th Morning Everyone!

A few updates for you…

Exhibition

The Exhibition was a great success we had at least 250 visitors over the 2 days and everyone said it was the best selection of art yet. Such a varied selection of beautiful and interesting paintings – you are a talented lot!!

Dr Luke Evans, our MP, came to present the Best in Show Prize in our 50th Anniversary Year and this was won by Shirley Simonetti who stole all our hearts and a massive percentage of the votes with her Stirling Mouse painting in pastels. David Ward was 2nd and 3rd with his Silver Birches and Through The Gate Paintings respectively. All three of our top three paintings were sold during the Exhibition.

We additionally sold another 18 pictures and our new ‘Exhibition Sales Bell’ was tingling right up to the last minute, where we were doing sales as Dr Luke was presenting. Dr Luke and his wife had a good look around the exhibition and voted for their favourites, they were impressed by the number of members we have in the group and the fact we have ‘a lot going on’, Dr Luke has offered to support us if we would like to apply for grant money for any artistic projects for the community – so this is something to think about – any ideas, let me know!

Our cake stall was busy as our HDSA Cafe and CakeAway served well over 200 cakes during the weekend. We raised £600 for HDSA Funds, which we will put towards running costs and events in the next year, which was slightly up on last year.

Many thanks to Carole Beasley for cajoling so many volunteers to help us with the Exhibition and its set up and take down. We had lots of volunteers over the weekend, it really was very much appreciated by everyone.

Also special thanks to Ricki Moore for balancing our Exhibition books with lots of different payment methods and ensuring all our artists were paid. NB: Artists being paid by cheque – we have cheques available for collection on Monday 12 September.

Cheese & Wine Preview Celebration Night

Thank you so much for supporting the Cheese & Wine Night on the Friday before the Exhibition, it was so well attended with almost 60 members and guests. It was great to see you all there and made all the stress of cutting up so much crumbly cheese worthwhile. I hope you all enjoyed it and celebrated our super Art Society. Carol West reflected that there was a lot of energy and conversation in the room throughout the event which was great to see.

Helen Tarr – Demonstration Monday 9th Sept

Helen is looking forward to taking us through her still life florals in oil on Monday, would be great to see you all there!

Nov 16 Art & Craft Fair

I am now opening the books for the Nov 16 Art & Craft Fair – so if anyone would like a table it is £10 per stall including tea/coffee throughout the day for the stallholder and a voucher for a slice of cake from the HDSA Cafe. If you would like to share a table between members – that will also be fine – just let me know.

I have a few people who have already expressed an interest – so please let me know as soon as possible. Stallholders will need to arrive at 9am so they are set up by 10am when we open. You can make use of the HDSA Izettle credit cards for any sales on the day (less 1.7% commission which IZettle charge us)

If anyone would like to volunteer for the HDSA Cafe on the day please let me know if you can spare a morning or an afternoon or a couple of hours.

The Committee will review the Cheese & Wine & Exhibition Events at our next meeting, so please let us have your feedback so we can look at any improvements or ideas for 2025. Just drop me an email or catch me on Monday 12 Sept.

I think that is all for now – Dave has updated the website on www.hadsart.co.uk – so you can see all of the photos from the Exhibition on there – including the presentation to Shirley and a good one of all the members at the Exhibition after the presentation.

Best Wishes

Sara Wykes
HDSA Secretary
07522 861125