After a long and tricky #lockdown, I am now back at Happy Planet. It's been a quiet first week but I don't mind, in fact, I was quite glad of the gentle easing back into a routine but less enamoured with sitting behind a desk all day. Still, it's good to see things slowly emerging out of lockdown like shy tulips.
Exhibition opportunity
I have spent a fair chunk of my time away creating things for the shop but the remainder has happily allowed me time to paint in my studio, where I regularly lost track of time busy creating work for a new exhibition, 'Time on my Hands', which will be opening in August in North Shields at the Gallery space where my studio is situated in the Beacon Centre.
The reason I am telling you about it now is that 'Time on my Hands' is all about reflections on the pandemic and lockdown and it's not just my story, as I am inviting the public to take part too.
I have created a series of clocks to represent my time and have written about them but I believe there will be many more stories out there in the community that may not be told about a time when we faced extreme adversity and uncertainty.
I am not looking for perfect works of art, so please don't think you need to be a professional artist. This exhibition is about how people used creativity to help them navigate and cope in difficult unfamiliar times. It doesn't matter how you did that, whether it was painting, drawing, photography, textiles, knitting, crochet, origami etc. etc. Everyone is welcome to enter, children and adults. I will simply choose the best 50-60 entries that form a good cross-section of how the pandemic impacted our lives.
If you want to enter all you will need to do is send an email with a photo of what you created and your story of how or why in 120words or less. Entries will open at the end of April and close at the end of May, so you have time to create something if you haven't already. It is an open entry, but I thought I would give you all a little advance warning, as I know what a creative bunch you can be. I will send another newsletter and post it on social media when the entries open.
