Whether you are interested in art or not I would advise you to take 5 minutes to have a browse…read morethrough the art and crafts that is on offer within the walls of The Old Grammar School Gallery (TOGS). The art on offer is not just beautiful but some of it is well within the means of most people's pockets. I have been into TOGS a few times now and I have even purchased some art. There is everything from paintings, to pictures, to glass wear, to ceramics and so on. This month there is a solo exhibition by Julia Odell. Now I will put my hands up and say that Julia is a personal friend of mine and I wouldn't want anything I say to be taken as favoritism. But I find her paintings engaging and they always lift my mood or take me off somewhere else. There are also works of art by many other local artists and entering The Old Grammar School is an easy and enjoyable way to spend half an hour. The last time I was in there I purchased a beautiful piece of hand made glass wear. £20? Absolute bargain!! But please don't take my word for it. And anyway, taking the time to visit Otley is well worth it! The town is full of interesting shops and a lovely riverside walk if you prefer a quiet stroll or a walk in the park. There is nothing like the lovely clean smell on a warm summers day as you walk along the rivers edge. Oops. This was meant to be about COGS!! As you can guess, I'm a huge fan and the staff are knowledgable and enthusiastic too. For me, TOGS ticks all the boxes.

From the owner: Original art by local artistsread more

I love looking in art galleries, as I'm sure you'll agree, there is always something interesting…read moregoing on. I'm one of those hellish customers who never intends to purchase the art work - I simply can't afford to - but likes to spend a good hour browsing anyway. In theory I'll be able to purchase...one day! Anyway, I was about Otley town and noticed Browns so went in for a good perusal. I was greeted instantly by a lovely lady who asked me how I was, which was very welcoming. This place is really nicely laid out and certainly has a high end feel about the artwork within. They had a number of different artists' work on display in a range of different styles and media. The first pictures by J Lagadec, which struck me on entering, were these female silhouettes, black lines on a cream embossed background, and one with a distinct red 'v' at her nether area. Nearby there were some exquisite watercolour landscapes by Graham Carver and some humorous paintings by Mackenzie Thorpe - including what I assumed was Death holding a sunflower over his shoulder. So there was quite a variety of styles on show. Overall I think my favourite artist was Todd White - his collection was a humorous lot with undertones of a darker nature. My favourite was just called 'Caffeine' and depicted a series of caffeinated wide-eyed people, all in business attire, sporting bloodshot, toothy and forced smiles. It was full of detail, skill, character and was just really quite fun. He also had a series of cartoonish clocks for sale, splatted cows and ice creams, all for about £44 which was really not too bad a price given the expense of the rest of the art work. That's not to say I thought the art on show was over-priced, I am more than aware of how long those pieces must have taken, and how much skill was required to create them in the first place. On a separate note, Browns also does picture frame fittings too! Essentially, this beautiful gallery is a must-see if you are having a casual day in Otley. Beautiful.

Today turned into a real Otley-Fest for me…read more I just happened to poke my head around a door to see what was inside and ended up being invited to the opening of BonoArtGallery. So being a nosey, cheeky Yorkshireman has it's up sides. This new gallery is situated just over the road from TOGS art gallery on Courthouse Street. So I said I would be back at 7pm. It was a lovely cool Saturday evening and what better way to spend it than with like minded people and a glass or 3 of whatever was being offered on the opening night? I am by no means an art connoisseur but I have been to a few art galleries and I know what I like. So in I strode at 7:45pm. When I walked in I was recognised by Roberto (owner) and was invited to have a glass of wine or beer as he had set up a beer hand pump. I like the way this man thinks!! The beer was Burnsall Classic Bitter and was very nice indeed. To be honest there wasn't a great deal of art on display and most of it was fairly pricey too. The painting that caught my attention was by Shane Green - Sprint. Loved it. I also like the paintings by Moff Skellington (great name). None of the others really jumped out at me. In my own personal opinion, it was a bit bare. After 5 minutes I had had enough. Everyone seemed in their own little 'click' and trying to start conversations was hard. My whole experience lasted about 20 minutes. I can't say it was a pleasant experience at all. I will call in again as it is early days and maybe when some new art is displayed it will be more interesting. The Old Grammar School (TOGS) over the road is a much more interesting space and there is lots of different styles of art on display. Not just paintings and photos.

TL;DR - A truly unique venue combining art, food and shopping…read more One of Sparky's colleagues tipped us off about this place, and I'm amazed we'd never heard of it before. In case you don't know (I didn't!), Saltaire was built by industrialist Titus Salt (amazing name!) alongside the river Aire to bring all aspects of his textiles business onto one enormous site. He also built a town for the workers, and the whole area is now a world heritage site. The mill has now been converted into an amazing and huge venue spanning several floors. There's so much here it's hard to take in, but I'll try and summarise. The ground floor is a mixture of books on art, stationery and arts supplies, postcards and the like but interspersed with huge art displays. At first I wasn't sure if I was in an art gallery or a shop, but the answer is both. As with the rest of the mill, David Hockney features strongly throughout. There's a basement level which we didn't explore in detail, but it sells rugs and wallpapers and is just as big as the ground floor. The first floor houses the most. One end is a gorgeous bookshop, where the focus seems to be on unusual titles rather than breadth - I saw many, many books in the recipe section which I'd never seen or heard of anywhere else. The other end of the building is devoted to homewares - kitchen supplies, furniture, clocks and more. A lot of it is very expensive, but it's a beautifully curated selection of objects for sale. Between these two wings is Salt's Diner. It's a separate venue on Yelp but suffice it to say we had lunch here and it was great.Through the restaurant you can access a further wing of the building which is split into an outdoor clothing shop, a jewellers, an art exhibit, a treasure trove of an antique store and a small coffee shop. Finally, the top floor is split into three: an exhibit on the history of the mill, a major exhibition of work by David Hockney, and a further cafe/restaurant. On top of all these, parking is free on site and it's right next to the Saltaire train station, so there's really no excuse for not visiting.

Its easy to spend the best part of a day wandering round the amazing Salts Mill with its extensive…read morecollection of David Hockney's work and its eclectic selection of "shops" which include an excellent book shop, the wonderful home section with its stunning array of furnishings and kitchen porn, and the antique/collectables area. At some point you are going to need to get some fuel on board and Salts Diner is not a bad option. Its situated on the 1st floor of this wonderful labyrinthine industrial building in a large area between the book shop and the home shop. It was very busy on our visit between Christmas and New Year but we managed to get a table for 6 without much difficulty. The young waiting girls were all very helpful and attentive and we soon settled down with a reasonably priced bottle of Merlot to have a look at the menu. There is fairly wide choice of available, and while there is no real theme to the menu, there is enough to satisfy all the generations of family visitors that Salts Mill attracts. There are lots of ankle biters about so be careful in your choice of seating if you want a peaceful lunch. I had the roast butternut squash and lentil soup from the daily specials board which was tasty and wholesome, obviously a popular selection as it was soon rubbed off the board. B and I both went down the pizza route for our main and shared a bowl of nicely cooked crispy fries; nothing to complain about but pretty bog standard. The most successful main seemed to be Danny's beef meatballs and pasta in a rich tomato sauce, again from daily specials board, although the other boys were quite complimentary about their beef and ale pies which came in a nice white dish topped with puff pastry. All in all while this was nothing to write home about it was a pretty decent lunch in a great building. Salts Diner itself its not somewhere I would go out of my way to visit but works well a part of a visit to the Mill (I would particularly recommended a visit at the moment to see the amazing "Flowers" show on the top floor of work created by Mr Hockney on his iPad - just stunning). 3 for Salts Diner and 5 for the Mill.

I nipped into Dalesway Gallery, situated in the lovely little market town of Ilkley, just to…read morepurchase some birthday cards actually. I work in an office with a great deal of people and as a rule we generally make an effort to buy birthday cards for people's birthdays. I'm usually pretty useless at this sort of thing, and I've little excuse, but I am forever forgetting to give cards. In a surprising moment of preparedness I made the move towards Dalesway in order to stock up. Although cash-wise this was a bad idea (it wouldn't have worked out to bulk buy according to my wallet ... ) it was a great idea art wise to pop in! I hadn't actually noticed that they sold art works as well as cards, I was being that one track minded! Inside there were a number of lovely special arty cards, some funny ones with animals, some beautiful landscape photography ones, some vintage style ones and so on. They also had a number of prints and art works on sale too. There were these huge framed prints in the window, one of a vase of flowers (a proper above-the-fireplace type of picture) and another two of these purple field scenes. As well as those they had some interesting 'fashion' prints of men and women dressed in lovely clothing only none of those images included the person's face. I realise as I write that it sounds macabre, but it wasn't really! Anyway, an interesting bimble worth the visit.

What with being let down once again by Virgin Media, I had to seek solace on such a rainy day as…read moreyesterday, with coffee and wifi. There's a number of spots about town in which to laze the day away with a supply of reasonable coffee, but since The Bowery is so close and it's been so long, I decided to set up here for lunch and respite from the rains. As far as I can tell, the place has gone from strength to strength, providing in-numerous excellent artistic courses for folks to partake of, alongside their range of fresh lunchables and gift-shop-cum-gallery. The programme of lessons looks fantastic, offering up everything from jewellery making to knitting, and browsing the hand crafted gifts about the cafe reveals a wealth of local talent and passion. I hadn't intended to purchase anything (one never does) but couldn't help be drawn in by some of the kitsch and quirky little items. The staff, as ever, are mega friendly, which makes a visit all the nicer. I decided to try the spinach and ricotta quiche, which comes with a sizeable plate of salad on the side. I have to say, whilst the quiche didn't make my mouth sing, the accompanying salad more than made up for this in flavour - the dressing was mouth watering, and the mix of sultanas, sesame seeds and such made this a healthy taste sensation. You can grab a decent sized latte for about £2, a pot of tea which yielded a few cups for the same, and of course the wifi is free. It's not coffee comparable to the likes of Bottega or Laynes, but the space more than makes up for this -and I'm not complaining, it was a good cup of Joe. The atmosphere defines relaxed, and with the array of art and crafts on the walls and in the cabinets, you're not short on excellent things to look at and ponder. The gallery and classroom space is upstairs, and whilst I didn't have an opportunity to wander around, I'll have to come back soon for a peek. I read also that the classroom space is available for hire for most art-related activities, for as little as £5 an hour I believe, which is fantastic for the local community. It's also worth noting that the toilet even has a mini seat that you can pull down, should you have kidlets in your company, which is a lovely touch. Overall, I'm a big fan of this place, and hope that Headingley continues to support independents like this. More of this, please Headingley. Get your senses open and your art head on.

The Bowery is more than just a cafe. Here you can also find art exhibition space, a classroom for…read moreworkshops and an impressive selection of cards and gifts. It's split across two floors and, while the upper floor is light and airy the lower floor feels a little cramped. Possibly because the lower floor contains the cafe and the gift shop but it does seem to work. Naturally, the gallery space is a little quieter but it's a lovely space and I really enjoyed wandering around and looking at the exhibits. It looks like the workshops room is really well used. A group was finishing a crafting workshop as we arrived and the website advertises further workshops as well as a series of short courses that starts in September and a variety of other events. We didn't stay for food but they're certainly popular, which has to be a good sign, and the cakes look great. I'd be tempted to return for a coffee and some treats but even if these turn out to be less than the best in the area The Bowery is doing a great job of pulling together a creative community in Headingley. They describe themselves as The Home of Creativity and I think that that suits them very well.

Well you'd be hard pushed to get in or out of Halifax without noticing the Dean Clough building…read more It's nationally renowned as a prime site in Halifax and it's not just a business emporium. It does house quite a few private businesses and office space but it has so much more to offer than that. First up take some live theatre and music. The Crossley Gallery has fast become a key place for many Jazz acts to come and ply their trade. You've also got the Viaduct Theatre which attracts classical music and of course live stage productions. If that's not your thing then the art galleries are pretty impressive. They get some really interesting exhibitions and change them about quite regularly. Add to that a nice design shop, café and a restaurant and it's a treat that you'd maybe not expect to find in these industrial looking walls. Loving your work here.

I work in this building and have to say - it's quite a nice place to be…read more The offices are a bit mixed - some are lovely and refurbished and some are a bit old and grotty but I think they are in the process of doing up the whole place. It's a nice central clean building. The viaduct cafe is nice and the Design House Restaurant is pretty decent too. I like the galleries here - it's quite nice during a stressful day to wander downstairs and look at the pictures or sculptures - helps calm me down and face the day. There is also a very nice gift shop.

This is a truly exciting and beautifully art gallery. I challenge you to wander past the window and…read morenot stop for a quick browse. I wasn't even meant to be stopping the day I discovered this gem in the heart of Ilkley and I suppose you might say it actually stopped me in my tracks. It isn't hard to see why either. Inside there was a lovely range of different types of art from a range of exciting media. Some of my favourites were the exquisitely painted photo-realistic images, although the Stef Ottevangar animal sculptures were really quite cute. There was jewellery on show too, including some lovely metal carved earrings for about £20. My absolute favourite was this amazing snowy road scene on a huge canvas, it really was something else. Essentially, whatever is on show here clearly will be of the highest quality and although it may be high end, I can justify those sorts of prices for high art by independent artists. Take a look for yourself, it's lovely!

I stopped to admire the glass figures in the window of this small gallery/shop and went inside to…read morehave a closer look. The figures are huge. almost life size, made by an artist called Steven Yates. My eye was caught by another piece that happened to be by the same artist. It was a paper mache pair of figures in a passionate embrace, painted red. When I asked about it the lady painting at the back of the shop explained that on the male figure there were 'men seeking women' ads. and on the female figure 'women seeking men' ads. It is appropriately title 'Chemistry' - I like it because the artist has really captured the movement and passion of the couple. It is slightly erotic but not tasteless! Alas if I only had £800 to spare and an appropriate wall to hang it on! Aside from this piece, which really grabbed me, the gallery is filled with paintings of landscapes and flowers, some beautiful, others quite ordinary. There were a few smaller glass and ceramic works and a cabinet of handmade jewelry. It is a lovely place to have a look around even if you can't afford to buy anything!