An exciting new venture, aimed at bringing art into the community, has opened up in the heart of Ramsey.
The Storm Art Cafe, situated on Bowring Road, officially opened its doors during TT Practice week.
It is the concept of artists Eleanor Mackender and Morgan Stonehouse, and their aim is to offer a free and open art exhibition space to all artists who wish to display their work.
‘The idea behind the art cafe is not to charge people to display their work,’ said Eleanor, over a coffee. ‘It is to create a dynamic art space for people to put their work into, and sell or not sell it. Also for people to come in, have a coffee or whatever, and to enjoy the artwork and to engage with it, relax with it and not feel like they are in a stuffy gallery.’
Eleanor and Morgan have worked day and night to transform the site of the former Northern Lights Community Cafe into a bright, light, relaxed and informal space, which they have filled with paintings, sculptures and other such creations by local artists.
‘At the moment on display we have photographer Ruth Gale, war artist Gary Bennett, and some new, unknown artists,’ said Eleanor. ‘We have some work by an artist called Victoria. She does cat pictures, but they are the best cat pictures I’ve ever seen. We have paintings by Graham Joughin, some people from college have paintings up. Gavin Carter has wood sculptures here, and wood-turned bowls by Mark Smythe.’
They intend to constantly refresh the artwork on the walls to maintain the vibrancy and dynamic of the display area. And despite only being open for two weeks, they have already seen their hard work begin to pay off, as they have sold several pieces of artwork.
They have far reaching plans to develop and broaden the scope of what the Storm Art Cafe can offer.
‘We’re hoping when we get ourselves more established, we’ll have some late night events,’ Eleanor said. ‘We’ve got a big screen projector, and maybe we can hold arts cinema evenings here.
‘We’re hoping to do art classes and craft groups as well, life drawing, teaching people different skills each week, groups on watercolours, acrylics, whatever people want to learn. So hopefully we’ll have classes on in the evenings and art groups on at the weekend.
‘Also we have the farmers market on Saturday mornings, plus we are going to set up a craft market on Sunday mornings. It’ll be the same kind of thing, but with crafty stuff instead of vegetables!’
The first craft market will be on July 12, from 10am to 2pm. More details on the Storm Art Cafe Facebook page.