Question … I hear you … What about the artists? Have they started work yet? Well it’s been quite a month. We got past the hurdle of artists agreeing to contribute more than one piece of work, but we were still waiting on new images of the children. I had been receiving some here and there but it was proving a tough challenge to (a) get photos – the children only met at most weekly, (b) get photos that were useable – to quote Philly/Matt:
“it’s hard, because the minute you tell a Bolivian kid to pose for a picture they stand up straight and don’t smile. We’ll try to make them as natural as possible and get those to you as soon as possible”.
… once I finally got enough and matched them up to the table of ‘who painted who’, I sent the images (whilst requesting a few re-takes) out to the artists.
Remembering all the great advice and info received from Terry, I also asked if each artist could attempt to get one piece of work ready by Nov 6th. This would give us time to collate and look at printing options in time for xmas. I’d really like get some cards/sets of prints done, limited edition possibly, to sell this side of xmas. Raise awareness and funds at the same time. That said I haven’t sourced a printer yet and would really like to find a good and generous/cheap one who could work with us throughout the project.
I think our biggest outlay is going to be in printing…
– Cards and/or small sets of prints as mentioned above
– There’s the idea of making prints of all works and sending a set back to Sucre for a parallel auction to be held
– Potentially displaying a set of edition printed works in other venues to raise awareness and funds
– Potentially a book of all works
So, that’s the progress there.
Meantime I thought I didn’t have enough to do and applied to go on a residency with Matt Roberts Arts (http://www.alasgallery.co.uk/) which has been great and running the last three week’s or so – another blog project perhaps!
During week one I receive confirmation from Julie at the Big Issue that John Bird was going to take on the role of auctioneer – ecstatic!!!!! Baring any Big Issue event colliding with our time frame (an evening during the week beginning 24th February 2013 – a date for your diary) going into his calendar, which would obviously take priority, he shall be there. If this happens, the organisation will send us a representative!!! How fantastic is that?! Fingers crossed!
The meeting at the Bolivian Embassy went really well; at the last minute I decided to pull together some slides by way of a presentation to talk through (a comfort blanket too). This really helped and Ignacio’s presence was invaluable. They now need to get backing from their Ministry of Culture to support our project and asked us for a copy of the presentation to forward to them – Ignacio very generously offered to translate the English version for us… What we would really like from them is a possible venue to hold the auction. Again, fingers crossed!
After the meeting the Embassy sent me an invitation to an art event the following week and a request to contact all the artists involved in our project in order to extend the invite to them also. Amazing!
