Having organised a rolling programme of exhibitions at the Sable D’or Patisserie, in Muswell Hill, mixed media artist Joan Podel is now showing her own work there.
The exhibition will include woven collages, prints, reliefs and what Ms Podel calls “box constructions.”
She says: “I’ll take a simple box, think of a theme and select fabrics, rusty things I may have collected from the street through the years, and other bits and bobs I’ve saved that are beautiful on their own, and I cover the entire box to create a scene, like a stage set.”
Ms Podel moved to London five years ago from Manhattan, where she studied at the New York School of Interior Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology, before establishing her own marketing and PR consultancy.
She is hoping her current exhibition will help an organisation that supports artists with mental health difficulties, The Other Side Gallery, to which Ms Podel will donate half the proceeds from sales of the work being shown.
She says: “There are many more opportunities for what we call ‘outsider artists’ in the States. Here there’s very little.
"Often people who are a bit different are not accepted, yet if I saw their work without knowing anything about them I would think I was walking into a professional art gallery.”
The Construction of Dreams is showing at the patisserie in Muswell Hill Broadway until December 31, Monday to Saturday 7.30am to 6pm, Sunday 8am to 6pm. It will be closed on Christmas Day.
Entry is free. For more information, call 020 8347 6890 or email joanpodel@yahoo.co.uk
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