Workshop and Open Museum Day.

Saturday 20th was Kolomna's open museum day with events running on until 2.00am.
I spent Friday afternoon and Saturday morning hanging a temporary show of 50 drawings and worked on a presentation for adults and a short drawing workshop for children. Fortunately the gallery was really full and the reception was very friendly. I was delighted to see my friend Anna, who had come down on the train from Moscow to meet gallery director Katya Oinas and be reunited with Natalia, who came to stay with us in UK two years ago.

We produced a large wall drawing with some children and helpers, with a view to this forming a starting point to the final show here. Fortunately nobody told me that a TV crew had turned up so I didn't have to stress about giving an interview until it was underway. People here are very engaged and polite but never seem to hold back from asking really searching questions. The rest of the evening was amazing, going to see the other open events including a shadow puppet play in a garden. I got some very interesting insights into local art education and there is this great feeling that people want to push things one step further in terms of how this town is perceived to the wider world. As a foot note; the food here is unbelievably good so I will be struggling on the bike. It was great also to meet a wonderful couple from a peninsular in the far north of Russia, who had travelled for the museum's event. 

It turned out that the children on the left pressed more heavily than those on the right, almost giving the drawing a sense of perspective. The scale is hard to tell but this is a compressed charcoal drawing about 2.5 m high.