Andrea’s PV went off really well.
The sun shone and so we laid the stones in the Butterfly Park and stayed there for the whole PV.
Lots of people came, people who had been in during the month watching Andrea paint and people who had attended the workshop.
Lovely atmosphere, tea and strawberry scones and good company.
The stones fit in really well within the park. I’m sure visiting children are going to love looking at them and identifying the different creatures and plants.
Andrea is making identification sheets that will be handed out allowing the children to see how many things they can match on the stones and then see how many things they can then identify in real life within the park.
She also has plans for a domino style game around the park that she is going to put a proposal in for that we can then possibly try to fundraise for.
Spent the day in the shop with Andrea today.
She’s painted 2 bee orchids and 2 more common blue butterflies and I imagine she’ll be there late tonight as she is determined to get as much finished as she can.
We had a few visitors today, not many but the rain was tipping it down all day so I suppose most people would be sensible and stay indoors.
I’ll be back in tomorrow, hope we get a few more visitors.
Roy, one of our volunteers popped in too, he’ll be back with us next week after a bad eye infection has stopped him getting out, great news.
We also had a student in, she’s studying on a combined sciences degree, has 4 months off and is volunteering with Cheshire Council on an eco-community programme but still has spare time and hates being bored, love people like that, so we’re signing her up as a new volunteer too.
I need to contact a whole load more people to come and do talks and workshops as we received another small grant last week. Great news for the project. Means we get another interactive artwork, new flyers for the park and more summer workshops.
Also need to do way more in the way of publicity. Wondering whether its worth actually advertising?
Will be looking into that :)
Where does the time go?
I’ve been ridiculously busy with work and the butterfly park project and haven’t had time to blog.
Andrea’s residency ends in a week…madness!!
She’s been back home to Cambridge all week looking after a poorly Mum and is very stressed about finishing her work here. She’s not coping with talking to the public and working at the same time under the pressure of finishing so is only going to have 3 of the stones done for Wednesdays stone laying and finish the 4th at home and bring it back up.
I’d offered to paint some butterflies in while she was away but was terrified at the prospect of actually doing it when she said yes. It’s so nerve wracking painting onto someone elses work. Especially as I’m not a painter!!
As it happens I have been too busy, mad week at work my 3 day week has been 5 already this week. crazy.
This afternoon I got the chance to tidy up some edges, make some Burnet moths redder and painted a male and a female Common Blue Butterfly. The volunteers this morning said only one person had been in all day. I arrived at 2pm to take over, set up the paints and sods law, lots of visitors came in to chat haha.
Great though, met lots of lovely people, had a great chat about being ‘scouse and proud’ to a woman who lives in Knowsley but was visiting her ‘woolyback’ mate. Its so funny the way Liverpool/Wirral has the big divide.
Hoping her friend comes with her next time, we decided she’d really enjoy the workshops.
Anyway I didn’t get as much painted as I hoped but thats the way it goes.
Andrea’s back in the studio tommorrow so I hope she thinks they’re ok.
The workshop she held was great, pity the drawing one was rained off but Painting on stones went really well and was enjoyed by everyone who came. Such a laid back, chilled out event. Supposed to finish at 4pm but everyone was having a great time so we opened a bottle of wine and painted til 5.30 :)
Andrea Bassil is now in residence and has been all week, she’s hoping to blog, in fact she started one but somehow her posts aren’t being saved, we dont know why. She writes, clicks ‘Save Post’ and it vanishes!!
www.a-n.co.uk/p/2227886
Keep an eye out in case we get it working.
Anyway, Andrea is an artist/illustrator and was Head of Natural History Illustration at Bournemouth and Poole College of Art for a while. She’s very excited to be here and is making a series of 4 large ‘stepping’ stones to be laid in the park that children can use to identify creatures and plants before they go out into the field so’s to speak.
This weekend are her workshops, we have Saturday ‘Drawing from Nature’ and Sunday ‘Painting on Stones’ should be great. Hope the weather holds for Saturday at least, thats the outdoors bit.
Lots of interest in the shop now, people popping in to talk to Andrea, think a lot of them find it nice that they can relate to her art. Contemporary installation or eco-poetry were fabulous but a lot of the people of New Ferry had no clue what we were trying to achieve. Andrea’s illustrations are very realistic so seem to going down well.
I still love that all the projects are so very different.
