We thought we knew where we were headed. We had decided – during the first shock of Jenny’s unexpected death – that as Art Executors our goal would be to put on the exhibition Jenny had been working towards when she died. Studio cleared and art safely stored, the exhibition was our next job. But it was curiously difficult to get started on it. How should we approach galleries – which galleries should we approach? Should we to try to sell some work to finance the exhibition, or would that make the exhibition a less attractive prospect for galleries? We were getting nowhere, but finally realised this was a project and we needed a proper plan.
A project plan begins with a clear objective – what do you want to achieve and how will you know you have achieved it, within given resources of time and money? Once put this way, it was clear that this exhibition, in project planning terms, would be an output, not the main objective. To illustrate the point, the objective most artists have when they exhibit is to make money to live on. That wouldn’t be our objective. We asked ourselves: if no one, or only people who already knew her work, came to it, would that be a good outcome?
Despite the early success of her prints when Jenny died she was virtually unknown. Surely the important point was that if anyone, now or in the future, found a work signed by Jenny, they would be able to find out who she was and what her art was about.
So we formulated an objective that Jenny’s name should not be forgotten. She had no digital footprint. Our first output should be to create a digital archive, a record of her and her work. We needed to catalogue the works we had and create a website. An exhibition would be the final output, not the beginning. We had a plan.