Monday 27 April 2009

Martin Cheek

One of the big names in the international mosaic scene, Martin Cheek, has agreed to come out and give us some consultancy between the 5th and 13th May. I got to hear about Martin first through my wife Bev who attended one of his weekend courses about fifteen years ago. I ended up going to his summer course in Greece five years ago and then the following year, with Bev, to another of his courses in Florence. As you can see from his website his work is not only very artistic but full of humour. But be warned that if you attend one of his classes you'll have to endure the other side of Martin's humour - his really grim, very old jokes. You'll find one or two pictures of me looking remarkably cheerful under the circumstances on his website's courses page.

Anyway, Martin will be providing training support to the trainers who are running the integrated art workshop in Bhairahawa and helping with design input. He'll also be helping us to prepare for a photographic/mosaic exhibition that we'll be running at several venues later on this year to mark the Trust's 10th birthday.

One of Martin's other students is leading British journalist Libby Purves who has shown some interest in following up his visit and our work. And I discovered last week that one of the charity's Trustees, Sue Duncan, has also been on a Cheek weekend course. Small world!