Final celebration day – st Christopher’s hospice

At around 3am early Friday morning, I woke up with a shock. I was having a nightmare about forgetting the balloons for the st Christopher’s celebration. I didn’t know how nervous and scared I was until that happened. Sure enough, I put the balloons in my bag and fell back to sleep for a couple of hours. I triple checked my bag before I left; cakes, balloons, traces banner, cyanotype photos, and string, done!

Arriving dot on the time, I made my way to the pavilion centre where the exhibition was taking place, Abraham and jess were the first to arrive, Harry and Laura were held up in traffic with all of the equipment and final pieces, but we were eager to make a start, and as the only thing we all had was cakes and juice, the refreshments seemed an obvious choice.

Everyone started arriving quite quickly after 9, including Harry with all the equipment, so we all had a lot to do to get everything finished by 11. Time was ticking and Laura still hadn’t arrived with the rest of equipment and my final piece, basically, I was getting nervous. About 5 minutes later she turned up and I started to prepare my cast and the cyanotype developments to be hung.

I was a little apprehensive because of the rain, but as my piece was site specific and needed to be in touch with nature to make sense, it could potentially get ruined, nevertheless - I decided to go for it anyway, and if it decomposed or got ruined, let it be. To my utmost surprise, the tree I chose had this beautiful texture when wet, and complimented the cast better than I could have imagined. It was so easy to set up too. There were these little stumpy branches coming out of the tree which allowed the fishing wire to wrap right round and stay secure. I then attached the images of cyanotype. All looked well.

I was really nervous wondering what Steve would think of my piece, but as soon as people started to filter in, I felt a lot better. The response to my work was positive, even though I doubt many people understood what it was about before meeting Steve.

When he came down and saw the piece we made together, I think he really liked it. He even started to take pictures of it with his camera. Everyone’s pieces looked so beautiful when they were hung/presented. I think we all really pulled it together in the end, despite all our doubts.

The feedback altogether was really positive, and it was lovely that Gerry wanted to keep all the work presented permanently.