Spring Fling time
Next weekend, Saturday 25th - Monday 27th May, will be the Spring Fling open studio event across Dumfries and Galloway, SW Scotland, when artists and makers welcome visitors into their studios from all across the UK and indeed the world.
This is an exciting time.
I stopped making work about a week ago, which is quite extraordinary for me. My inner voice commands “More, more, more!”
But with only a few days left now, all thoughts turn necessarily to a chaotic "getting the studio ready".
All the obvious tasks are involved here: sweeping a floor that doesn’t want to give up its accumulated detritus, tidying waxy paint encrusted work benches, patching and painting bits of the walls where too many nails and bluetack have made their indelible marks.
Paintings have to be edge painted and strung for hanging, even before I can decide where to hang them for optimum effect.
Then there are arcane considerations of how to make the studio look suitably “working artist’s studio”- like, as well as making it safe enough for visitors to walk around without slipping on spilt wax, burning hands on hot blowtorch and pans or gouging legs on errant rusty metal shards.
How much vital studio paraphernalia can be hidden under tables and which paints and tools do I leave on show?
You may well think a week seems like plenty of time, but then you didn’t see my studio when I closed the door yesterday.
Words like “crash” and “burn” come to mind...
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