Mail-out

Last week we mailed out to our list of friends, followers and other contacts at the Dave Pearson Trust. Sorry, the version below is probably too small to read, but double-click on it and you should be able to see a larger, clearer version:

Today we're approaching being a month away from the opening of the 'Byzantium and Beyond' show in Bermondsey. Suddenly London seems an awful long way away to us, and our concern is that because we're based in the North-West of England attendance at the gallery Preview will be low. Of course we've been aware of this issue for a long time and have been making plans. The first piece of the jig-saw has been to create databases of friends, contacts, galleries, press, and other potentially interested parties. The mail-out above was the first part of putting this in place, and at the same time we also sent out a more informative mail-out to the press.

Next we've hired a small local company to handle the mail-outs, including adding a form on the front page of the Dave Pearson website for new people to subscribe. I've also looked at advertising. This is a problem area for us, as advertising rates are very high, way out of our league, so we've tried to create interesting editorial copy, hoping that the press will find Dave's story and the story of us setting up the Trust of interest and run an article. Finally we're hoping that friends and other contacts based in London, including of course the Crisis charity, who run the Bermondsey Project gallery, will help us send out word of the exhibition.

If anyone reading this blog is interested and wishes to receive an invitation to the exhibition, simply go to the Dave Pearson website at www.dspearson.org and complete the very simple form at the top right of the front page. You'll then receive our mail-outs. Many thanks.

Fun with Spam

Margaret has been creating a number of details (including the three above) from the Byzantium series of paintings that will be on show in London and then passed these on to Julian so he has photographs available should there be any responses to the Press Releases that are going out next week.

One thing to slightly delay things is that the company handling our mail-outs ran the texts of both the press release and the general bulletin through a Spam Checker (to make certain that our emails weren't directed into recipient's spam boxes), and they managed to achieve a score of 8.6. Anything over 5.0 is considered by the programme to be potential spam and thus likely to be promptly deflected from any Inbox worth its salt. This was all news to me; but apparently it's  based on identifying certain spam-sensitive words - so that the words 'exhibition' and 'painting', for example, score highly on the 'highly dubious' scale and thus help condemn any emails containing them to the spam box. 'Film' appears to be a dangerous word, whereas 'movie' is OK. Odd!

So time was taken by our friendly mail-out agency to re-write the releases in a spam-friendly way. It's actually quite hard to send out notice of an exhibition of paintings when both of the key words are among the main culprits. But they did it, with a final score of only 3.0!

Portraits and a poster

It's been a weekend of work on our Press Release, the mailing list and on the catalogue for the Bermondsey exhibition. 

Some changes to the planned catalogue have been agreed by Margaret Mytton and Edward Lucie-Smith, and we've also been discussing the poster design. Two blogs ago, on Sunday 12th February, I focused on the 'signature' image to help us promote the show:

That self-portrait, an old favourite of mine, was used in the very first short monograph we created, shortly after the formation of the Dave Pearson Trust. Margaret has been a little concerned that it may be over-familiar to some people, so the  possibility of using an alternative image - or even two different images - has arisen. The portrait at the top of the page is suggested as that alternative. 


So we're now having an amicable debate about the merits of the two images to publicise the show; or do we use both? Any strong feelings one way or the other out there? We would be interested to hear them...

Colour matching and design

I've been working away in Glasgow but the Inbox is full of mails between Margaret, Ric (the designer) and Julian. Clearly things are moving fast - selection of the final few paintings, agreeing on the design for the catalogue cover (so I can use a version of this on any e-mailouts) and putting together a mailing list so the first notifications can go out to followers of Dave's work. 

Matching the colours of paintings with their printed versions is one of the many important things to get right in the catalogue, and Margaret and Ric are working closely together on this. The design is at the stage of devising page plans and producing a rough draft of page layout. The 64 page catalogue will include three illustrated essays, a chronology of Dave's work, and plenty of colour photographs of key paintings by Dave. 

Julian and Jackie have been busy at the studio; their work has made it much easier for me, and especially for Margaret, to select work and make decisions in preparation for the London show. 

Margaret has been given time from teaching at MMU to undertake this selection and curating as part of her academic research. As well as selecting work she is preparing photographs for the catalogue and collating the written pieces for the same. David Maclagan has already written a very interesting piece on Dave's 'unseen' drawings, and Edward Lucie-Smith is developing his initial article on the exhibition into a catalogue piece. Lucy-Anne Hunt was at the studio earlier in the week, holed up in the gloomy basement (a lightbulb had gone) searching through Dave's old books for evidence towards her piece on influences relating to the 'Byzantium' series. 

Byzantium and Beyond

We've chosen this self-portrait (with arms, fungi and fishes) as the 'signature' image for the Bermondsey exhibition - now called 'Byzantium and Beyond'. It's a favourite painting and was also used on our 2009 brochure. Now it'll be on the catalogue cover, invites and any other artwork such as posters. It's featured in this blog before now, too, but I think deserves a second - or third - showing. 

We're also working on a Press Release and a Press Pack, a mailing list, and Margaret more specifically is working towards the production of the catalogue. 

Selecting work

Yesterday Margaret Mytton, joined by Edward Lucie-Smith and Julian Williams, spent the day choosing paintings for the forthcoming exhibition in London.

Above Margaret, Chris Pearson and Edward look through photographs of paintings from the two enormous 'Byzantium' series to select paintings for the Bermondsey show. 6 pieces were selected - although these would each be in the form of large diptychs or triptychs - one is made up of 5 large canvas panels. 

These paintings will make up the core of the exhibition, but decisions were also made to include a group of self-portraits, some of the work Dave made during the period of his hospitalisation and treatment for cancer, and other examples of his wide-ranging and prolific work, including some playful assemblages and constructions Dave made for the Globe Arts Studio Christmas exhibitions.