Wood for the Trees

I am in the very early stages of planning a bigger exhibition than I have ever attempted before.  With the mentoring and support of Meadow Arts I am embarking on setting up The Leap Open, an exhibition of work by artists within 10 years of graduating or 5 years of completing their Masters’ degree.  The aim of the exhibition is to highlight the work of artists taking the long leap from college to mid-career and boosting their exposure and inclusion in the art world conversation and exchange.
The title of my blog is just so fitting!  Wood for the trees – I am really getting the feeling of being in a forest of opportunity and I have to choose just a few to take up.  I am a child in a sweetshop in the art world.  I keenly remember back in about 2002 reading a-n print magazine and so wanting to belong to that world.  I call it this world now, finding myself somewhere within it.  Now I’m here I have to prevent myself from overload, to ensure I can really make the most of each project I am involved with.

I have just taken down my work from The Young Open in Hereford with 13 other artists in St Peters church as part of the h. Art week.  As one of the organisers I have been experiencing the work involved in the whole thing.  With all the organising of this and an exhibition ‘PaperFields’ coming up in October (see publicity material attached, designed by Daisy Rickards) I have had to make do with only a few days or hours for my own practice each week recently.  It feels greedy, but I know I need at least 2 whole days of making to be at my best.  The other thing I have been lacking is a visit to exhibitions outside of my locality.  I’m hoping I can fit in a trip to Tate Britain next week to see the Late Turner – Painting Set Free exhibition as well as take in other gems at the Britain to re-charge me!

My current work has involved pitching intuitive painting against text on a surface. I am finding my work most interesting when there is a lot of uncertainty in it.  I often pick up work I’ve done in the past year and re-visit it and with my new approach something often clicks and something exciting happens.  When I just have to do something  – this is the only way I can describe it – I’m often working with words and yet beyond them.

I’ll be printing at The Print Shed within the week – starting with Intaglio engraving – I am really looking forward to it; I haven’t done a great deal of printing before, mostly lino print, but I am itching to get going now I have an idea of what’s possible.  Cy Twombly’s aquatints (Untitled II, 1967. Etching, open bite, and aquatint) really caught my eye during research last year.

Lots of projects on the go, I really need to learn how to say no!

The piece of work in the photos, I’ve just been working on – think it’s finished now.  I had originally been working on it in the time before the degree show at college and called it ‘unneutral’, but that doesn’t fit it anymore.  Am wanting to battle out in paint and text, mostly because it’s my own battle in my work.  The orginal text was pasted on and cut off and re-pasted.  Now I’ve gone into it in dark paint and then (stealing from Kate Morgan-Clare) using white marker pen to write over the dark areas of paint. While doing it I’m thinking that the writing is going into and out of the paper.

The hang for the h.Art Young Open Exhibition is on Monday 1st Sept – coming around very quickly!

We have combined PV invites with 2 other city venues – all on different evenings, our PV is on Tue 2nd 6-8pm – so a very short run up from delivery of work – Monday, to the opening evening the next day.

We have display screens still to paint in Hereford. The directors of Framework Herefordshire (an organisation set up to support emerging artists who live, work or have studied in the county) handling much of the planning of this are now fairly spread out geographically – me in Abergavenny, Alex in Nuneaton, Daisy in Worcester, Marion a drive from Hereford and Johnny is the only one in Hereford.  We are in constant email communication, have regular meetings.  Sometimes it isn’t enough, so we’re going to have video calls more.

And also – the downside to all that funding stuff is I haven’t decided what to display yet!  There is lots to choose from, but I’m erring towards showing some of my most recent work where I’ve decided to pitch intuitive painting against writing, in the same piece.  I don’t think its become destructive enough yet, I want to PUSH the writing and PUSH the painting until one of them takes over. Haven’t got there yet!

It is now only 7 weeks to our R K Burt Gallery Exhibition show ‘Paperfields’ and I have used all my available time (5 hours a day, including last weekend) preparing our funding application to help us get there and help with the cost of it all.  35 hours in the past week to get it all ready (and I hope I did a good job!)

It was made a little harder in that it’s for a group exhibition and so I need lots of details from the other artists to get it together and being August with people away made it very hard!

I am relieved to have got it done, and now it is time to get on with some artwork.  I managed to limit what I had to do today to 3 relatively simple tasks, done at the Apple Store Gallery studios in Hereford.  And I took up the kind offer to use their studios today as I wanted to do something messy after all that number crunching and writing onto my laptop!  (My son has been doing a drama activity in Hereford this week, which has given me time – unusually for the holidays – in the middle of the day to work.  My holiday work routine usually involves getting up 2hours earlier than I otherwise would to get whatever I need to do done- then having an active as possible day,  – then getting back to art after dinner.)

I took up any offers of help from others to read through our application as came my way!

Hopefully the next one wont take quite as much time to get done!

With 8 weeks to go until we (7 graduates and students from Hereford College of Arts) put up our exhibition in Union St, London, it’s hotting up!

The group are:

Daisy Rickards
Kate Morgan-Clare
Rosie Daffern
Alex Weaver
Jack Clough
Ethan Carey Seaton
and me!

I’m coordinating the exhibition.

Kate Morgan-Clare is seeking (and with success!) sponsorship for various things we need. So far she’s had results in finding a local luxury biscuit company and cider company who are willing to donate these goodies for our opening (Wed 15th Oct) in return for having their logo’s on our publicity.  She is also liasing with college’s marketing department to help raise our profile.

Daisy is taking the lead with publicity – currently getting our poster design together.  We each had the chance to submit ideas and material to be used in the publicity and Daisy’s designing for us to choose the best for purpose as a group.  Daisy is keeping us on our toes about fundraising and any other things I miss as we go.

Alex is lead in fundraising – he’s made us an Indie gogo account and made a video outlining what we are doing, who’s involved and what goodies donors can receive as a thank you.  It’s been online for a very brief time and we’ve had our 1st donation – feels great!  We are also putting in an application for Grants for the Arts with the Arts Council England.  We are about to submit it in a few days, meant to have it in much sooner, but end of year show, holidays and graduation got in the way.  Sadly, Alex and Rosie (also exhibiting) have moved to Nuneaton, so our communication is mostly electronic.  Really miss the face-to-face banter!

Rosie is applying for funding with support from all with the number of sections to be completed!

Ethan and Jack are stepping in with help as and when needed.

We are having meetings, about monthly now, but we’ll be increasing them now as we draw closer to the exhibition.

With Rosie and Alex at a distance, I am thinking that having them present when any of us meet via Skype would be really helpful. We’d feel more in tune with each other.

We have a time plan developing and we are allocating who will set-up, when each of us will steward and dismantle (and clean) after taking down the exhibition.  Still subject to change at this time.

The whole exhibition preparation feels really huge now, with it approaching rapidly.  I feel there is too much to do, but it is helpful for members of the group to take on lead roles, but not leave anything ALL to one person.  Speaking to a painter the other day who said the way group exhibitions are hard to manage and complicated is why he just puts on solo exhibitions now.  Having only put on a few exhibitions with others so far, I can relate to his sentiment – so complex and we all risk believing someone else is doing x, y or z but actually they’re not.

Communication is (obviously) essential.  Inclusion. Not easy. All but one of us are on facebook – so we do most of our banter and planning on there with the combination of being able to post photos and text and files.  Some via email, but again, not everyone responds to that. Others respond better with a text message and others still through a phonecall (hard to keep track of all details covered when talking quickly on phone I find).   Any tips on communicating better in a group via technology would be most welcome.