Blog

The weather’s affect in the studio has been very strange lately. It has been so hot that I have had to have all the doors and windows open. The acid bath is working very fast, a steel plate in the bath six minutes producing a velvety black! And the really odd thing is that the prints are taking much longer to dry. I have been really careful and have been changing the blotters and tissue every few days in order to make sure that they don’t get mouldy.

I must be doing something right at the moment. After a truly dreadful start to the year with over 3 months of work heading to either the recycling bin or the fire, I returned to my first love, etching, and new subject loosely based on “paths”. I submitted two of these for the National Original Print Exhibition in London. And I got the seal of approval last Friday with an email informing me that “Leaving Civinnini” had been selected! The show opens September 16th in the Bankside Gallery, which is next to the Tate Modern, and runs until 28th.

---

I can't tell you how excited I am to have been selected for this exhibition - it is the inaugural year for this new annual event and the details of the space and the exhibits can be found HERE. You can read about my return to etching in a previous blog post HERE

My life has been somewhat like being inside a tumble dryer recently.

There were a few exhibition submission deadlines looming, (and to be absolutely truthful, I had left it on the long finger and now I was in a bit of a panic situation), but what was really frustrating was that they were digital submissions. By now you will probably know that I am, at the most charitable, a bit challenged when it comes to all this computer business, especially with online form filling. This combined with trying to take photos with a digital camera (download, upload, wombling free), an inability to place things level on the wall, and metric measurements led to a lot of swearing and shouting at inanimate objects. Squeak had done the smart thing and had disappeared into my wardrobe looking for a jumper to eat. Eventually my knight in shining armour / LSH came to the rescue, and the forms went off.

---

Well, our house could never be described as dull.

Last night was (more) proof of this. We had been out at the opening of the R.H.A. and then onto the Office/Doheny and Nesbits and finally the United Arts Club. We eventually came home and were met by a VERY strong smell of wet dog at the studio and kitchen door. Now, we don’t have a dog; we have quite enough on our plates with Squeak, Missey and their various tom cat boyfriends (three at the last count!). I had encountered this smell before about 15 years ago, but hoped I was mistaken in what I remembered of it. We looked around and eventually found the source, a fox. Yes, a fox. In the utility room. Curled up. On top of a box.

I’ve seen him before, with a few others, in the garden and he’s in a fairly sorry state. He didn’t stir when we went into him and even though we left the back door jammed open, he was still there this morning, now curled up in Squeak’s basket. This could have been a disastrous move on his part, as Squeak does not believe in the Barney/sharing is caring notion.

I phoned the DSPCA and left my details on their answering machine; but, just as I put the phone down I spotted the fox running along the back wall! And quite perky too! Now I am quickly trying to do the laundry, and getting tonight’s dinner out of the freezer before either a hyena takes up residence or a herd of wildebeest begin to graze in the back garden.