Anne Middleton - Part of the Country

People ask what goes on at Duchy Square Centre for Creativity - how long have you got? This is my first blogging experience and I hope it will give an insight into the busy, varied lives of artists and craftspeople. We turn our hands to a lot of things and love it. So here we go - behind the scenes!

I have a workshop at Duchy where I have my equipment for framing pictures, I am working towards my qualifications with the Fine Art Trade Guild. I publish artists' work, put on exhibitions and I am also a mosaic artist.

I have just pulled out a couple of photos quickly to illustrate that one minute I could be putting an exhibition and the next I may be working in school showing children how to make their drawings into mosaic pictures that they fix into concrete to go on their walls.

This week we were filling in the screw fixing holes and polishing 152 panels - that's 304 holes - no finger nails left and sore shoulders but the four murals look great. I also taught a mosaic totem pole course at the weekend, framed some old watercolours and made some oak frames that were hard to cut, the oak was very old.

In my mosaic studio I am getting some exhibition work together so lots of experimenting, thought processes and sketches, it is coming together now.

I have just got a hot vacumn press which is a lovely shiny red magic machine that flattens out the work and puts various finishes on it ready for framing. It needs to be kept dust free and there isn't enough room in my workshop at Duchy so I have it at home at present. I do wonder whether it could do the ironing??!

Also this week I finished off framing two mosaics that are going up in the Parish Hall here, one of them was inspired by some material I bought at the Centre.

There have been lots of visitors to Princetown, even in the summer rain - and some people I met on holiday in France last year called in - we had camped next to each other and they came from Tavistock. The new exhibition was going up so lots of bustle about. Oh... and not to forget the bunting workshops, the children have had fun and so have we - wishing for sunshine for Princetown Carnival this weekend. Sorry not to be there but Lisa (the silver lady) is running a course for Part of the Country in Moretonhampstead and I will be looking after them all. Bye for now.

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