President's Letter for March 2013

 

Gillian Govan

I hope you have all had an enjoyable Easter break. I felt very uplifted by the wonderful results of the International Flower and Garden Show. This was ably coordinated and run by Mark Cowie who we must all agree did wonderful job. The variety of work and the standard was outstanding which resulted in wonderful sales. Thanks to all the entrants for your participation, those who demonstrated and all who were on the roster . I am sure your efforts have raised the profile of the Association of Sculptors.

 

Unfortunately at the moment we need all the help we can get as we do not have a website to help our image. Our website designer’s heroic efforts will only be matched by our efforts to see that we are not in this situation again.

 

This has not been easy for me as president as we seem to be having a rather bad time. I now have to inform you that the committee has had to make the unfortunate decision that we will not hold our Annual Exhibition and Awards this year. As a committee we have looked at many venues and have found nothing large enough and prestigious enough to show the quality of work that we produce.

 

While we have two coordinators they require a subcommittee and they have had very few offers of help. We need to advertise, find sponsors for prize money and judges to judge our work. All these things do not just happen.

 

We therefore plan to:

• Start sending proposals for 2014 to as many galleries or City venues as soon as possible ( if you have any suggestions please contact Monica Mauer or Bronwyn Culshaw)

• Start looking for sponsors ( If you have any ideas or contacts please contact Bron and Mon)

• Start advertising and publicising as soon as we have a suitable venue.(again contacts and data bases useful.)

• We can start planning a grand opening. (we will have a little more money to spend on an opening and advertising as we will not have made a loss this year).

• Ask a few of our members who we recognise have certain qualities to help. These need only be small tasks but if planned in advance will not be too onerous and should be easier to carry out.

• Members will have time to produce some of their best work and hopefully we will be able to display more pieces for each member.

I am very disappointed that we have been forced to make this decision but as is the case with most associations like ours there are too high expectation that so few volunteers can carry the load.

Every cloud has a silver lining and in looking for venues we found a very nice gallery in Toorak that although too small for our Annual is most suitable to hold exhibitions on the same lines as the John Elliot Exhibition. Monica Mauer has agreed to run an exhibition there for two weeks in September this year. It will not involve sponsors. prizes or judges. The gallery director and board are most enthusiastic to work with us. We will keep you informed as more details come to hand. ..... So watch this space.

We will not have a meeting this month but look forward to seeing you at Ashburton when Cetta Pilati will talk about her journey with her art. In June we will possibly have a members show and tell and discussion about articles that members have found interesting and would like to bring to the attention or discuss with fellow sculptors. So please keep your eyes open. In the meantime... 

Happy sculpting

Gillian Govan