For the last 3 months I have, with Girl Friday's help, been re-vamping the studio.Gone are the workbench and vice and wood and metal-work tools, screws, glues, nails and the whole damn hardware shop. In their place are work tables, a design computer, art history library and a warm fire.I haven't been near a pub, club or cafe for all this time - just work, work, work.The studio is now getting to be a nice place to hang out and will soon be open to the public along with the large back room of the house which is now an artists life drawing and painting room and lounge.Come and visit us soon, we're nearly ready...
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A new addition to the life of this artist is Girl Friday, who I met at a printmaking class I was teaching at our local High School. At the end of the printmaking course I invited all the class members to continue their work at my studio. Keri Ann leapt at the chance and in a matter of a week or two had become Girl Friday, super hero, planning strategist, marketing manager, chief collaborator and an indespensible integral part of the studio and all that pertains to it.And all this while holding down the job of wife of Mark and Mother of two young sons.I tell ya she's near as manic as me, maybe more so. What a score!!There are three businesses going on here; various art workshops, artist backpacker accommodation and the manufacture and sale of artist's etching presses.Girl Friday sees the etching press side of it as a means of funding the proper set-up and ongoing maintenance of the art courses and backpacker accommodation.
We are committed to a year of getting this show on the road just for the fun, making art and to meet people and maybe even for profit or at least the partial underwriting of the cost of our many and various habits such as our addictions to print-making, drawing, painting, coffee, and sticky buns!
A major stumbling block to the official opening party for the Smallest Art School in the World has been the delay in the creation and launch of the new website because of our inability to find a suitable name for the enterprise. A few friends have joined in the hunt for the perfect name and the only thing they can agree on is they don't like my choice; the Smallest Art School in the World . .
Girl Friday wants to get some of her clever girlfriends onto helping make the website with domain name and all and she has experience in newspaper, radio and marketing and reckons that's the way to go John. Ok Keri Ann, just hurry up so we can have the party!!I can turn a radio on, light a fire with a newspaper, I know where the supermarket is and what is this that I am writing on right now but a website with an international following of four people???
My musician friend Graham likes the Little Art School and promises to play at the party and do his fire juggling act and his 7 year old daughter Soraya likes Johnny's Little Art School.I came up with -Art Workshops Waihi- but that is so prosaic and I still like Smallest Art School in the World and all I want is to get the name sorted and invite all my muso and artist friends to the opening so we can PARTY!!Maybe you can help dear reader?
Someone in Singapore who liked my writing style wanted me to do a blog on certain restaurants and a hotel chain in South East Asia. As I wasn't offered an all expenses paid trip around SE Asia staying in those hotels and eating in those restaurants I let my new writing career die stillborn.Well, hell! You are the only person reading this anyway, what were those Singapore advertizing people thinking??
The etching press business has been moved out of the studio into a shed of it's own. Space is at a premium around here with so much going on.
I have been a bit crook so no posting for a few weeks but Barbi came to visit and brought with her sunshine and happiness. There are now two mural commissions on my books, as they say and today, Sunday, I will be working on the designs for both of them and will soon have posts on Marley's Mural epicode 2 and the Rocket Park Mural episode 1. The Rocket Park is a kid's playground and I will be paintint a mural or two there in Winter. No worries, doesn't snow here but in a Southerly one can smell the Antarctic and the Great Southern Ocean on the winds that come whipping through the Karangahake Gorge and keep little old Waihi cool, man, really cool.
The studio before
How do you paint two seven metre murals in a six metre studio? Start with buying the canvas and plonking it in there. So far so good.
The studio after
Then make a seven and a half metre drawing board that curves around the corner. This was the plan for Saturday last but didn't happen till today, Tuesday.
Tomorrow is for priming two seven metre pieces of canvas and getting on with the design work while waiting for primer to dry.
Have you heard the expression bout as much fun as watching paint dry?
Well watching and waiting for paint to dry is a reality of my life. Fabulous eh?
I just noticed that this post was headed by the date: Monday.
Well friends here in New Zealand the sun shines first and it is, for myself and my fellow kiwis, actually Tuesday. Night. 7. 20 pm.
That's an interesting thing about playing with computers: different time zones and different species of the English language and all the other languages too. Small world.
So if any of you good people living to the East or the West want a sneak preview on what, for instance, the coming Wednesday is feeling like before it arrives at your place well just gimme a tinkle about 4 hours from now and I'll duck outside and check it out for ya.
Be no sweat, always happy to help a mate out of a tight spot....
The first thing my Mother never told me about building an Art School is you need a separate building to build the Art School bits and pieces in - 
and the artist's lounge, life drawing room and bed-sitting room will become a dumping ground for furniture and paintings and frames and glass and stuff...
and the guest room will become a workshop crammed with a whole hardware store..
and the carport becomes an etching press manufactury and the Toyota (poor wee thingy) sleeps out in the cold and wet.
