This year’s Festival of Chichester will feature the works of Daphne Casdagli. Her exhibits will be demonstrating that the etching process in its technical development isn’t that much different from painting. And she shows that using all methods with or without acid can produce similar textures and marks.
She explains that different colours and subject matter are used but the emphasis is on taking a drawing from its drawing environment and transferring it to an etching plate and thus the etching serves as an extension of the original drawing. Daphne’s origin is Greek and she trained at the Guildford and Farnham Schools of Art. She also underwent further training in the Royal College of Art’s painting department. She worked as a technician for a year and taught in various art schools in London for 25 years. She was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers when she retired from teaching and the Bankside Gallery still has some of her works on display.
Ten years since she started, Daphne still organises life drawing sessions and her work has featured in private collection within the UK and Europe and also in educational publications. A talk on the relationship between printmaking and drawing will be given by Daphne on July 5th from noon to 1 pm. You can call ahead and book a place if you wish to attend the talk. She will also be showing some of her work at the little ART shop which is located in West Wittering. This will be on 30th July from 10 in the morning to 6 in the evening.
The Festival of Chichester was first held in 2013 with the purpose of staging a festival that would have a new look and feel to it. The festival has been month-long arts and community extravaganzas and the people present at the festival have included artists, groups, associations, clubs, poets and writers. The festival was designed to showcase the cultural importance of Chichester and the range for writers and performers who have been attending past events has been increasing.
A committee meets monthly to ensure the organisations for the event are going according to plan. The festival has received support from many sources including the Chichester Observer series and they’ve also been funded by the Chichester City Council. For the 2017 festival, there will also be musical performances that will feature classical music, blues, rock, jazz, pop and world music.