After about five hours of mind blowing frustration trying to manipulate images on paint shop pro I’m ready to throw in the towel. My twelve year old son came in at one point and managed to do what I had been attempting all morning with three quick clicks but when I asked him to repeat it he wandered out of the room with a shrug and said – ‘don’t know how I did it’. Aargh! An hour later, I’d had enough and he came back when he heard me shouting ‘WHYYYYYYYYYY?’ at full volume repeatedly into the screen.
Remembering back to Geneva and walking around the flea market with Katie, explaining why I could tell certain prints were done with certain methods and the different procedures involved in those methods, she commented that colleges are really lacking in equipping graduates with a solid range of practical skills on leaving college now. I’d be interested to know if that’s true but right now I sure know where my problems lie and it’s somewhere between the chair and the computer keyboard.
Back from Geneva – what an unbelievably expensive place! Weirdly enough, the first port of call Katie brought me to, was to a show to meet an artist who also has a home near Salisbury and wants to join the crit group I’m trying to set up – small world or what! Besides this, we looked at some spaces, discussed the work, met some people and did a lot of kissing strangers (it’s three in Switzerland).
I did the tourist thing and ate way too much melted gruyere cheese and followed it by a trip to Giger’s museum (the Alien guy, boy, that alien’s tame compared too what I saw there, that man can really stretch the boundaries of taste). The erotic content was interesting at first, but got to such a point, we all nearly brought the cheese back up again, and all this right in the middle of Gruyere with the quaint buildings and the tinkling of cow bells in the background. An odd combo for a day out!
In the end, I got some amazingly useful advice. After discussing the work and looking at the spaces Katie had selected we got a very good contact who has put on shows in alternative venues and this is the direction we both thought the work should go. As a freelance curator (Katie is also a contemporary art expert for an auction house), alternative venues is also where her interest lies so I trust her to push forward.
Meanwhile, after a quiet period for participatory art jobs, I received five project requests in 24 hours. I would love to turn them down and concentrate on producing my own work and following up the leads Katie gave me but we have just learnt my husband has a one in two chance of being redundant by next week so I guess I’ve little choice in the matter. Perhaps they have come at just the right time!
Noise – that’s what my husband would call it – as if we haven’t got enough of the bloomin’ stuff in this household. Noise is what I have unwittingly created. As you might have noticed an email came through from Andrew Bryant with this months blog updates and a quote from one of my entries (or comments I think) mentioned with my name attached. Aha I thought – here’s the noise my husband keeps referring to. So as I had just added a couple of photos to my website etc I thought I would post a quickie on this blog to draw attention to that and perhaps get some feedback. Job done.
Two hours later I happened to click on my Axis statistics to find that, in addition to the measly few hundred hits I had had in the last year, I had suddenly aquired just under a thousand in the two hours since I had added that post! Scary! I told my husband all this when he arrived home and he said ‘You see I told you, get tweeting as well and keep building that noise. Well, I don’t know about that, I have yet to fall in love with twitter. It’s all getting a bit too noisy for my liking, and isn’t there a saying about empty vessels? Lets hope that’s not me!
Finally got the images on my website after much tinkering (and some unsavoury language). Pics of recent work are on www.susanfrancis.com, take a look – hope to have stills from the film I’m working on up there soon.
Having spent one mind numbing morning resizing photos and sorting out invoices etc. I often wonder if other artists have the same little system going as I have. Make work, create humungous mess in the process, (materials everywhere, tools left where they fall), finish work, clear up huge mess, photograph, banish messy clothes for a while, then spend ages updating sites etc until the whole process starts again. It always surprises me that some sort of loose, self imposed order has emerged naturally to what I do.
Anyway, here’s a quick image of the beef gelatine butterflies I struggled with over the last two months in the piece ‘Clever Cow!’. Someone once asked if you discuss some innovative material on this blog are you liable to have it replicated in someone elses work. Well, trust me, if anyone can replicate these little blighters they deserve a reward. Off to Geneva soon to meet the curator about spaces etc for a potential show. My intricate plan to fly my sister over from Ireland to look after the children is looking rocky though as she is in hospital with neck problems! I’m quickly trying to come up with a plan B. With four children and one with coeliac disease, the list of alternative offers is a short one!
