Sat in the studio in my sun warmed studio life listening to Johnny Flynn, life couldn't feel much better. This week has been sun drenched and energy drenched as the Solstice has worked its magic. I really feel a part of nature, fuelled by the heat and light and elated with it; a complete contrast to how I feel in winter. I've used that energy in the worst way possible! I have completed all my accounting! Two studio moves last year had left my finances in complete disarray but now I am back on top and very ready for some creative time.
When not at the kitchen table doing paper work, it has been a week very much about gardens as everything around me makes the most of life. The allotment is exploding, the polytunnel astounds me with its fervour, producing radishes, yellow beetroot and purple basil. My plot outside the studio is giving us lettuce and cabbage, purple podded peas and rich-red chard. Eating has become a pleasurable concoction of fresh tastes and colours. At the weekend we were invited to the Weleda gardens and took great pleasure from their healing, peaceful powers. I want to bottle these days!
The weekend ebbed and flowed between sunshine and showers, tea and cake, delightful, heart warming conversations with artists, friends and visitors. Oh, I wish there were more days like these!
Here's Helen and Sue setting up the exhibition. And a million thanks to Josephine for helping me set up. I couldn't have done it without her.....so handy with a drill and very calm and collected!
I had a great weekend at Sock in Loughborough. I said a sad goodbye to Quilted. It was a favourite piece; I hope it's happy in its new home. I also sold Love Song as well as a good selection of ceramics.
Love Song HH2010
Sock was really well organised and advertised. The marketing session they arranged before the event, and the supper for the exhibitors, were both helpful and gave time to share ideas and make contacts. I'm really pleased to hear that there will soon be a Sock Gallery at Loughborough Town Hall, and hope to exhibit there soon.
I spent the weekend in the company of Helen Rhodes who was exhibiting on the next stand. She's a fellow alumnus of Loughborough College of Art and Design. We'd met before, in fact it was the very same day as the storm that I captured in the piece Journey Through The Storm.
Journey through the Storm HH2009
That piece was the first I did mixing ink, collage and stitch, and the start of my journey to now here. So, for me Helen is somehow a part of that story and feels like a good omen in my life!
