Talking about losing my way (last post) I could’ve slung that sat nav as far away as possible to day. I was dropping off a piece of work in Bristol to be delivered on to an exhibition in London (a few of us have been selected to represent the South West at the Arts and Business headquarters there) and felt confident that, now I had a sat nav, my navigating problems were over.
I was soooo wrong. Late and frazzled, the zombie (which my husband swopped the car icon with) landed me up in a deadend in a housing estate on completely the wrong side of Bristol. I know to many of you, this is a typical experience with a sat nav but it’s all new to me and I foolishly trusted mine.
Alls well that ends well though, work delivered I managed to get back in time for school pick up. It turns out the twins were annoyed I’d made it on time, ‘Especially’ as Erin said indignantly ‘when I told my teacher that Mummy might be a bit late as she’d gone to Brazil for the day!’ Brazil/ Bristol – an easy mistake to make.
I enjoy blogging and reading others’ entries really keeps me going but sitting down to write this I realise I have less words within me. I have opened this up to write a number of times recently but where there were words there now seems to be a blank.
I thought about this and wondered where the words had gone and now I think I know – they have been replaced by making. The making has become my thinking. It is no longer a linear process of ideas developing into words developing into process, developing into object. Somewhere, the linear has fallen away and the process has become the beginning, the middle and the end, the thinking, the inspiration, the making, all inextricable from one another.
Perhaps I am a mad person. The placing of some fabric scraps has been a turning point. Now I am getting closer. The placing became my thinking, the gentleness with which they inhabited the space stopped me in my tracks and became something much bigger. But it’s all so fragile, one careless move and I will lose my way again.
I’ve finished a piece, I finished a piece, I’ve actually finished it! And now I can’t stop making, and thinking and wanting to make stuff. ‘Bedtime Stories’ is a collection of stains, some very faint and really quite beautiful, some large, some tiny like the one attached. All from duvets and bedding, edged in the text from a romantic novel ‘The Business of Loving’ part of a series, subscribed to by a woman I barely know. I have her subscription form, her name, address and date. Perhaps I will frame it and display it with the piece.
Looking back at Rob’s ‘A Walk with Cosmo’ (you can’t help but love that blog) I noticed that something I commented on along with a couple of others turned into a mammouth run of 24 comments of which I was totally unaware of. I think Andrew Bryant got the feeling that I was sternly anti MA but just to put the record straight, I am certainly in favour of MA’s at the right time, in the right place for the right reasons. I am just concerned that curators etc. respect an artists integrity to make that choice among many others and judge the work on it’s own merits.
The comment on thinking through making/language etc is something I’ve been mulling over myself recently. In my recent work the making has really become the thinking and through dissecting and remaking, ideas begin to unfold, construct and destruct again, bringing me to an understanding of the subject matter I would never have arrived via another route.
I have always considered my work as quite literary even though I don’t think I have ever brought myself to introduce words of my own. It has often been my intention but I have never quite overcome the fear that once words are introduced the viewers thoughts are tethered down in a way to a particular train of thought. It’s a kind of visual poetry if that’s not too generous a term for it. With written words, a poet can take from the every day and play with words, constructing them in a manner which enables us to view ourselves from a point not possible through everyday language. In a way I think that’s how we operate in a visual sense, drawing from the everyday, combining and constructing the quotidian in a manner which enables us to climb up a hill and view things from a new standpoint.
Today is a good day, not prefect but good. There’s nothing – (for all you artists with families or part time jobs supporting your work) – like waking up on a studio day. Knowing you have an uninterrupted day with your work. And it’s sunny. I know I haven’t blogged in a while but that’s mostly due to my carpal tunnel business flaring up which was my own fault for painting 36 little bits of work in one go and spending an hour straightening my daughters hair (the one with hair like Scary Spice had before she got at the straighteners). Work is progressing more slowly than I’d like but it’s moving forward. My website has crashed and burned due to my husband fiddling with his (somehow they were linked) but that’s good because it’s about time I overlhauled it.
I have booked a flight to meet with the freelance curator in Geneva as she has some spaces in mind to show me and I am now in the process of asking ACE to switch my funding for a NY visit to cover this. Studio wise, at the moment I have a couple of pieces on the go, one of which involves remaking the gelatine butterflies (I’ll tell you the story of that another time). I need to get my ass into gear and organise the first crit group meeting but apart from that I’m fairly up to speed. In absense of a good photo to post I have attached this strange image of the wonderfully named ‘slapped cheek’ disease which one of my daughters woke up with this morning. I did say it wasn’t a perfect day!
There’s a great line in the book ‘Notes from an Exhibition’ by Patrick Gale, about family life with a woman artist. The children recount a childhood of talking to a mother who, although she replied to their childish chatter, they knew her mind was never really with them but always with her next piece of work. This saddened me when I read it. I’m not sure if I could say I enjoy my work. I’m well aware that it fills up my mind and pulls me away from my children often, not so much physically but mentally. I’m not sure I’m ever really theirs in the way other mothers are.
We didn’t sleep last night. My husbands back to work today and the pressure of life resuming is building up for both of us. It’s early still and I should be packing to take the children to Kent while they sleep but instead I’m scribbling down thoughts about a piece of work which is filling my mind up. I wonder is there ever a way to balance all this?
