Anna Collette Hunt: Entomological artist
Anna Collette Hunt was invited to guest lecture for our group. Unfortunately I missed her visit but was thankfully able to watch a recording made by a peer. I have admired her ever since I saw her beautiful ceramic insect swarm installation in the stairwell of Nottingham Castle a few years ago.
Her piece, consisting of over 10,000 ceramic insects, was created and installed following her winning a prize in an open exhibition at the castle after she completed her Fine Art studies at Nottingham College and Nottingham Trent University.
I find her success story really inspiring and motivating. It reinforces my drive for making work and for growing my skills and portfolio. I feel so excited and grateful to be given opportunities through this course to exhibit in places like the castle. It is a frankly majestic space, the curator is really open to ideas and it's the second biggest gallery in Nottingham. I just want to step into showing work more and more. No one is going to chase this for me. I need to show up to be in with a chance of success similar to Anna's. And I am absolutely ready to try.
Anna is a fan of collaboration in her artistic practise and advocated that we seek it out too, explaining that it pushes us to try new approaches in our work. I agree and am looking forward to exploring how I can collaborate effectively with other creatives. She also stressed the importance of capturing our work professionally using video and photography. She explained that it is pivotal to successful self promotion and brought up a salient point, that in this age, more people are likely to view images of our work remotely than see the pieces themselves.
She exhibits but also has a commercial branch to her work, selling through her website. I think having diverse income streams like this is savvy and will give you more financial buffer as an artist.
Researching her as I have been, it is abundantly clear that she has worked very hard at (or paid someone else to work very hard at) generating a cohesively branded, sleek and navigable online presence. This feels essential as a contemporary artist because it's a significant point of contact for your audience. I need to look into this more I think and educate myself on website design. Developing the zine and collective website will give me ample opportunity to do so.
More about Anna and her work can be found at https://www.annacollettehunt.com/
