Calendar Customs

Today we've hung a small show at The Whitaker, Rawtenstall. It's a selection of a dozen pieces by Dave Pearson from his series of works made between 1973 and 1985, based on British (mainly English) Calendar Customs. 

It's all part of the Rossendale Heritage Festival, which includes a wide range of events from Bengali stand-up comedy to Lancashire dialect poetry. It embraces the traditional Carnival held at the Bacup and Stacksteads end of the Valley, as well as the Larks of Dean quire, Waterfoot Wakes, heritage readings and storytelling by Hina Qureshi. 

We've taken over one of the two upstairs galleries at the Whitaker, our local museum. The other room is being converted into a pop-up cinema and there will be showings of Derek Smith's film about Dave Pearson, along with Arcadia, a much acclaimed film shown on BB2 earlier this year which uses old film footage to paint a wild, dark and slyly humorous look at English traditional customs. 

We've been able to show a selection of Dave's large cardboard relief paintings, as well as etchings and small oil paintings. Thanks to Paddy Campbell and Ella Cole for their help in hanging the work - the show opens tomorrow and stays up until Sunday the 14th July.

Modern Masters

The holiday period is coming to a close and both Ella and I will be back to regular work at the Dave Pearson Trust. 

No apologies for yet another post focusing (above) on the reprints by Alan Birch of some of Dave's spectacular 'Calendar Custom' prints. 

News update - the York exhibition at the According to McGee gallery is due to open on Saturday 10th September at 12pm. This is an opening of the group of exhibitions themed as 'Modern Masters' and introduces a sample of works by the artists who will be represented later in the series - so don't expect a Dave Pearson exhibition, but it will include a few of his works, including at least one of the new prints. The gallery is in the centre of York, at 8 Tower Street, YO1 9SA - opposite Cliffords Tower. 

I've a meeting at the Turnpike Gallery in a week or so, and the idea of holding a big exhibition at this gallery (which Dave first exhibited in almost 25 years ago) looks as if it's coming closer  to fruition. 

Prints

We visited Alan Birch in Prospect Studios again this morning. Alan has continued to proof nearly 60 of Dave Pearson's etching and drypoint plates. So Ella and I have been able to go through the whole selection and decide which ones for Alan to take to the next stage. 

The prints fall into two series. First steel plate etchings, nearly all of which are from the early 1970s series of Calendar Customs, that explore British traditional customs and place them in a formalised landscape setting. These are large (mostly about 70cms x 45cms), really attractive and highly detailed. We've asked Alan to take 15 of these and print up top copies.

The other main group, of which we've chosen 11 for Alan to print, is a looser, more expressionist set. Still fairly large, these are drypoint from the later 1970s, hand etched onto a soft metal (aluminium) plate. Many of them are a development in terms of subject matter from the 'Calendar Customs' series - still relating to traditional customs, though with a few interiors of his studio, and one simply of trees:

Our hope is that Alan will finish the next set, which will be printed on top quality paper with a good border all around, next month. I'll then start looking for interested galleries for an exhibition of the work. The Whitaker in Rawtenstall has already expressed an interest, and the whole process of rediscovering these plates should make for a very interesting exhibition, especially for anyone interested in printmaking. 

An interesting cache...

Before Ella can entirely complete the cataloguing process in the first room, there remains one folder of work. Ella had some doubts whether the work was by Dave so we had a good look at the contents. The first sheets were pastels and oil pastels by his mother, Lilian, that had been entered for the 'Hackney Annual Art Exhibition', and with gold date stickers for 1982 and 1983.

But further in we came to some unmistakeable Dave Pearson's - not in great condition, it has to be admitted. 

There were half a dozen or so oil pastels on canvas, from the 'Calendar Customs' series, and these needed removing from their deteriorating mounts and will, ultimately, require cleaning. There were also about 15 larger scratched card and black pastel drawings from 'In The Seven Woods', which will need fixing. All of course can now be catalogued.

Probably the nicest pieces were six small coloured drawings, again from 'Calendar Customs'. I'm planning to have these framed - as small paintings by Dave all rare items.

More of that extraordinary find...

Four more examples of the set of large pastel drawings of British Calendar Customs made by Dave and uncovered by Ella last week. I went to see them - they really are huge, most measuring close to two metres on the longest side. How would we frame them - being unfixed pastel they really are quite delicate?

A discovery!

I visited Ella at Dave Pearson's studio yesterday to see how things were going with the cataloguing of Dave's work, and also to meet Chris Pearson, Dave's son - and one of the Trustees. 

Ella showed me the progress she was making  and we took a look round the upstairs rooms where she is focussing her work. She has now reached 5400 items in the catalogue and is close to completing the first room - with perhaps another 1000 paintings and drawings still to be catalogued on the first floor alone. Chris, by the way, mentioned that he had several thousand works on paper in his house, in addition to the those in the studio. 

I pointed out to Ella a pile of works on paper that had been unopened since Dave died. These were rolled up in about 10 large rolls. This afternoon Ella opened one of these rolls - and found a series of really beautiful images of Calendar Customs pastel drawings. Excited, she immediately sent me 11 small photographs of her discovery. Four of them are illustrated here, to show their quality. 

British Calendar Customs

This weekend has been full of work to follow up the incredible response to the One Show piece on the Bermondsey show. The number of people who have signed up to receive information from the Trust has doubled, as has the number of people following our Facebook page and Twitter account. There's also the matter of responding to the many people who have written wishing to buy a painting by Dave. This is far from easy to organise as the London exhibition is not a selling show, in the sense that Crisis, who rent and run the space are not allowed to sell as a condition of their lease, although the Trust can sell works in the exhibition, but only by handing it ourselves - and this isn't easy as we don't have a presence in London. Anyway it has been sorted, offering people a choice of options including meeting up with Margaret on two named days when she will be in London.

Anyway, to lighten the workload, I decided to go through the 10 notebooks that Dave left behind which contains his notes, scribbles and sketches on British Calendar Customs.  There should be 11 but we can't find one of them. These are wonderful - full of the notes Dave made when reading up the subject, and quick sketches that would have provided a basis for the paintings and collages he eventually made. These books reveal yet another side of the artist. Among the pages are a handful of more worked up ink drawings and I include a couple here. Above is a drawing of a Full Moon ritual, and below of 'Dumb Cake' from Norfolk.