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MEMBERS' NEWSLETTER: JANUARY 2001 A Happy New Year Everyone When a new year dawns, traditionally people begin it by making resolutions. Mostly these are perceived by the person making them as being good or beneficial. I'm no exception to this custom but I'm going to keep you guessing by not disclosing what my good resolutions are! What is more important is that we members, of an Art Society which has enjoyed many successful years, should be willing to make a modest commitment to serve the Society to ensure its continues to develop. So please try to include in your New Year resolutions one which applies to giving some of your own time and effort to be of use to the Society. The Newsletter outlines ideas for two projects that even those members living some distance from Ludlow could help develop given a willingness to take an active part in the Society's affairs. For some time several of us have been unhappy about the poor state of the Society's display screens. Their shabby appearance spoiled the last summer exhibition in the bright new surroundings of the Harley Centre. The screens were made almost single handed by a former member Keith Thomson in his garage, his unselfish hard work has served us well. The screens were refurbished once when a group of us applied a new coat of paint just before one summer exhibition but there seems to be a reluctance to undertake that task again–it is time for complete renewal. The Committee in January approved the expenditure of up to £5000 for a completely new set of display screens. These will have tubular steel uprights and the display boards will be built onto a steel framework The construction should be stronger and lighter than the old wooden ones. The old screens are still in storage and therefore an expense to the Society. If any of our more entrepreneurial members would like to make an offer for any of them before they are consigned to a bonfire you will be helping to rebuild the Society's depleted funds. If you have a use for our old screens please contact the Hon. Secretary. So we are set to have fine new screens for the Spring Exhibition but will we be able to actually stage it? The Society still does not have a Treasurer and at the time of writing we do not have anyone willing to take charge of the financial management of the exhibition. John Hawkings, a good friend, has agreed to keep the Society's accounts even though he will not be a member of the Committee. This I feel is an imposition on someone who has served the society well for so long and who was hoping to retire. For the Spring Exhibition to take place we need someone to be responsible for keeping accurate records of sales, banking takings, and posting payment cheques to members whose work has sold. It requires daily supervision of cash for the period of the exhibitions and perhaps up to one more week to arrange and post payments. Many of you have benefited from the unselfish dedication of the two previous Treasurers who shouldered this burden at every exhibition. Are there any volunteers whose New Year resolutions might extend to these duties? Getting into hypertext. We artists are firmly glued to very old technology, moving hands holding pieces of chalk have been making marks on surfaces for thousands of years. Basically very little has changed in the way we craft our creations. Some people take comfort in this long tradition and there is nothing wrong in that except that it is easy to become trapped in a conservative way of doing things. Those prompt payers, I love you all, who have already paid their 2001 subscriptions and received the new membership cards will have noticed the logo which has sneaked unasked onto the front page. There it is again on the Newsletter–it has a history. The logo originally carried the words 'Ludlow Assembly Rooms' because I offered it to the LAR Council who were looking to develop their corporate identity. Sadly it got buried and I thought, at the start of a new year, it was worth resurrecting with a different name. But I digress, the real point is that the logo is a computer graphic produced essentially by clicking a mouse rather than with traditional tools like a brush or engraving tool. It took a just a few seconds to change the words in the design to give it a new life in a different context. Richard Wardle was telling me recently how he was required by a publisher to submit his designs as computer graphics files. Artists are being nudged towards computer graphics and the methods of the new technology change completely the way artists and designers work. The computer is a powerful tool which offers quick and flexible ways of producing designs or artwork. Digital technology though is sometimes misapplied. Last year 'The Artist' magazine carried an article describing the production of Giclée prints–an obscure and arty sounding name someone has coined for scanning drawings or watercolours and printing them with an ink jet printer. The method is fine if you want to cheaply produce your own greetings cards but signed editioned prints produced in this way are worthless. As artists we keep alive a long tradition of hand-crafted works of art and prints produced by etching, engraving, or lithography have an individuality that fits naturally into this hand craft tradition. Digital imaging has great potential for creating lovely images but its logical field of application is the video screen rather than the editioned print Digital technology is now of fundamental importance because of the world wide web. The web's importance lies not in its commercial applications but in the fundamental conception of Tim Berners-Lee, its founder, that it will allow people to share knowledge and ideas freely. Packets of information can be sent anywhere and the significance of this is that our widely scattered membership would be able to share their ideas, make suggestions, and we could regularly show our work to each other—if the Society had a website. Professional Societies like the Pastel Society and the RBSA have their own web sites and I am sure there will be some amateur societies like our own who will have followed suit. In fact I spent the cold wet days of last December writing my own web site. It is now published at www.rkstudio.demon.co.uk. Members, if they have access to the Internet, might like to look at it—I would welcome your opinions. It was not my intention to use the Members Newsletter to publicise my personal site, I mention it only because I have included some pages about the Ludlow Art Society. I have a programme of development for the site so I do not envisage that the Ludlow Art Society pages will be a permanent part of it. It would be better if the Society had a web site of its own; but if any member troubles to look they may begin to see the possibilities. David D. and David M.'s etchings look quite nice on the web and we could present members' work in colour much more cheaply than by having it printed. More importantly it would be a means whereby our more distant members could share fully in the life of the society by giving their views and showing their paintings. Remember we could also publish your photograph as well as your work so we would become familiar with those faces we only normally get to see when you hand in your submissions to exhibitions! Development and maintenance of the site ought not to be left to one individual and our more isolated members could easily help because Emails are cheap and quick and reports, articles, and artwork are easily sent. If there are any silver surfers, out there amongst our membership who are not afraid of HTML and would like to help develop the project I would love to hear from you.
The Newsletter - a way forward? The Society's Members' Newsletter has always tended to be the Chairman's mouthpiece and this has always bothered me a bit. I suppose since you have a Chairman you should indulge the old duffer and let him air the froth of his mind in each issue but with a membership of currently around 200 there will surely be a sizeable number of you with something worth while to contribute. Widening the content of the Newsletter to include members views, opinions, technical tips, news of your exhibitions would be an interesting and worthwhile development As with the web site the Editor of the Newsletter could be any of our far flung members just as easily as a local one. The Society exists to help you develop your own particular corner of a very big artistic field and gain some confidence and enjoyment as your artistic talent grows. In return I hope you will become more than just a name in the members database and be prepared to share your artistic knowledge with other members. It would be nice If an Editor could be appointed at the October AGM so that a revised Newsletter, which reflects the views of a broad section of the membership, can be published next year. If the idea of editing a revitalised newsletter appeals do get in touch. We seem to be back to those New Year resolutions again!
The LAS Prize for Painting. Several years ago the Society made a donation to Ludlow College to fund an annual prize for painting. The prize goes to the student adjudged by the College to have produced promising and outstanding work during their course. Desmonnd Keig-Shevlin and I represented the Society at the Ludlow College Presentation Evening last November. So I was pleased to meet Harry Toogood the 1999-2000 prizewinner and I was able to congratulate him on his success. Harry is now in his final college year and after completing his 'A' Levels he intends to take a BA degree in Interior Design. We wish him every success in his chosen subject.
The Children Drawing Project. Those of us who took part in the Children's Drawing workshop which David Mace devised last year were delighted by the keen response of the children. I also discussed plans for the project with Sara Robinson when she took up her appointment as Artistic Director at the Assembly Rooms. Sara came up with the idea of a Saturday Morning Art Club. This would widen the scope of the artistic activities on offer beyond that of drawing but it would meet our original criteria and have the advantage of offering an ongoing programme rather than an infrequent series of one-day workshops. The committee therefore agreed to sponsor Sara's SMAC (sorry about the acronym!) for three 10 week terms commencing with the schools summer term this year. T he sponsorship will meet the cost of a trained leader for the Club. Voluntary help from any of our members who would like to help run some of the practical activities would be welcome. The 2000-1 Programme I hope members will be keenly looking forward to the new monthly programme. The names of some of the speakers will already be familiar–Jean Brown is well known to local members and you can deduce from the title of her March presentation 'Stitches in Time' that it will be about the development of embroidery. Margaret Layton with Claire Spencer selected the entries to our Summer Exhibition—Margaret , in April, will be talking about 'British Artists since 1900' . Claire Spencer has been on a painting holiday to India with Ken Howard and in May will be sharing her experiences with us. Please note the unusual date of Claire's presentation. The Assembly Rooms will be closed on the first Thursday in May because of the May Fair when the 'swaggering hempen homespuns' and noisy rude mechanicals bring sensitive civilised life in Ludlow to a standstill! The May meeting will therefore be on Thursday May 10th. please note it now. The concept of holding a quality exhibition which achieves a national standard of excellence during the Ludlow Festival was developed primarily to help members assimilate ideas from a range of work. Collections of paintings of the quality shown in our sponsored exhibitions can only normally be seen by traveling to London or other large regional centre. This year we will be sponsoring the President's Exhibition and it promises to be a stunner–several members of the PS, NEAC, RWA, of which John Blockley is a member, have expressed an interest in showing their work with John as has David Prentice and other RBSA members. I am particularly pleased that John Napper has agreed to give the July talk his subject is: 'Remembering to remember–a few memories of my long life as an artist. ' John is now 84! In September John Blockley will give a day workshop at Notgrove. This is a lovely unspoiled Cotswold village between Stow and Cheltenham. I explored it recently under cold overcast January skies and even in those conditions the drystone walls and farmhouses just asked to be sketched. In September it will be marvelous.
Here's a thought I hope members who were at Robert Perry's presentation in January will have picked up his little gem about the danger of the brain taking over from the eye. It is easy to paint what we know should be there rather than what we can actually see. How many times have we fallen into that trap? Here is more advice on the theme of 'seeing'. 'Seeing is a matter of looking and feeling, for things do not look exactly like you think they do. To look with preconceived notions of visual experience is to destroy the possibility of creating again that experience in paint. If you know before you look then you cannot see for knowing'. Sir Terry Frost. Robert Kirk, Chairman. |