A long overdue update!

A long overdue update!

I know it’s been forever since I posted something here, but I have been insanely busy behind the scenes.

Last September, when both my kids finally started going to school full time, I thought “Great!  Now I’ll have more time!”

I was wrong.

I run 10 different calendars on my iCal – 4 for my projects, 3 for my husband’s, one each for my kids and other family.  It’s the only hope I have to keep up with my deadlines.

So… what have I been doing?

Among the projects I was working on in the second half of 2011, was The Metal Arts Guild of Canada’s inaugural Exhibition in Print.  Getting the issue in my hands finally in December after so many months of work was thrilling and rewarding.

I’m really hard pressed to choose the one thing that stands out for me about the experience.  Initially, it felt very intimidating:  except for the bit of volunteering I’d done setting up other MAGC exhibitions, I had never been as intimately and directly involved in planning and running an exhibition.

Because this was going to be a virtual exhibition, we decided to try using an online jurying system.  There was a real learning curve involved in getting it set up and functioning in a way that would make it easy for the applicants to submit their work and for the curator to review and make selections.  My experience as a tutorial writer came in handy, when we started getting flooded with questions, and I had to quickly write a “how to” instruction email, detailing all the steps.  As the deadline for submissions drew near, I was in daily contact with the Memberships Chair, Charles Funnell, and our treasurer, Janet Ma, to make sure people were paying the right fees, and dealing with assorted last-minute questions and glitches.

Response to the call for entry was outstanding:  165 entries.  MAGC was the beneficiary of a wonderful stroke of luck, in the form of an introduction to Gloria Hickey, an award winning Canadian craft writer and curator with extensive experience, who agreed to take on the EiP.  Gloria went through all of the entries with a discerning eye and picked out the grouping she felt was most representative of our theme “Larger than Life”.  It was an enlightening experience for me, during the conference call on the final selections, to listen to Gloria explain how and why she chose the pieces she did.  I sat back and absorbed the discussion between Gloria and the Exhibition Chair, Mary McIntyre.  The pieces weren’t always an obvious fit to me, and the most frequent question out of my mouth was “How does this relate to the theme?”  This prompted Gloria at one point to tease me laughingly:  “You’re very pragmatic, aren’t you?”

It brought to mind a friend of mine relating a similar story about my time in university.  The project was to design a kitchen.  My classmates were busy coming up with all kinds of wildly outlandish designs.  “And here’s Dianne saying “But what about the BUDGET!?  What’s the BUDGET?!”

“Yes,” said Mary, in my defence, “but it works.”   She saw this tendency to stick with the facts as a benefit:  it kept her own – in her words – “harebrained” ideas in check.  (For what it’s worth, I would call it “brainstorming”, not “harebrained”.  She has an awesome talent for it, so in many ways, we balance each other, and it makes the results in print that much better.)

Twenty-one pieces, representing a wide swath of Canadian metalwork, were selected for final publication.  They can be seen on MAGC’s website.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been focused on other areas of my life.   One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to get a grip on my health, which has taken a beating the past couple of years.  So, I’ve been making a concerted effort to work out and lose weight.  It’s making me look better physically, but I haven’t been able to make much progress on the stress levels I live with – there still seems to be no end to the juggling I’m doing.

I’ve been teaching a lot of workshops and private classes since last Fall.  I added Chain Making to the list of con-ed courses I’m teaching at George Brown College this year, and the Wire Art Jewellery course is running for the first time in several years.  I’m pleased to have been invited back to Haliburton this summer for Wire Jewellery 2, and I’m very excited to be heading to Germany in August to teach at the Beaders Best Perlenkunst Messe in Hamburg.  (See my class schedule for a full run-down of my classes.)

I’m also taking part in the Lake Scugog Spring Studio Tour again this year, so I’m in active production mode, making pieces for sale there and through my galleries. Photos will come at some point.

So, it’s a busy life, with a seemingly never ending To Do List!  My white board has become my best friend…