It’s March, and finally, miraculously, Artizan Gallery is back! After a far too lengthy absence, in the middle of February we managed to reopen our doors and officially start our 2019 with the help of some wonderful guests who joined us for the grand launch. And with that milestone safely under our belts, we can look forward to the rest of the year and we’re sure it is going to have plenty to offer.
And it’s already been a busy year in fact. Our relaunch exhibition has passed as we got to enjoy the work of our five Artizan artists, Kirsteen Titchener, Jo West, F. G. Davis, Martin Dutton and Susan Cavaliere. And this wasn’t even the first exhibiting opportunity of 2019 with both Martin’s and Susan’s work also being on display in the Riviera Art Fair at Torre Abbey’s Spanish Barn.
The societies exhibition was a great success, with collaboration between Devon Artist Network, Torbay Guild of Artists and Brixham Art Society for the second year running. We attended the preview afternoon to meet the award winners, who included Tracy Fox (collecting the Cavaliere Cup), Pauline Talbot (who took away the Elisabeth Bovil Trophy) and Julie Smith (winner of the June Urban trophy), with Martin and Susan also picking up awards.
In the same breath, applications for this years Cockington Sculpture Trail were launched and have recently closed, for the third-year building on the exciting event hosted in the grounds of the court. Watch out for the launch of this in May.
As well as this, we were pleased to celebrate the news that the Torbay Culture Ambassadors are back. The volunteers network, which was piloted back in 2017, was relaunched in February with the addition of a new training programme and hosts network to better connect individuals with local opportunities; hopefully there’ll be a few hosted with Artizan Gallery over the Summer.
We're now looking forward to the rest of the year which we’re sure is going to have plenty to offer. March sees us setting up and running our second show of 2019 featuring two North Devon Artists, Jenny Smy and Gill Jones so still plenty of time to pop in and see us for this one.
We’ll leave you with one final bit of news, a teaser really. Make sure to keep an “eye” on eye-view.org.uk. We look forward to telling you more on that next month!
