Another wonderful day at the Gallery today. There were 16 visitors yesterday to my arts installation during my 2 hours stint and 17 today. I'm quite taken aback by that, given the weather and it being mid-week. Most of the people today were people who volunteer at the Garden or staff, plus my lovely friend who appears in 2 of the film shoots for The Dragon Tree, Bob Edwards.
I talked to Bob about the wonderful NEW idea I have for the follow on book/installation ... but I won't share that with you until after the live performances of this tour. Needless to say, I'm really excited to be so inspired and Bob's knowledge of ... well, just about everything ... made the time whizz past. Thanks for coming to have a cuppa, poppet!
An older woman and her daughter came to the Gallery and asked me about the furniture used. It is all recycled, been given a new lease of life, lifted from dusty corners of skips or junk shops to be up-cycled into the beautiful Gallery.
The older woman told me about a sideboard of her great, great grandmother's, that now lives with her, but she couldn't get it into her house, so they had to split it in 2. When they did, they found newspaper clippings from many years gone by and one of the clippings was a piece about a family member. Like 'hidden treasure'. We talked about how exciting it was to imagine people in our family, whom we have never met, opening the cupbaords, their fingers holding the very same handles.
Our artefacts outlive us. To those who will look back at our time, yet never known us, these things will be how they try to define us ...
And that was the central to the conversation I had with Simon who is the Curator of the Garden. He came to see me and we had a wonderful chat.
He has only been at the Garden for 18 months and was curator at the Botanic Garden in the Isle of Wight for 24 years.
He told me about the AMAZINGLY exciting installations that he facilitated there. Like an Easter Islands head, a huge one, made from old cars, on the cliff top ... a field of huge outdoor candles, all lit one at a time in the darkenss to ambient music and then blown out by the wind, line by line ... Already he has planted new forests at the Garden, saplings that will tower for our children's, children to dance around one day.
How wonderful to have the time to share with people and hear their stories, inspired by what I have done, in my small way, at the Gallery.
Wonder who I'll meet tomorrow.
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