Networking
Well, today’s intention was to network, by going on the Wirral Open studio tour : http://wirralart.com/ but, like all good intentions, other things happen.
I didn’t actually leave the house until after 12, because I had to do a pile of washing, walk the dogs and try to get some sort of order to this chaos at home. My 6 days off seem like a blur now as I’m back to the 3 days in, 1 day off, 3 days in week nonsense.
So I circled a few of the artists studios that I wanted to visit and I headed out to the first on the list. On the way, I bumped into a friend of mine, and we chatted… too long. Then I met people who organised the church installation at one of the studios and we talked about logistics, setting up and trying to fit in one more school workshop beforehand. By this time, over two hours at passed, so I thought I’d pop into the Williamson Art Gallery to check my shoe installation was all still there ( it was) before trying to see at least one more studio.
Trying to follow the odd little map on the trail, I eventually found the studio of Brigitte Jurack : http://brigittejurack.de/
I’d only vaguely heard of her, as she was the partner of someone I’d exhibited with last year, so I was quite amazed to hear about her experiences. She gave me some ideas about using commercial printing companies for digital prints, which I’d never really thought about.
This is the good thing about the Open studios – having the opportunity to actually talk to the artist. There’s probably no way that I would have been directed to her website without this chat and I would have been totally oblivious to her achievements. So I need to think of a way of doing this next year….I’m sure like other artists, I could just share a studio for the week to set up.
Brigitte complained about not having the time to work ( she teaches part time in Manchester) while I just longed to be part time again.
I came across a part time job that would suit me and that I thought – to take this job, I would need to supplement my income by earning circa £4000 per year. Could I do that as an artist? Too scary – I doubt it very much that I could. I would have to get another job – which kind of defeats the object.
I will have to stay full time : (