Newsletter April 2008

Dear Member,
We appear to have successfully negotiated the winter and popped out at the other end – I quite clearly saw the Sun shining today; not for long, but it is a start. Hopefully, everyone is getting themselves geared up for the Summer Exhibition and, as the light is now getting better, we have no excuse for not getting the easel set up.

AGM
Our AGM was very well attended, with lots of members having their say.
We now have a new Chair, Brian Wiles, plus several new committee members taking up post; all the details are on your new membership card. In addition, we now have a President in the person of Alan Merchant-White.

Our workshops have done very well over the last year and we have regularly covered our room rental. Members who attend workshops are taking an interest in how they are run and pitching in to help.

Our membeship currently stands at fifty eight full members plus one student – a marked drop from the seventy seven members that we had last year. If you have any friends who you think may enjoy spending time with a brush or pencil in company with like minded and friendly folk, then bring them along.
We all need to note that if we don’t pay our subs by the 5th of May, no more newsletters will come our way; and that includes the all important exhibition information! If you would like to pay, then please contact Joyce on 01288 352108 or simply put your cheque in an envelope and send it to: Mrs Joyce Hancox, The Phredds, Redwood Close, Bude EX23 8EB.

Accounts
Any member who would like to see the Society Accounts as presented at the AGM, please contact Dora; details on your membership card.

Summer Exhibition – Early Warning
Due to the new room arrangements for the exhibition, using one room at The Parkhouse Centre and one in the Castle, there will be a restriction on the size of work which can be displayed; we will not have room for ‘very large’ pictures. More precise details will be available in the pre-exhibition newsletter, but, just so you know what to start work on, the space allocation per member will be: two pictures in The Parkhouse Centre and four in the Castle. One of the four destined for the Castle can be work which has previously been shown at our exhibitions.

Our 2007 exhibition produced a very high standard of work once again – but sadly, the buying public was hanging on to their cash so we came out with a big loss.

Website
We currently have under twenty members exhibiting on the BudeArt website. We are now seeing people from, quite literally, all over the world viewing our work. For four pounds a year that is a pretty good audience in my book. So come on people, send the kids out to work, sell the dog - be part of a very big display for just four pounds. We can meet all our website costs if we have just twenty members displaying. Interested? then contact Ian on 356950 or just send your pictures via email to info@webpedlar.co.uk.

For those of you who haven’t heard; the British Library has asked permission to include our website in their website archive. The archive is designed to ensure that, as technology moves on, information from earlier periods will not be lost when the medium on which it is stored becomes obsolete. When new storage technology arrives on the scene, the archive will be transferred to that new medium. BudeArt.co.uk has become part of history!

Golden Brush award
The Golden brush this year was won by Janet Grant, second place went to Lorna Gibbs with Carolyn Cartwright taking third place. Both the number of entries and the standard of entries was very high this year.

Al Fresco Sessions
In July and August a list of venues will be compiled by interested members and we hope that this will include a trip to Truro to paint and to visit galleries. If you are interested in the Truro trip, please contact the Chairman.