Dave Butcher Leaving High Peak Artists and Gallery in the Gardens

After 17 years with High Peak Artists I have decided to leave at the end of January 2022. I was recruited in February 2005, having already been accepted to join Peak District Products (an art and craft group of professional artisans living and working in the Peak District, now called Peak District Artisans). Based in Buxton we originally had an exhibition space in the Buxton Pump Room, opposite the 17th century Crescent building. Then in 2009 we moved to a purpose built gallery area, called Gallery in the Gardens, in Buxton Pavilion Gardens (SK17 6BE) main building and I've had the same space ever since to display and sell my work from.

I changed my display on Christmas Eve and these pictures show roughly what it looks like now - until everything is sold or 31st January when whatever is left will be removed.

There are lots of Dave Butcher original darkroom prints and framed photos at much reduced prices, most with 60% to 80% off the normal price. Lots of bargains, but only while stocks last, once they're gone they're gone!

From February onwards discount original prints will be available online from the Clearance Prints page on my website and from my Etsy shop. 

 

Display Change in Gallery in the Gardens Buxton

I changed my display yesterday in Gallery in the Gardens in Pavilion Gardens Buxton. Several new hand-printed darkroom silver gelatin pictures as well as lots of small mounted darkroom prints at £5 and £15. I'm still being very cautious because of Covid-19 so it's been a long time since it was last updated, it was pleasing to do it at last! 

It's a Beautiful Day in the Peak District

I am running the Gallery in the Gardens with Paul Tavernor in Buxton Pavilion Gardens. www.galleryinthegardens.co.uk. Open until 5pm. There's a Saturday Bazaar on here too so lots to see.

It's a beautiful day in the Peak District too. I walked in the 6 miles across the tops. Still about 3 feet of snow on the tracks in places, most gone from the hills though. Forgot to take a photo on my phone on the way here, sorry.

Buxton Gallery Day

My first day of 2013 looking after the Gallery in the Gardens in Buxton Pavilion Gardens. Walked over this morning in the mist. Felt a bit sluggish, may have eaten too much in the last week or so!

Wet London, Dry Peak District

Yesterday, our last day in London, was wet all day. No photos but walked about 10 miles so at least we had some exercise. Also visited the Gloucester Arms in Kensington and Mabels Tavern near Euston Station. Pints of Youngs London Gold, Fullers London Pride, Shepherd Neame Spitfire and Bishops Finger. All on good form.

Train slightly late. Home a bit before 11pm, to bed by 1pm.

Today I'm walking to Buxton to run Gallery in the Gardens and it's a lovely day in the Peak District. If you can get out to the hills today take your camera, could be a good one!

Buxton Gallery in the Gardens

I'm in the Gallery in the Gardens in Buxton Pavilion Gardens today. This is the gallery for High Peak Artists, there are 39 of us exhibiting here.

It was a wet and windy 6 mile walk to get here, but at least it was daylight all the way. It will be dark for quite a bit of the walk home.

Come in for a chat if you're passing, I'm here until 5pm.

I sent Andy, my web man, 12 new photos of Glasgow yesterday. Hopefully they will be available to view in the next day or so. I will drop some in here too when I have a moment.

Gallery Almost Finished

At long last the gallery mods are close to being finished. The main entrance hall is pretty much done but the side corridor still needs some hanging rails fitting before any pictures can be displayed there.

Today I hung 50 framed photographs in the part you see as you come to the door. Maybe room for another 20-odd pictures when remaining hanging rails are fitted. That's a total of around 100 framed pictures and another 600 in browsers in the 3 gallery areas.

Also building up stocks of small prints using Ilford Lab Direct printing onto traditional silver paper from my digital files. Now have around 70 images printed this way ready for the show season that's fast approaching. Stonor Park, near Henley on Thames, over August Bank Holiday is next.

Buxton Gallery Day

It's my last gallery day until mid-October. Dry as I walked the 6 miles here this morning but jolly heavy showers this afternoon.

Hope the walk home is dry.

Tomorrow is a computer day preparing images for a US 2013 calendar.

Fingers crossed the builders and electrician finished the gallery refurbishment today! Maybe that's just wishful thinking.

Gallery Mods at Briarwood Continue

The electrician went on holiday this week so the gallery refurbishment is still not finished. Hopefully it will be done by Tuesday, assuming he comes back as promised! It will be 4 weeks on Tuesday since they started and almost 4 weeks without lights in part of the house. Not sure why they disconnected so much when they knew it would be weeks before they could reconnect them.

One of the last jobs to be done will be the new gallery hanging system (rails and cables as used in first part of refurb last year). Hanging pictures will be much easier and will give a cleaner look to the gallery.

Buxton Gallery Day

It's a cold, wet and windy day in the Peak District. More like autumn than summer.

I am in the Gallery in the Gardens in Buxton until 6pm. Bit quiet in spite of it being in the middle of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera festival. On with Sarah who has been driven to have several lots of cake and coffee because of the boredom. I just stick to water and a cereal bar for the day!

I marked up all of the new contact prints last night and pulled together a scan list. Lots of new images. Now just need to make the time for the scanning!

Gallery Mods at Briarwood

The conversion of the hall at Briarwood into part of the gallery is going really slowly. Should have been finished last week, looks like it will now go into next week. At least the power stayed on all day while I was printing in the darkroom. Electrician may be back tomorrow though. It's now over 2 weeks without lights or power in this part of the house.

Walking Again

I am in the Gallery in the Gardens today until 6pm. The 6 mile walk this morning was good, quite sunny but cool.

Felt a bit lethargic to start with but soon into the swing of it again, just 3 days after finishing the 5 day 64 mile trek across the Lakes. Incidentally, I lost 2% body fat and gained about 1kg in weight. I put the weight gain down to building muscle rather than the 33 pints of beer or copious food intake!

Al and I were both going well at the end. Al had blisters on a toe that was painful for the first 2 days until he wrapped it in Compeed. He also needed encouragement to go high on day 4 after hearing the BBC give out a severe weather warning. He was going to get wet going high or low and always possibility of a big view if you walk the tops. He had no problem with the walking once the decision was made though. The forecast heavy rain arrived after we reached the pub anyway!

For me, my bad back was surprisingly pain free until the last day. I think the very soft bed at the White Lion in Patterdale was to blame but Voltarol (which I took 3 times a day every day) helped.

Buxton is buzzing right now. It is festival time, lots of opera, theatre and literary events for a bit over 2 weeks. Quite busy too.

Busy Day and Cotswolds Weekend

Jolly busy today. Started with scanning a few local negs and editing for printing, then across to my dentist just under an hour away in Cheshire (a dentist is for life not just for Christmas)!

Followed this by calling in at the Ilford Lab Direct facility at the Harman Technology factory a couple of miles from dentist. This is where all of the Ilford black and white films and papers are made.

I had 8 new image files to drop off for printing onto silver gelatine paper and needed some others reprinting. Neil the manager offered to try and print Monday as I'm a little behind at the moment.

From Mobberley it was home to edit a new magazine advert needed for copy deadline of Monday.

Then I was picked up and driven to a committee meeting of the High Peak Artists Association who run the Gallery in the Gardens in Buxton where my work is sold. I'm the secretary of the committee.

This went on a bit longer than expected but fortunately Jan had dinner completely under control, as usual.

Thank goodness we have a relaxing weekend planned with friends in Upton St Leonards near Gloucester. Monday night I'm giving another lecture to Cotswold Monochrome who happen to hold their meetings within 200 yards of where our friends live.

Hope the weather is good. I still have almost no pictures of the Cotswolds. It should be great for black and white but you need the right light.

Wet Walk to Buxton Gallery in the Gardens

Another day in Buxton Pavilion Gardens Gallery. Walked here this morning in the wind and rain. It''s hardly stopped raining all day. Hope it will be dry on the return.

Visiting friends near Gloucester at weekend, I am giving a talk to Cotswold Monochrome Group on Monday and taking opportunity to catch up with old friends as well as add to my picture library for Gloucester and the Cotswolds.

Tunstead Milton Gallery Refurbishment Part 1

The gallery at our house in Tunstead Milton has been refurbished. with an extension, new lighting, new gallery hanging system and simple white decoration. Here are a few images to give you an idea of what it looks like and there are more on the new Tunstead Milton Gallery web page. Now that we have completed the refurbishment of the main gallery area we plan to upgrade the other 2 display areas next year. If you would like to visit just telephone or email to make an appointment - I'm not here all the time.

There is usually a display of around 140 framed photographs and another 500 or so in browsers. In addition to this there are my 3 books, course information and the darkroom, where all the hand prints are made, can be viewed.

Icy Peak District

Today I was in the Gallery in Buxton Pavilion Gardens. It was a cold clear day, about -6C, and I walked there and back (about 12 miles). It started with good views of the lunar eclipse which covered 3/4 of the moon as I left at 7.15am. Just a dusting of snow across the hills but at the green lane that runs around Ladder Hill (opposite our house) there was so much ice, 2 or 3 inches thick across the entire track making it difficult to walk down the lane. Looked like it had been rain water running off the hill which then froze. I came across more ice on the route to Buxton than I have ever seen before. Slowed me down a bit picking my way around it. Came back the same way this evening so that I could remember where the ice was rather than try a different route. It was dark all the way so it was good to have a bright headlamp picking out the track and the ice ahead. It took about 20 minutes longer than normal, including a detour over a snowy hill rather than along part of the track where I know it would be seriously icy. Had to tread carefully on the way home as I had bought a couple of bottles of Buxton Brewery Kinder Stout - didn't want to break them!

Lovely Day in the Peak District

It's a couple of degrees below freezing here in the Peak District today and we have blue sky and sunshine! Everything frosty would be great for pictures but today is a darkroom printing day - catching up on orders that came in while in New Zealand.

Walked to Buxton yesterday for a day in the Gallery in Pavilion Gardens. It was a dry cold day but not bright like today. It was a good day for walking though, even enjoyed walking back over the tops in the dark.

Home Sweet Home

Finally, we made it home yesterday morning at 11am. I lasted about an hour before going to bed to catch up on sleep - I can't sleep on planes. Apart from a few hours yesterday evening I slept through to this morning.

We left our hotel in Christchurch at 11am on Wednesday so it took 2 days to return, except that New Zealand is 13 hours ahead  so if you add that into the mix it actually took 2.5 days to return. It was a long way and most of that time was spent flying (over 25 hours) or hanging around at airports!

I don't understand why when you get off a plane for less than an hour while they clean and refill it you have to go through another security check, which means another hand-check of my film. On the whole trip the only place that would not do a hand-check of my film was London Heathrow. Sydney and New Zealand do checks both going in and out of the country, so that meant 6 hand-checks plus 2 at Hong Kong making 8 in total for my film.

I took 123 rolls with me from the UK, Ilford kindly had another 100 rolls delivered to my hotel in Sydney to avoid some of the possible x-ray scans. Of these, 195 were exposed and the remaining 28 rolls were unused; 99 rolls were processed in Wellington in New Zealand to avoid any possible x-ray damage on the return trip. I would have liked to have had another 80-odd rolls processed but the timings didn't work out.

Unfortunately, staff at the scanners think they know better than anyone what the effects of x-rays on film are. I know differently, having worked for Ilford for 21 years, including running the department that saw a lot of the customer enquiries after x-ray damage to their film, and I have seen x-ray fogging on my FP4 120 after just 3 passes through x-ray machines.

Now I'm wading through the 1648 emails that were waiting for me on my pc, about 80% were spam. I had kept up with most while away using my Blackberry but I have to go through the whole lot again once I return. We also shipped all the book orders today and revived my Amazon shop.

The builders have finished the work on the house. This included extending the gallery so most of today was spent putting things back and hanging pictures on the walls. It looks good now though. Just the computers to move back and it's pretty much sorted.

Buxton Gallery in the Gardens

I am in the Gallery in the Gardens in Buxton Pavilion Gardens. Paul Tavernor is on with me today so we are having a chat and telling a few tall tales, well it wouldn't do to be miserable!

I walked here, as usual, this time in the rain the whole way. It's a 12 miles round trip across the tops. Great views across the Goyt Valley on a good day. We have just had a torrential rain and hail storm here. It was sunny and warm just a few minutes before then it went very dark with very loud thunder claps before the storm really let loose. The water ran in the back of Pavilion Gardens like a river and soaked the carpet in the new Arts Centre here. It opens for the first time tomorrow. Hope it isn't that heavy as I walk home at 5pm.

April Showers in August and New Newsletter

We are having heavy showers and sunshine here in the Peak District so it is more like April than August! It's a bit chilly too when the sun isn't shining, with quite a cool breeze.

The builders have made a good mess at the side of the house. The old leaking roof is off the side part (so it leaks properly now!), walls are down and they have started putting in steel beams and brick pillars to hold everything up as well as a few new roof trusses. We should see the new roof going on this week.

I sent out a newsletter yesterday. It will be on my web site sometime next week hopefully. If you are not on the distribution and would like to see it here is the link to the archive for all my newsletters.

Just putting finishing touches to my new lecture Lake Light; 73 prints done, just a handful to go.