April 2017 at Blaze, Bristol -- art by me and Lucy Roberts

One of the collages I've made specially for the show

If you're in Bristol in April 2017, please try to go and see my small art exhibition with Lucy Roberts. It's 'small' both in the size of the exhibition space and in the size of the pieces themselves, but it's embedded within a lovely art shop, Blaze, in Colston Street, and I hope it'll be worth a visit.

My work intermingled with Lucy's

Lucy got in touch with me via Instagram. My account is @foundandchosen. If you don't already use Instagram, I'd really recommend it -- it's obviously completely visual, which I love, and in my experience it's very friendly and positive. I feel as though I have lots of friends on there now and it's a great place to 'show and tell'. Lucy's Instagram account is @madebylucyroberts and she often showcases the beautiful memory boxes and other delightful things that she makes.

For my part, I've made some quirky collages, bright prints (including lots of alphabet prints), cards and one-offs. There's a Bristol theme to some of them, including a mixed-media picture of the park in the centre of Bristol in a blossom-filled spring and a vintage image of Rosie the Elephant at the Zoo.
     This is the 'calling card' we made to go in the shop window during the show:

I really enjoyed the afternoon I spent at Blaze with Lucy hanging the pictures. With David wielding the hammer (in a disappointingly traditional gender role), we soon got our 'hang' hung.Then there was just time for the two of us to get completely lost in the city centre, looking for our hotel, before we had to return to Blaze for drinks to celebrate the start of the month-long show. So if you're within hailing distance of Bristol, please do try to go.

'Killing with cake' -- my rather unsettling feminist collage...

Rosie the Elephant, alphabet prints and cards -- all for very reasonable prices!

Some of my work is also for sale in the Found and Chosen Etsy shop, and, after the show, there'll be more. You can also see some photos of my studio in a four-page article in the new edition of Uppercase magazine (no.33):

1866 -- One date, two worlds?

I just came across this book in among some things that once belonged to my mum. It's very small, about 8.5cm by 6cm, with a very pretty embossed cover. I didn't remember seeing it before and I was pleased to find it as my mum and I shared a love of miniature books. But I felt a strange sensation when I opened it.

It has a handwritten dedication, 'To my dear little Lily, with Auntie's love. Oct 16th 1866.' It was the date of 1866 that gave me a turn because, by coincidence, that's the year in which the principal event of my book, The Apprentice of Split Crow Lane, takes place.

My book is non-fiction, a forensic investigation of an awful child murder committed near Gateshead (in the North of England) in April 1866. In going into what happened in as much detail as possible, through newspaper and court reports, I discovered an aspect of Victorian society that felt very different from the version represented by this little children's book, which may seem to us like a more recognisable image of the nineteenth century.

Here's a charming and innocent set of illustrations about little girls and their dolls set in a vaguely rural idyll and accompanied by little rhymes. It's in sharp contrast with the rather graphic details of the murder that were reproduced in newspapers at the time and which surprised me with their frankness, although they are not unduly sensationalist.

Yet even in the little picture book, I began to see hints of the darker world which the victim of 'my' murder had inhabited. She was called Sarah Melvin and was aged 5. It was when she was out walking across Carr's Hill on her own (which was nothing unusual) that she was taken. And isn't that an angel in the previous picture -- so is that little girl in a pink dress asleep among the roses or...?

The two little girls who inhabit the book have a brother, Frederick, who taunts and teases them and generally makes their life a misery. Without wanting to give too much away, this also resonates with my book, which looks in part at how difficult life could be during this period for young people, especially those who found it hard to fit in. So what seemed initially to be a rather shocking contrast between light and dark aspects of mid-Victorian society ended up being much more closely related.

The Apprentice of Split Crow Lane is published in hardback on 3 November 2016 (£20), for Kindle on the same date (£13.99) and in paperback on 27 August 2017 (£8.99) by riverrun, an imprint of Quercus Books.

My new artist's website

moo cards for my new website

I've got a brand-new website to showcase my art. Please do visit it: www.janehousham.co.uk. I think anybody who wants their art to be seen needs a website. I held off for a long time because I didn't feel I had enough work to show but now I want to let people see what I'm doing and encourage myself to do more.

I looked into lots of different 'pathways' to getting a web presence before I plumped for having a bespoke one designed for me. There are lots of less costly options on shared sites that give artists their own 'spaces'on them but, often (it seemed to me from rootling around), the websites have their own agendas and the individual artists' work can get a bit lost. I also looked into using online templates and instructions to make my own website. I did this once before when I was designing greetings cards, using a free version of DreamWeaver from a magazine -- I managed to create something useable but it nearly killed me. Even Wordpress seemed complicated.

I knew that I wanted really good navigability and a slideshow, so I decided to get someone who knew what they were doing to do it for me. I'm pleased with it but now I need to feed and nurture it with fresh work and more images. It feels a bit like a living thing that I mustn't neglect.

I got the little Moo cards printed to help publicise the site. If you don't know about Moo cards, I recommend them. They're very high quality and the best thing about them is that, if you're ordering 100 business cards, you can load up one single image or a hundred different images (or any number in between) and they don't charge you any more for lots of different cards. Trouble is, I almost like the little tiny reproductions of my paintings better than the real thing.