Chapter 11: Open Studios pilot
Recovering from a bereavement is not easy, as anyone who’s experienced it will know. Everything just feels upside down and completely surreal, and I felt then and still do that I’d never be same person again. A big part of me had gone forever. There was a long wait too for my mum’s funeral to get organised, but eventually it happened, and then it was just trying to get back to normal - but what is normal? I learned that you don’t have to get over it, you just need to accept that it has happened and try to live with that. But also think of the happy memories and precious time you had together. No matter what, if you had a strong bond with that person, you can continue to live with their personality and spread positivity, as that’s what she wanted me to do.
I got back into the studio on and off, after getting back up north, and as many say, painting was a therapy. Keeping busy and throwing yourself into things is a coping mechanism, and that’s what we do in our family.
I’m not sure where or why I wanted to paint a flock of crows - lots of images stick in my head. I’d seen photos a few years ago, by the side of a road in Canada - my dad had captured swarms of crows going crazy! I think the painting was symbolic of recent events somehow too.
Research photo and finished painting of Storm of Crows
Trying to get back into being creative again wasn’t easy, and I felt annoyed at myself stopping and starting new artworks. Scrapping and starting again became quite common, and a general sense of not having a clear direction. I thought about what had happened so far with William Fawkes, and even whether I really wanted to carry on with it. But doubt in yourself and abilities is not worth it. I remembered I do it because I enjoy it, no one is making me do this, it should be fun, so I should just carry on doing it when I feel that I want to, there is no pressure coming from anywhere.
I’d had a few minor artist market appearances in 2016-2017, and of all the works I took along, I seemed to get a reaction to the Skeletons at the club painting - why was that? I tried another one under the same theme, this time in a fish & chip shop. I remember my friend Helen had been saying back at the beginning - people like collections, and if you want to do exhibitions one day (which I do!), then you need to create several pieces of art that fall into the same theme somehow. I’d not really operated like this before, my ideas just came out the blue, and each new thing never seemed to relate much to the previous one.
I went off searching for old nostalgic photos all over the internet. The skeleton theme then became a thing, and they started appearing all over the place. I found some old wooden wine box panels, and decided to replicate like giant playing cards with skeleton queens and kings on - a lot of these random things started as a sketch book scribble, then somehow manifested into something more.
Research photo and finished Skeletons at the chippy
Mars was another sketch - one day just decided to start a new big painting, the red mountains will spell Mars, and it will have surreal elements of spaceships, a pool of water and skull buried underground somehow. I again scoured the internet for inspiration.
In April I was finding out the latest Dept of Health project I had been doing in Washington for 9 months was coming to an end - I then found myself being invited to start at The Dept for Work & Pensions. I was back in the same office I’d previously been at with HMRC. I threw myself into that too, it was an intense project - this time I was researcher for Pension Credit, a very distressing topic - we had to try to improve a service for retired people who didn’t have enough money to live in. I wanted to make things better, so worked really hard to learn as much as possible and cover a lot of ground.
Another thing I decided to try in May that year was to make my art stuff available to order online. I did it with no marketing, just added things to my website, to see what happens. I also had a big quality upgrade to my art prints - I found a local framing guy Mark - who was helping a few other artists out with their framing needs. I also started using a company for Giclée printing - it’s the best quality art print available, the closest replication, richest colours, and nicest papers I’d ever used. Gone was the budget digital printing I’d been doing before - I wanted to keep standards high and start to be taken seriously!
Anatomy I and Deborah Harry
More new artwork slowly emerged, more giant skeleton anatomy, I’d sourced a couple of human anatomy books now, just to make sure my drawings were semi-accurate.
One day I decided I needed a female hero painting - I found a cool photo of Deborah Harry online which I liked, I just changed the reflection on her sunglasses, originally it was going to be something dark reflected, but then I changed it to just be abstract colour palette knife marks - this was a feature now that crept in more and more - I’d started experimenting with more abstraction within works.
Busy busy busy, let’s keep busy! What’s next… Ok i’ll do Gateshead Open Studios! Time to stop talking and make it happen, there’s not much time, no money, but I’ll just try, and see what happens. I took it on single-handedly, it kept me busy. I can’t sit around waiting to be discovered as an artist - we’ve got to bring the people to us! Ouseburn loves its Open Studios, maybe the people of Gateshead will too? It’s a great opportunity to bring something positive and fun to the area, try to create a sense of community and pride.
I’d had a couple discussions with Brighton Road studio artists and representatives from each of our venues, and arranged a chat with Gateshead Council - who sent two ladies to visit us at the studios - and understand what we were thinking of doing. Shortly after this we narrowed down to a 1-day pilot test this year, 5x venues - try to keep it all close proximity, a walking trail like Ouseburn. We decided on end of October, as leading up to Christmas was a good time to try to sell creative things - people starting to think about gifts, but we also picked a few weeks earlier than Ouseburn’s event so wasn’t clashing. We also were based in a more residential area, so with a half-term at end of October, we thought it might appeal to families and children too. Within the trail, we’d have some free activities for people to take part in too.
The pilot venues and cafes that helped support us, plus the flyer/map produced for visitors
So our pilot 5x venues in numerical order from Gateshead central station were:
New Bridge Project - fine art community space & studios
Saint Cuthbert’s Church - home to Cotfield Mirrors with pop-up artist market
Bensham Grove Community Centre - historical quaker house with tours & craft activities
Brighton Road Studios - 13x artist studios
Saint Chad’s Church - functioning church with beautiful architecture, and historically-relevant arts & crafts features
We knew artists and creatives were out there, but it took some digging to find them, there wasn’t an obvious immediate network - I was trying to create one - and some of our venues were arts council funded or supportive of the arts, but not actually all artist studios. What differed for us was historic venues, architecture and art all mixed together. That was our USP.
We almost had six venues at one point, Eleventh Avenue in Team Valley was due to take part - home to more artist studios. It was an initiative ran by East Street Arts, but sadly the landlord gave up the premises for a new purpose - only shortly before we went ahead. Luckily it just before any major printing happened, so that was fortunate in one way.
I won’t lie, I did my best to spread the word at short notice - with the help of my friend Mark, I hand-made orange A-board venue numbered signs - one for each venue on the walking trail, I designed some flyers and posters, and got these out as best I could to local cafes, art galleries, pubs - you name it! I made a list of all the venues around Newcastle, Gateshead and some smaller villages too to spread the word. I did minimal online activity - mostly setting up a Gateshead Open Studios Facebook page. Then it was time to sit back, and see if people wanted to come see us…
Facebook artwork and venue numbered signage and bunting
All the other venues in our little walking trail were really supportive too - sharing flyers, posting on Facebook and generally spreading positive spirit. Alan at St Cuthbert’s Church deserves a special mention - he runs Cotfield Mirrors with his wife, and they occupy a mostly empty space in the church. They allowed lots of other local creatives to arrange to set-up pop-up stands inside, making it a nice little creative art market! I managed to persuade a few friends to volunteer to help with give visitors directions around the event - and I even contacted a local retired couple Sheila & Bill, via Twitter - I’d met them before, helping to volunteer at Mushroom Works in Ouseburn. They were awesome, they are super kind, and just love being involved in creative events, and offered to help greet people at Brighton Road Studios as they arrived. It’s really welcoming I think to have people like that if you’re arriving to an unfamiliar location to be warmly greeted and invited in.
The day finally arrived - Saturday 27th October 2018. It was a nice sunny day, and I was ready, in my studio at Brighton Road. Everyone had been briefed to open at 10am - we even had an offer from local cafe The Nest in Low Fell, who turned up at Brighton Road & ran a pop-up cafe! Other venues sorted out some refreshments too. Oh yeah and as our branding was orange - with a graphical bunting effect, I got hold of some cheap orange bunting for all venues too - that was our landlord Nick’s idea. I can’t claim that one...
Just before 10am, we had people waiting at Brighton Road Studios front door to come in! Wow is this a sign of things to come? Throughout the day, we had a nice steady stream of visitors - a mixture of locals who had seen the orange signs on the street and been curious to finally see what was inside. And also local creative fans and people who had been to Ouseburn had found out about us. The audience numbers varied across the venues but on average we had 128 people - Brighton Road hit 150 visitors according to our 5-bar gate!
Bensham Grove Community Centre is another hidden gem in Gateshead just at the end of our street, you have to go! It’s like time-travelling back hundreds of year, a beautiful historical family quaker house and little garden, run by volunteers. They offer tours of the building, tell you stories and allow you to take part in arts & crafts activities for free! They do pottery courses, Silversmithing, printing and lots more!
Here’s a selection of photos to click through below, taken during the event by local photographer Sam Orton:
I think everyone involved in the event was chuffed with the positive feedback and turn-out for a pilot. It felt really good to have pulled it off and that we had a decent turn-out for the first ever event! I can’t deny it was hard work, but the reward was seeing people turning up, excited to come see what was inside, the feedback I had was amazing, and I felt there was enough learnings and a good foundation to try again next year…