The hours between the end of COLLECT and the trip back to Portland for our biennial conference, BECon, seemed a good time to link the two with a visit to conference presenter Heike Brachlow at  London’s Royal College of Art.

The RCA sits just opposite Hyde Park, not far from the little mews house that we’d rented for our time in London. So it was a short walk and a good way to stretch out after days of standing at the fair.

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As often happens, the end of anything is the moment when we ask ourselves “why”.

COLLECT closed late Sunday afternoon. It had been a day filled mostly with artists, students, and families with small children. Buyers were few and exhaustion was setting in. The big pack-up lay ahead.

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It’s the last day of COLLECT. Can’t leave with a pic of us all in a heap on the floor (and what a grand floor it was! Thank you, Dinesen)….

Out of his worker’s grubbies, Dan – and the rest of us – stepped into an opening evening like I’ve never experienced. For a few hours the Crafts Council let us pretend we lived in Charles Saatchi’s world. It was quite over-the-top.

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Just because it looks posh on the outside, doesn’t mean that any Royal Treatment awaits within.

Small children being forced to run endless laps on the track in front of Saatchi’s glam digs should have alerted us  to the drudgery that lay ahead.

And sure enough…much as I utterly ADORE doing  COLLECT  in London, it’s the same old grind when it comes to setting up for this art fair.

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