DrawBrighton

Drawing Circus Photoset: The Phoenix Studio 2019

Added 2020-07-03 08:00:02 +0000 UTC

On our 2017 summer tour we planned a route that took us through Oxfordshire where we put on a workshop for a confederacy of local art groups. The greatest challenge of organising Drawing Circus tours is finding affordable accommodation for a dozen life models and musicians; researching what we could get for our minimal budget I found the county an uncompromising host. In London we've often slept overnight in the backs of vans and lorries, showering from plastic bottles before events - on more fortunate occasions we have been billeted in stately homes and once, in a Scottish castle above a picturesque glen. As I trawled the Internet for a campsite we could afford in Oxfordshire (there wasn't one) an emailed popped up from James Ort at the Phoneix studio near Thame asking about future collaborations. After a succession of cheeky requests he agreed to let our motley crew stay on the floor of his studio on our way to our event. We arrived after 10pm to a night time feast he had prepared and we were gone by 8am the next morning - in that brief time we found ourselves a new, firm friend. The following year we held a Drawing Circus in his beautiful meadow-bound studio, returning again 2019 for an encore. This photoset is from the second year of events, where we reprised some of our favourite themes - the Sleep of Reason, the Rise and Fall, Alice in Wonderland - on a series of indoor and outdoor sets. It was blisteringly hot and we finished the first day with a glorious dive into the thames. During lockdown I'm dearly missing James, the Drawing Circus crew and those hot summer days together amongst the chickens and clay heads of the Phoenix Studios meadow. The photos, as always, are by Mary Martin.

Happy drawing!

Jake

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