A hive of activity....

So the start of November means that the Sculpture Garden becomes a hive of activity. This is when we have three manic days where we ask most of the artists to come in and collect their work - either because it hasn't sold, it needs a bit of TLC over the winter, or they have another show.


This year, 90% decided to all come on one day, which meant that our gardener, our handyman, a local artist who helps us out, Hannah's housekeeper and myself were rushing about like loons trying to wrap stuff and organise a swarm of artists who had descended on our sleepy gallery.


The most...well I guess stressful would be the appropriate word...part was the fact that we were waiting for a lorry from France to collect a tonne (or two) of massive bronze trees. Thankfully we could dismantle these massive brutes (being 4 metres tall....) but they were still bloody heavy! But Lorraine (housekeeper) and I got the rest bubble wrapped (having wrapped the first lot precariously balanced on the top of a wobbly ladder). As it happened, this bloody lorry didn't turn up till half 4, so we proceeded to load in the pitch black with 2 Frenchmen who barely spoke a word of English. God knows what I signed when a sheet of paper was thrust in front of me.

 Tony Heywood's assistant 

The rest of my day consisted of wading about in the most vile smelling pond to help retreive some floating pieces, overseeing the manhandling off a beautiful marble torso, panicking watching 3/4 of a tonne's worth of oak being craned onto a lorry, and generally rushing about in my usual frantic manner.

The artist - Paul Vanstone standing on the left, with our helpers.

Most of the time, Paul uses a portable crane-frame, but this time he decided to be lazy! But surprisingly it worked very well.

Moving Walter Bailey's charred oak piece

But alas, excitement over till Spring (when we get a whole host of new pieces). Now I get to spend the winter twiddling my thumbs....

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering, my room is now a beautiful light greeny-blue...but I will be without furniture for a whole week! Bloody Ikea screwed up the delivery, so I am living off what ever I can find rooting about in the spare room/dining room.