Is it over yet?

Oh i'm pooped! I've spent the last few weeks/months working towards events that all happened over the last weekend, and now i'm just about recovering. I slept for 24 hours mind you...

Saturday was a lovely day, spent in the sunshine in Uphill Quarry with artists and friends (most of whom are artists, some of whom are rollergirls)

Not a very brilliant photo, but you can see the lovely high-vis jackets we had to wear (we being the official Arts Festival bods, not everyone who attended)

A big pile of cucumber sandwiches from cantfindamatch.com's performance

Sunday was spent in The Mythical Beast Sweet Shoppe. I had so much fun working as a Sweet Shoppe keeper- I think the highlight of the day for me was selling sweets to a real live lifeboat man (I have a fascination with the RNLI that's inexplicable).

We had lots of lovely visitors, including fellow Westonian Karen, who I 'met' last year when the Grand Pier burnt down, and now have had the pleasure of meeting in real life too- I hope we get to spend some time drinking cups of tea and talking about art in the near future.

couldn't have asked for nicer weather- in fact it was so sunny over the weekend I caught the sun a bit and ended up with heat stroke...

Just a quickie

I just updated The Mythical Beast Sweet Shoppe blog with some photos from the venue we shall be using- take a look

I'm at full pelt at the moment organising things for my three events during Weston-super-Mare Arts Festival.

There's the Sweet Shoppe, which will be open weekends during the festival (12th Sept-11th October)

Frou Frou, an exhibition of work featuring Cathy Cullis, Joetta Maue, Karen Ruane, Lou Trigg and Elin Thomas, which will be opening on September 11th and running until the end of the festival at a boutique in town.

And then there's the Art in Uphill Quarry event that will be taking place on September 12th, from 10am-dusk and will feature artists creating site specific work, performance, a picnic and lots of sweets.

I've also just had it confirmed that I shall be curating the exhibition space in the University gallery- this was mentioned to me earlier in the summer, but I got the official confirmation today from Kate Parsons my tutor there. It's really exciting to think of having a semi-official gallery to play with, wondering how much different i'll have to do things to fit in with an organisation. In the past i've pretty much only curated events/exhibitions at spaces i've set up myself or borrowed for the duration- haven't really had to play along with anyone elses rules, but this will be good practice for next year when I should be down in Falmouth studying for an MA in Curatorial Practice.

A sort of to do list...

Some of the many things I have ticking along at the moment include:

organising a sculpture exhibition in the quarry

some of the artists that are going to be showing work in the quarry

curating an exhibition of lovely embroidery work at Frou Frou

Work from Karen Ruane, Joette Maue, Lou Trigg and Cathy Cullis

rustling up artists for The Mythical Sweet Shoppe UK

Proposed Venue for the Shoppe

and anything else that The Weston-super-Mare Arts Festival chooses to throw my way.

In addition to Arts Festival work I have been invited to be the curator at the Bath Spa University Gallery, at the Weston College Campus, which means i'm going to be doing a lot of emailing and plotting and planning in the hopes that we can get the space off the ground this year.

As well as all that I am still trying to make my own work- I shall be exhibiting as part of the quarry exhibition and as part of the Sweet Shoppe- just when I shall get my work made i'm not so sure!

But...before all that happens I am heading off to this place:

photo by rbanks

I'm going to MOOMINLAND!!!

Art in the Quarry

Yesterday I had a lovely day with a visit from Kirsty and a trip to Uphill Quarry where I had arranged to meet with artists who were interested in taking part in an event there that I am organising in September. Weston has two quarries, and the old Town Quarry is the one where pretty much everyone headed to for the meeting, until I pointed out that we were going to the other one. This highlighted the fact to me that when we come to the event we really need to make sure that people know where we are!

We took some time to investigate the space and stake our claims on patches of ground- the event will take place over one day (September 12th) so all things are liable to change, but I wanted to make sure people had visited the space and didn't just turn up on the day with work that wasn't going to fit in. One or two people revised their ideas whilst we were there- the wind and the noise from the boat yard were an ever present element and several of us felt our work would need to encompass.

Whilst we were at the site I started to consider what I would be bringing to the space- up until now it's all been about rounding up other people, but sat in the Quarry I started to visualise myself working there and creating something. At the moment I am buzzing with thoughts of dens made from tableclothes, knitting, sound recordings, and lantern shows...it will be interesting to see what of this comes to pass.

I am still looking for participants in the event so if you are interested, or know of anyone that might be, please get in touch.


And I have to share this link I found today after following a trail from the newly revived Sew Green blog: Ghost Town Farm is Novella Carpenter's blog all about her back yard farm. If anyone could get me to start eating meat again it's this girl- I love the fact she is growing her own veg and animals in her back yard, all in Oakland, a place I have a strange fondness for.