Returned to Scotland to find more phone messages, and another surge of emails all relating to the exhibition.It has opened up a deluge of repressed memories…And still the photos come rolling in.
On a more practical note have got to sort out my status as an artist. Am I self-employed or a small company?
Have got both The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine and the Heritage Lottery Fund waiting for invoices. Have booked time with a financial adviser for artists next week in Glasgow. This is a very useful service provided free by the Scottish Cultural Enterprise Office.
The exhibition opened yesterday and we are all still reeling from the media coverage.
Thanks to the amazing press release sent out by Dr Carole Reeves from The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine we got two television crews, and at least two newspapers though there could well have been more all covering the opening. We made the 6.30pm BBC Wales News – how many photographic exhibitions make the daily television news?- one slight hitch was where could we watch it on television ? We had returned one of our "stars" Valerie Brent to her home in Mumbles – she had agreed to do interviews both in English and Welsh on television – and we found ourselves in a pub in Mumbles competing with the rugby. We persuaded the girl behind the bar to let us watch the coverage on one screen.
The exhibition is arousing tremendous interest in the community because it has opened up a book – a taboo subject that has never been spoken about before – how sick children were removed from the community for years on end and placed in remote isolation in a Welsh castle.
For some reason I can’t fathom my Apple Mac wont allow me to put links in so have to put them in on a PC.
Anyway, my on-line photographic exhibition is now up and running – complete with short film!- so now its "all hands on deck" to complete mounting the digital prints.
www.childrenofcraigynos.com
Having worked on computers so much for the past few months I had forgotten how particular one has to be when it comes to producing a finished product that you can hold in your hands – not that folk are going to hold the photos in their hands but you get my meaning.
As I prepare this exhibition I hear the voices of my tutors at Glasgow School of Art muttering their mantra:" less is more, less is more" and find myself doing some ruthless editing of phtographs.
Web site goes live.
Well, at 1am this morning I get an e-mail from my web designer- ex graduate from Glasgow School of Art- to say that he has uploaded my photographic exhibition "The Children of Craig-y-nos" to its new domain name:www.childrenofcraigynos.com
We have checked and double-checked all links to make certain they are all working, so here’s hoping….
I am astonished this morning to get a phone call from Wales from a woman congratulating me on the new online photographic exhibition”The Children of Craig-y-nos”.
The site does not go “live” until next week and some parts are still under construction.
How did she get into it?
“My grandson did this morning at 9 o clock.”
So he hacked into it!…I didn’t dare ask his age. Suspect he’s still in primary school.
And that’s what constantly amazes me about this project- the way it crosses generations.
Yesterday I got an e-mail from the granddaughter of 90 year old Thomas Isaac who was in the Adelina Patti Hospital in 1928.
