10,000

Ella has finally passed the 10,000th piece of work in the cataloguing of Dave's work. The works she chose for this august occasion were from a small selection of pastel drawings that she uncovered in one of the 20 or so plastic box folders that have recently been the focus of her cataloguing work. These contained a wide of range of Dave's work including a high proportion of early student drawings, but also a number of very special series from later in his career - including these pastels, three of which are shown above.

There remain two of these boxes still to be processed, and a mezzanine attic above the workshop space that contains a number of shaped canvases and a few early seminal paper-mache pieces from the 1960s. Once these have been done Ella will be able to move from the top floor of the studio to the two lower floors to continue her catalogue. 

The Art Trail 2015

The decision to return the large ground floor front room at Dave's studio in Haslingden into a gallery space really paid off this weekend at the Rossendale Art Trail - the renamed Reveal Open Studios weekend. 

It meant that at least a small selection of the work can be viewed in optimum conditions (above) and this was clearly appreciated by the 80 or so people who came through over the two days. It was also reflected in a good number of sales being made, and a lot of interest from people who want to make an appointment to visit when they would have more time to look through the work.

Ella Cole, who is managing the process of cataloguing Dave's work, has now reached 9,999 pieces in the catalogue. Purposely holding back from the ten thousandth until we have a bottle of champagne at hand! This quantity  of work is still all contained on the top floor  of the building, and the ground and first floor have yet to be sorted through.