On Tuesday, I went to an artists meeting – set up by fellow blogger Josie Jenkins ( https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/skygroundbeing/post/52429535 )
It was wet and miserable, it had been a horrible day in work (half term – loads of kids ) and we couldn’t find the place. I felt like turning back and going home.
I’m glad now that I went, but it wasn’t totally what I expected.
There’s been a lot of ‘chatter’ on social networking sites over the years …a lot of unease, agitation and some downright anger in some cases.
Put yourself in this position… you live or work in a large City. There are many, many studio spaces and artists groups, probably hundreds and hundreds of artists.
OK, so now imagine there is a big artists festival – The Biennial or WCAF for example. Both want to represent an artists group.
What would you do – being one of the many, many artist mentioned above, if only ONE particular studio group was chosen for these festivals? The same group every time. No one else is asked, there is no choice, no way to apply, it is a completely closed door.
Hard to believe its happens isn’t it? Hmmmm
Anyway, everyone was very polite. the group in question were only mentioned once ‘They are perhaps very good at marketing themselves’, said as a kind of hopeful suggestion. Yes, perhaps :-/
But obviously, that wasn’t what the meeting was about. It was about getting artists together to encourage us all to support each other and ‘make something happen’ during the Biennial year.
I was surprised how many groups attended. It was a good turn out for such a miserable night and I’m sure Josie will do an update about it on her next blog post.
It did make me think about how much support we give each other. How many artists exhibitions do we actually go to? Out of all of the ones I was personally invited to, I visited one last week. Mainly because this artist had made the effort to visit one of mine.
I met some people I hadn’t seen for a while at the meeting, so it was good to catch up. I miss that ‘artist talking’ thing. There’s never time or opportunity, so it makes you feel like you are part of something, instead of going on your own all of the time.
I’m looking forward to the next meeting.
The next day, my day off, I headed back to the pottery studio to glaze my planes. I expected them to have cracked in the kiln, so I was really happy to see that they had all worked.
I really have no idea what direction these are going in, I’m just enjoying the experimentation and the working in a different medium.
