A couple of weeks ago I travelled down to London for an interview following a funding application with the Juliet Gomperts Trust.
From the Trust website:
About the Trust
The Juliet Gomperts Trust is a small charity which gives financial support to artists who are resident in the UK.
- We award approximately ten thousand pounds every other year.
- We judge on artistic merit: vision, imagination and skill.
We have been doing this for over twenty years.
Juliet Gomperts
Juliet Gomperts was a lively, interesting, young Londoner who was tragically killed while travelling on the Khyber Pass in Pakistan in October 1989 aged 23. She had completed a foundation course at Chelsea College of Art and was doing further studies in observational drawing at Lahore School of Art with a view to taking a degree in Fine Art.
The Juliet Gomperts Trust was established and built up by her family and friends. The idea for helping art students to travel came from Juliet’s Godfather, the sculptor Nigel Konstam. He offered a two week scholarship to his art school, the Verrocchio Arts Centre in Tuscany where Juliet had started to paint and draw.
Today I received a lovely letter informing me that my interview had gone very well and that they will be awarding the full ammount in my application. To say I am over the moon is an understatement. I wasn’t sure how the interview went as compared to myself, the other applicants seemed to be established artists with a specific working practice. Thankfully the Trust members could see the potential and agreed with my plans.
So what is the money for? Well, we are all having to tighten our belts in the recent financial climate, and I would love to attend the Wet Plate Jamboree hosted by John Coffer in Dundee, New York this July. So I applied to the Trust with funding for travel expenses in mind.
By attending this three day event it will allow me to meet and see working, first hand, a wide range of other wet plate practitioners. In the UK we seem to work with the same chemical formula and standards whilst being aware that there are many other recipes and ways of working. This funding will give me the opportunity to see this in practice and return with a fresh understanding of the process and share with others in the UK.
I have been in contact with John Coffer and he’s aware of my wishes to attend. I can now write ( he doesn’t do email) and confirm that I’ll be attending.
This is the first time I have applied for any sort of funding and am so pleased to be offered this award.
This blog post probably reads really badly. There is so much I’d like to type but I’m more than likely rambling.
I would like to thank the Juliet Gomperts Trust for this opportunity.
Full details of my trip will be blogged here and a concise report will be sent to the Trust for their records and website.
