In the middle of the residency at Guldagergård and organising the exhibition in Brighton, I have had to squeeze in preparations for a public art commission I’ve been shortlisted for. I ended up spending three full days working on the proposal. Which means I am now really behind on my schedule for completing everything here.
However, I am really pleased I did it and I am happy with the result. I got quite inspired looking into the history of the site, especially when I discovered that lots of really interesting things have taken place there, and many important people have had dealings there, so I was spoilt for choice when it came to including local references into my proposal.
I always love spending time designing. It’s one of my favourite parts of the job. I’m a bit old fashioned and I love getting out the watercolours and painting away. These days, of course, that is not enough. However beautiful the design might be, I need to professionally render it into a ‘mock-up’ of the site, and that is what I find hard, because my skills at using the necessary software are not up to scratch. Last night I was helped by a fellow resident here with a dab hand at photoshop and we had fun turning my designs into a ‘real’ situation. In fact, it has inspired me to get on and learn the programme, because I can’t do without any more in my job. It’s vital. It’s so wonderful being on a residency for so many reasons, but one of the main things is meeting other artists and feeding off of each other. Great.
So, now, to the airport back to the UK for a 3 day trip, in which I am squeezing not only the job interview, but also a meeting with my graphic designer for the catalogue, an interview with a journalist at The Ceramic House, a presentation to Brighton Univeristy students, hopefully to recruit volunteers for the project, and I even have a customer coming from Oxford to buy some Danish artwork in advance of the show going up in May!
