What to say … how to make sense of yesterday … it was one of those days when everything just flowed … one of those days where I was just doing what I was doing and enjoying it. Now that I sit here and reflect on it though it seems too good … too easy to be true.
After getting up early, a short run, and packing my things (my stay at the KRO apartment is split by a few night with my good friend P – some nights at the apartment were already booked when the fair dates were announced,) I met two of the Juxtapose Art Fair directors for (in my case a second) breakfast at a very nice cafe in the very trendy part of town. We chatted away for more than an hour over different and very tasty selections for the various modern plays on egg on toast. Pam and I have spoken twice online, and it was the first time I that I met Cecilie – they are of course lovely, friendly, professional, intelligent, and confident. We spoke seriously about some things … laughed and joked about others … and shared musings and wonderings about things that we were still processing. Walking back to the apartment to pick up my suitcase I couldn’t help but ask myself how I had ended up speaking with directors of an international art fair as if it was the most natural thing in the world … but then I do do it regularly – every year … throughout every year – with the directors of Supermarket. This is one of the worlds in which I work … I still can’t quite believe it … I would like to get better at acknowledging it … without becoming arrogant or having an over-inflated ego.
The fair’s Forum Day is always good fun … and this year I not only took part in the speed-networking but I remembered to say that I am a practicing artist. I met such interesting people – some of whom I already know in other contexts … a pleasant sense of familiarity, some who I could easily see future connections with, some who are doing fantastic things though far from my sphere of activity and interest.
After coffee we broke into smaller groups for more focussed discussions in response to Supermarket’s very own fortune cookies. It was a surprisingly effective way to get people thinking and speaking about their ambitions, concerns, dreams, and hopes for the future. One of the notes I made, for myself, it reads: the process is political. Of course it’s a riff on ’the personal is political’ … the idea is not new but in that moment yesterday afternoon those four words captured something that I want to explore further and something that I want always to keep in mind … it’s not quite a mantra but it might well have to sit alongside ’It’s to do with art’ on the studio wall.
Getting an introduction to the booth of one of the exhibitors in the fortune cookie group inspired me to imagine a possible project for the artists’ club – a project that I might get funding to run, and which could add a new way of working … a new relevance … a new energy to the club. Bcademie run a mentoring programme for new graduates, there’s no art-school in Uppsala so there are no new graduates however there are young artists who want to go to art school and there is a club full of professional artists who could over the course of a year mentor them. A structure would have to be worked out but the model that Bcademie have developed is a very interesting starting point. It certainly something that I want to think further about and speak to Eiera at the county council about.
Catching up with former Supermarket team members at the opening party was lovely – they really are such a great group of people and I am very pleased to have become part of it. I think that I needed to be reminded that I already have so many connections to an amazing group of colleagues working in various strands of the Swedish art scene … colleagues and connections that I should take better care of and value more highly.
Sitting up late at P’s chatting about my impressions from the day he was good to ask what personal projects I was going to be working on during my sabbatical. Even if I couldn’t he could see my enthusiasm for developing new programmes for the artists’ club and the studio association as potentially sabotaging my sabbatical. I am very grateful for the clarity of his direct question.
