Plenty of Bite, No Doggerel in Sight: Project Dogwalk Northampton Art and Poetry

I'm a bit crap on Facebook these days, so almost missed out on notice that a friend's private view of her latest art exhibition was on last night. The exhibition is called Project Dogwalk, and is the result of a project that the very talented Minnie Teckman has been working on for years. The exhibition is running for a couple of weeks in the upstairs room of Made in Northamptonshire, and is free entry. If you're a fellow Northamptonian, you might know the shop... it's full of art and crafts made by people from the region and I go squee over the button bags in the window every time I walk past. If you don't know it, it's in St Giles' Street - next to the lovely cake shop where they sell Northampton curd tarts - yum!



 



Check out Minnie's website and you will see how good she is. And go and see the exhibition - it's great!







Minnie chats to an art fan.





Lucy Anderson

For this exhibition, Minnie has been collaborating with a local poet, Lucy Anderson, who has spent months creating response pieces to the sketches and paintings. I chatted to Lucy and we realised we had already worked together on the 48 Hour Book Project at our local library.

 

Refreshments for the opening were provided by local independent wine seller, Northampton Wine Lovers, and they'd chosen some lovely wines, most of them featuring doggies on the labels! I tried all the white ones, and my favourite was the sweet, apricot-scented, sparkling Moscato.

 

 

...there were also bowls of water on the floor for the doggy visitors!

 



 

 

Visitors were invited to add their own prose, poems and sketches to a wall, so this was my contribution. A little quick poem about Dylan the very overweight spaniel who passed away a couple of months ago.

 

A cushion cover;
several pairs of slippers;
logs from the log pile;
dirty nappies;
bread bags;
used kitchen roll.
Dylan ate them all;
sneaked them, chewed them,
one eye looking,
challenging,
snarling, tail wagging.
There's no end to a spaniel's greed.
But if you think that's bad,
Nanook, my sister's husky,
once at a whole leg,
arm, and some of the back
... of a leather sofa.

All in all a great night, and rescuing my husband from a sun-soaked beer garden on the way home, I got introduced to someone looking to collaborate with a poet for a musical project. Fingers crossed, eh!