Bunch of photos from finishing up work in Ptuj, in the home stretch now; opening tonight! Many thanks to everybody who's come in and helped or even just looked at the work in progress.

Anyway, we're cleaning up the studio now and there should be more pics tonight/tomorrow from the opening (again, you can go to the Art Stays facebook profile - link in the last blog post - and check for pictures from every opening of the week).

Thought the photo from the boxing club was interesting.

Shendra Stucki (Switzerland) working on her figurative wire sculptures with Alina Gavrielatos.

I don't know what the sign with the car signifies, but I liked it.

I tried to do a rubbing of the irregular coblestones in the square in front of the Ptuj Tower.

Posing in front of the view from the entrance to the Ptuj castle.

Owen putting in grommets on my work with Ceren Selmanpakoglu watching Anka Kolaric, who was helping me by sewing the edge of a canvas. Anka came by the studio often and even made her own stencil. She was very generous and gave me a couple of very interesting books on Ptuj.

Postcards pretty well finished.

The main Art Stays stage - minutes before Alina's artist talk. Alina is talking with the amazing Sanja Selinšek, who interviewed Alina during her talk. In the foreground are Ceren and Owen.

I doubt we're going to be doing an update for every day of this week, as most of the time is spent in the studio working - we'll see how pictures of the process come out.

However, you can check out the Art Stays facebook profile for photos of the various openings around town as they happen.

Day 3 in Ptuj

On our third day we explored a tad around Ptuj, but again dedicated much of the day to working in the studio.

At night we made a visit to the "Cleansing The Kurent" multimedia installation by Stanka Vauda Bencevic, seen in the last few pictures.

The architecture in Old Ptuj is very interesting. Bits of the original roman architecture is preserved - sometimes this is shown as bits that aren't parged over - usually arches.

Tha alley beside the studio.

Back of the Ptuj Tower.

Ptuj Tower.

Yellow ground and some lines on the large painting.

Background for the camo swatch.

Over the red ground I put a blackish wash with some lines and put on the ol' grizzly bear stencil - never used before.

Artist talk on the small stage.

This was an interesting installation in the basement of the Musikafe.

Day 2 in Ptuj

On the second day in Ptuj we moved into the studio and Ben began work on his paintings and customized postcards. The day was spent in there, working behind Marek's Anarchist Cookie Shop, before going to the local Amadeus restaurant for dinner.

This is what the studio looked like when we arrived.

Setting out some of the stencils to get the art juices flowing.

I put Owen to work helping to set up the canvases for painting. We stapled them directly into the wall.

The canvas for the biggest painting.

Owen posing in the Anarchist Cookie Shop.

A nice red ground on the vertical piece and the start on the postcard pieces.

Owen in the Ptuj mall where we went to get more paint and needles and thread to finish the edges of the canvases pieces. It is amazing how malls are the same the world over.

My paint. Liquid Lukas. Took a little bit of fooling around with the paint to get a feel for it and to mix the colours I wanted.

The anarchist baker at work.

View of the entrance to the Hotel Silak - the second reddish building on the right side of the street. It was a very comfortable hotel.

Owen posing in the window of the Anarchist Cookie Shop. My studio and later gallery was in the gallery space behind the Anarchist Cookie Shop.

Dinner at the chicken restaurant. We had vouchers to eat here each day. They specialize in and are famous for all of the ways they prepare chicken and are owned by the largest chicken processing facility in all of Slovenia (possibly Europe?).