Essential things to do when preparing for an exhibition
Set a date, talk the talk, and only then realise you don’t have anything to exhibit
Realise - with relief - that’s a load of nonsense, you have lots of things. Some are even real, and not just inside your head.
Get over yourself. It’s OK if some pieces in storage are not what you’d make ‘today’ - as in, right now, this minute. They’re still you, they’re still valid, they’re still good work.
Prepare to make a body of work.
This is my official process for starting a body of work.
There’s no faffing with sketchbooks here, no months spent with experiments or samples, following the thread of an idea. There just isn’t time. We’re trusting to the Gods of creativity, and hoping that previous time spent thinking about making glorious works of art, footling around the edges (and teaching, too, giving myself credit for that) will count just the same when it comes to actually making it.
So in best City & Guilds stylee, we’re making the things and then retrofitting them into our brief at the end…as someone who once taught C&G I probably shouldn’t say that, but let’s be real here. Oh, and the creative brief? I guess that’s my Artist Statement. Which I wrote last Monday.
Here’s how it goes:
Start to accumulate random stuff to fool yourself you’re getting things done: snaffle some canvases to repurpose, then ignore them. Instead, choose to order a quantity of frames, far more than you have a hope of filling.
Get out some fabric, look at it… and let it sit there (definitely don’t tidy it away).
Go through your box of bits: unfinished experiments, things that are almost ‘something’. Maybe you did this already, when you were making a video to tell other people how to sort themselves out….maybe you even wrote little notes about what the next step should be, and clipped them on…
Start to work in a desultory fashion: being good, finishing previous false starts. Yet despite finishing and even framing a few things, feel somehow frustrated that you’re missing the point, that this isn’t it. None of it so far matches the vision you had in your head six months ago when this was all just an idea.
Start to feel squiffy and panicky but you can’t back out because it was all your idea and other people are committed now, too.
Time for a wake-up call: an email from the venue with a first draft publicity poster, using an image of a hideous thing you made in a hurry and hate. To be fair, it was all they could find.
Castigate yourself for essentially putting yourself in the position where what others see (such as when they trawl your Instagram feed for publicity material) does not match your vision (invisible to others but crystal clear in your own mind) of what could be. If only.
Trawl through your camera roll to find a better image, there must be something…find it, and….realise you still have it, in a frame, ready to sell!
Thank your lucky stars that despite threatening to cut it up on more than one occasion, you didn’t follow through. I told my little group of artist friends about this, and they said I should be banned from having scissors because I’m always chopping things up…
Submit the image, and bask in glory as it’s chosen as THE one for all the publicity
Pull up a chair for the muse, as she now decides to waft into the room, kaftan flowing and bangles jangling.
Roll up your sleeves (remove the bangles, they clatter) and set to.
Feel the ideas start to flow. The more you stitch, the quicker the ideas arrive, the less time is left.
Just when you’re getting into the flow of it all, randomly decide to stitch through an index finger
this got a lot of likes on my notes, but not everyone noticed the bandaid! Two days later, decide it’s an excellent time to slice the other index finger on a metal framing tab
With two fingers now swaddled in plasters, consider taking up Fingerbobs puppetry instead of art.
Note! 63% of this process happens before any art is created!
I’m calling it my ‘warm up’ phase. Pottering about, approaching it sideways.
Being serious for a moment, I actually think making false starts is an essential part of making art. What do you think?
Other essential tasks include:
Ordering 250 more business cards (despite still having a box of 100 left) which arrive with square corners not round, necessitating a phone call and free reprinting so you now have 500 new business cards…and the original 100. Think we’re good for cards.
Submitting and paying for your exhibition entry at the latest second before the deadline because you’ve been too busy organising to actually apply to take part in your own exhibition
Staying up until midnight arranging things on the carpet instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour
Thanking your midnight self (while raising an eyebrow at your unprecedented foresight) for making a scribbled plan of where things will hang and how many strings and hooks you’ll need, thus saving yourself much fiddling the next day
Rewarding yourself for walking miles and hanging banners on every available railing in town, by having a cold drink in the pub - where you also drop off some more publicity flyers
Spend the last few days supposedly stitching mini pieces for cards, but getting so caught up in the process they could be more than cards…but do I have enough picture mounts 🤔
And what about those empty frames? Surely there’s time for a few more…
And what about the CARDS I still need, if everything keeps ending up in a frame?! Could I stick some business cards onto card blanks? I might have a few spare…
….and so it continues!
The workshops are also very nearly fully booked out - only two places on Melissa’s stitched journals left. Ah, that’s another thing I need to remember - workshop preparation!! There’s time, right??
The big question is…what have I forgotten?
I’m sure to remember at 10am on Saturday when the doors open…
Until next time,
when I’ll also share everyone else’s displays and the general vibe of the whole shebang,
PS Do not copy me. Seriously, don’t. Especially the business with fingers and sharp things.
PPS If you’re in the vicinity and you’re planning to pop in, I can’t wait to meet you! I’m there both days morning and afternoon (teaching on Sunday morning). I might sneak home for some lunch, but I’m only a couple of minutes away. If you’d like to make sure I’m there for a natter, send me a message and I’ll give you my number so you can text me.
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Your exhibition sounds, and looks, wonderful! I’d love to see it, however, living half a world away is somewhat of a barrier, so I’ll have to make do with looking at the photos…sigh…
Hoping it is a huge success. 🤞
hope your exhibition was a success, I am sure it was, your pieces are so lovely, you have such a joyous sense of colour and in spite of injured fingers, YOU DID IT!I remember stitching through my finger when I was about 12 making a costume out of foil, this was on a Singer hand machine. My father had just sewn me how to sew, so I could turn his collars for him