TIDAL Wave Gallery announces its Christmas exhibition, 'The Sea, The Sea', on view at 3, Bridge Street, Hereford and The Gwynne Street Studios, Left Bank Village.

36 local, national and international artists will be showing their work, including Royal Academicians Mary Fedden and Ken Howard; Trevor Chamberlain, David Curtis, Moira Huntly and Dennis Syrett of The Royal Society of Marine Artists; Herefordians Anthony Morris, Daniel Crawshaw and Crispin Thornton-Jones; Spanish artist Jorge Segrelles; Pembrokeshire artist John Knapp-Fisher and Dutch artist Frits Goosen.

'The Sea, The Sea' opens on November 12, Monday - Saturday 9.30am to 5.30pm. For further information contact 01432 352365.

NORTH Herefordshire makers are going to be well represented at this year's Hereford Contemporary Craft Fair, to be held at The Courtyard from November 23-25.

Winner of the New Exhibitors Award is Sue Lane from Hatfield who has been in residence at the Courtyard Centre for the Arts for the past year. A new member of the Alloy Jewellers Group, Sue is at the beginning of what will undoubtedly be a successful career in the crafts.

Metalworkers Claudia Petley and Paul Shepherd will be exhibiting for the second time, having had an extremely successful show last year. Their beautifully crafted fire tongs and pokers, mirrors and candlesticks are elegant, robust and eminently practical.

Wytske Lazenby from Eardisland produces exquisite leather boxes, briefcases and jewellery caskets from her studio at Glanarrow Mill, while in Kingsland and Lingen two strikingly different potters; Katie Eastaugh and Yen Robinson produce a range of domestic pots. Yen Robinson has been strongly influenced by Michael Cardews book, 'A Pioneer Potter', drawing from it the challenge of combining form with function to produce pots for the kitchen. There will be many other Herefordshire makers at the fair, along with craftspeople from around the country, making the Herefordshire Contemporary Crafts Fair the most prestigious crafts event in the West Midlands. Further details on 01432 260129.

THE work of local artist, Ria Parfitt, has been featured on these pages before when an exhibition of her work was held at the Old Mayor's Parlour Gallery in April of this year.

Since then, Ria has picked up a number of commissions and will be exhibiting at various galleries in London over the next six months.

The first showing of Ria's new work will be next weekend at the Battersea Contemporary Art Fair, November 16-18. The fair attracts thousands of visitors from all over the UK, Europe and America and is a great opportunity for art lovers to meet artists in an atmosphere quite unlike that of a gallery.

Ria, 20, is looking forward to taking her work to a wider audience as it is quite bright and vibrant and not always suitable for her local market. A self-taught artist her work is based on ideas from the imagination, which can sometimes be a little unusual and which always involve some kind of relation to the human body.

If you're interested in attending the art fair then Ria has a few vouchers left which will allow discounted entry to the show. Contact her on 01432 340751.

If you can't make the show but are interested in future exhibitions of Ria's work then you can catch her at The Gallery, Cork Street, London between February 25- March 2, 2002 and then back in Battersea for the third Paperleaf Art Fair between March 23-24.