What I really want to do is get on with practical, creative work for the final show. What I have to do first feels like an army assault course. I have this lovely pink cotton dress with slightly conical/comical bust-darting just waiting for me to stitch on it. But no, first I have to finish writing 120 reports… I’m about half way through (I only do the art bit, so don’t feel too sorry for me). Arts week is a fortnight away so I have to send out emails to our visiting artists with last minute arrangements and confirmation, requests for invoices and so on. Then I have to timetable myself and the room, which over the week don’t necessarily coincide. I have ordered some materials, but this morning – note it’s Saturday – have to go to Worcester Resource Exchange for ferreting about purposes… you never know what you might find.
Then there’s the day to day stuff, my son’s birthday this week, and Father’s day of course. Got to get to the farm for the meat. This family not terribly keen on vegetarianism. I could probably do with doing some housework, but as the MA has progressed, Mike seems to be doing most of that, bless him!
Then Arts week… 5 days of jollity and mayhem. Some teachers love it, but most tolerate it, a few loathe it. I have to keep my helpful enthusiastic smile on all week. I do love the thing, but supporting other people’s hatred of the whole affair can be draining. This time round I plan to do a variety of stuff… printing, embroidery, weaving, clay stuff, drawing, painting, a bit more printing, collage… with children ranging from 4-11.
The deadline is looming for the catalogue to be sent to the printers for the MA show.
The “art dept” of the local papers have misunderstood my instructions and have sent me a proof of my advert for the LOAF event, totally reworked on the computer, instead of just using the hand drawn one I sent as a jpeg as they requested. If I’d wanted to have it done on a computer I’d have done it myself. They have made about a dozen errors too! So I am going to have to have a difficult conversation on Monday about that one.
At some point before the 14th July, the shed has to be dismantled, loaded onto the van, transported to Stourbridge and re-erected for LOAF.
http://www.elenathomas.co.uk/events
I need to borrow some sort of awning in case it rains in the middle of July (hollow laughter). I printed out a table with time slots for people to take turns to make tea/ bake cakes/invigilate/sell raffle tickets and so on… getting people to write their names into it is quite difficult.
By the 19th July, all of this will be over (apart from show at end of August), term will be finished and I will be able to breathe again. I then have about 4 weeks to make, sew, record, practice and perform.
I shall wallow in those four weeks, soak up, relax, be invigorated by them.