This week there should have been the Frimley & Camberley Society of Arts 59th Annual Exhibition at High Cross Church. The Coronavirus has meant that all our plans, meetings, demonstrations and events have had to be cancelled since the lockdown in March.
Nonetheless, the committee has held two futuristic committee meetings via Zoom. The first meeting was to progress the new look website which was launched at the beginning of July. This week the committee met again to consider how to best serve the membership during lockdown.
2020 Lockdown Exhibition
The committee discussed the possibility of organising an online exhibiting of members’ paintings, especially those that might have been done during the lockdown, by putting it on the new website. Olga Salgado and Steve Hammatt attended the meeting and offered to upload paintings into an exhibition area.
If interested, people would need to take good quality photographs of their artwork. The minimum size necessary to work well on the website is 1024 x 768 pixels, but bigger would be better. Once you have saved the photos onto your computer it would be a question of submitting them in an email to gallery@fcsaonline.org.uk. In the accompanying email there would need to be the following information:
- Artists name, Title of the painting, Size of the painting, and Medium
- Price of painting if offered for sale or clearly indicating NFS (Not For Sale)
- On the Exhibition web page there will be a notice advising that if anyone wishes to purchase a painting or commission work from an artist, then to contact the society via gallery@fcsaonline.org.uk and the message will be passed to the artist.
- Artists will be responsible for agreeing the sale, and for the collection or dispatch of the paintings themselves.
There would be no hanging fees or commission fees on this occasion. Primarily the idea is to offer members of the society an opportunity to share and exhibit their work online. It would also help to promote the society through the website and keep everyone connected over the period when we cannot meet up.
Adult Education Art Studio
Camberley Adult Education Centre has informed us that it intends to re-open in September. The committee discussed the possibility of FCSA meeting again on a Friday if the art studio was made Covid-19 safe. It was agreed that we should find out from the membership how many people would be likely to attend if the Society were to open up again in September.
It was also acknowledged that even if we could socially distance to paint together we would not be able to hold demonstrations safely because more people would have to be sitting in a very confined space. It was suggested that it might be possible to arrange a Zoom demonstration online and we wondered if this would interest members. Since the demonstrator would expect payment, there would need to be a method of charging people to attend via a paid portal.
Survey Of Members
It would be very helpful if you could complete the following survey and return it to carolehead@waitrose.com. Just cut & paste these questions with your answers into an email. If you would like to add any comments please feel free to do so.
Do you like the idea of an online exhibition? YES/NO
Would you want to participate? YES/NO
If the studio were open on Friday nights in September would you attend? YES/NO
Would you be interested in a Zoom demonstration? YES/NO
Have you used Zoom already? YES/NO