ARTISTS TALKING

# 270 [23 January 2012]

I can hardly believe  Forth Valley Open Studios have come around again.

How things have changed!

We are now a registered C.I.C. (Community Interest Company).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_interest_company

 Already it has resulted in a streamlining of our operations. We have a core of five officials (or directors to give us our official title) and we are working on establishing a support group (committee) around us.

We had a problem.

I remember one of my tutors at Glasgow School of Art telling me that every problem should be regarded as a challenge, an opportunity to do or try something new.

So it is with us this year.

Delta Studios, who hosted our exhibition for the previous two years, said they would be unable to accommodate us.

We had to find alternative premises, a place that could accommodate the work of around 80-100 artists, is free and we did not have to invigilate since all artists would be tied up with their own studios and therefore not available.

 Oh yes and we had to do this in less than four months.

Anyone who has ever curated exhibitions will recognize the challenge we had given ourselves.

We approached the Smith Museum and gallery in Stirling more in hope than in any great expectation knowing how far in advance galleries and museums programme their events.

So we were delighted when the curator Elspeth King offered us space. Now the Changing Room gallery, Stirling only contemporary art centre is looking to see how they might accommodate us too.

So we will have two venues that fit all our criteria!

I suspect all this would not have happened if we had not become a C.I.C.

This week sees the closing date for all applications for this year Forth Valley Open Studios and we expect the final figure of participating studios to be over 80.

# 269 [21 December 2011]

Its weeks since I last updated my blog so what’s happened?

Well, I guess it’s been a period of introspection and the realisation that my blog is not focused enough.

Ever since I joined Blipfoto.com – where you put up a daily photo from your life- it has made me realise how unfocused my blog is.

To start with it’s far too general. Secondly I do not put up the personal stuff – left over from my days in journalism – and it’s the personal stuff that often makes a blog “sticky” or the fact one is giving specialised information, which would not be available elsewhere.

 I have finished another e-book. Now I got to upload it to Amazon via Kindle – that is another steep learning curve requiring knowledge of HTML so I have started the search for someone to help me.

Meanwhile have another solo exhibition at Scion House, Stirling University Innovation Park but not until February 2013!  

Forth Valley Open Studios is now a registered not-for-profit company (Community Interest Company) and we hope this will enable us to attract grants and sponsorship though given today’s economic climate we are not that hopeful.

One spin-off of FVOS is that it has resulted in a flurry of artistic activities in central Scotland and the local council is conducting an in-depth survey of the creative industries in the area.  We have already had meetings with the researcher and she tells us one of the reasons people thought nothing was happening in the area is that most of the artists are home-based and do not show up on the official business registers.

She has discovered, what we had already learnt through FVOS, that there is a very lively artist scene here.

It just operates below the traditional business radar.

And we all recognize  a need for a central artistic hub to bring together, share and co-ordinate all these activities.

# 268 [1 December 2011]

Tomorrow night we have the first pop up networking event in Stirling organised by Joe Hall, a young woman new to the area.

She tells me it is already over-subscribed.

We are delighted.

For those of us who live in central Scotland this area is like a cultural desert for the contemporary art scene, in its widest scene, with little in the way of printmaking, digital, music, performance or film.

OK there are little pockets of activity – MacRobert Arts centre and Changing Room- but no central hub for contemporary artists.

Everything happens in either Glasgow or Edinburgh.

Through Forth Valley Open Studios we created the first ever database of all artists working in the area- and there are over a 100 of us- but most work in the traditional arts and crafts sector.

Hopefully these series of pop-up art events will help create a vibrant artistic community in the central belt of Scotland so that artists no longer feel they have to migrate to Glasgow, Edinburgh, or worse, London on emerging from art college.

# 267 [16 November 2011]

I reckon we are fast approaching a “tipping point” for the arts in central Scotland.

Instead of us being caught in a cultural wilderness between Glasgow and Edinburgh we are beginning to establish our own identity with a vibrant art community.

Last Saturday saw the opening of the Elizabeth Blackadder exhibition in Stirling University to celebrate her 80^th anniversary.

(http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/1526302)

This followed on the previous weeks highly success Bridge of Allan Arts and Crafts Festival- first ever for the area-and we have two “pop-up” events scheduled – one is a weekend exhibition by two FVOS members, Libby Yule and Catherine Froy in West Mosside and the other is a “networking/music evening in the former Changing Room in Stirling Arcade.

Meanwhile my own work involves finishing off “Sully” a book about Wales and I am about to dip into electronic publishing.

# 266 [7 November 2011]

Ten years on 

The other day I received an email from Glasgow School of Art asking alumni who had graduated ten years ago what they were doing now.

It stopped me in my tracks.  Was it really ten years since I graduated?

During the past ten years there have been immense changes in the way the world operates thanks to digitisation of our cultural landscape and the globalisation of our economy, (and of course 9/11.)

How has this impacted on artists and on a personal level, my own practise?

Well to start with I use electronic devices and software  (iphone an ipad) that were not even invented then and often distribute work through social networking sites like Youtube, Flickr, Facebook and Blipfoto.

None of this existed ten years ago.

The other evening at a gallery opening of Sue Grierson and Belinda Gilbert in the Changing Room, Stirling we discussed the impact of new technologies on artistic practises for Sue, a graduate of the GSA MFA programme, also works with new technologies.

She reckoned that the next ten years would see even bigger changes.

OMG!

Meanwhile I am about to suss out iCloud.

Does this mean that all my external hard drives are obsolete?

In the “real world” as opposed to the virtual world we had on Saturday the first ever Bridge of Allan Contemporary Arts and Craft event.

 It was phenomenally successful, even the organisers were taken by surprise.

Far from the “virtual world” supplanting the real world it simply seems to fire up more enthusiasm for the arts, particularly crafts, by unleashing pent-up creativity in the community.

Three people working on email pulled this event together at short notice.

 They built on the work of Forth Valley Open Studios and many people are now talking about an artistic “tipping point” having been reached with Bridge of Allan and Stirling becoming another focus for the arts in Scotland, a focus long shared by Glasgow and Edinburgh.

In fact two years ago, before Forth Valley Open Studios, the central belt of Scotland was considered an artistic wilderness.

 But the next ten years could be radically different for all the arts throughout the UK as we face an uncertain future  as the full force of cutbacks in arts education and budgets are felt.

I for one could not have afforded to go to Glasgow School of Art as a mature student. The fees are now £27,000 and I would not have  been eligible for a student loan.

# 265 [27 October 2011]

Back from Morocco .

I am now a blip photo convert –www.blipfoto.com/Libra- and getting a pic up each day proved a challenge from my iphone in North Africa.

Despite all the very clear instructions they sent me from the site for uploading I failed to do so.

So I asked the IT guy in the Riad where we were staying, in the heart of the Medina in Marrakech, and he not only loaned me a card reader but the use of their computer too!

Morocco has a well-deserved international reputation for beautiful craftwork and I bought a genuine old Berber artefact. Except nobody, not even the Berber up in the Atlas mountains from whom I purchased it had any idea what it was once used for.

PS On my return I found the cause of my failure to upload pix – the confirmation email from the blipfoto site, an essential part of the uploading process had gone into junk mail. And I had not checked.

Ouch!

# 264 [6 October 2011]

In memori - Steve Jobs

He changed the way we live.

His motto was:" Stay hungry, stay foolish".

The blogosphere is teeming with tributes to him.

This is mine on blipfoto.

# 263 [29 September 2011]

I used to work on The Herald newspaper in Glasgow many years ago – before I took redundancy to go to Glasgow School of Art-

I was one of the writers for the Women’s page (OMG! that sounds so sexist…).

Anyway The Herald has now launched a weekly Women’s Herald magazine and I bought my first copy today.

Will I buy it again? .....the jury is out.

Most of my newspaper reading is done online these days. For free.

# 262 [24 September 2011]

Well, we have signed the papers  for Forth Valley Open Studios to become a C.I.C – Community interest Company.

 This does not give us charity status – which would require us to jump through many more hoops- but it ensures we continue in perpetuity and opens the doors to, we hope, gaining grants and sponsorship.

Spring Fling Open Studios on the Scottish Borders already formed themselves into a C.I.C.some years  and we are using them as our role model.

Unlike Spring Fling we have not had any public funding and the only reason we have been able to reach the stage we are at in less than two years is thanks to the internet. So much of the work from gathering a database to registering, design and marketing  our Open Studios has been done online.

Another new venture I have become absorbed in is  www.blipfoto.com

This Edinburgh based project have created an amazing online global village for photographers.

If you have never visited the site then I would strongly recommend it:

www.blipfoto.com

My work is on www.blipfoto.com/Libra

# 261 [11 September 2011]

I have become a blip addict ever since signing up a few weeks ago.

It is an amazing photo-sharing site and the bit I like is the social networking which in this case really works maybe because it is linked to Twitter, Facebook in such a way as to make it very easy to share.

http://www.blipfoto.com/entry/1397725

Basically you are only allowed to upload one photo a day to the site and this is a good exercise and challenge.

I have just come back from a weekend in London . You can even upload from your smartphone.

Visited the Miro exhibition, bit disappointing I thought but then I was comparing it with th Miro Foundation in Barcelona which I love.

Also Miro is one of those artists whose work lends itself to prints which of course we are all familiar with.