We visited South Heighton pottery, near Newhaven, in the Coastal trail where, alongside Chris Lewis’s beautiful ceramics, there is a special exhibition of textiles and earthenware pots. These pots and textiles, which are from Africa, Asia, Oceania and Americas, have been collected by Chris over many years and have provided inspiration for his work. A […]

The House of Qualia sounds intriguing – what are the aims of your Open House exhibition? Qualia (singular, quale) is a technical term used mostly in philosophy and neuroscience representing individual instances of subjective conscious experiences. These experiences, such as a smell of a rose, taste of wine, colour or pain, are understood to be […]

Hi Sarah – we are really pleased to have you exhibiting in the Artists Open Houses festival this year! We love your exhibition of portraits of friends and famous people.Can you tell us a bit about how you chose the people you have pictures? Sometimes people make suggestions of famous people and I draw them.  […]

Welcome back to Artists Open Houses – how many years have you taken part in the AOH Festival? I’ve taken part in AOH for about five years now. I used to have a solo show in a tiny basement flat when we lived here part time, but since living in Brighton permanently for the last […]

Hi Evelyn. Your venue is called The Chocolate House – that sounds intriguing! Can you tell us something about it? I love chocolate not just eating it but also working with it. Chocolate is a wonderful and very versatile medium. I created Chocadyllic six years ago after making a friend “a proper chocolate cake”. As […]

You are taking part for the first time in Artists Open Houses this year in a rather unusual venue. Would you like to tell us about it? Yes! We are a family run independent funeral directors situated on the Preston Road in the Preston/Fiveways area of Brighton. We opened our office here in 2016 after […]

Hi Jo – is this the first time you’ve taken part in Artists Open Houses? Yes this is my first time. I also have the space all to myself so that’s really exciting! I’ve been lucky to find Dan and Jin – the owners of the house – to exhibit my work. Can you tell […]

Hi Clair! Your Open House BouSham has an unusual name – where does it come from? The name BouSham is a combination of my name Clair Boubli (Bou) and Shyama Ruffell (Sham). It originally started as a joke, but we kind of liked it and it stuck. The BouSham collaboration, with my life-long childhood friend […]

All Creation Groans by Amanda Greavette Your Open House exhibition is called Birthing a Better Future – can you tell us about the ideas behind this exhibition? The Birthing a Better Future exhibition was established to increase public awareness about the key issues and importance of the first 1001 days of life from conception to […]

Does your trail have meetings to discuss Open House preparations with trail members ahead of the festival? As this is my first year acting as the coordinator for Hanover Trail, it was really important to have a meeting for all of the houses on the trail. It is a great opportunity to pass on details […]

All AOH local trails have a ‘Trail Contact’ who is the first point of contact for Open Houses wanting to a join trail in their area. We asked Shyama Ruffell, one of a group of three Trail Contacts for the Seven Dials Trail, to tell us a bit about her trail and preparing for her […]

The Christmas AOH festival got off to lively start at the launch party, generously hosted by My Brighton hotel. Along with great drinks and nibbles – My Brighton offered use of their photobooth to help us capture a really great evening!! Mother and daughter and newbie’s to Open Houses this year, the lovely ladies at […]

For the final festival weekend we visited some wonderful studios taking part in the Artists Open Houses. We’re sad its all over – but look forward to seeing you again in May for some more amazing art and crafts!   Copperdollar Studios   New England House Open Studios

Here is a round-up of another fabulous selection of art and Christmas gifts from Open Houses visited by the AOH team last weekend. It was great to meet and to talk to so many artists, who were all so welcoming and informative… and generous with their offers of mulled wine and mince pies! Don’t forget, […]

How do you plan your Artists Open Houses visits? Flicking through the brochure, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the variety of artists and houses on offer. Some people like to organise geographically – visiting all the Houses in Hove, for example. Some people seek out particular types of work, searching for ceramicists […]

Welcome back the Christmas Artists Open Houses! How many artists in how many studios will be taking part at New England House Open Studios Christmas? We have more than 38 artists exhibiting this year. Some stalls will be in the spaces around the lifts and wide corridors leading up to the open studios of the […]

Amanda Rosenstein Davidson tells us about her extraordinary exhibition at The Regency Town House: Portraits, Puppets & Performance is a collaboration of makers and artists who bring their exhibitions to life with performance and demonstrations. After their successful 6 month show last year at Hove Art Gallery & Museum, I approached the organisers of The […]