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Caroline has visited most of Europe, and has
travelled widely in North America and the Indian sub-continent and Nepal. She
spent December 2004 and January 2005 in Sri Lanka studying
dance, masks and puppets.
From
the age of dot she painted, drew and made shelters and
sculptures out of the products of the natural environment.
She went to art school in London in the 1960s.
After a start in a
fashion course (deciding to make copper-foil wigs), she pursued
a mix-media course of her own -
theatre design, photography,
sculpture, general visual research. This was before mixed media
courses were commonplace.
On
leaving college she worked on community arts projects in and
around
Notting
Hill Gate. Although painting was not one of the things she did
at college, painting together with photography, became her main
interest and her work was exhibited in London. Another media
which she started to use at this time was batik.
After
London, Caroline lived in Oxfordshire and Staffordshire before
moving to Herefordshire in the late 1970s, bringing her skills
and experience with her. She immediately became fully involved
in initiating arts projects of many kinds in the area.
After
an exhibition in London she made the decision to put all her
energies into working locally and helping to bring a richer
diversity of arts to Herefordshire e.g. Arts in Action, Three
Choirs Fringe etc - see below. This inevitably led to a
narrowing of her original, more international audience which she
now feels she needs to return to.
Caroline was the first resident artist at the Hay-on-Wye
Festival of Literature where she started the children’s
workshops.
These
later evolved into a separate children’s
festival, running alongside the literature festival.
Caroline has always been an initiator of projects and
activities, not being afraid of taking risks. The exploration of
possibilities and contradictions being central to her
philosophy.
One of
her passion is the dance - in all its forms. Much of her work has
dance as its theme, and she has stayed at a dance school in India
and worked in the UK with Indian dancer Chitraleka Bolar.
Caroline
was the initiator and organiser of ‘Hereford Dancing’, a celebration
of dance. This began as a residency involving her own exhibitions
all around Hereford, and a week of workshops and performances which
explored the wide variety of dance. This project later merged with
Worcester Dance Fest.
She was also a trustee of an arts education agency set up to develop
the work of artists in the LEA schools of Hereford and Worcester
before the two counties parted.
Caroline
also ran a series of visual arts workshops called 'Dance across the
World', on dance from different countries.
Through this involvement in the local community Caroline was invited
to become the Festival Director of the Hereford
Three Choirs Fringe Festival
a year later. Utilising the wide range of contacts she had
made through her work and international travel, she ran the festival
from 1991 to 2000 - four cycles which included local, national and
international artists. The Fringe festival also provided
opportunities for a widening range of community input, this included
a wide range of performance and visual arts and increasingly
provided platforms for the exchange of ideas on environmental and
other issues.
Caroline spent the winter
of 2004/2005 in Sri Lanka and was there when the tsunami struck
on December 26th 2004. After Sri Lanka Caroline
took part in a head injuries textile project in Weobley Church,
Herefordshire with pupils from Weobley Primary School. The
project was in co-operation with Headway,
the brain injury association.
Caroline sees the role of artist as an integral part of society
- skilled, innovative, inspirational - and capable of embracing,
as appropriate, either the clamour of total involvement or the
value of silence. Particularly sensitive to environmental
issues, she contributed to, and exhibited at, ‘Soil, Soul and
Society’, the National Conference on Sustainability, in 2002.
Caroline has spent a great deal of her time working with young
people. Apart from those at Hay-on-Wye she also ran children's
workshops at the Ross-on-Wye International Festival and in
London and the West Midlands and has designed sets and costumes
for a children's theatre summer school.
Her residencies in
schools included a project with six primary schools in
Malvern, Worcestershire, to
make a large hanging. This encouraged the pupils to research
their local area and one other country each and to visually
interpret their investigations. This hanging is now on display
in the reception area of County Hall, Worcester, and has been
for many years.
Her wide experience also includes working with adults - young
and old - including those with learning difficulties and
physical disabilities. She has painted murals with patients at
local hospitals and worked with young (and older) offenders in
London and Stoke-on-Trent.
When not travelling, Caroline spends her time at Overdine Farm near Fownhope in Herefordshire, where she carries out her work.
There are so many projects still to do.
caroline.hands@talk21.com
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