News Update I, 2007 from ArtPrintSA
Dear Friends, Warm greetings from a totally overheated Lowveld, even Tamar'senthusiasm for sub-tropical temperatures is being tested at the moment. Theheat and the good rains that we had before the new year mean that the garden hasgone crazy (swear you can hear the plants creaking as they grow), last week wehad a Working for Water contractor here with his team of sixteen alienexperts. They cleared the blue gum saplings, wild rose, bamboo in the bottomvlei, bugweed,lantana etc etc, so our plan to get our bit of veld and thewetland back into shape is inching along. Our garden service gang come everysecond week and Kota's keen landscaping eye is really transforming thegarden into some kind of order. Mark's therapy in the vegetable gardencontinues and he has branched out into planting turmeric and asparagus.After many anxious months his parcel of artichoke seeds arrived and we areall (including Maru and Simon) looking forward to the spring harvest. Thekids pack artichokes for their school lunches, which they then eat in frontof their admiring friends like true connoisseurs!! Maru started Grade One this year. She looks too adorable in her neatlyironed blue shorts, shirt with cap sleeves and little white socks (the topsof the socks almost meet the bottom of her shorts). After great expectationsover the Christmas holidays Grade One turned out to be very noisy, the boysare pests and the teacher is not strict enough for her liking. However asthe term progresses the situation does seem to be improving. Simon is now insenior primary and loves it. The subjects are getting more interesting andat last he has started to learn Siswati (which means that the rest of thefamily is learning as well as he is very enthusiastic about sharing his newfound skills). Afrikaans classes have also begun and he is fascinated by howmany of the words share roots withEnglish. On the sports front he is putting his long spindly body to use andis enjoying long distance running and wishes that it were winter so that hecan play soccer rather than cricket which bores him! Simon at nine and ahalf now has longer feet than Tamar (it's almost an injustice!!) Over the festive season a two metre long python started to indulge in ourchickens and although most welcome on the property the loss oftwo hens and three chicks was starting to threaten the viability of ourflock. The solution has been to build a new python proof hok which issomething of a chicken palace, complete with a copper rooster cut out of anold geyser. Hopefully the python will turn to the rat population instead. In the studio things have been rather quiet on the artists front, we havebeen catching up with editioning and are almost over the backlog. Joseph andJacky are finishing off Claudette Schreuder's new series "The Long Day",take a quick trip to New York via the web and visit her exhibition, which ison at Jack Shainman's Chelsea Gallery http://www.jackshainman.com/ In September last year we had the privilege of working with Albert Adams.Sadly Albert died from lung cancer in January this year. It was special toshare some time with such a gentle, wise and humble man. His life story is afabulous one and his work is very powerful. There is talk of an exhibitionof his work for South Africa and we look forward to seeing the show of oneSouth Africa's "missed artists". Albert spent most of his life in the UK,having left the country in the early 1950's when his family started to bepersecuted by the Apartheid State. We will not be publishing his work andhave sent the approvals to print to his partner to add to the collection ofhis work. In the next few weeks we will be launching Hanneke Benade's prints that shedid at the beginning of last year as well as some by Conrad Botes.To view Hanneke's exquisite prints please go to http://www.artprintsa.com/hanneke-benade.html Newly up on the website are prints by Anton Kannemeyer and Robert Hodgins. We have decided to add a section to the website that profiles artists fromMpumalanga who are doing fine work but that are not prints. So far we haveput Karin Daymond's http://www.artprintsa.com/karin-daymond-landscapes.htmland Tamar's http://www.artprintsa.com/tamar-mason.htmlwork up and are busy building pages for other artists. Althoughgeographically fairly close to Johannesburg artists down here are veryisolated from the exhibition scene in the rest of the country. So we havedecided to help these artists to get out there via the ether. Keep your eyeson this section of the website; it may just surprise you! We have taken to spending sweltering weekends having picnics at theblissfully cool waterfalls of the Sabie area, highly recommended for copingglobal warming... All the best Mark and Tamar
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