The Universe was somewhat peculiar and a tad fraught over the last month or so...
Way back in December 2014, we opened the East End Gallery with a vow to always maintain direction and our individual ethos. Our future plans for the Gallery were fairly fluid, but we knew what we didn't want. Anybody else dictating their wishes over ours.
This self belief has served us well. We look back on our achievements - renovating a broken-down building with determination and intuition, opening our doors, our memorable first sale, surviving twelve months, then two years and three years..., winning a Wheatbelt Business Excellent Award, Sundowners and other fantastic functions, and most recently, our Celebration with pride and joy.
We are still frankly astonished to be into our tenth year of the East End Gallery. And now we are looking forward to the next ten years with positive energy and a clear vision.
The East End Gallery is a home for artists and artisans in the Central Wheatbelt. Every single one has a connection to the Wheatbelt, to us, or both. We continually strive to be the best regional Art Gallery possible, for our artists, our supporters, our friends and our guests.
Sometimes, long-held dreams are just that - dreams that should not become reality. After my first marriage ended, I moved back to Queensland to reconnect with my extended family, to build a new life as a single woman and to boldly go where I hadn't gone before...I realised almost immediately that I had made a terrible error of judgement. The fantasy became a nightmare and I returned to Perth and the bosom of friendship and support with my tail between my legs. I dodged a bullet of despair and loneliness and rebuilt my life, especially after my beloved Michael arrived on the scene.
Fast forward to the present. During this short and sharp encounter, we embarked on another dream. Fortunately, we were able to sever the process before we faced an absolute disaster. Incompatibility, a continual moving of the goalposts, muddied ideas and entirely different outcomes brought the whole debacle crashing down.
Whilst we have learnt a extraordinarily valuable lesson, we are emotionally and physically battered and bruised by this experience. We have both spent the last few days realigning the Gallery to better than before, but we were left with a rather bad taste in our mouths and an aura of unpleasantness was permeating our art space.
How to return the Gallery's welcoming and warm ambiance? If we had been characters in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", we would have reached for the trusty Windex. The bride-to-be and story-teller Toula narrated that her Dad Gus believed Windex to be the universal cure-all, and was responsible for the banishment of any and every ailment. Including unwanted zits on her wedding day.
Being married into a Greek family could have had me applying Windex to the entire Gallery. Instead, we remembered the White Sage Smudge Stick we had hanging off Michael's sculpture "Mindscape". Cleansing our art space's energy using a Smudge Stick was more practical as there would be no chemical smell (!) and we were sure that one application would do the trick.
We lit the Smudge Stick on Sunday night. Sage filled the East End Gallery. Michael carried our blessed Stick to every nook and cranny of all one hundred and fifty metres of the Gallery and some extended spaces that needed also required this ritual. We closed the doors of the East End Gallery and then enjoyed a fantastic dinner of pizza and vino with new friends Geoff and Amanda. Just what the doctor ordered...
I suffered from extreme Writer's Block during this whole episode. April saw me only produce one post, which has never occurred previously. Now I know why. I was in a state of turmoil and confusion and exhaustion for an entire month. At sixty-two years of ago, I can't afford to waste a month of my life.
The moral of this story...We forgot to believe in ourselves. We doubted our ability to carry on. We shifted our focus from our core values concerning ourselves and the East End Gallery. We will recover from this experience mentally and physically over the next little while. And we know the right path for us and our Gallery.
We should have been listening to Yoda...
In the beginning...Michael with fag, Bevan with dog...
In the East End Gallery September 2020...
Then, along came a bulldozer...friendly at first...
Which is why we felt like this...
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