What a great weekend.

Well, its now Monday evening, after what has felt like a very long weekend, and a totally needed day doing absolutely nothing today! Literally! Stayed in bed, only to get up for water and lunch . 

Coastival which included the Preview Evening of the Movement and Action of Worms exhibition, is finished, and by all accounts was the most popular and successful yet. Well done to everyone involved. 

 

My exhibition "The Movement and Action of Worms" is open again this Thur - Sun 23rd Feb 11.00am - 3.00pm, and after that by appointment until 14th March. I am now hoping to find a gallery further afield who will take the exhibition later in the year. I had some really encouraging comments in the visitors book, which included:

"Really impressed by the focussed intensity and interpretative nature of the show."  

"Inspired collection, each one distinctive and also unique." 

"Worms are great!"

Thank you to everyone who has come along so far, and made this a really enjoyable experience for me. It has made me realise what a good life I have made here for myself in Scarborough, and what inspirational and supportive people I have met. Thank you. Good times, and good friends are ahead, and there is so much great stuff to look forward to in the coming months - it certainly won't be quiet!

The exhibition made me realise just what a control freak I am! I was already very aware that i have compulsive tendancies - it is afterall how i create my work. Inspired by Darwin's study at Down house in Kent, i once described my own work as "Methodical experiments, repetition and obsessive compulsion, combined with a comfortable but ordered homliness." I think this still applies, but i hadn't really realised that my need for control extended into how the audience should view the work. It's obvious to anyone who knows me probably, but was drawn in stark focus for me this weekend.  When people came to the exhibition, i found myself feeling really anxious, if they came in and started looking at the work out of order - to the extent that i felt compelled to redirect them to Image no 1, hopefully explaining my reason for doing so. I don't think that any of my audience were offended, quite the opposite I think, and actually, once i had explained my preferences, i was very happy for them to 'do their own thing' anyway.

I will document my reasons for directing my audience at a later stage, but today I wanted to say how proud i am of myself. It was an enormous milestone, personally and professionally to get this work completed and exhibited. I hope that the work can now go on and build its own relationships with new audiences and feel less controlled and contained by Helen Birmingham.

Tins completed

25 x slates with wire

25 x Microscope slides

All now into tins. The following photograph shows the tins being filled, one item at a time.

Edition 1  The Studio Gallery Scarborougih, February 2014 <edition of 25 boxes

Treasure boxes/catalogues £25 each

Limited Edition Catalogues x 25

25 x tea sample tins

25 x catalogue : set of cards showing 30 pictures in exhibition

25 x limited edition collages specifically for Scarborough exhibition catalogue

25 x antique watch glasses

25 x textile/stitching samples

25 x leaves tending to skeleton

25 x archaeology fragments brought up by worms

25 x pieces of slate with wire (to be completed)

25 x microscope slides with burnt paper (to be completed)

Worm Tins Underway

Today was a day for final decision making, and when it came to it, it was easy to make. Obvious to make. There was only one decision TO make. The tins i am using for the 'catalogue' are going to be some of my precious, treasured tea-sample tins. Even though I am finding it hard to think of letting some of them go, the work needs them.

I will make an initial set of 25 tins. Each one will contain a tiny handmade box (shown on yesterday's blog), with 30 cards, each showing one of the pieces of work in the exhibition. There will also be one-off "treasures" in the box,  and one from a series of a numbered edition of small collages, made from scraps collected while making the exhibition.

My last exhibition "Voyage of Discovery" in 2009 was really successful, and to say that I was disappointed to sell all 30 of the pieces would sound silly. But ...... 

I was disappointed not to have documented the pieces better, and sad not to have the opportunity to exhibit them as 'one piece' again. I do however have a piece of work, which was made from a collage of scraps collected while making the exhibition, and of course the catalogue.

It seems appropriate (and ironic) that at this exhibition i will be selling the collages (hopefully) - as part of a collectible 'worm tin' catalogue/record of the exhibition and therefore i will retain the 30 original pieces. I hope to be finalising another venue for the exhibition later in the year. 

OK so less than a week to go until the preview. But i am in control. 

Nearly there - but very nearly wasn't!

Well this has been a difficult week. On Sunday evening my last post was saying that I was going to have a day off, then get stuck into making the artist's books in tin boxes, which I had been planning since last June! I kept putting it off and putting it off - finding all sorts of displacement activites, some wholesome, some not-so! It took a real effort to try to look at what was troubling me.

I finally started in earnest very late on Wednedsay evening, when next Friday's preview started feeling as if it was breathing down my neck! i thought i knew what i was doing. Goodness knows I've been planning it for long enough. So i started printing off pictures; re-binding the books I'd bought to go in the tins; and finding samples of off-cuts to stick into the books. BUT i wasn't enjoying it. 

IT FELT REALLY CONTRIVED and I hated it.

But that threw me! What else was i going to do? Even if i am lucky enough that anyone wants to buy any of the 30 main pieces in the exhibition, i am determined that the originals are not for sale and are to stay together, in order to be able to move the whole exhibition to another venue, later in the year. It was the thing I've been worrying about subconsciously for weeks, and finally  i had made myself come face to face with it!

i knew very quickly that i would rather have nothing to sell at the previev, rather than produce something I wasn't happy with. So I stopped forcing myself, and cried!! A lot!! 

Then I spoke to my sister. She is the only person whose opinion I really really trust. I don't like her opinion sometimes (!) but I trust her.

She suggested that the boxes contain small treasures, like when we were children. She remembered a piece of moss and an owl pellet in hers. I have a really strong memory of a tiny book which she had in her box. It had photos of my aunt's wedding when we were bridesmaids. We were about 6 and 2. It was tiny - the size of contact prints - and her ownershiop of it was my first memory of covetting something.

So the idea of fhe tiny book/set of images in a handmade handprinted box came into being. It will have a copy of all 30 of the exhibition pieces in it, together with an original piece of artwork/collage and other treasures, all in one of my very precious tea-sample tins.

I am enthusiastic and inspired again! Just in time!!

30 images: 1 piece of work = FINISHED

Self imposed deadlines are pretty good - even if it means its gone 10.00pm and i'm only just having my lunch!! And yes, I know that isn't healthy, but the feeling of euphoria which goes with having finished the work on time, is priceless!!

 Now i have nearly two weeks to get the limited edition artist's books, the catalogue and labels done, before the preview evening on friday 14th February. (In spite of my Coastival poster saying 14th may!!!) 

The last 6 pieces were a bit of a worry, even though i was ' talking up ' my confidence. I've been experimenting with using tile grout behind glass, and was enjoying some of the results  i was getting. But i was beginning to worry that the technique was going to be too hit and miss to have left making the images for the exhibition until so late: and what was i going to do if it all went wrong. Hence leaving a final week for eventualities. I'm not saying that I'm won't be really grateful for it, but actually the set of images Nos 12 - 17 were so fixed in my mind's eye that they came into being relatively easily.

So, lunch (at 10.30!)  then a bath, then bed. i will take a final check on the gallery in the morning, take the afternoon off, and then get stuck into the artist's books on Tuesday. X x hooray! See you in a coupke of days, with hopefully as positive an update. Good night. X