FANTASTIC!
I just logged on to my email – the first time since arriving in Stockholm – and see that I have been offered the residency studio at wip:sthlm.
I’ll call/email Erik at wip:sthlm to arrange to meet him and see the studio next week.
It feels as though things are coming together – and I’m not just here for an extended holiday. I can start to call this a “residency”. I can be in Stockholm as an artist.
I will get to meet other artists, make new work and new networks!
FANTASTIC!
Great meeting on Monday with Ken and Julia from M2 Gallery. We first met in Norway last year, Julia was another of Michael Petry’s Golden Rain artists. Since that first meeting over Margaritas in their suite at the Stavanger Clarion I’ve got to know them better and really admire their passion and enthusiasm for art, design and architecture. They are an incredibly generous couple, and it’s always a pleasure to spend time with them. In another of my tiny world venn diagram experiences it turns out that I taught some of Julia’s jewelry students when I used to teach theory at Middlesex (a good eight or nine years ago now).
They’ve invited me not only to show in the M2 Gallery, but also to install work in their house for London Open House 2009. I love their home – and feel incredibly honoured that they’ve asked me. It feels absolutely right.
So on Monday Ken and Julia came to my studio to select work and for me to show them the piece I’m proposing for the gallery. I want to make something specific for the gallery and have planned something that I thought was simple and low tech – however it gave Ken more than a few anxieties. There were other pieces that could have gone in the gallery but I really wanted to see my ‘site-specific’ idea become a reality.
Back at theirs, and after a lovely dinner (thank you very much!) I think we’ve resolved the practical issues that I hadn’t foreseen.
The show opens on the Sunday of the Open House weekend (19 & 20 September), so this evening I booked my return flights from Stockholm! I like that I have a return visit during my sabbatical. I don’t expect anyone I meet in Sweden to come over for the weekend but it means that I have a live project to talk about and should have some great new pictures once it’s installed …
Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m being an artist or playing at being an artist!!
Whatever it is it’s great fun and I am thoroughly enjoying myself at the moment.
visit www.quay2c.com
Artist living and working in Uppsala, Sweden and very occasionally London
Fashioning my universe from the material of other men's lives and a good amount of glitter. www.stuartmayes.com @studiostuartmayes
