The day of the opening

Nicola

Rachael

Today, we open our de-junk, re-junk! show to the public at 10am, with a grand opening at 11am for supporters from the council. Mr Mayor, Gerry Ellis opening us officially at 11.30am, and Sean Styles from BBC Radio Merseyside will be coming to interview me at 12.30.

I have arranged for 2 friends to model my television wire corsets. Rachel modelled for a photoshoot with photographer Mathew Kelly and make-up artist Persis Peters. The images were later used in an article in Cheshire Life about my work. Nicola modelled during a fashion show at the Williamson Art Gallery in 2011.

The show would not have been made possible without the late Jim Smith. He was put in contact with me after I met Steve Maddox, chief executive of Wirral Council at the Oxton Art Fair in 2009. Jim and Daniel Molyneux arranged to meet me in some coffee shop or other and a few meetings later they had pulled together a community art show featuring recycling with my involvement being to rope in some artists working with "rubbish". So along with my work, Wendy Williams' carrier bag rug art pieces, Vanessa Ryall's mosaics, Julie Dodd's paper pieces made from old books and a few other people, we had an exhibition in the park. The following year, we had two outings of what had by this point become "de-junk, re-junk!". The first showing was to tie in with an environmental conference run by the council at Pacific Road Arts Centre and then into Birkenhead Park Visitors Centre. This time almost 30 artists were involved and were given parts of my old kitchen and other rubbish from my house, supplemented with their own "garbage". The show was a huge success and here we are today with many of those artists back involved and a few added to it, including one jeweller from Lancashire , so we are 34 in number!

I am indebted to Jim Smith for many cups of tea and laughs as well as being occasionally infuriating. I miss him and I hope we make him proud today.