THERE have been so many strands to the Brewery's Women's Arts International Festival that it's been hard to keep up.
How Linda Graham and the Kendal art centre's team have pulled it together is pretty amazing - but they have, and done a very professional job in the process.
For me, it's been a bit like a child in a toyshop - who next to chat to in the magical mix of artistes who've graced the month-long soiree which, apart from two art exhibitions that go on until June 3, came to a tremendous conclusion last night with the music of Joan as Police Woman.
Brewery visual arts officer Trevor Avery's invitation to London-based artist Tina Keane to create a festival specific installation is another Avery coup, resulting in Tina's Lost and Framed in Green, running in the Warehouse Gallery, for another week.
Trevor refers to Tina as the Queen of Light as he introduces me to the internationally-known creator, who chose light as her form of artistic expression way back in the 1970s after being inspired by Bauhaus electronic artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
She experimented with film with the London Filmmakers Company and, after studying fine art and painting abstracts, Tina swapped her brushes for painting with light.
Tina went on to work with David Bowie and Pink Floyd during those pioneering days, designing their light shows with colleague Joe Gannon.
Over a coffee in the Brewery's Intro bar, Tina describes with an engaging enthusiasm how in those formative times she would use translucent ink with ether held in glass, which exploded in a mass of colour and was projected on a screen as a backdrop for the likes of Mr Bowie and the lads from Floyd.
"In those days art was predominantly male, although there were a few women like Bridget Riley," explains Tina.
"So we set up a group and decided to discuss ideas. We set up women-only shows, more tongue-in-cheek than anything."
Tina goes on to say that feminism is part of the culture now. "It is embedded. You can either be annoyed by it or embrace it. Different people have different attitudes to it."
After Trevor invited Tina to take part in the 2007 women's festival, she bobbed up to Kendal to have a look around: "There was so much green and so many different shades, it was amazing.
"It reminded me of when I was at boarding school and I would sit on a hill in summer and watch the landscape change."
Changing light and colour plays a major part of Tina's exhibition - from rural lands to cityscape with a neon sign providing "an open-ended sentence," Tina points out, and "not a slogan".
"Neon has always fascinated me - how it reflects in puddles as the neon changes."
Part of the Warehouse show features a video, projected on to the floor, of a flower opening up and then dying.
Tina explains that it depicts beauty in motion and how superficial beauty only lasts a short time.
"Real beauty from the inside lasts forever. Sometimes when you're lost you turn the corner and find something new.
"That's what my work is about. A sense of loss and an idolisation of remembrance."
Also running until June 3 is Linda Lomahaftewa's exhibition in the Brewery's Sugar Store Gallery, a milestone in the leading Native American artist's career, as she has never ventured into Europe and the UK before, having lived most of the time in the Hopi/Choctaw community of south western United States.
Linda has landed many awards, which is no surprise really, when you see some of the work in her eye-catching exhibition; a new moon rises among the deep red skyscape in one inspiring image; a full moon orbits over a purple mountain in the mystical midnight sky of another.
For further details, telephone the Brewery on 01539-725133.
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