President’s Report 2023-2024

Ruth Quinn, President October 2019 – 25 March 2024

Welcome everyone and thank you for attending this AGM today.

The last year has been a busy and productive one for PAS and it has been good to see the start that was made with new classes, demonstrations, and workshops, are all continuing into 2024. The new printing workshops are very successful and so are our short courses which usually last 4 or 6 weeks and cover various mediums and styles. There is a mosaic workshop happening in April and some of our full term classes even have waiting lists. Class numbers have risen in them all to the delight of our regular, highly talented, and popular tutors.

A new watercolour tutor, Diana Casey, has joined our team and has very successfully added an evening watercolour class to our busy list. There are also a couple more tutors in the wings waiting for the right time to join our class list and Veronica Cunningham, our diligent and efficient Class Secretary who has arranged a lot of these changes, is keeping a close watch to see when this will happen.

The Open Studio days which we ran in conjunction with Frankston City Council Seniors Month last October were very popular and the exhibition looked most enticing with our members’ beautiful artwork being shown on hired screens and complimented by a little Cat Café and lots of art demonstrations by our members. The Textile Group stalls featured an amazing array of textile art and did a roaring trade. Some visitors were so impressed they joined up on the spot and most visitors also filled out the People’s Choice forms. After counting them all, which took a little longer than expected as there were so many, we came up with 3 clear winners – John Young, Joan Denner and Liz Turner. Congratulations to all three and thank you to Leoni Jenkin for organising the event, and to the other committee members and volunteers without whose help the event would not have been possible.

We would love to get a team together over the coming weeks to begin planning our next major art exhibition, so if you would like to be involved please put your name and contact details on the form which is on the table in the foyer. We can’t put on a major art event without your help.

Carla Cruikshanks was our accountant Treasurer up until the last AGM and despite many call outs to our membership, and registering with volunteer agencies, we were unable to obtain a volunteer Treasurer until recently. Meanwhile Carla, along with accountants Marilyn Davis, and Ellen Zhang, continued to assist with bookkeeping until mid-year. Member Liz Clifford, who is a highly experienced Certified Public Accountant then kindly offered her services as bookkeeper on a voluntary basis and proceeded to upgrade our dated accounting system, a move welcomed by both Carla and Marilyn. The new system integrates effectively with our online Bendigo Bank systems. Bendigo Bank have been a generous sponsor of PAS. They donated $3000 last year which helped fund our Open Studio and Exhibition.

The introduction of online payment systems is a key innovation brought into play by our web administrator Leoni Jenkin, together with our volunteer bookkeeper Liz Clifford. This has meant less handling of cash for our office staff and more convenient payments for our members, most of whom used the new system to renew their membership.

On that note I am pleased to tell you that memberships have steadily risen again since last year and we now have over 500 members.

Our hardworking and very efficient membership secretary Jenni Guilfoyle has been busy for months processing new memberships. Jenni took over the role of membership secretary from Marilyn Davis in mid-2023.

There are lots of volunteers who work for PAS in different roles, from everyone on your friendly hard-working Committee, to the catering team of Caroline Kill and Faye Mac Crystal, with Rob Meredith, doing all the odd jobs and maintenance around our studios and ensuring the video cameras are set up for our demos. Karen Flavel logged our email correspondence for much of last year. John Randle assists the bookkeeper and Michael Lord manages our amazing library of art books and DVDs, while Margot O’Neil has been taking care of our Facebook page.

Nic Kirkman kept us up to date with all things PAS during last year, through her quirky and entertaining newsletters. Nic has had to resign from that position due to heavy work commitments and we are on the lookout for volunteers to assist with getting our monthly newsletters up and running again. As many people now view their newsletter via phone and tablet, we will be moving to an e-newsletter this year. Hopefully that will make reading your newsletter far easier and just as enjoyable.

We also have several Convenors who run the social studio groups. Wendy Williams looks after the Fridabblers. Jenny Guilfoyle makes sure that there is a model and a portraiture group on Thursday and Karen Flavel looks after a very busy watercolour group on Tuesday. There is an evening group with Jacqui Simpson on Wednesday and a Textile Art group that meets on Friday afternoon.

Saturday is very special too as Maxine Pritchard, as well as running Upstart, her very popular classes for children and teens, also convenes a Life Drawing class on Saturdays.

Kerri Hutchins is working hard every week cataloguing and archiving all the PAS history from our small beginnings in 1954 to the present day and would love to hear from you if you would like to help. We are also lucky to have a warm and friendly team of office volunteers who work in the PAS office, answer the phone, deal with enquiries and keep the place tidy and well-stocked. Without all these dedicated hard-working volunteers our society would not be nearly as interesting and fulfilling a place to be, so thanks to all of you for your time and enthusiasm, and for keeping PAS as a place where you will find that our “Friendship through Art” slogan is real and flourishing.

As most of you know I will not be standing for President again this year as my general health needs a good seeing to and I also feel that, having been on the committee since 2007, I need a break  I believe that the society needs someone younger, with more energy, who is more au fait with digital technology than I am, so as to bring this organisation right up to date!

I have enjoyed my time at PAS and it is good to see that we have recovered from the Covid situation so well. It has been wonderful to see familiar faces coming through the doors again and getting to know the new faces who are discovering the friendliness and diversity of this vibrant Art Society for the first time.

I wish you all the very best for the future and I know I am leaving this Society in very good and capable hands.

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