The ‘to do’ list I left on the mantelpiece on Thursday night, is still there, untouched. I think this is how it would be if I had more time. I’d get into my head that I had all the time in the world to do things, and would just pick them up when I felt like it…. or not.
I feel that when I’m off, I lose that momentum that keeps me going. Its much easier for me to come in from work and say ‘oh well, I’ve been working all day, what’s another hour’, than having to start from scratch.
I don’t know where these last 3 days have gone…. I’ve been out a lot, my freezer is full of blackberries but the house is still a tip. Well, I did hoover up a growing fur ball (the dogs) that I passed daily for about a month, thinking I must deal with that one day. That’s all though.
I’ve really struggled to make the last few parts of the installation. For want of better words – I just couldn’t be bothered.
I’m now very thankful for the manic weeks/months I spent putting together these paper air balloons for the installation. My precious days off would have been completely stressful otherwise.
I must complete one thing on the list today though – to pack them all up ready for delivery tomorrow. But then, here I am wasting time on the internet…
These 5 days are the longest stretch I will have off for a while now as I have to save as much of my leave as I can for the group trip to New York next year. The next 6 months will be very hard.
But in the meantime…. the sun is still shining….
Things are back on track with The Altrincham Arts Festival after they had a meeting this week. The website has been updated, artists announced and their tweets are telling me that there are a lot of musicians and other performers involved. It’s all looking good.
In the meantime….. Next year’s Barnaby Festival has started the ball rolling on publicity for their events already.
I know the contracts I signed for both festivals have no mention on exclusivity of work, but I do feel really uncomfortable about showing the same work at both. I’d sent the same proposals to both, not really expecting to be accepted for either, so this has put me in an awkward position.
The festivals are 8 months and 15 miles apart so maybe they will have different audiences……? Oh well, I’ll just have to deal with it later. I know for sure that I am not producing new work.
More pressing matters are that I’ve made arrangements with the Chapel Gallery to meet with them next Tuesday to discuss the layout of my Balloon installation. I’ll also take half of them across with me so that they are out of my way. There’s evidence of them all over the house – from pieces drying on the window ledges, bits of paper on the floor and stuck down the furniture, to the many boxes that are starting to pile high. I will be glad to get this one completed.
I think I’ll avoid the ‘…and what did you do over the weekend’ questions tomorrow if I can. I did the usual….. cutting, folding and gluing paper. Nothing exciting to report.
I am well on track though – which is good, considering I didn’t work continuously. I should safely be able to have my 5 day break, coming up at the end of next week, completely work free.
Beyond that though, I’m starting to get a little apprehensive about the Altrincham Arts Festival which opens next month. When the work I submitted (work already completed) was accepted, I was initially quite excited over the prospect of showing there. I haven’t seen any publicity for it though and the website hasn’t been updated since they asked for submissions a few months ago : http://altrinchamartsfestival.co.uk/ This doesn’t bode well.
I did have thoughts about pulling out, but I’ll hang on till the end of the week to see if there’s any update. It is quite worrying.
Today’s date tells me that I have been working full time for 22 months now. A drop in the ocean compared to others I suppose, but I still long to go back to my part time years.
I can only do my best as they say, as I struggle to spend just an hour in the evenings , tediously gluing together the parts of the paper balloons. More than an hour sends me over the edge.
I had originally booked 5 days off to work continuously on them, but I’m glad that plan has changed. If I can just work on the installation every day, I should have a few days free to myself if all goes to plan.
Since I put together the house and wood installation a few weeks ago, I’ve had more ideas on a similar theme that I’m keen to start work on.
A passing comment from someone I know that I’m ‘not in many exhibitions’, partly makes me want to make more of an effort to do smaller works and spread them out a bit. I thought I was doing OK with exhibitions – five this year isn’t a vast amount I know, but the work for all of them has taken a considerable amount of time and I can’t just ‘knock them out’. I think people just want to criticise for the sake of criticising sometimes, when really we all should be supporting each other.
Afterthought….actually, I’ve been in six – one was an Open that was so bad, I’ve erased it from my CV and memory it seems : / No more wasting time on these things!
Today I had my own Bank Holiday, which was really nice – despite everyone else being in work.
The sun stayed out, so I had my quota of fresh air and exercise that I felt that I had been missing out on.
In between the walks and blackberry picking, I did short bursts of work – finally assembling some of the pieces that I had been working on these few weeks. I’d come to the relatively easy part now, so I should be close to completion.
I’d emailed the gallery on Saturday to ask if we could meet up to discuss the installing, but I haven’t had a reply yet. If I don’t hear by Saturday, I think I will give them a call as I would really like to have a definite plan of action before I take the work across.
So this small box of paper balloons is all I am doing today. Doesn’t seem a lot to show, but I feel it’s a huge leap forward.
