Featured Artists

“After forty years of realising other people concepts I have at last found time to create for myself and am thoroughly enjoying the process of playing with ideas and techniques. What I make, I make for me, and I am always delighted when someone else shares my vision. I have sold some very odd stuff to unlikely people, except of course they are really discerning art lovers!”

Alex trained as a property maker at a free-lance studio supplying mostly London’s West End theatres and major tours. In 1966 he became head of the Props Department at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre where for some 16 years or so he made and designed props, and trained props makers and stage managers.
Having been head-hunted by the BBC to set up a props making department at Pebble Mill, Birmingham, he left to start a prop-making studio, with his wife Polly. Pollex Props was based in Sutton Coldfield, and supplied props, costumes and art works to theatres, television and film companies throughout the UK and overseas. During the course of his career Alex has worked with such eminent designers as Ralph Koltai, John Bury, Henry Bardon, John Napier, and Findlay James and has been responsible for many coups de théâtre including an on-stage beheading and a deus ex machina in the form of a flying Viking galley.
Firebrand was added to Pollex Props in 1993, enlarging the range of services on offer to include flaming torches and special fire effects, which are used by theatre companies all over the world. In 1996 the company moved to the west coast of Scotland where it continues to thrive. Alex also has a teaching diploma and has given illustrated practical lectures in props-making to college and university drama departments.
Since moving to Argyll Alex has had the opportunity to develop his interests and has become a successful artist. Having spent so long realising other designers’ ideas, in recent years he has thoroughly enjoyed exploring texture and form for his own pleasure, and the range of techniques acquired during forty years as a prop maker informs his idiosyncratic portrayal of the world around him. His fine art interpretation of the environment ranges from impressionist landscape through collage, and assemblages, to wood and metal sculpture. Alex has exhibited at Kilmartin House Museum; the MACK, and Luckenbooth Galleries in Tarbert; The Archway, and other local exhibitions in Lochgilphead; and the Equine Exhibition, Ludlow Festival.

Shropshire born, Polly was educated at Ludlow High School, Shrewsbury Art College and Birmingham College of Art, where she studied Theatre Design with the well-known designer, the late Findlay James.
Polly managed the Compendium Art Gallery in Birmingham for three years. For the following ten years she divided her time between bringing up three children, and running the freelance company that she and Alex founded in 1976, making bespoke props, costumes and art works for theatres, film, television and advertising companies.
In 1979 Polly was asked to design the souvenir poster for Ludlow Festival. Her series of limited edition prints for the festival has continued unbroken since then and by now several thousand of the prints can be found in collections worldwide. The first Macbeth poster was selected as one of the 6 British entries for a touring International Poster Exhibition starting in Toronto.
Returning to full time education in 1991 Polly gained a First Class Honours Degree in History of Art and History at Wolverhampton University, and subsequently worked at the University for five years as a History Researcher. In 2007 she was awarded a PhD for her art and history based thesis 'Haberdashery .and its use in Dress, 1550-1800'.
Polly and Alex moved to a hill farm near Tayvallich in Scotland in 1996, where they keep Highland cattle and Herdwick sheep, run a Bed & Breakfast (www.whiterock-argyll.co.uk) and continue their companies Pollex Props and Firebrand (theatrical flambeau).
Apart from other venues in Shropshire, Birmingham, and Argyll Polly's work has appeared on magazine covers and greetings cards; by invitation she contributed to “Art off the Rock”, the Stirling based Art Link charity auction. She has also exhibited at Kilmartin House Museum; the MACK,Galleries in Tarbert; The Archway, and other local exhibitions in Lochgilphead.

Kate’s passion for fabric seems to have been around forever, with memories that go back to her father's theatre workshop which had a mezzanine level filled from floor to ceiling with folded fabric, and large bolts of calico and muslin standing in the corners. Given the opportunity she would play in there for hours surrounded by rolls of ribbons and trims, tins and boxes of buttons and beads. Later, as an arts student she combined textiles with ceramics, literally, by soaking textured fabric in slip and then firing it to make delicate vases and bowls. Kate inherited her paternal grandmother’s fabric kist - Liberty lawn and Harris tweed pieces all carefully folded - together with both grandmothers' Singer sewing machines on which she learned to sew.
Now she uses vintage, remnant and recycled fabrics, from embroidered tablecloths to denim jeans, to make decorative items for the home using the company name CalicoKate Originals.
Kate also makes textile pictures in a naïve style, simple figures and animals that are quite charming, and as well as her atmospheric handmade felt pictures she is currently developing a new line of quilted felt blankets.