The Beehive, London, 18 January 2024

27 Jan 2024

The Invitation

Hi Steve and Esther, Happy New Year! We are reopening on Thursday 18 Jan with a free class to celebrate our 10th birthday. Are you both available to model from 7-9pm at The Beehive pub? Please let me know. Best, Taz.

With some diary adjustment – thank you, Carl – we were indeed both available. We’d modelled together for their 4th birthday and 8th birthday and it never ceases to feel an honour to be invited. 💖 Happy 10th birthday, Tottenham Art Classes!! 💖

The Event

When a class is free, it’s natural to expect more people will attend than usual. What a glorious sight, though, to walk into a life room and find it buzzing with row after row of merry artists. I counted 35 before we started, but reckon the final total was nearer 50.

The high turn-out meant Esther and I had to alternate at each end of the room rather than connect closely at the centre. It was a pity, but… ç’est la vie, que sera sera, etc. We opened energetically: two 1-minute poses, two of 2 minutes, two of 5 minutes.

With such quickfire work from the outset, it was probably a kindness to artists that we weren’t able to intertwine. For the rest of this first half one of us stood whilst the other sat on a stool. Poses of 10 minutes, 15 minutes and 12 minutes took us to half-time.

Cometh the break, cometh the birthday cupcakes! Cute chocolaty handfuls with thick icing and rainbow sprinkles, courtesy of Sugar Tea Room – divine! But we devoured them with such gusto that our white floor sheet quickly became a riot of crumbs.

After cake, wine and giving the pose space a cursory clean, we returned to work with poses of 5, 10 and 15 minutes. Holding hands during the 10-minute pose was, sadly, our only physical connection on the occasion… but it got a nice smile from Taz. 😁

And so to the endgame. With barely more than 10 minutes remaining, Taz suggested we finish with five poses of 2 minutes each. We closed the session as we’d opened it, energetically switching room-ends in a blur of staccato shapeshifting.

It had been an extraordinary and wonderful evening. We’d had a cat dashing through our pose space, regular cries of “chips!” ordered from the bar, a free range dog at the denouement, and – of course – there was some dizzyingly sublime art.

Artists on Instagram

As if to emphasise how much community has built around this group, within 24 hours there were oodles of Instagram posts tagged by artists sharing their creations. These ones below are but a few. Thank you, everybody! Thank you, Taz and Tom! x