carved into each piece, as she pays tribute to forgotten female heroes in miniature monuments.

Joy plays with ancient mythologies and re-examines our fascination with the ‘classical’ – often challenging ideas around precious materials and ideals of western female bodies in sculpture.

Lisa Atkin

Contemporary basketmaker Lisa Atkins forages materials from Epping Forest to create her sculptural works – always paying tribute to our oldest craft and the ancestors who have come before her. 

Using techniques that are thousands of years old, like whittling, carving, weaving, bending, braiding, twining and coiling, Lisa creates contemporary pieces that give the viewer a sense of our shared history as well as our connection to the earth. She works in partnership with her materials – allowing them to move and grow as she works.

Beatwoven

Professional dancer turned sound alchemist/woven artist, Nadia-Anne Ricketts, has long been interested in the power of sound to ignite, connect and elevate our energetic spectrum. She explores the relationship between digital technologies, music and historic crafts. 

Having developed her very own BeatWoven audio technology, she translates the songs of all kinds into woven pieces, marrying the audio patterns to the binary system that underpins the weave structure. “With my work of fusing sound, pattern, colour, and texture, I would like to help disrupt conventional boundaries, stretch our perspectives, and open our minds to a new awareness that extends beyond our immediate surroundings”.

Meet these makers and explore their work up close at the Cockpit Winter Open Studios – taking place at both our Bloomsbury and Deptford sites. Book now!