Papertrails Residency

What an incredibly busy week it has been! I feel as if I havent had time to draw breath let alone write anything. The trouble with doing a project like this is that as well as 'being' the artist you are also everything else as well. I am learning so much about the whole process but sometimes I just long to be able to get on with the main core work. However if I had had the choice I would have got someone else to do things like the education work and I would really have lost out on a valuable and uplifting experience. It does make putting up an exhibition difficult though. An exhibition of a project like Papertrails which has a fairly large outreach and community aspect is incomplete without reflecting that work. I have sometimes envied other bloggers who are engaged on projects where they can focus on one aspect and develop it thoroughly wheras I sometimes feel as if I am being pulled in all directions. But when I look at the whole project rather than just my 'work' I feel rather differently. In the first three months of Papertrails I worked with 355 people and had over 125 visitors to my studio. One group of children wrote poems about the work they did as a result of the project and I have had such good feedback. It has been a good thing. So those elements have to be reflected in the exhibition as well as what might be more narrowly described as my 'work'.