‘working with a new material’ sounds obvious doesn’t it? Every time I tackle a new material I think, ‘this is going to be a creative adventure, and I’m excited’ – what I forget is the strange one step forwards two steps backwards feeling I have when learning something new, with something new – perhaps it’s because it’s a part time course and I already cram too much into a busy life, perhaps its because as an adult I have more of a perfectionist nature than I am prepared to fully admit to or perhaps it’s just that I rush everything and still need to slow down.
So as I wasn’t busy enough already this term I had raised the stakes and agreed to give a Pecha Kucha 20×20 (that’s 20 images and 20 seconds per image) presentation at the De La Warr Pavilion on International Women’s day. This created the perfect storm and I have been spending much time upset, (spot the basketry puns) having what a friend laughingly suggested was an existential crisis ever since.
As an artist it’s kinda necessary to be able to say what I do even though artists usually prefer to let the work do the talking. Getting used to saying I am an artist has been difficult enough; there is no employer to back this up, no wages and no clear career structure. But repeatedly artists are expected to be able to summarise in a neat little sound bite what it is that we do. As someone who wants to maintain a professional art practice I feel obligated to do this and also recognise it helps to think this through every now and again. The trouble is my work is an ever changing thing as my practice moves forward. I recently read ‘The mark on the wall’ by Virginia Woolf and for me, like the ‘mark’ every time I squint at my practice it seems to change…
‘in certain lights that mark on the wall seems actually to project from the wall….it seems to cast a perceptible shadow’ wrote Virginia Woolf
I recognise in some ways I am in a state of transition so it’s only to be expected that I am slightly discombobulated by the prospect of telling people what I do succinctly and in a language we all can understand.
For Pecha Kucha I realised I was trying to be many things. Funny, informative, cool, professional, concise, accessible, relevant etc…argh
WAY TO MUCH PRESSURE STOP IT AND CALM DOWN FELICITY!
I am the only person putting this pressure on myself – so after several failed attempts at choosing 20 images (out of hundreds) and choosing different angles on which to base the presentation I reverted back to what was relevant to me.
I mused about even stopping calling myself an artist, like Ai Wei Wei because I have found adjusting to the challenge of returning to education for the strict purpose of learning very specific and repetitive skills, was throwing my status quo of process and philosophy right off centre.
As far as pechakucha was concerned it dragged me through a tangle of self examination laced with the irony of finding a statement I wrote in 2012 saying exactly the same thing that I had concluded after all this soul searching..(I am consistent after all if a trifle forgetful!) note to self ‘take more notice of yourself and less of others’
Learning a craft (with a very skilled and patient teacher, John Page) is actually a brilliant experience as it is flagging up exactly where it is in the process that I tend to bolt at being told what to do. For example making the final rush basket with handles, I wanted to control how it looked without much regard to its purpose. But to learn how to make a good functional basket one needs to learn about strength, proportion, materials and techniques.
But when it came to the handles, which gave it a distinct character, I was not prepared to add handles that made it look twee there’s no other way for me to describe this (unless it was going to be an ironic statement) so I made handles that spanned one end to the other slightly more architectural in my mind…although that does sound really quite pompous.
I enjoyed returning to using rush and felt better about handling it. I learned how to damp it properly and have no idea how it might feature in future work yet. I want to focus on dualities as they are a very common recurring theme in my practice. Rush as a material has many attributes, it’s incredibly strong yet soft, (sounds like a toilet roll ad!) pliable yet can hold form, it’s inner core is like natural polystyrene and basically in its raw state looks like the most unlikely pile of dirty plant stalks you’ve ever seen …until you learn how to use it that is…
