Elinor Brass is an artist, teacher, researcher, Director of Art at a school in the Midlands, founder of Sketchbook Circle and former Director of Gerald Moore Gallery. Working with photography, drawing, collage, print-making, sculpture and installation she creates painterly responses to environments.
Elinor has a BA in History of Art and History from Birmingham University, a PGCE in Secondary Art from Cambridge University, a Masters in Painting from Wimbledon School of Art and is currently completing an Educational Doctorate at the Institute of Education.
Collaboration is an important part of Elinor's practice. She established Sketchbook Circle in 2009 in order to have the chance to work with other artists and to ensure that she continued to regularly make work despite the busy life of a teacher. The current circle has 120 participants from across the UK and Europe with each participant having two in-depth visual conversations over the course of a year. It supports artist educators to commit regular time to their own artistic practice and has become a supportive community of practitioners. Elinor has organised numerous events at Gerald Moore Gallery for the circle, with practical workshops and exhibitions where the work from the circle is shown.
Now running the circle with Georgia Naish, there has been the chance to curate on-line workshops as well as establish an annual residential for Sketchbook Circle members bringing artist educators together to make work. So far these have taken place in Berlin, Margate and Cambridge.
In her research, Elinor is exploring being an artist, researcher and teacher within her own institution and investigating an artist-led project in Gerald Moore Gallery where students from three schools collaborated to develop an exhibition. Elinor's role leading the gallery was to develop a programme of exhibitions and events that has learning at their centre, working with young people, teachers and reaching out to the people in the locality.
sketchbookcircle.com
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