What a lovely day…

Ok so it’s not very good weather, so I’m not talking about that. Instead I’m talking about the lovely day out I’ve had today. A while ago I signed up for a creative exchange organised by Fife Contemporary Art and Craft and due to being immensely busy, in hospital, out of hospital, dealing with a backlog of work and what not, there has just never been the time to do anything.  So I put today in the diary as the day to go out and do it – or at least part of it.

The idea of the creative exchange is to offer your skills to another person for free and in exchange someone else will offer you their skills for free and all in all everyone learns something new, experiences something new, meets new people etc etc. So I’ve been teamed up with two talented Fifers – Jill Calder, an illustrator based in Cellerdyke who is going to teach me how to use my Wacom tablet – that I bought a million years ago and never used [shocking I know!] and also Pat Bray – a local artist who is based in East Wemyss who was after some help with Facebook and other online networking stuff.

So I went to Pat’s today with the dog and instead of messing about with Facebook we just talking a lot about art, our work, exhibitions, open studios, creative exchanges etc and it was great. I love having conversations like this as I come out of them full of inspiration and creative ideas. I also discovered that Pat is a bit of a master framer and has all the high tech gear and so might have to ask for a lesson or two in making frames at some point in the near future, in exchange for something I can teach her.

One thing we talked quite a bit about was Open Studio events in Fife, or the lack of them in Central Fife. Ever since I moved to Fife I’ve found it odd that the North Fife Studios and East Neuk Fife Studios run open studio events throughout the year and yet in this part of Fife there is nothing and I’ve always wanted to get something going but not had a studio of my own until now. Also, it’s only since I moved to Kinghorn that I’ve started to get to know and make connections with other artists and creative folk.

I really am interested in running my own open studio events from my home and would like to get other people involved at the same time, whether they’re in Kinghorn or a bit further afield.  I was hoping to open my studio to the public at some point before Christmas this year, but that might not happen as I’ve still not moved back in there yet – but the plasterer is coming on Monday and the chimney guy is also coming next week to fix my fire, so there is hope… if I get busy myself in there too!

But if I don’t manage it this year – I will certainly do it in the new year. All the people I have spoken to about this showed a keen interest so I know it can happen, someone has just got to get it started and I really don’t mind giving a go and seeing what happens. I’ve already got ideas about setting up a website and featuring all the artists involved on that and everyone would have to pay an annual fee to cover the costs of the site, printed publicity material, advertising etc. so I’m hoping to start small and see how it progresses. It was great to talk to someone else about it and thrash out a few ideas.

So if you’re an artist in Fife and you have a studio and would like to be able to open your studio up to the public every now and again as part of an open studios event, please get in touch and let me know you’re interested. This will be open to all artists within Central Fife – so this excludes those involved in the North Fife Open Studios and the East Neuk Open Studios.

After Pat’s I dashed up to see Kirsty in Cellerdyke to drop off work for the Pigeon’s Pop Up Christmas – which is opening on the 27th of November and will run until the 24th December – more on this in another post. Then onto Funky Scottish in Pittenweem to drop off some festive button notecards. Busy busy busy!

Then I took Abee to Ellie for a very blustery walk along the coast and we got back to the car just as the sun was setting – it was lovely, but very very cold! How I wish I had my camera – but it’s still with Mr Fixitt at Camerabox where I bought it and I have no idea when I’ll be getting it back – communication is of the non existent type which is very frustrating as I have no idea when I will get it back!