Something is always revealed when the moon is full, according to my astrologer.
Parch mark. Gosh, that's good. Sorry, but having a mare of an evening, so happy to see some of my artwork does more than just hold itself up.
This blog is about as much use as a chocolate teapot, a handbrake on a canoe, an ashtray on a motorbike. It is like shouting into the void. No response, no critique, not even trolling. So I am going to air a problem I am having in the certainty that no advice will be forthcoming, no solution offered, no light at the end of the tunnel being switched on.
I run CAYAC - the Cambridgeshire Area Young Artist Competition. There have now been 2 attempts by involved parties to change the name of the organisation I founded. I think I will go into the RA and suggest rather forcibly that they rename their annual event The Piccadilly Venture. More modern and not such a mouthful as The Royal Academy Summer Show.
I am carping, but the underlying crisis is built upon graver concerns. Without adding any remarks whatsoever about government and governance, let me just say that the devastation meted out to Education caused by the pandemic is just another brick in the wall as far as our young people are concerned, a total disaster for aspirational artists (those in Drama and Music too for that matter). It is not a fiscal issue; it is that old chestnut, 'Art is not a proper subject.'
When I see the work submitted by the kids in my county to my show, I am moved deeply, almost physically, like a sentimental old messed-up git! Not just the skill per se, but the ideas behind the work. And I often feel that the secondary students have done it despite the strictures and pressures weighing upon them. No so much the primary, though I was told recently that having taken part in The Big Draw the art provision for one school's entire yaer had been 'fulfilled.' That is like giving a child a blow-out meal on the Monday and expecting them to not eat for the rest of the month. We just wouldn't do it.
Now I find I have sufficient numbers of volunteers prepared to do the donkey work, the visits to drip feed info to Heads of Department and primary responsibles. I do not drive and am not far enough up the greasy pole to insist my school take part, or even offer itself as a venue for a future show.
Do I cajole the unwilling to help? Do I offer expenses? Do I try my hardest to revivify the thing, or just let it die? A couple of years ago the show took, at a conservative estimate, one thousand hours of my input. I have other commitments now (selling my own work, for example) and am that much older and less able to sustain that kind of involvement.
I fear I am just not a strong enough person to carry this on, though I may spend some of tomorrow emailing like a busy beaver.
Wish me luck, my invisible audience members!
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