We’re always looking for new ways to improve the work we do here at Artizan Gallery and offer our audience a greater experience and insight into our activity and the lives of the artists we represent. Arthub is one great part of that and we’re beginning to reach a point where we can bring you nearly daily blog updates from our in-house team and contributing creatives. Added to this, our events calendar is really filling up recently with our Acoustic Nights becoming more and more popular, Stanza Extravaganza continuing to be a pillar of the local poetry scene, and Cocktails and Conversation delivering incredible guest talks from the likes of Gordon Oliver, Frank Sobey, Jim Parker and next month, Kate Farmery; we’re in the process of adding two more great events to this line up and when there’s nothing to do at the Gallery we curate a great monthly guide to Torbay events for Beach Hut Magazine. Then we’ve brought back Artist Hour at the gallery, offering a great social opportunity for artists and creatives to regularly meet and reach out to one another. Then there’s our new 360 scans produced by the wonderful Innovate 3 Sixty; these we’re particularly excited about as they are the closest we can possibly get to creating a permanent record of the amazing shows that come through the gallery.
These exhibition walkthroughs compliment another new project we’ve been working on in the wonderful realm of video. Its something we’ve been wanting to do for a while, and we’ve got a bit of experience here; I’ve worked on a number of filming projects in the past with other production teams, normally as a camera assistant or production photographer, rarely as a DOP, never on my own projects. So, we decided this year that making video a part of the work we do in a meaningful way was important to us, after all, it’s an incredibly powerful documentary tool and it can be used to tell a myriad of stories. Not wanting to do things by halves, we leapt in with both feet and quickly discovered that we were being incredibly ambitious!
Nonetheless, our bimble into the world of film is beginning to deliver some fruitful results and we were excited to bring you our first ever “Artizan Introduces” at the end of March with our exhibiting artists Michael MacDonagh Wood and Veronica Charlesworth. The film was shot in their home studio in Newton Abbott, a beautiful old farm building that they’ve been renovating for the last 12 months. An intrepid and ambitious team (Grace and I) turned up in the van, with far too much equipment and a plan, which we just about stuck to! Veronica and Michael welcomed us warmly and exploring their home there was no shortage of inspiration for shooting; two wonderful studios, work from Michael’s father Peter MacDonagh Wood filling the walls and a small menagerie of characterful animals who were in no way camera shy. We set ourselves up and then quite simply chatted for a handful of lovely hours.
We learnt two lessons from the day: firstly, there is no such thing as too much footage; and secondly, there is such a thing as too much footage! This may seem contradictory, but it’s amazing how much ends up being snipped away when you try to squeeze three hours of chatting into a manageable video, and how many shots you wish you’d got when you end up sequencing it all together. Either way, we went into it saying we’d work with what we got, we are after all, treating this as an experiment, but were incredibly pleased to come out with what we hope you’ll agree is an incredibly interesting “Artizan Introduces, Michael MacDonagh Wood and Veronica Charlesworth”. If you haven’t managed to check it out already, please do go and give it a look, its only 16 minutes and Michael and Veronica have some incredible stories and helpful advice.
At the end of this week, we’ll be bringing you the second in the series from our current exhibitor Cristina Ulander who we had a chat to in the gallery whilst we set up her show. This one will be a little shorter, but no less interesting! We also have three other artist interviews recorded and in the pipeline that we hope we’ll be able to release in the not too distant future also. In the meantime, you can also check out some new recordings from the Artizan Acoustic Sessions featuring regular performers Robert Spence, Simon Coverdale and Steve Gill.
We hope you’ll join us on what we’re sure will not be an uneventful journey as we continue to develop this project and welcome your feedback through all the usual channels.
