An experiment

Today we tried an experiment, using the Dave Pearson Trust building to run a poetry workshop with girls from the local South Asian community. The Manchester-based poet Shamshad Khan, above, ran a two hour session upstairs in our Haslingden base, Dave's old studio. 

Shamshad was helped by Arezzun Nessa, and together they decorated the upstairs floor of the old studio to create a suitable environment for the girls. Of course Dave's paintings were everywhere around, and Shamshad said that the girls and the women who brought them along to the studio were inspired and delighted by the context. 

The Saturday workshops will now continue over the next few weeks. They are part of a project running throughout 2014 and 2015, organised by Horse + Bamboo, called Different Moons, which sets out to record and celebrate the South Asian heritage community in Haslingden and Rawtenstall. Dave, we're certain, would have very much approved. 

'To Byzantium' now available on Freeview

We've just heard from Derek Smith, the director who made the stunning and acclaimed film 'To Byzantium' about Dave Pearson. He tells us that the TV Community Channel has released its new schedules and that they are still programming 'To Byzantium'.

The Community Channel is now on Freeview 109 so it commands a much bigger audience than it did before. 

For more information on the schedule, go to:

http://www.communitychannel.org/schedule/20140923/

Enjoy!

A present from Ella!

Back from a couple of weeks holiday in France and Ella sent me this photograph of a newly discovered oil painting she came across while cataloguing. I'm not sure of it's size, or whether its a canvas or painted on card (although I suspect it's the latter), but I agree with her that it's a lovely example of Dave's mid-period small oil studies.

A tidying

On Wednesday last week we hosted a small group from Bacup & Rawtenstall Grammar School, who visited the studio, watched Derek Smith's film, and who were given a guided tour. This, along with the recent decision to open the studio for the Rossendale Art Trail Open Studio weekend in October, encouraged us to spruce up the rooms and fill some of the empty wall spaces.

The upper photo shows the room where pieces are photographed and catalogued and then shelved before being returned to their places. The two photos below that are of the room which is now fully catalogued. The bottom two photos are of rooms we probably won't reach for some time....

...probably worth adding, too, that we now have a Dave Pearson board on Pinterest; so if anybody want a quick peek at a range of Dave's work it's all there. Currently with over 70 pictures.

Tuesdays...

As I'm beginning to spend most Tuesday's at Dave's studio in Haslingden, I've found time to do some housework including rehanging in the very few areas of blank wall space that don't have paintings piled against them - such as the top floor corridor, above.

Ella, meanwhile continues the job of cataloguing the work - she's at number 7101 as I write! The present series is somewhere over 100 pastel drawings from the 'In the Seven Woods' series of the early 1980s. Another recent series, the pen and ink drawings Dave made to envisage how the huge 'Byzantium' series should be displayed, created a particular problem. The paintings are very large oil-painted panels, and Dave recreated these on varied sized sheets of paper:

The dilemma was whether to record each drawing as a single catalogue item - or as several individual sheets. In the page above it could be 8 individual sheets, for example. Or 6; or 4. Ella chose to record each as a single item - I think the way Dave intended.

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.

The Catalogue

I will have written about the cataloguing process way back; probably 2 or 3 years ago now. So it's probably worth posting a short reminder as to how it actually works.

Ella does a couple of days' work each week, mainly adding to the catalogue. She (as I write) is at catalogue number 6670. When Ella started I had reached around about the 1500 mark, which took me best part of 2 years - but in just under 18 months she has added over 5000 pieces of Dave's work.

What we call 'the Catalogue' is actually a piece of software called 'Artlook'. The company who make it are based in Milton Keynes and if and when something goes awry (which it does once or twice a year) they are available, on the end of the phone or email, for friendly support. It's a very reasonably priced package, and we would certainly recommend it. It's PC-based, which to me is a slight problem as otherwise I work on Macs, but other than that it does everything it claims - and then some.

Ella takes a photograph of each piece of work and enters it into the system. These photographs are fairly low-res and a simple guide to the piece rather than the definitive visual record. The title, media, size, value, date and so on also get entered and the software automatically generates a catalogue number. Ella backs the data up every week.

Artlook software offers all kinds of other cataloguing possibilities - accounting, comments on condition, even an on-line shop if you want one. The catalogue is also very valuable in recording the sales we make of work - including the names and addresses of buyers. In  this way it has helped us create a database of people who are interested in Dave's work. It also enables us to print out invoices, certifications of ownership, and other important paper-work. 

However, on the whole, we use only a small proportion of the resources that Artlook has on offer. Even so, we're continually using the catalogue search facilities, and the ability to print off the financial and sales records save a great deal of time and trouble. Finally, being able to view thumbnails of the work by category, and click on these for a bigger image if necessary, is also a highly valuable tool - probably the only way we get to overview Dave's work visually - or at least that part of it (a third?) which, so far, has found its way on to the catalogue.