A Kind of Lulling

hello

It’s incubator day today and I have remembered my key.

THE STOLEN PAINTING!

A painting has been stolen from the galleries here at Exeter Phoenix this week and I am wondering who pinched it. I think somebody saw it, loved it and came back with a screwdriver and took it home to put above their mantelpiece.

Intrigued about stolen paintings and Joe Orton defacing library books.

it wasn’t me what done it.

Drove in today – it was truly raining. Drove at around 57mph all the way.

Observed three umbrellas:

Brolly 1) An overly large yellow umbrella nestled with patrick trainers.

Brolly 2) Moreover a parasol with a pointy bit.

Brolly 3) A carousel of complimentary colours (mostly greens).

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A Memory is Made:

Ben’s red plastic ‘Queen Mother’ umbrella on Tuesday and a lovely conversation about it.

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It seems that incubator day entries in this blog start with three things. LIke the train triptych last week. Then a memory is made. Then something else happens. But things have a habit of connecting.

On My Radio

The radio station seem to be having a two tone thing today (which is my school disco).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjKtQO3IPrk

A Lady With a Very Soft Voice

Paul Rooney is being interviewed by a lady with a very soft voice after the two tone bit. He has an exhibition opening at Spacex tomorrow. I can’t see Paul Rooney but I can hear Paul Rooney. I listen to the interview like a nosey neighbour in my room – (or, to put it another way, like Basil Fawlty checking for woodworm) and at the moment Paul is talking about how you survive financially as an artist and links this to his previous teaching practice, The Northern Art Prize and a spare room at home serving as a studio.

I remember that the framing of this blog was exploring ‘making’ again after PGCE. I think I’m going through a process of asking myself what I am doing, why I keep doing things and how teaching shifts context of making/faciliating to something that I don’t know yet but want to explore/experiment with/write about. A new kind of energy/function/context.

Connects also to a conversation today with Catherine Cartwright about developing the artist/educator role, how practice relates to facilitating learning, criticality in workshopping, Artists’ Access to Art Colleges, the South West region, her explorations of printmaking/the digital and how the internet enables connection/sharing/learning.

Catherine’s blog: www.a-n.co.uk/p/544293

Thinking of funding…..earlier in the week I found myself writing about being at the photocopier at work copying pages from the book The Dream of Fluxus – a chapter called ‘Art from Letters and Paper’ where George Maciunas ‘developed a thrift ideology for Fluxus’ while holding down a day job (in the US Air Force? LOL!)

Links to idea of adapting/appropriating/recycling as an aesthetic….

‘In aesthetic terms, Maciunas’ vision was founded on his virtuostic handling of texts…in conjunction with recycled paper and pictorial motifs from which he made decorative products’

n.b. concerning ‘decorative’ – see Art Forum article ‘ornamental and the shallow’ term – oh drat I can’t find the link – will update later.

Reminds me of Lily Van der Stokker’s ‘unshouting feminism’ and nice use of the words ‘nice, sentimental and decorative’. Nice show this summer at St Ives.

http://www.airdeparis.com/lily.htm

These little nuggets of stuff helps me make sense of all those old books/pages/texts I have been making under the influence of and why I might want to continue to do that with a sense of thrift. The idea of the Scrapbook is useful here – ‘scraps’ – more on this soon.

With less than 50 words to go – I will tell you that I will post some pictures of a small fragment of ‘making’ from today and in a mo I will post the ‘making’ strategy.

Menu decorative thingy:

trying to find squiggley-line

sorry no video today

~oOo~

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At this point I put a spanner in the works:

PINEAPPLES

Today I’ve been collecting pineapples.

http://maddypethickpineapple.blogspot.com/

Pineapples have fallen into the work for a long time.

Must write more on pineapples.

I’m back. No post last week when I came back to incubator space after summer holidays and managing childcare. The radio station next door to me (there is a radio station across the corridor) are playing music a bit too loud. Funnily enough they play Eiffel 65 ‘Blue’ and last time on this blog I noted the blue floor. On another blog there is a ‘blue period’.

Duncan (from Blue).

I made a list of rules on a piece of A4 paper:

The Rules:

(written in biro)

Today…I get the train to the incubator space.

The camera isn’t relevant at the moment. I left it at home.

Tools: scissors, the old books, gluestick, handmade scrapbooks.

And some notes:

A spinal tap analysis of the word incubator:

And a drawing: of an incubator. (with eggs in it).

Came up with:

1) eggs (hatching) I’m in an egg. It’s hatching – do you want to see my pebble collection?

2) Illness. LOL.

I wrote in my plan that I should delete this blog tonight. Instead I am back here writing and thinking that this is a good space for writing and thinking.

Focus/isolate/do – were written on the piece of paper.

As were ‘paper’ and ‘pen’.

Why did I delete my pen pot inventory post from another blog?

No blog rule.

No camera rule.

Just the things for themselves.

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On the train. Funny little train which follows the seaside. A one hour and 20 minute train journey. Two sausage dogs on the train. This made up three things I’ve seen on the train in three days.

1) Man with ship painting.

2) Man with long plank of wood.

3) Lady with two sausage dogs.

i tweet this from the train.

Then realise I have FORGOTTEN THE KEY TO THE INCUBATOR SPACE.

*@%^

>>>>>>> <<<<<<<<

Above: a set of chevrons.

I like titles.

Plan B: What you do when you have forgotten the key to the incubator space:

Go and buy some pencils and a pencil sharpener and go to the library.

Exeter library. I came here last week on my ‘incubator day’.

I liked:

The 60s? ‘civicness’.

The huge windows and windowsills where people sit and read. You can sit on the windowsills. Or face a chair towards the window. It’s a lovely sun trap. And nice to see people sitting on windowsills reading. Huge houseplants are carefully placed in sun spots. Some high up on shelves above our heads.

Windowsills are good places for people and plants to hang out.

Encyclopedic categories of books:

Sport, cooking, crafts, gardening, poetry, biographies, maps.

An internet room with internet people.

Photocopier corner.

A childrens’ library where all the books are all over the floor.

A library kind of smell.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Activity for today: focus/isolate/do.

Collect mini texts. Starting with Elizabeth David French Cookery Book:

Puff Shells.

Written in pencil in a handmade scrapbook.

Nice texts about recipe books – which I share with my friend Helen Pritchard who is writing about Fluxus and stuff.

And then it started. Collecting mini- texts. sitting in various chairs. Under various houseplants. A bit performic. Until 3 books were filled.

The Power of Three.

SOMETHING IS HAPPENING.

coming up next – I have to go to make hot chocolate and go to bed:

What to do with the mini-texts. Thats what I have to work out. Some experiments with materials and tools. This related back to my previous questions/observations.

Now I’ll find two pictures to post – one of the books last week – i tidied the old books up, categorized into cats, plants, crafts etc and started to salvage pictures that ‘punctumed’. I could write about punctum.

And a picture from today of collected text written in pencil. I could write about descriptiveness.

And I forgot: I wanted to say that all along I was in a library, with a lot of books, with a pair of scissors and a glue stick in my handbag.

Some more connecting things to think, read, see and write about?:

Orton and halliwell defacing books at Islington Library (Devon County Council must rest assured that I will not deface books)

http://www.joeorton.org/Pages/Joe_Orton_Life11.htm…

Illich – on libraries and learning webs – people accessing tape recorders and tapes to share knowledge.

End. Here’s that menu thingy:

-~oOo~-

OMG there’s an add video option just below this dialogue box. Could I add video next time?

bye

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