IN THE THICK OF IT...reflections on SNAFUs & The Bladnoch Altarpiece

The Bladnoch Altarpiece project just finished a few days ago, and I'm still recovering!  More about that later.  But while organizing files in the aftermath, I found an unposted blog written on the day everything went wrong - isn't that how the expression 'snafu' came into being during WW2 (Situation Normal All F##ked Up)?  Here's my memory of that day and maybe it'll encourage others who are in the thick of it, because we kept going and somehow it all ended well...

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HAVE YOU ever experienced the phenomenon that once you commit to a project with a deadline, it's like an invitation for things to go wrong?  

You get into the thick of it and suddenly the Wifi develops an agenda of its own that has nothing to do with yours, the printer won't talk to your laptop or phone, the car wants new brakes and the disabling sciatica you thought had gone away forever 20 years ago makes a vicious comeback.  

And then you're in the van going home with all your equipment in the back. Unbeknownst to you the back door lock is broken and has sprung open open in transit. All you heard in the front seat was a little bang, like a pothole.  It actuality, it was the door flying open and then shutting itself.  But when you get home you discover that your backpack containing a case of your best paint brushes went flying out and was lost forever - you know, those well loved extensions of your brain and hand, whose every stroke you know so well?  Just when you need them most.   Thankfully, someone finds the backpack on the road and leaves it at the local pub, but the brushes are gone forever.  

On top of that, the Scottish Government introduces minimum alcohol pricing before you had a chance to buy wine for the exhibition launch.  And as little extra added insult your laptop refuses to write apostrophes correctly any more (now spontaneously cured, as weirdly as it began).

These are trying times, the times when you either give up or persevere.  Another artist in town comes to my door with some lovely paint brushes she no longer uses, blowing me away with this act of kindness.  More replacement brushes are ordered online, not the same as picking them out by hand but they'll do.  And I move forward with The Bladnoch Altarpiece project despite pain (walking with a stick now) and frustration.   

And art is often about finding wonder in small things that often go un-noticed. I continue to be amazed by finding little remnants of the past, like this crumbling bit of paint on a doorway of Unit Three Gallery on the old Bladnoch Creamery site...

Am I hallucinating or is it kind of in the shape of a little horse? or maybe a lamb skipping through a field?   Discoveries like this are reason enough to carry on.

So was the tea party we had at an open studio afternoon at Unit 3 Gallery attended by some lovely ladies who talked about their memories of working at the Bladnoch Creamery back in the 1950s, about how all the jobs were so much in demand that you had to wait until someone retired, died or left to get married (as was customary for most women back then) to get work in the canteen or packing margarine. 

So I'm struggling on this week.  More updates soon.  And maybe I’ll even figure out how to stop that apostrophe from going rogue again.

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