Hannah Frank Art News April 2011 - and an invitation
Fiona Frank
It’s been a busy few weeks with some exciting developments.
NEW PARTNERSHIPS WILL BENEFIT GLASGOW ORGANISATIONS
Three Glasgow organisations – Glasgow University, Glasgow Women's Library, and Westacres Jewish care home – are joining with us in a new partnership development to bring my late aunt’s art to an even wider audience.
Glasgow University, which already holds two original Hannah Frank drawings and a sculpture at the Hunterian, is to stock a selection of her prints, cards and books in their visitor centre shop. Glasgow Women’s Library will sell selected Hannah Frank prints from their website while Westacres will have a set of rare signed prints as well as unsigned prints, cards and books on display in their reception area which visitors to the home can buy.
Each of these organisations are charities whose aims were close to my late aunt’s art.
INVITATION TO THE LAUNCH – GLASGOW UNIVERSITY
We
are launching the new partnership on Tuesday 12 April, in the
University’s Visitor Centre, from 12
noon till 2pm. I will be
there and it would be lovely to meet you - new Hannah Frank fans and old. At
the launch mounted prints and cards will be on sale with 10% off.
In 2009 my aunt received Glasgow University’s first ever posthumous doctorate. She had graduated from the university with an MA in Arts in 1930 and between 1927 and 1932 the GUM, the Glasgow University Magazine, rarely came out without a drawing by ‘Al Aaraaf’, Hannah’s pen name.
WESTACRES PARTNERSHIP LAUNCH
Westacres Care Home, where my aunt spent her last years, is to have a set of signed prints as well as unsigned prints, cards and books on display in their reception area which visitors can buy. Westacres has been so supportive of Hannah’s art: her sculptures are still on display around the home and, of course, much of her work was stored in the home’s attic – some of which we discovered just weeks before her 100th birthday. I will be at the Home this Sunday, 11th April, between 4 and 5 p.m., and there’ll be a chance to look round at the sculptures as well as buy prints. Westacres is on Westacres Road, Newton Mearns, off Barrhead Road near exit 4 of the M77.
GLASGOW WOMEN’S LIBRARY
Glasgow
Women’s Library will sell selected Hannah Frank prints from its redesigned website.
Most excitingly, Hannah’s prints will be showcased as the GWL’s first
e-commerce items when the website goes live in May.
The Glasgow Women’s Library received
many of Hannah’s books after her death, and volunteers there also devised a
Hannah Frank walk around key spots relating to Hannah’s Life in Glasgow.
We are now actively seeking new outlets for Hannah Frank cards, books and/or signed or unsigned prints – we’ve been talking to a popular Scottish island art gallery, for example (more news next month, hopefully!). So if you’d like to pop down to your local gallery or card shop for us and put a word in, I’d be happy to send you a set of sample cards to show them!
NEW CARD TO CELEBRATE NEW PARTNERSHIP – HALF PRICE OFFER ON PRINTS EXTENDED TO MONDAY 11TH APRIL
To celebrate the new partnership we have launched a new card: for the first time you can now purchase Woman with Birds as a card, as well as Garden, Sea Story, Dance, Girl at Window, and Dream. It’s not quite on the website yet (should be there any time though!) but if you’d like a complete set of cards including Woman with Birds, click on the link for any of the other five drawings available as cards on the website ‘gallery’ pages http://hannahfrank.org.uk/pages/gallery/prints/index.htm, order a set of assorted cards, and we’ll include Woman with Birds. Oh, and the half price offer on prints is extended to Monday 11th April. So get in there!
EDITORIAL TEAM FOR NEW BOOK
We had a marvellous response to our shout out for volunteer editors for the forthcoming Hannah Frank poetry competition anthology.
We currently have three team members. They are Stuart A Harris-Logan, Kate Tough and Elsbeth Campbell. Here’s a little about each of them:
Stuart undertook an M Phil by research in Scots Gaelic oral culture. He has written two books on this subject and has publishing experience too, most recently in editing a biography of Scottish composer, Thomas Wilson. He works as a librarian/archivist for both Glasgow University and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD). He said: “My mother is a retired artist (now in her 80s) and studied at Glasgow School of Art. She knew Hannah at this time through a mutual acquaintance. I became aware of her art when the press for her 100th birthday exhibition began to circulate - I love the drawings but the sculptures really grabbed me. The mix of modernism with primal folk art really connected with me. I'm delighted to be on board with this project.”
Kate is a writer and workshop tutor. She has been living in Galloway and has been writer-in-residence at the Wigtown Book Festival, but has just moved back to Glasgow. She is working on her first novel, Critical Mass, with the support of a Writers’ Bursary from the Scottish Arts Council. Kate is also a published poet. She told us: “My interest in Hannah Frank was sparked by the 2008 Glasgow university exhibition. I entered the Hannah Frank poetry competition - no success - but one of the poems has since been published in the journal 'Southlight'. Then Fiona sent me the Hannah Frank education materials which I’ve been using in my writing workshops with young people, most recently, care leavers in Ayr.”
Elsbeth is Head of Communications for Forth Valley NHS. She discovered Hannah Frank just this last month! “I was browsing a online auction site for a forthcoming sale of Scottish Contemporary Art and I noticed that a few of her signed prints were up for sale. I was instantly drawn to them as they reminded me of illustrations from some of the story books I had read and treasured as a child,” she said. Elsbeth ordered three signed prints and volunteered for the book project.
We are very happy to announce at this early stage that the Glasgow Women’s Library is on board with us as our Charity Partner: all proceeds of the Hannah Frank Poetry Anthology will go help them with their important core work. Now in a new home at the Mitchell Library – one of my late aunt’s favourite haunts –they hold archive collections and contemporary and historical artefacts relating to women’s lives, histories and achievements. They deliver an innovative Lifelong Learning Programme, an Adult Literacy and Numeracy Project and a dedicated Black and Minority Ethnic Women’s Project. They run creative courses and events, and a lending library and helpdesk accessed by thousands of women.
We will also have an exciting announcement to make about a very special person who’s agreed to write the Foreword to our anthology: watch this space.
JACKIE MASON LEADS TO HANNAH FRANK AUCTION
This month I won a pair of free tickets for the UK premier of Jackie Mason’s film 'One Angry Man' which was showing at a Glasgow Jewish community centre in aid of Clarkston Synagogue. In return I gave them a signed print for their raffle in return.... and they auctioned it instead, raising £175. Our journalist friend, Sharon Mail, was on hand and my photograph appeared in the Jewish Telegraph handing over the print.
Hannah Frank Fans – your stories
A Glaswegian exile in Canada, who ordered a number of prints recently, told us about his long ‘relationship ‘ with Hannah’s art. “I bought the print ‘Woman in Trees’ for my wife's 21st birthday. She loved the image and the style. She wanted to know where I bought it and we made a trip to Charles Frank’s shop in Glasgow where they were for sale. Well, we ended up buying several prints they came to Canada when we emigrated here in 1974. We have never tired of them. Unfortunately I didn't know the correct way to mount prints and frame then. I glued them to a backing board and, over time, they discoloured. We have just finished redecorating our house and had taken all our pictures off the wall for painting. When we started putting them back up it promoted me to do a quick search to see if there was anybody out there that might be selling any and there you were.” I met up with Glenn to hand over his replacement prints in the Tchaiovna in Otago Lane recently while he was over in Glasgow visiting his sister.
Also meeting me in the Tchaiovna to pick up some prints she’d ordered was another new fan, Janice, who had discovered my late aunt’s work when visiting Gordon McCracken, my favourite framer, in his studio behind the Hidden Lane Gallery in Glasgow. She had been given some money by an old friend, an ‘honorary auntie’, when she moved to an old people’s home – and she was very happy to spend this money on a present for herself, of Hannah Frank art to adorn her own home.
MILNGAVIE PRIMARY SCHOOL’S NEWSLETTER
This school, in East Dunbartonshire, is currently featuring a news story in its newsletter about how one of their Primary 5 pupils had come second in the Hannah Frank national Poetry Competition. This is a lovely story with a great photograph and you can see it here:
http://www.milngavie.e-dunbarton.sch.uk/page_viewer.asp?page=Hannah+Frank+Winner!&pid=2011
I’ve had a great six months in Glasgow, have just about managed to get a full draft of my thesis in (need to get back to it for the finishing touches now, though!), and I will be moving back to Lancaster next week. I hope to keep in touch with lots of you in Scotland and internationally. ..
Best wishes
Fiona
Fiona Frank