Eric Steen is a Portland based artist who was at Market Gallery for GI. He set up a series of pub school events in which we went on brewery tours and met brewers. The culmination of it all was the market gallery pub, for which myself and James Stephen Wright made an alcoholic ginger beer called Thrush. I also volunteered as a server for the bar so I got to see some amazing things (like a fridge that had been converted into a chiller and pump) and felt a strange sense of pride at seeing my own brew being enjoyed by so many people (a feeling shared by my fellow server who made a delicious vanilla oatmeal stout). I was hoping to learn something about the organisation side of Erics practice and I did attempt to get in touch Scott Williams from Williams Bros. brewery on Erics behalf while he was still in the states but I didnt seem to get very far compared with Eric. On the bright side I did learn the value of having a solid professional (and open) appearance through things like blogs and websites in convincing people to get onboard with projects. Central to this seemed to be Eric's ability to send people concise artists statements.
The other big lesson from all this is how individual the role of an artist in a community can be. While Eric managed to bring together home brewers from all over Scotland, it is conceivable that this might happen in at least a small way in internet forums and craft groups. What made this special was that Eric was able to get the home brewers together in order to supply free home brewed beer to the public in a safe environment. Now that its over I can see a few of the home brewers meeting up and exchanging beers but i doubt that there will be a public appreciation and discovery of so many home brewed beers again without someone like Eric creating an event like that, which had contributions from a few commercial brewers too.
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