‘Surroundings’ by Hazel Green 19th June-8th July

 A landscape gardener with a talent for creating striking images from mundane sources is showing her first photographic exhibition at Number 8 Community Arts Centre, Pershore.

 Hazel Green is an established gardener with a professional interest in horticultural colour and form, but there is barely a bloom or border to been seen in her photographic exhibition, entitled Surroundings,

 Instead corrugated metal, disused greenhouses, and dried-out mud puddles seem to take on new forms and meanings as these everyday objects and backgrounds are transformed into almost abstract shapes.

 Hazel, who grew up in Evesham, was trained at Pershore College of Horticulture and now lives in the Rainbow Hill area of Worcester, finds particular inspiration in the weather-worn buildings to be found on market gardens and roadsides around the county.

 “Sheds feature in parts of the Surroundings exhibition,” says Hazel. “Sometimes it’s a close-up of the peeling paint, sometimes a picture of the whole building. Many people who grew up in the Vale say they are fond of these structures, which have been a part of their lives and that’s certainly true for me.”

Other pictures are more industrially inspired and come from the canal towpaths, and the side of the railways around Worcester.

 Most of the pictures have been taken with a modern digital camera, although some are 35mm photographs and others come from an old folding roll film camera. In every case, the pictures are straight from the camera. “I don’t manipulate the images with a computer but instead try and find something directly interesting in the objects I find,” says Hazel.

The Surroundings exhibition opens at Number 8 Community Arts Centre on 19th June and runs until 8th July. 
Opening times are Monday – Saturday 10am – 4pm

For more information please visit the Number 8 website www.number8.org