First day of Art Week at school. Lovely people and a huge amount of enthusiasm and creativity. When do people stop being open to colour and the joy of making things? I am always amazed that generally life as an adult is so predictable and colourless and that the capacity for the oppposite is more generally the rule for children.
Looking at yesterday's post again I thought that it wasn't really like that. In fact yesterday was also a day when I met interesting people, had a good day with my son (who is feeling better today) and made my first tentative steps towards learning a bookbinding technique. Thank you Noel.
A beautiful looking day, sunny and clear. Unfortunately it was one of those days when everything seems to conspire to trip one up. On Fridays I am 'in residence' in the church, it's when people can drop in and see what I am up to but today my son was ill and I hadn't arranged any contingency cover. So no plan 'B'. I also had to get materials over to the school where I am doing some workshops so I had to rearrange everything. A day full of 'doing stuff' rather than making work.
Today I am preparing for next week's work at a school. I am wishing I had asked for funding for another artist to help with this aspect of the project. I suppose I had never thought that it would be seized upon so eagerly by schools when I was making the applications. Still the teachers seem very involved and I'm sure everything will go well. I like to get the organisation and logistics very well organised so that I can concentrate on the creative side of things when it comes to it. Yesterday when I met the staff again to discuss arrangements for the week we looked at images to use as starting points, things like leaves and seed pods to examine structure.
For the rest of the day I am going to work on papermaking. I am making a 'book' over the course of the year. One page for each day of the residency and I need to prepare some more paper. On Friday a friend, Noel is coming over to the studio at St George's Church to show me some bookbinding techniques. A skill I never thought I would need. This year I seem to be learning new skills every week!
Today, being Monday is admin day. My project website has developed an interesting problem which is that I can't upload images to it. The main reason for having a webite being of course to show how the project is going. Its going to be an interesting day!
This afternoon I am visiting Hurst Park School who are basing their art week on the Papertrails project. I am looking forward to the week but we need to sort out some of the practical, organisational side of the art week. Claire Barwell, the visual arts co-ordinator has seen quite a lot of my work but the other teachers will need to be shown a little more about the project. As my website is playing up I am going to have to show them some of my older work.
