“The Collected Writings of Graham Kingsley Brown” edited by Sophie Jane Brown, limited print run self-published paperback, November 2012
I am curating and recording my father Graham’s artwork posthumously, at present, on behalf of our family. It is rather a long job! So to keep me company, you are invited to join me here on this journey, and contribute if you would like to. I guess I’m quite well placed to do, what I consider to be, this privileged work. I have a degree in art history, can design and build websites, have produced artwork myself from time to time (and even made frames), can do graphic design and page layout, have some spare time… and a lot of patience, although I’m not a natural archivist! If I had the means, I’d happily do this full time to move it on, but I haven’t at present, so must content myself with finding those islands of opportunity to do so…
After a final celebration event in North Devon in January 2012, a month after Graham’s death, the first task was to collect and safely store his work from what was available in his private studio. We did this in March 2012. It took some months to muster the strength to face doing anything with it, while dealing with the initial and inevitable rounds of grief. But we’ve now made a start…
To begin with, I concentrated on typing up his writing and poetry from original handwritten manuscripts, from July to November 2012. These have been collated into a first draft self-published book for evaluation and copyreading by the family. In time we will be exploring ways of making these writings available for enjoyment and purchase, and I’ll write more about this work later.
The website framework was started around February 2013. I began by scanning in a set of black and white A5 size drawings produced during the 1990′s, some of which are visible in the first gallery page on the website. These had been neatly, but rather precariously, displayed in those photo albums with plastic sheets on top and card with glue strips beneath, since they were produced. It was a relief to remove them from the albums and store them safely, to prevent them from sticking further. All 80 of these are now scanned and included in a digital inventory.
I’m hoping those of you who knew Graham, and those that come to know him through his work, will share with me your thoughts and contributions here as time goes by, and we can develop a resource which will showcase and provide a vehicle for selling, reproducing and distributing his output.
The journey of a thousand miles, as the saying goes, begins with a single step. You’ve joined us here at the end of the first long leap, so I’m pleased to share this with you on the other side, of what has been quite a deep canyon for me, and for all his family.
Sophie
