Today my planning has gone awry. My son has had tonsillitis all week and I have managed to juggle things to cover my time at St George's but today I can't. I have had to put up a notice and close the exhibition for the day. Another problem with running a project as a one (wo)man band. However the cold weather has meant that there weren't streams of visitors anyway and it does mean that I will be able to catch up with my emails and starting to put together all the information for the final (dread word) evaluation.
Since the private view I have been at the exhibition space at St George's Church six days a week. Partly to make the most of the last couple of weeks 'in residence' and partly because there isn't anyone else to mind the space while the exhibition is on. Unfortunately, though the church is full of atmosphere, history and inspiring detail it is rather short on internet acess so I have found it difficult to update the blog. A recap then over the last few days; the private view went really well, lots of people came and I was very encouraged. I was also pleased with the way the last pieces of work looked in the space. One of them, the one with thousands of cast paper fragments on pins caught the light in the way I had hoped it would. You are more aware of the mass of cast shadows than the construction. However, worryingly, considering how long it took to make, I have a huge compulsion to make another one, a bigger one this time! The other new piece was an echo of my 'Storytree' series. I hung a large branch wrapped in one of the stories high in the nave of the church. I wanted to bring something from outside into the building and I was pleased with the way that the light strips of text illuminate the form. Its difficult to photograph though.
On Tuesday I had a visit from a troop of 'Rainbows' and their leaders, mums and siblings of various ages. They were a lovely lot, very interested in what it was like to be an artist and very keen on being shown everything after which we did some big drawings on the floor and some of us got very grubby indeed!
All the glitches and problems of the preceeding week resolved themselves at the eleventh hour (literally in this case as the private view started at noon!) and everything went well. Lots of people came to the opening and it was especially lovely to see people who had been involved in the project during the year.
Its been ages since I had time to write an entry. There hasn'tbeen time to reflect on progress (or the lack of it). I can't remember an exhibition that has been such hard work to sort out. Partly, I suppose that's because I have done so much work this year and there is only a limited space to show it. The exhibition has had to be an overview of the year rather than a distillation. I know that once I have had time to think about things I will be able to resolve how I am going to use / present the work in the future.
In the last couple of weeks there have been a ridiculous number of things out of my control that have gone wrong; to the point that when I opened the second pot of white paint that I was using for the screen in my space and found that it was blue, I just laughed.
The private view is tomorrow between 12 and 3pm. Note to self: artist initiated projects are brilliant, liberating opportunities which allow you step outside your box but they are also a lot of hard work!
Today I am assembling the last few pieces of work for the exhibition. Some of the pieces are ones that are added to daily and will only really be finished at the end of the residency. There is one in particular, a book which is growing, one page at a time over the twelve months. However, I'm a bit behind with sewing the pages together. Eventually it will be bound using coptic binding which looks a bit like blanket stitch and works with loose single sheets rather than folded ones. The pages have been coloured with sampled pigments from wherever I have been working that day so some are coloured with clay from the commons and others with dust from the church. Its an earthy version of a book of days and is a sort of opposite to one I have been making with local people. That book is white and embossed and made to catch the light. I call these peices 'books' however unbook-like they appear because I don't know what else to call them but really they are sculptures whose form is being generated by the process by which they are being made.
