A Blog About An Art Gallery

I spent an hour or so the other day (Friday actually if you must know) chatting to an ex work colleague and all round good egg Lucy Hook-Child, she of the double barrelled surname and 100% Essex blood running through her veins. Well where else would you expect her blood to run? I ask you.
Lucy has recently opened a new gallery and I was keen to find out a bit more about it. So I paid her a visit and demanded some answers. Well what else is an intrepid blogger, aka nosey bugger, supposed to do?
The gallery in question is called  Hazel Gallery, named after her Nana, a keen artist herself who, coincidentally, was also called Hazel (Not Gallery). Lucy used to spend summer holidays at Nana Hazel's house and was encouraged to take part in her various artistic interests, painting and crafts. Her love of art began here. This inspired her to study for her GNVQ in Art and Design and then a degree at Colchester Institute graduating in 2000. Lucy then worked at Colchester Library where I first knew her (and also knew her Mum and younger sister as they used to visit the mobile library), and a new age shop The Cusp. After a spell of teacher training in Bristol Lucy returned in 2007 to teach on the GNVQ art course back at Colchester Institute until early in 2013 when, faced with reapplying for the job she was already doing saw it as an opportunity to follow her heart and made   the courageous decision to say thanks all the same but no thanks.                                                             
She spent the summer, and her redundancy money, setting up Hazel Gallery in an old newspaper kiosk that used to form part of the also redundant bus station in Colchester, right next to the old waiting room/café. I used to wait for my bus there, many years ago. And more than likely bought a paper or two and some sweets from the kiosk itself  (and probably the odd packet of fags, but don't tell anyone).
It's now a new community initiative designed to regenerate the area from the ground up, by involving the local community, under the banner of St Botolph's Waiting Room or just the Waiting Room, if you want to be informal. And I know you do. It's all very exciting. And there is a magnificent view of the new firstsite gallery and a big red London bus.
She has added a complete new open frontage and inside is a feast of art, Cards, paintings, handmade gifts, bound journals and some of her own work. Well you would, wouldn't you.
Lucy also has her own studio at Cuckoo Farm where her lovely artworks are born. Lucy is a mixed media artist inspired by nature, the environment and music. All stemming from growing up in the countryside and long hours spent admiring trees and the moon.
Oh, and bye the bye, not content with all the above for talent, commitment and general all round clever clogginess (I made that word up),  Lucy also happens to have her Level 1 BSL, that's British Sign Language to you and me. Crikey!
You need to get yourselves down there don't you, for a good look and to do some Christmas shopping. Hazel gallery is open Tuesdays to Saturdays 10am - 6pm. And for good measure this Saturday is the Christmas Art Fair with 'art, craft, vintage and acoustic music all day'. So it's telly off and shopping bags on.

And when you're there, as I know you will be, say hi from me.

Nuff said.

Just more writing really

Written at Write Night, 15 Queen Street, Colchester on Monday  8 September 2012. A writing exercise in three parts. Unedited and copied as written on the night. Well maybe the teeniest bit of editing so it is readable!

Where:  The lake

Who:      Two people
When:    Summer time, early evening

Fifteen minutes on each task.....

 

Task 1. First person narrator 

In that summer - that long hot summer of 1976- at the tail end of my childhood and the beginning of my young adulthood I had taken to walking down to the lake on my way home from school as home was a place I didn't want to go - both of my parents having taken to working longer hours so that the lack of communication between them seemed to have the basis of a legitimate excuse - although why they could never do the thing they always insisted I should do-that is actually tell the truth and admit they were not talking-was always a source of irritation and upset to me - anyways to get on with the story and not prolong the agony of my parents difficulties-it was a Friday I remember that much as it was the end of the school week and I was feeling even more depressed than usual at the thought of a whole weekend at home with non - talking parents and an ever thickening atmosphere. 

I had been at the lake lost in my own thoughts for what felt like a few hours when I first caught sight of the couple - how long they had been there I can't say - seated on the wooden bench further down the lake - the bench I would never sit on as it was close to the edge of the woods and - in my young imagination - I always feared 'something' coming up to me from behind out of the woods - so I preferred to sit on the side of the lake close to the park where children often played and whose parents would sit and watch them as I always felt safer with others around...

 

Task 2: Third person limited narrator

(NB: Will told me that I got this and next task mixed up but this is  how I wrote them from my understanding of the tasks at the time)

The couple had been sitting for a while - not really talking but not not-talking either - they seemed comfortable in each other's presence - at ease - not needing the verbal noise that so many felt they had to resort to in the company of others - before the boy looked up from his own thoughts and became aware of them ..

He seemed troubled - not at all at ease - unrelaxed as if he was there escaping from something rather than enjoying the scenery - and on noticing the couple across the lake he seemed relieved - as if they could be a focus of his attention for a while - something to occupy his mind - a distraction from the disturbed state he was in - so as young people can do he seemed to stare right at them rather than be discreet almost as if he was becoming hypnotized - the expression on his face one of intense concentration - and maybe it was the intensity of his stare or the length of time but soon the couple - with not a word or a look passing between them - lifted their heads as if they were one and returned his stare - almost as if an invisible current of electricity was passing between them...

Task 3: Third person omniscient narrator

(it had seemed to him mere seconds - the briefest of glances - and yet in that moment he knew everything about them)

From where she was crouched behind the trees she could see the boy across the lake - the boy she had been watching all summer - the quiet, withdrawn, sad boy - the boy she had taken to following and observing - always from a distance - to his home and to his school - the boy soon to be a man.

She could see him staring intently at the couple on the bench that she used to follow and she wanted to warn him - don't look at them, don't attract their attention - they were harmless until you attracted their attention - she knew this - she had seen what they did when they felt they were discovered and she liked this boy - the quiet sad boy - he reminded her of herself all those years - ago when she inhabited clay as he did - when her body had solid form on this earth - and she wanted him to keep his - to live - to have a life - to......