Helen Mandel
Helen Mandel spent a week at the residency in August 2019, along with her husband. She works across mediums – capturing characters she encounters with pen and ink, as well as more abstract work using paint, collage and texture. Last year Helen’s work culminated in an exhibition in Manchester and the Prestwich Art Festival. She also produces her own zine, “The People of Slate.”
Helen Mandel
on the people of Slate, being inspired by characters, and her time in Oristà
What have you been thinking about or working on while you’ve been here, Helen?
Well, I normally go out, look for inspiration and then make a piece. So for example I painted some roof tiles I’d seen. But I like to take things and subvert them and, so I was looking at the rows of tiles and I resented that they were in a straight line, so I folded them in on themselves to create a spiral.
I’ve also did a piece to commemorate a walk we did on on the green route, and it’s become like the form of a woman, with legs.
I like to go with it, rather than fight it, when something starts taking shape for example, and has its own kind of flow.
How are these different to things you’d normally work on?
I normally draw people and places. I like the variety of them. They are always up to something extraordinary. My style is illustrative, some of it is like a comic book style. Although I enjoy painting, pen and ink is what I always return to.
In and around where I live near Bury (Manchester, UK), you can always hear and see extraordinary, daft things. Things are entertaining and funny just because they are so human. I think such things need to be celebrated and captured. And, it’s important to be daft, because we’re not here all that long, are we. Time is limited.
“We’ve been talking about moving for years,” Pen and Ink, Helen Mandel ,2019
Lately I made a book of drawings of snippets of conversations I’d had with an elderly lady I met while I was volunteering. She did extraordinary things during the war – working as a volunteer. It would have been so dangerous, the situation she was in. She told me that they’d given her a gun, for example, and she’d said “I could give it a go if somebody showed me,” which you just can’t imagine! I have given the book of drawings that capture all her stories to her daughter.
Do you miss the volume of people when you come away to somewhere like this?
I do miss them, but in some ways I can tune into a different part, studying the forms and things. I do tend to anthropomorphise, as well. Like a little armoured beetle I’ve been painting, in his outrageous decoration, kind of on patrol.
The People of Slate
Faces drawn on slate roof tiles which eventually took on characters, and then became the subject of their own zine - available by request through Helen’s website (details below).
Tell me about the people of slate.
The People of Slate are a collection of slate roof tiles that I have painted characters on. I started to make collages of them too, of drawings of their faces on different bodies, doing different things. They were first on display in a gallery that someone had made on their drive, and now they’re in the Crooked Man pub (Prestwich) but they are also in a zine, getting up to things. For example, one scene shows them as ballet dancers, another as the Beatles. I was able to animate that one and make it look psychedelic.
Helen and I caught up again later in the year, to talk about what had happened since her residency at Cel del Nord.
How did the Prestwich Arts Festival go?
It was 22nd-29th September 2019, its second year, and there was poetry, music, art sketching sessions, films and craft activities. I had a mini gallery in my porch alongside my husband’s street photographs (see #artinaporch on Instagram). I chose the theme of Prestwich Clough, a a series of woodland areas that link up with trails and impressive trees. The festival organisers produced a little map so you could go around and see the art displayed in shop and resident’s windows throughout the village.
Were you able to include the work you did in Oristà?
Sadly no, because the work had to be about Prestwich. If had had more time at Cel del Nord I like to think I’d get to know some people enough that I could capture their characters and draw them too. I bet there are some real characters about.
Since returning from Oristà I have had a solo exhibition in the Old Co-operative Building in Manchester. ‘Out of the Frame’ used old painted canvases, my own and some donated by friends. This was a completely new way of working for me, removing the originals from their frames, breaking them up and using the pieces to make it look as though they were bursting or flowing out of the frames, in search of a new formation. I still have some of the canvass pieces and intend to reuse them to create another body of work at some stage.
#artinaporch
How do you look back on your residency, now a little bit of time has passed?
I enjoyed my time at Oristà, and used it as a bit of a ‘brain clearing’ exercise. I returned refreshed after 6 days of exploring the lovely countryside and trails around the area. Sometimes you need to have a clearout to make room for new ideas! I felt at home at Cel de Nord, found it a warm and welcoming atmosphere. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to have a break from the norm and energise themselves for their next project, whether it be artwork or writing, or just using somewhere ‘neutral’ to think something through.
Helen Mandel has work on display in The Crooked Man pub in Prestwich UK. She is a member of Bury Art Collective, Whitefield Art Group and Manchester Urban Sketchers.
See Helen’s work on instagram, and contact her to buy a zine @helentj1
Visit Helen’s website.
For more information on Prestwich Arts Festival visit prestwichartsfestival.co.uk