Exhibiting at Thaxted

The Monday class from The Granary held our second art exhibition at Thaxted.  Liz showed print/collage, Cherry showed textile quilts and acrylic, Lynne watercolours and Margaret prints. I showed my latest 3 samplers, key fob and payroll.

Stitching (In)Significant Women

We had over 100 visitors over the weekend, but only sold one piece, plus many cards.  The rest of the group felt Thaxted was the wrong venue for our work.  I'm the only one not trying to sell my work.  Thaxted is only accessible if people travel by car, although I'm not sure whether people travel to any small exhibition by public transport.  The Guildhall also has a lot of steep stairs and no step-free access.  Nearly all visitors were friends and family of exhibitors.

I worked the Friday/Saturday and spent a fair amount of time talking to people about my work.  Good practice for talking at my Viva on 11 November! I had a poetry class on Sunday, but arrived at 4pm to strike the show.  Show struck quickly and all of us went home.

The following day, at The Granary, Cherry and Liz told me that my work had inspired a lot of comment from visitors on the last day.  It was their view that this body of work needs a bigger audience because of the response it inspires in other women.  They suggested The Festival of Quilts has a new Fine Art Textiles exhibition, expressly for textile work that is not quilting (3 layers joined by stitch).  I looked it up online, and for the 2019 show, the closing date was in May, long-listed by photographic images, then shortlisted by delivering the actual work to the selection panel.  There was nothing online for the 2020 show yet.  Hmmm.  Is my work this good? But if I don't try, I won't know.  And it would give me something to talk about in the Viva to the assessors.

Belton House, Grantham

Having handed in my thesis, Jim and I are having a couple of days away.  We went to Belton House, where we saw a Women and Power exhibition - this at the end of the National Trust's theme for the year.

Jim and I started with the below stairs tour.  As usual I was the one asking questions on the tour, some of which the tour guide did not know.  For example, if a beer ration was part of the wages (weak ale was a sterile drink when the water supply was suspect), but staff could have a cash bonus if they did not drink their full entitlement (men 3 pints per day, women 2), what happened if any of the staff were dissenters or teetotal.  The local church was Church of England, so presumably most staff would drink their entitlement.   We were taken into the strong room to see the silverware.  There was a huge silver punch bowl that one of the Earl's had been baptised in, coronets for the Earl and his wife and a complete silver dinner service that was loaned to No 10, when Thatcher was in power.  Belton House had to ask for it back when she left power, as No 10 staff appeared to forget to return it!

The four women focussed upon in Women & Power were Florence Woolward, Sophia Cust, Marian Alford and Nina Cust.

Florence Woolward 1854-1936 was the local rector's daughter, friendly with the Brownlow family through her father, and became a botanical illustrator.  The Marquess of Lothian was a world renowned orchid fancier, and Florrie was given the opportunity to paint the orchids.  This led to a major orchid catalogue in 1896, and although the first copies were attributed to the Marquess, the third publication, attributed her as assisting the Marquess!  Without Florrie there would be no record of this  orchid collection.

Sophia Cust 1811-1882 was the leisured daughter of the 1st Earl Brownlow, and painted watercolours of the gardens and mansion.  This gives the historical restoration of Belton some factual detail of the 19th century.

Marian Alford 1817-1888, was widowed at 34 and trustee of her eldest son, John Cust's, fortune until he came of age.  She was another watercolour artist and embroiderer.  Brought up in Italy she made many religious paintings as well as flower, landscape and humorous ones.  Founder member of Royal School of Needlework, promoting embroidery as employment for poor women.

Nina Cust 1867-1955 was the most intriguing.  Her story was that she was an intellect, writer and sculptor.  But she had a shotgun wedding to the philandering Harry Cust (info from the Belton tour). Research online indicates Harry fathered children (with bright blue eyes) with many women, but none with her!  One of his alleged children was with a maid at Belton, and this child is alleged to be Margaret Thatcher's mother. The alleged pregnancy of Nina Cust did not produce a child.  And Harry and Nina remained childless.  One of the interesting things here, is that NT literature talks freely about the shotgun wedding, where Harry was leant on by his cousin to marry Nina, but none of it refers to their childlessness.

Great day out.

Hand-in of Thesis and East End Women's Museum Summer Party

On Wednesday I handed my essay in - one day early!  Imogen had signed off all the paperwork, the previous day, and I had planned to stay with Darren for 2 nights.  (Darren, a trained chef, had cooked us a wonderful butternut squash risotto the previous night).  This gave me a spare day to get the thesis copied and bound, before hand-in.  But I grind my teeth severely at night and had left my retainer at home.  So I checked whether I could change my hand-in appointment, and dealt with that a day early - so I could go home and save my teeth!

On Thursday evening, I went to the EEWM summer party.  This was in the heart of Barking.  Lovely to see some old contacts, but most useful of all was that I could float the idea of my samplers being part of the opening exhibitions for the EEWM when it opens next year.  For the first time, I met some of the Trustees, all intelligent, capable young women.  Just the way they came across, they were women not to be messed with!  Very inspiring.  And two of them - I could see their faces focus with attention when I suggested my work was about unknown women of the area, and that outreach work could draw attention to women 'known to you' in art workshops.  Focussing on the ordinary and mundane.  It appeared this was something not mentioned before in their plans.  And Rachel and Fani (Director and admin) did not rule it out of hand either.  Rachel was ok with me using the EEWM in my Viva, for how my work might be used.

I also met Darren Rodwell, leader of the council, and the Mayor and Mayoress.  I am often cynical about the top brass at these type of events, but they certainly seemed to walk the talk about representing their community.  Despite my cynicism (learned from experience!) I was impressed with this event.

So it was a productive evening.

What Next?

I'm currently finessing the essay, for last tutorial on 17th Sept, hand-in 19th Sept, Viva 11 November.

I have 3 ideas for what next:

1. See whether my local gravel quarry will let me be artist-in-residence, to work with the skills of manual workers, who drive the quarry lorries.  Possibly an exhibition at Braintree library/musuem to celebrate local unsung manual workers.

2. Learn to do more poetry.  I like the way poetry can say a lot with a few words.  I know I am reacting against the discursive style of my thesis - I just find a lot of it verbose.  I want to say stuff in a powerful way - but with comparatively few words.

3. Art class is doing a term on sketchbooks for the Brooklyn sketchbook library project.  I'm really looking forward to this.  There are various themes - but Time Trapped appeals to me.   Yesterday I dug out an old sketchbook with blackwork embroidery stitched from a drawing of the gesture of cross stitch.  I'd like to do some work with blackwork and Jacobean embroidery, and drawing the different gestures of stitches - which vary across time.  Elizabethan gestures are different to Mary Thomas' Dictionary of Embroidery stitches from the 1930s.  This could be really exciting, and I love blackwork embroidery.  I can visualise making fabric pages to fit the paper pages.  And I'm planning how to secure the textile page edges in different ways - Elizabethan buttonhole, or 1930s hemming.  Get some even weave linen on the frame, mark out the page sizes and off I could go - using leftover thread from my degree projects.  But I need to do the artwork first!

Third day of show

There's been a long break before I've written this up - exhaustion and writing final amendments to essay.

Sunday morning Darren and I were late getting to the exhibition.  This was because my Aunt Doreen, who is staying with me, took her morning tablets on Saturday night.  This meant on Sunday morning I had to look up all her medication and work out what was safe to give her in the morning, to make sure she was correctly dosed.  This took some time.

Darren and I got to the show at 11.30 - having advertised it to be open from 10am.  This meant I missed one of my art class friends, who had made a lot of effort and driven a very long way to get there.  I was frustrated with myself.

However, on Sunday, we only had 4 couples: (Lori and partner, who I missed!), Ian and Gwen, Sharon and Becky, and Margaret and Chris.  However they all wanted the detailed tour, so I talked them through my work.  Becky has just resigned from her job working in publishing, and has been accepted at University of East Anglia to do an MA in Poetry.  When I read my Oulipo poem What Difference Does a Good Toilet Cleaner Make? she said the inflection of the voice and the punctuation enhanced the poem.  High praise!

Darren and I struck the show very quickly at 4pm.  Unfortunately I forgot the plinths had been wrapped in a corrugated cardboard cover, and we stuffed the plinths in the car and scraped them.  Had I retrieved the cardboard covers, they would have been really useful when the plinths get stored in the garage.  And it's a lot of bother to remake them.

So, reviewing the event:

The location hugely impacts who visits.  I used RAWLabs because it was the only venue I could find. (Thank you Mary Schoeser!).  But it was awkward for visitors to find.  Even with most people having google maps on their phones, and Darren putting out the advertising poster and direction arrows, people still found it hard to find.

I should have managed the relationship with the venue better.  Confirm what is booked in writing, particularly sole use of the gallery.  This was due to a lack of knowledge and exhibiting experience on my part.

People who visited, had made a lot of effort to get there - for me!  This was very flattering.

Advertising should have been more targeted.  Very few people who did not know me attended.  So my advertising to WI in East London, and others was unsuccessful.  But people I knew from church (30 years ago) attended, because I'm still in touch with one friend, and they were relatively close to the venue.

Friends from church commented that my show was a self-portrait.  The attitudes within it, were the same as I demonstrated when they knew me well 30 years ago.  I don't have the words to describe how this makes me feel.  I don't like the term humbling, but it is humbling that they found my exhibition positive and that it went to the core of my being.

I should have been more realistic about what times I could staff the show.  If I had reduced in the evening opening hours, I would have been less tired.  I should have expected there to be incidents that would make me tired (Doreen's medication; my brother upsetting my husband; my brother dropping the bombshell that his consultant thought he had MS, just before me leaving for the last day of show).

I was very glad Darren worked the show with me, even though on the last two days there was very little to do.  He was the MOST FANTASTIC staging assistant, and did all the heavy lifting, carrying and hammering for me.