Cara a Cara || Face to Face

The Embassy event was really something. There were about a dozen artists from Bolivia who had raised funds to travel to the UK having entered the WEYA (World Event for Young Artists) in Nottingham. The work they had on show in the Embassy was really interesting and a broad range including video, sculpture, photography, painting and performance. From our project there were 6 of us in attendance, which was great and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, it was a privilege to be invited, and a thank you email was promptly sent.

Whilst at the event we received another invite from the “Anglo Latin American Foundation” to a gastronomic food fair – if you love your food, see the attached flyer for details. On that note I have to say the food at this event was amazing – I was totally transported back to Sucre with the delicious empanadas (bite sized pasties) doing the rounds.

It’s great to see that the artists on board our project are really being pro-active: spreading the word about the project; getting galleries they have links with on board; sourcing goodies for our events; applying to organisations for input and support. I’m really excited to be working with such a great bunch of people. This blog has been a long time in my head and now I’m almost up-to-date I just want to say we have made great progress so far and I know we are all really excited by what’s still to come.

An aside – late last week I got news that good a friend from my Uni (Kevin Fitzpatrick) took his own life. This is devastating news for everyone who knew him and has left us all feeling shocked, lost and vulnerable. He was a great guy, a great artist with lots of new and exciting projects in the pipeline; the last person you would think would do such a thing. He will be sadly missed.



An update was the next step – let all the artists know all this good news, keep the momentum going. They are just as excited as I am, which is great stuff, and welcome the invite to the Embassy – this will be great PR for us – to go along and meet Bolivian artists, officials and friends of the Embassy. It’s short notice but even if two or three of us can put in an appearance…

I informed Terry too, let him know what progress is being made, and remind myself really that we are indeed moving forward. Terry was also quick back, asking what week we would ideally like to have use of the venue. Thinking about the conversations we had around involving local school children and the community, February half term would make sense. Then we could run some workshops with local children alongside an exhibition of the works, some tuition in portrait drawing/painting maybe. Hopefully we can make this happen, quite a few of the artists are really keen on this idea.

I haven’t mentioned the artists yet, because I thought it better to check they didn’t mind being identified here in my blog, the great news is that they welcome the mention. So I’ll attach the slide I took to the Embassy with an example of their work and add their details to this post.

I also had a chat with Bow Arts Trust, where my studio is, regarding the possible involvement of the education side if we were to hold workshops early next year. Rob Smith, Head of Education and Learning at Bow Arts Trust, has been really supportive and encouraging and has offered to assist us in any way they can. Brilliant.

One of the artists – Sarah – is also a bar manager in town and through her contacts has managed to secure some South American beer for our exhibition(s) which is great news too, well done Sarah… lots of details like this that need to be addressed soon. But the printing is probably the most pressing, finding the funds for making this possible. I know a little bit about crowd-funding and really want to make time and explore this option – put up a pitch on one of these sites, see if we can raise the necessary funds this way.

As part of the email to the Embassy with the translated version of our presentation, they also wanted an indication of how our timeline looks now. This is a tough one as it highlights to me just how many moving parts there still are.

Ambitiously I’m thinking:

– All artwork complete by mid January

– An initial exhibition at the end of January/beginning of February, possibly South London – I’ve trying to investigate the Bow Arts project space at our site down there, but I’ve nothing tangible to report just yet.

– An exhibition in East London during school half term (18-22^nd Feb) with workshops for local children.

– Concluding with an exhibition and auction in West London, possibly a Bolivian Embassy building (week beginning 24^th Feb).



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 6^th. 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 24^th 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!



There was only one thing for it – Be Firm! So I thought about it, and thought about it, and proposed to Philly (&Matt) that we stick to the original game plan and each artist just paint one child each. I suggested that in addition we could produce a book that all the children’s work could be included in. That way no one would be left out. Like I’d said – I couldn’t ask the other artists involved to do more. Equally I was cringing at the disappointment I was delivering to the children.

So in conjunction with writing this email I also set about writing an email to the artists … after all it was their choice. Before I could send it I receive this back:

“I understand it may be hard for the artists to draw more than one child, but I think we would have to do something to make up for that. The children who drew are awaiting a picture of themselves and I feel it would be letting them down not to get them one. It’s really going to make them proud to see themselves drawn by an artist. But, we can work that out as the project progresses and see how much each artist is willing to do”

Again I was caught on the hop, I hadn’t thought through the expectation of the children seeing themselves painted … I included this in my email, sent it, and waited ….

Philly and Matt sent through the list along with photos of the work the children had done. I had only sent head-n-shoulders pictures through of the artists, and yet we were receiving photos of work with whole bodies in them. Awesome!

I had phoned the artist, who had been painted 6 times, before sending out the group email – to talk her through my dilemma and ask if she would be able to do 3 pieces (a few other artists had been done 3 times). She could choose which three, and we would work on getting the other three children done by other artists in the group. It was a good gauge for me, to know her reaction I was able to consider what might come back from my email.

Well, almost without hesitation the replies came flooding in. The artists were prepared to do more than one painting – I say painting, but the only stipulation we had given ourselves was size. We agreed to make the work A4-A2 in size and no bigger, so it didn’t over-shadow the children’s work. They were working on A3 cartridge paper; which they struggled to source initially – So really medium was up for debate really; it didn’t have to be paint.

I have to say, while I was hoping the answer would be yes, I am also very humbled by everyone’s generosity of time and artwork.

As an aside we would really like to organise, phase II you understand, a residency in Sucre, find funds to send one or two artists over for say 3 months and work directly with the children. Let’s hope we succeed here with phase I, and can also make that happen that would be such a lovely reward for them :-)



Over the next week I chased the Embassy and it paid off. They had as I thought, been busy with the Olympics, but were now able to engage in dialogue. We set up a meeting for the 10^th Sept, how exciting.

I’d originally hoped Laura would be able to attend with me but now I asked a fellow artist on the project – Ignacio – this was the obvious choice really as he is from Argentina and a great asset when going into a meeting with Spanish speaking people. Especially when what Spanish I did learn seems to have deserted me!

A skype call to Bolivia also proved useful and a friend of Philly (Matt) was now going to keep things going while she was on vacation. They had received the photos of the artists and some children had already started painting sessions. Matt was in charge of the library organisation Biblioworks that I mentioned earlier, and between them they had managed to get 31 children painting! Utterly Amazing! They were now in the process of collating all the names, ages and who they had painted, so we could pass this onto the artists.

But this presented with it a new dilemma… can you guess what it is yet?

In their enthusiasm to encourage participation, and with lots of shiny new materials, they had allowed the children to choose who they painted/drew. This resulted in a much larger number than required taking part and some painting the same artist. In fact one artist had been painted 6 times!!!

What now? We only planned to paint one child each. Each artist had offered to get involved and donate one painting to auction to raise money for the street children and magazine. How could we now choose only 14 from the 31? Which 14? What about the others? Surely I couldn’t ask let alone expect any artist to contribute more than one piece? How do I get around this? …