Recently this blog has gone from being a once-a-week posting to once a month. Its been hard to find time to write, as I’ve been juggling my job with looking after a small person and a big one, as theres been a lot of illness at home. Plus I’ve been juggling deadlines and fitting in making a new piece of work for a show that opened last week.
My practice has been increasingly mobile, as for the past 2 months I have been without a studio, so I’ve been working in cafes when Abie is napping, or on the sofa after he’s in bed. At a family gathering I was making an embroidery piece sat on the sofa and a relative remarked how I looked like a ‘prim and proper lady’. This made me think about how certain traditions of crafting are viewed as typically feminine by others (men) and as somehow inert, and how in fact they enable you to sit there overhearing conversations and thinking improper thoughts.
I’ve thought again about the quote about the pram in the hall being the enemy of good art and have recently read about how what makes people ‘great’ artists is being able to be focused and not get distracted. It is hard for me to find focused time but when I do have time I use it in as focused a way as I can. And I’m also trying to work with the distractions.I realise increasingly how much time and space to work are privileges.
Abie’s playing has expanded beyond the field of the playmat, so I decided to draw the scattering of objects across the whole of our downstairs. He’s been really into displacing objects, shoes, bottles, spices, whatever he can get his hands on. This week he found a box of tea which he deconstructed, scattered and ate through the tea bags resulting in an interesting pattern of leaves. Now it looks like we are moving house in the new year, a further displacement is on the horizon. I’ve also got a new studio space. All this feels both unsettling and also exciting: the process of sorting, clearing, packing and moving opening up new spaces and possibilities.
