Saturday I called into the village shop after picking up the twins from a sleepover (Maeve had saved up her pocket money for an impressive three foot stick of bubble gum) and saw a leaflet for the Wylye valley art trail. In the past, to my shame, I have been known to poo poo an art trail but it was a sunny day and I surprisingly spotted an installation by Sandie Flower I liked the look of and decided to go. I thought
a) There may actually be some other artists out there and
b) Perhaps I have misconstrued art trails.
This is partly because Salisbury is currently organising their Art Trail and as I wanted to do an installation in a domestic dwelling in Salisbury I thought I may be able to piggy back onto their publicity etc, involve the Arts Centre and bring something new to the whole event.
The exhibition turned out to be in one of the prettiest places I have ever seen in England. A couple of old cottages just outside Tisbury and a beautiful private chapel housed a range of work by a group of ex grads from Winchester. On a lawn of buttercups we had tea out of old china cups while the girls played with chalk on the patio. Opposite was a PYO flower business where you left money in an honesty tin and wandered around fields bursting with flowers, gathering armfuls to take home. An iyllic setting – were it not for my three girls playing tug of war with the scissors, fighting and yelling 'poo pants' at the tops of their voices, ( the price to be paid for sleepovers!).
All in all I gained, a few extra contacts, a potential chapel to exhibit/photograph work in and a lot of droopy flowers by the time the girls had wrestled with them.
