My feelings today are a little different from those of sheer panic on the set up date. Friday, the set up day, a room full of excited, willing helpers, then the work arrived - perfectly packed, perfectly labelled. With military precision we allocated rooms and labour. Great, all organised, then the fun began! In the rooms, we had to aim high: because the building had heritage status, and the only manner in which we were allowed to hang work was from the picture rail way up at the top of the walls, some 4 to 5 meters from the ground. And there was only one very tall set of ladders. The other ladder, which we had brought along, looked puny against the wall, standing on it we couldn't even reach half way up!
'Kimonos' by Deanna TysonThe first three pictures took us a whole hour to hang - depression set in - a myriad of helpers, but no means by which we could speed up the hanging process. We had 20 members with 5 pieces of work each! Then it hit us even worse - Ted, the trusty caretaker, who had been up the ladder hanging the work for us announced that he had an appointment and had to leave! Almost simultaneously Ann Reilly returned from lunch with her husband Bob, who was wondering what-on- earth he was going to do for the rest of the day - Newmarket races not having started. Our Superman, our knight in shining armour! Up the ladders he went and he did not come down until 5 p.m. when we were thrown out - but by then we had actually just finished! Bob was brilliant. He stoically directed stringing and knotting from his crow's nest - and withstood the storm of advice and chatter from below. His nautical skills were never put to a greater test, I am sure!
Gallery with work by Peggy Lamb, Cheryl Heath, Rose Martin, Conny Gewart and Deanna TysonAt the finish, the exhibition looked just great. We all enjoyed a very well-attended private view opened by Amanda Stevenson and received many compliments for the lovely work. Not everything was perfect though. We could have done better in terms of publicity and we should have taken control of this ourselves as an absolute priority rather than relying on others. Amanda had told us how important this aspect was. No matter how beautiful or good an exhibition is, if people don't know about it, they don't attend and they can not have the opportunity to buy. We have learnt from our experience and know now what to do in future. What was very encouraging though was the enthusiasm of our group to repeat the experience and the very positive delighted responses of those, who visited not only from the U.K., but also from as far as Scandinavia, Australia and the USA. We think we made a few recruits as well, but also received enquiries about workshops and invitations to exhibit elsewhere. In all, I think the whole event has been a great experience for our group, which has never mounted an exhibition of this type before, and I think we have learnt an awful lot.
Deanna Tyson - Cambridge
Deanna Tyson with model 'Naomi'