On Opening Night

The opening night is over… It was amazing and I had a fab fab fab time. Thank you so much to everyone who came out!! I can hardly get my head around the fact that the Swimming Upstream project is up for show now. Cool:-)

The whole day was amazing. I was lucky enough to have Jolene help me out all day long. We made our way to Orms at about 11 am to fetch the prints and damn, they did a stellar job. Packed it all up and went to the GD straight away. As soon as we pulled up at the Grand Daddy a big car moved out of the way creating the one and only available parking space in front of the Grand Daddy Hotel. The guys helped us carry the frames into The Venue and move furniture around.  Then we still had to decide on the order of the photos. I had made a selection on my computer but it is different once you’re inside a venue. There’s only so much space available, which photos do you want people to see first when they enter the room. Certain photo go together well, other don’t… When we finally made the decision of who to put where it was more than an hour later. Handyman Sheldon was quickly bribed to forget fixing the water pump and help put up the photos. Thank you:-) 

I think my favorite part of the day was sitting on the floor with Jo, eating pasta, drinking caipirinhas, tweeting and chatting while staring at my own work and realizing it has actually become a reality. Nice:-)

Jolene and I rushed home to Woodstock at about 4 pm in order to shower and change. Made it back just in time for me to fly into a fit, to get the dj table *back* into the room, move some furniture out of the room and for the champagne to be found before the first guests came. And from then on the night just whizzed by.

Verity opened the exhibition with a beautiful introduction and what Swimming Upstream means to her after which we played the video and Akio spinned his records all evening long. He had brought another dj with and they just took turns. Thank you guys so much!

And I can’t wait to see the Pixel Revelation’s video of the evening and some of Joy’s pics:-) If you have any as well, please let me know as between the excitement, champagne, chatting to people, rum & coke, being interviewed, tequila shots, the occasional hiding behind you just so I could take it all in and some more chatting and some more rum & coke, the evening just flew by.

Made it to bed at about 3.30 am. We started the ext day with a yummie breakfast at Superette and now it’s back to reality. Pics need to be sold, banks to be paid and visas to be sorted out… But the night happened anyway:-)

I’ll sell pussy to a lesbian if I have to

“I was very strategic about what I was doing, where I was hanging out. I was studying photography but worked in a bar and I made sure it was in a cool place in town where the right people came. You have to surround yourself with the right environment, meet people and get inspired. A challenge is to get yourself known, gathering ties, selling yourself but you have to have the portfolio to back it up. I’ll sell pussy to a lesbian if I have to.”

(Neil John Smith)

We did the interview at his studio at the Woodstock Industrial Centre on a Friday morning. He brought champagne with. We drank it. It was a good interview. I was tipsy by 11 am.