Scolawi News 14-9-14

Once again I'm getting ready to travel out to Malawi and my life is full of 'to do' and 'to take' lists. This time we're taking our children with us so they can experience a completely different culture to ours and realise how privileged their upbringing has been in Scotland.

 

We leave for Malawi next Saturday to exhibit the I Love Scolawi project. I'll be exhibiting at the Lake of Stars music and art festival 26th-28th Sept www.lakeofstars.org and at the Blantryre arts festival 2nd-5rd Oct www.blantyreartsfestival.org

 

Unfortunately I will only be at the Blantyre arts festival for the first two days because I need to get home and get the Scottish exhibition ready, which will run from the 20th October. The exhibition will be left up for the entire four days of the festival. Thomas Chibambo, the director of the festival has also asked me to run a photography workshop during the festival which I'm quite excited about. There are further plans for a collaboration between Thomas and the BAF and the Fotospace Gallery in Glenrothes. While I'm in Malawi I hope to make these plans more concrete.

 

I'm also taking the exhibition to the participating groups who helped create pictures for I Love Scolawi. It will be wonderful to see everyone again, and I can't wait to show participants how their contribution fits into the whole.

 

In the last few weeks I have been feeling quite panicky about getting the community exhibition ready in time, while at the same time creating some work myself. I'm happy to announce that I woke up this morning feeling refreshed and not panicked for the first time in ages! I have completed the 10 pictures I set myself to create, I've photoshopped three composite A0 posters of everyone's work  along with five A0 posters featuring my forty favourite pictures for the Malawian exhibition. Everything that needs printing has been uploaded and sent to the printers, and I should get them delivered back by midweek latest. It's quite a relief, I can tell you!

 

One of three A0 posters showing everyone's artwork

 

 

There's still quite a bit to do: organise the workshop I'm running, mount the printed work, write some blurb to go with the exhibition, update my resume etc. But it feels like the stressy part is over with and I just have to get myself organised.

 

Fundraising news

 

The bingo tea last weekend as a great success, and we raised £264. Big thanks go to Betty for organising the event. I didn't win anything, but I think I've only won at bingo a couple of times :(

 

Cafe Alfresco in Glenrothes have been using their charity box to collect money for I Love Scolawi for the last few months and have raised £260. This seems an incredible amount raised from spare change! Big thanks go to Laura and Claude for organising this.

 

Also worth mentioning I think, is that Laura and Claude looked through my pictures when they popped over the other day and Laura  told me it was my best work to date (bless her!), and that I wasn't allowed to say that I couldn't draw. I can't remember my exact words last email, but I don't think I can't draw, I just think that I'm adequate at drawing - I need to practice the shapes I'm drawing over and over to get them right, whereas I think that good drawers can draw the shapes first time.

 

Thank you to everyone who has donated to me over the last couple of weeks. The total we have raised in nearly £5,700. Well done everyone! There is a Paypal donate button on my blog (top right) if you feel like donating to raise this above £6000.

 

Lastly,
I've had an email from my friend Mary, in Malawi  who has asked if I can bring any old or broken mobile phones over with me to be used for parts. If you have any old phones knocking around the house that you haven't got round to throwing out yet, please consider passing them on to me to take out with me.

Scolawi News 2-9-14

Its less than three weeks till I travel back out to Malawi to exhibit the show, and I'm getting really really excited, but also really really panicked by all the work that still has to be done. Still, what would be the point if projects didn't come down to the wire!

 

Since the middle of July I've managed to create one picture a week. I'm really pleased with how they look  and here's a sneak peek of them before the exhibition opens.

 

 

 

I hope you like them. I still have two more to create before I go, and maybe another two (if I can manage) before the Scottish exhibition.

 

These pictures are A4 and don't seem much for a summer's worth of work, but they take me a long time to design and etch because etching takes longer than drawing, and I'm still pretty new to drawing. I started going to art classes about nine years ago, not having drawn since I was 17. I'm now getting more and more ambitious with my designs, and my latest picture (ceilidh dancers - middle right) called for me to draw people in 3D looking like they were dancing AND having faces! - I've been putting this picture off all summer...

 

It took me a few goes to get the figures looking in proportion (the family thought my first attempts were hilarious), and it took me even longer to get the faces and hands looking acceptable, but I got there, and I'm so proud of the result. It may not be perfect, but compared to how it would have looked 6 months ago I think it looks amazing, and huge thanks go to my art teacher Lorraine for helping me so much. Without her classes I would never have started etching in the first place, and this project would never have happened.

 

Last week I taught workshops to the scouts and the cubs, which went really well. The explorers filmed the scout one for the film they are producing. I'm teaching one last workshop this week to the guides, and then  I choose my 20 favourite Scottish pictures to enlarge. This was a really hard task with the Malawian pictures, but I came up with a technique which I'll use again. It's really exciting to see everyone's work laid out on my kitchen table when I'm choosing, and remembering the workshops, and all the people I've met. I'm looking forward to doing it all again.

 

Fundraising

 

This Friday (Sept 5th) My friend Bettie has organised a Bingo Tea to raise funds for I Love Scolawi. It will be held in Dunshalt Village Hall and starts at 7pm for 7:30. It should be a good night, with lots of great prizes up for grabs. If you're not really into bingo you can always come along for the cakes - Bettie always puts on a really good spread at her Bingo Teas!
If you're local then please come along, have a great night out, and help support I Love Scolawi.

 

Thank you to everyone who's pledged to my crowdfunding campaign. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/553280159/i-love-scolawi

 

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to spend the time advised to promote the page (2-3 hours a day!) and it's not going to reach it's target. The pledges are only taken from your bank accounts if the target is reached, so none of your money will be transfered. This funding route was always going to be hard to pull off because I've  fundraised so much previously, and I'm not surprised it hasn't raised it's target. But I'm really please to have tried it, and I used it to get I Love Scolawi mentioned in the papers again which is great. In fact, I was talking to my hairdresser about the project the day after there was a piece in The Courier, when the lady next to me asked if I was the 'etching' lady that she'd read about the previous day, and how interesting she had thought the project was. I was so proud!

 

Without the crowdfunding source I've had to scale back the exhibition slightly, but I hope it won't be noticeable. I will no longer be making a book of the project for the participating groups, There will be less A0 posters, and some of the frames/hangers for the Malawian exhibition will be reused for the Scottish one.

 

So far I have raised nearly £5,000 which is completely overwhelming amount, and I'd like to thank everyone who has donated towards the project (some people multiple times, so you get multiple thank yous!). A huge special thank you goes to Violet, Bettie, Laura and Claude, and Amanda who have wanted to see this project succeed so much, that they have planned events, or raised money in other ways for the project. Thank you, I couldn't have managed without you.

 

If you haven't already donated but really want to, please use the PayPal donate button on the top right hand side of my blog.