Well my #Collage365 show at Bridport Arts Centre opened this morning. We finished the labelling and soon after the first ones sold. So the show is off to a good start and is looking great.
I, on the other hand, have run out of energy and am completely run down. So I need to get to bed and get the batteries recharged.
Please note that I am ignoring the fact that this is another round number!
Well of course the answer is “a fine piece of art for today’s #Letter365” and that is what I did. I am absolutely cream-crackered now after working on getting my #Collage365 show up at Bridport Arts Centre and I still had a task to work on this evening so I can get it just right before it opens at 10am tomorrow. Yet I still managed to create a decent piece for the project. I had in mind what I wanted to do and the result was great – though I could have done with something that took less time! But what you can’t expect is anymore writing here.
I can’t say any more – and anyway it’s late having been out to see Mark Steel at Bridport Arts Centre – but in this case I think it is an idea that works in many sizes. Sometimes I wonder if I have the skill to make bigger – I mean much, much bigger – versions of ideas I make in small mostly I think it’s a little bit of fear and lack of confidence. What I have wondered is why I stuck as stamp on and posted this to a place I visited an hour or two later!
It’s been a busy day today. I sorted out the final pieces for my forthcoming #Collage365 show at Bridport Arts Centre and took them off to the framers. Then went and bought our second car, mainly for Sally’s commute and round town. And that took up so much of the day that by the time I had done #Letter365 we had ran out of time to get to Paul Newman’s preview evening in Gillingham, about which I am really gutted. And now we are off to meet some friends and say farewell before they move and another friend is coming to stay over. The reason I mention all this is that, when under pressure, all sorts of things pop into my head. I get scared to do the things I think are needed in case I bugger it up and have to start again. When will I learn to just do what my heart tells me?
We went to see Kilter Theatre‘s “The Last Post” tonight, a sensational performance that takes place inside the Mobile Sorting Office, which was parked on Bridport Arts Centre‘s forecourt. We really enjoyed their piece and the guys from the cast agreed to take responsibility for the delivery of my #Letter365 artwork. I have given them a free hand to deliver it in whatever way they choose and they have a Mobile Sorting Office stamp which they will use on No212’s envelope. So pleased to be able to link with other artists working with a postal theme, though since the MSO handles a lot of undelivered and undeliverable mail, who knows what will happen!
As to today’s piece itself: I love it! It is also somehow quite fitting for the delivery mode too – not sure why but I feel it is.
I thought I would save the price of a stamp and deliver today’s piece by hand. I could have just wandered round to Bridport Arts Centre from the studio but since I was going to The Gravity Drive gig there this evening I thought I would deliver it then – except I left it at home and so had to go back at the end. Jonty was there but refused to pose because he was all sweaty from …from who knows what, so he suggested Ziggy take it, but since she didn’t have the key to the office had to deliver it to Jonty anyway!
The piece itself is quite an unusual one. I had a mind to play around with some particular materials – not specifically for #Letter365 – and remembered how I had used something previously and thought it would work just fine for today’s artwork.
The postie was just collecting when I got to the box: not the last post (we are seeing a performance of that, a play performed in a mobile sorting office van by Kilter Theatre on Saturday at Bridport Arts Centre).
Today’s piece re-approaches some work I did a while back and I want to re-explore in that area again soon so it was worth doing something for #Letter365 in that vein.
And the story is that I was going to be at Bridport Arts Centre tonight for Story Cafe (to be followed tomorrow by a mini story festival tomorrow) and since the special #Letter365 box is broken at present Beki at the bar had to take delivery. I pondered for some time about how Beki spelt her name as I was certain it was not the ordinary way. I almost didn’t use her name because I didn’t want to get it wrong! But then of course as an artist it is good to use my eyes and read the name badge she is wearing in the photograph!!
It’s a first day of issue for the stamp but I almost forgot to do this post on the blog. My daughter rang as I was starting it. She is off to South Africa tomorrow for a holiday with friends who live there. Then it was time to get some food for our meal and tend to Bramble and we were out this evening at a gig at the Arts Centre. So it all got forgotten until almost the last number of the show and I started worrying. No problem in the end as I had loads of time.
I was thinking that I hadn’t delivered one by hand recently and thought Thursday would be good because we are at a gig at Bridport Arts Centre that night. Then I realised that there was a new stamp issue and it would be good to do a first day cover. So I thought I would wander round there and take a last look at the Greta Berlin show before it finishes. So imagine my surprise when I saw the box was missing! I don’t know: Polly Gifford, the Director, is leaving soon to take up a new exciting role in Hastings and already the place is falling apart! Lovely Jill took delivery and certainly makes a much more interesting and colourful photo than my hand holding an envelope by a box! She said the box had broken. The question is, “how?” When Rothko’s painting was vandalised at the Tate it was in all the Media. My work is removed without a how-do-you-do let alone a splash in the local press!