Brilliant news! The Lightbox Gallery, where my current project is based, has won the Art Fund Prize. This prize formerly the Gulbenkian Prize is an extremely prestigious one and well deserved in my opinion. The Gallery is not only a beautiful new building but also has a team of enthusiastic, positive people working to establish it as a much needed art resource in an area without much art provision. It has a good local history gallery too and always seems to be full of school children and local visitors as well as those from further afield.
http://www.artfundprize.org.uk
This week, being half term is a break from my papermaking and recycling workshops too, giving me a chance to continue with my own project within the project. Coming up soon is the Surrey Artists Open Studios and towards the end of the week I am installing a small selection of work in the window of Waterstones in Guildford to publicise it. So another busy week.
http://www.surreyopenstudios.org.uk/
Week five. The afternoon went very well. We did printmaking and burst into colour. The children made some good work and were happy to experiment. Some or all of these prints will be added to their book structures after the half term break. I am hoping that I'll be able to take their long strips of paper back into the Lightbox to hang by a window or somewhere the light can catch it. There are problems with being able to hang things though because being such a new building no-one wants to make holes anywhere. Drawing pins are a no-no! However Lynn, the education manager has promised to work out a method.
There are too many conflicting and competing things to do this week. To mix my metaphors, I have too many fingers in too many pies and my chickens are coming home to roost. On a more positive note though, the work for the Lightbox Gallery feels as if its working out. I am finding it really interesting to re-examine my relationship with 'stuff'.
Week four. We got on well today, finding textures in the courtyard garden and making paper from a variety of recycled materials. We also made another long composite sheet to hang with the others we had made last week. The materials we used to recycle into new paper included brown envelopes, pages from discarded books and money. The last was the most popular with the children. The idea of sticking hundreds of pounds worth of bank notes into a blender and seeing what happens is quite appealing! Before you go away with the thought that this art project is possibly over-funded if we can casually pulp money; be aware that this is pre shredded by the Bank of England and can be got from them free plus postage and packing! Monday saw me washing the shredded bank-notes in biological washing powder to remove the characteristic smell and grime off the paper. So I can also add money laundering to my CV.
The workshops at Farnham on Saturday went really well. It was a very enjoyable day if extremely busy. Note to self; queuing system next time! Dozens of sheets of paper were made, mainly to be carried off by proud participants and a good time was had by all. Many thanks to the wonderful people who were conscripted to assist at short notice.
