Turning a corner
I feel like I've turned a bit of a corner now, it is all happening at the BFP. I am feeling a lot more at home there, and also feel like I have a lot I can contribute.
Two friends of Eloise' dropped in today to chat about joining the BFP. They (Andrew and Laura) were both recent grad students from art school, and both seemed keen to get involved. Andrew has decided to come back to the BFP next week and Laura can come back in a couple of weeks.
Eloise has booked a stall for the Artspace Book Fair, which is held in October. I will be going along to help her man the stall, and we will be selling prints from the BFP. Also, we will be doing a new set of prints along with Andrew and Laura - they will be a set each of printed zines. This is so exciting because I get to do my own artwork and then have it printed at the BFP, so get to see the machine in action again, this time with my work! I just have to decide what I am going to do. Eloise is drawing fish, Andrew is drawing archways, Laura is doing embroidery, so I just have to come up with something - and knowing me, that idea will pop into my head at midnight!
Peter Humble from the Workshop for Potential Cinema came for a visit today, together with his colleague Rowena. They're an artist run film workspace who focus on 8mm and 16mm film and darkroom processes, experimentation and collaboration. Their current studio space is coming to an end and so they chatted with Eloise and Diego about whether they'd be able to share the space with big fag press. Eloise thought they would be a great organisation to work alongside - printmaking and film making such a beautiful combination, and she thought they would bring so much life and energy into the studio. However, there is the space to consider - if they did join us they would infringe on the idea of the studio being totally flexible. Peter was an interesting person, I did get to chat with him a little, and he mentioned that he lectures in Media Arts at Wollongong Uni once a week. Eloise has sent out a email to members of the BFP to get their opinion on this.
Today I helped Eloise with her project for an art exhibition coming up - she is using non slip safety dots that you find at railway stations to create an artwork, so we discussed how she could display them in a creative way. We workshopped ideas with Diego, and soon came up with something that I think will work really well. There are some interesting issues Eloise has faced with this project, the main one being that she is not allowed to put them on the floor, which is strange considering they are a safety tool. Anyway, I've done a quick sketch of how Eloise is going to display them on the wall, I think it will look fantastic.
There is an Annual General Meeting coming up soon, and Diego has put forward notice that he wishes to resign as treasurer and pull back a bit from his work at the BFP, in order to concentrate on his own work. I talked with Diego about what is involved with being Treasurer, and it doesn't sound too complicated. It is just record keeping, and because the BFP is an incorporated organisation, there is no need to lodge tax returns. I've done bookkeeping before in a small business I used to have, plus I keep all my financial records for Kiama Art Workshops, so I am thinking about volunteering for this role. Diego did say that a lot of people shy away from the role as math figures scare them, but it doesn't faze me at all. I'll see what happens at the AGM.