A little bit Kielce-like

As some of you already know (because we were talking about it so much!) we went to Derby Format festival portfolio review at the beginning of March. We have met with excellent team of reviewers and heard some helpful stuff about our old and new bodies of work. The highlight of the stay was meeting with Amy Stein (see her blog in the bloggroll on your right) - she is smart, charming, intellightn, helpful and funny.

You know as you sometimes think something when looking at your own work but are too lazy or too shy to actually change the direction of an advanced project and start from scratch. That is why I was deeply impressed with Amy's scrutinising eye. What she said will allow me to move my work forward. I am on a lookout for a studio space now so that I could continue my project. Though it is actually quite weird to hear somebody whose work you admire to pronounce aloud what you were secretely thinking about your own work. Well, she said she liked it so fingers crossed for the progress of this new work amidst the wedding work whirlwind.

Derby is a very weird place - visually, of course. I think it must have been quite damaged during WWII (a nearby Coventry was completely flattened) and then rebuild without any particular plan in a very haphazard way. On Sunday morning, while Simon was meeting with his agent (Regina was one of the reviewers) I went in search of Sunday newspapers and it took me quite a while to find a newsagent open at 10 am. Luckily people who I asked about directions were most helpful and I got my Sunday Times and Telegraphs in the end of a quite a long walk in the rain. Just in case I went to say a short prayer in the nearby church (again an interesting architectural mix - gloomy and medieval from outside, pink and welcoming inside!) - for a preagnant Amy, Simon's trip to Warszawa to photograph The Polish National Ballet there (he was going litterally a day after our return from Derby), my mum and dad and many other things that one does not write in a blog post.