Two days workshops in the school. One of those schools where the moral of staff is very low.
As it turns out the cleaners there have been paid wages below that of their male counterparts and have been awarded eqall pay at last. This has also been backdated about 7 years or so I'm told. The school has to make up this shortfall not the education authority or the council.
So 140k or something dont quote me I can not remember is coming out of school funds. The result may be no money to pay covering teachers when absences occurr. Curenttly at 7 apparently. So my contact at the school was only briefly there to say hi and I didnt see her on the 2nd day at all!
But I worked as well as I could and we did mosaic work all 55 of us. I had teacher support as well dont get me wrong.
I wonder what it is like to face these tasks as a kid. Levels of expectation really high. Fish with eye lashes and intricate patterns.
Achievements are on a different scale gone are mouths, the fins and tails. Sometimes the fish has gone as well? A good result is to cover the whole paper with tiles…'finished it' wow.
Do you remember what your expectations and aspirations were when you were a kid? Did you meet them? Some kids here tried so hard and worked intensly, others pestered me the whole time to do it for them. I hope the kids who tried hard try hard at all their subjects.
It is about aspirations and having ones that make you move through life. Too low and you get lost.
Do you know the Pink Floyd song about 2 gold fish swimming in a fish bowl, covering the same old ground, facing the same old fears, year after year.
I came away with this song ringing in my ears, it seemed apt.
My job is to step it up a level and bring them with me.
I've had some feed back from the commissioners and the indirectly from the funders of this project, which was all good, so good, that apparently they were showing print outs of it around the office.
That's a nice feeling my tail is wagging.
I have booked up 2 nights in a hotel my usual B+B was full…which is a drag as I have to spend £55 instead of £30 per night. This is to work with the school and the funders of this project will also turn up and see how it all going.
All the paymasters and bodies behind this project (of which there are a few) want their names in mosaic on it now. Tiny little lettering and I'm going to have to put my logo on it now cos I dont want to be out done.
Product placement eh…fish food or water purification systems anyone else want their name on it?
only joking, in a way it shows its a good project but I will have to be carefull about this lettering. If it is too much I will have to ask for a seperate plaque.
So I am enjoying making this mosaic now and want to carry on, but I have to change focus to working on another project. Is this because I always want to do something other than what I should be doing? Procrastination or displacement activity, who knows.
I have to arrange to work in the school for this project soon. But I have overcome my insecurities about this mosaic now and should relax and not worry about it while I do other stuff.
So here is an interesting thing then;
Have you ever had a client allude that they are slightly disapointed, or feel that you are not quite doing your best work?
I have, this is the second time its happened. I am not surprised, I am spreding myself too thin. She was very subtle about it. She knows me very well, I have worked on a couple of commissions with this same organisation.
So the colours are not as bright in the mosaic as they are in the design. True, spot on. But mosaic is not painting and you can not mix the colour you want! Your stuck with what you get!
But if I'm suposed to be good at this then surely I can raise the quality some what. And she is right, as was the bloke in scotland about 6 years ago.
So I've tried a slightly different technique. And you know what? There are no short cuts, no toshing out, no coasting, no path of least resistance and no 'oh that will do'. This medium is a major fecker, but thats my problem not the commissioners. On both these occasions, I have raised my game, as they were right and I am glad they did, as the final work would have been below par.
Thank god for email attachments as I would have been embaressed, dissapointed……well, gutted actually… at a luke warm ribbon cutting ceramony.
I have really got stuck into this mosaic in the last few days. An inner swelling of nervousness about it has consumed me. I felt it was below my real abilities and felt the colour relationships were not quite going to work.
I have had to keep working on it untill I rescue it, pull it back from a path leading to a dull, unresolved, naff, poor piece of work. Just the same feelings as when you start a painting really. Actually I think I get them at the start of every mosaic I make. So relax you'll manage it.
I can not work on it tomorrow which is very frustrating. But I have turned the corner with it, and should be able to resolve the colour weight problems.
Tomorrow: another long drive to a meeting.
Hopefully I will feel more positive soon, and after all as an artist with work what have I got to moan about. I should be jumping for joy and enjoying my work?
