blog…

The other day an artist sent me a paragraph of text lifted from my recent blog and asked if she might use it to label some of my work. I had no idea she read it ……I felt quite startled. Am I alone in feeling almost stalked?

This is crazy. I blog to an unseen audience, that’s the point, or at least part of the point; the wish for discourse, to feel less alone, to feel that there are others alongside also struggling to make sense and headway of whatever they are working on……….The other is of course to listen to my own creative voice coming back to me, to catch it unawares and see if it sounds different to the endless chats I have with myself.

Sometimes it does sound more grown up, but I think that might be a matter of wanting to sound like I know what I am doing in print rather than knowing what I am doing – which is of course, different.

Anyway, the silent reader, the one who reads and moves on and leaves no trace……

You blog. No comment. Sometimes it is immaterial to me, sometimes I feel as if my blog has been found wanting – too boring? too ordinary? bad writing? bad art? But hang on – is this me being childish, petulant, attention – seeking? Probably the majority of blog entries remain unacknowledged and after all I still have the other half of my bargain – the echo of my blog voice.

I think on reflection that maybe it is the fact that any mention of my blog in conversation invariably means we have at least a faint connection. We know each other. So my being unaware that they are reading my blog feels somehow socially uncomfortable…..as if I should have known something I could not have known.

Now – why don’t I feel the same about Facebook?

The last few day have been spent in Groningen in Holland.

As you come out of Groningen station you are instantly assailed by the strangest building – Groningen Museum. It was finished in 1994 with separate sections deliberately commissioned from non architects, one of which was Phillip Starck.

Too brutally modernist and spatially too harsh for my taste but you always find something interesting don’t you? I was fascinated by the fortuitous way that bottomless black holes appeared to form in a green algae pool when fresh water funnelled into it. The mix of colours, perspective and the dark piercings gave me a sinister wish to dive into them.

The town turned out to be warm and friendly, chilled and cultured, full of art, theatre and antiques. My high spot was re- visiting the museum to see Chinese digital photographer Chi Peng’s first solo show – ‘Me Myself and I’.

Stunning. A tightrope walk of politics and folklore, adolescence and the headlong growth of a country. As a non Chinese I knew I was missing references to culture, stories, film and heritage but the show was so strong it seemed immaterial. Photography is not my first love and I don’t claim much knowledge of it but this exhibition reignited my interest.

The other image I bought back with me was of the many trees with scarves tied around them. Apparently some of the trees are under threat of destruction and tree lovers have knitted them scarves to show they care. With so many scarves of so many sorts it becomes a clamour impossible to ignore…. .

The collaborative artists book ‘Quattrodecim’ that I did with thirteen others printers seems such a long time ago now, but is suddenly reappearing in my life. Thanks to the generosity of a Hastings based printer who took part in the collaboration my book is now ensconced in her Open Studios exhibition, as I think are my moth boxes from the Crypt.

This morning the postcards arrived for our Quattrodecim exhibition at the Pie Factory in Margate . Fabulous. I am always in awe of anyone with unerring graphic design skills. I have none.

Today was spent with the Farningham Hobby Horse Project – wet again. This time we were at a local Heavy Horse show when the rain came down………the only thing to do is throw plastic recycling bags over all 120 of them, load them as fast as possible, drive home and dry 120 hobby horses and wet plastic bags over my Aga.

Absolutely barking mad.

The last time I turned up at a PV one of the artists made straight for me clutching a screw of kitchen roll- which I was obviously thrilled to receive. I could see the curator looking somewhat intrigued. Little did he know it contained a wasp and a fly.

Everywhere I go people hand me little jars and pots of dead insects. There is more than a little insanity in all this…………………..

My lovely friend Juliet has sent me a matchbox through the post containing moth wings she has collected from under a bat roost.

I am stupidly excited by their arrival and spend the day lovingly constructing in my mind works with them. Favourite at the moment is to paint each one separately in watercolour – and then as a pile of wings – both works on separate sheets of paper; then frame them side by side as one work.

This seems to honour each insect and memorialise it, while at the same time telling the story of its demise.

I can hear an echo of the listing of names on a plaque at a place of massacre.

Anyway- nothing can be done for a while…………just too much else to do. I need to get my work /life balance sorted. I have so many projects waiting in my brain and no time. The hobby horses are very time hungry.

Maybe by the spring I will have changed my mind as to what to do with them completely and this imagined work will be no more than a homeopathic vibe within the final one………

Another day of sun and showers with the Farningham Hobby Horse Project – this time part of the Ramsgate Squall. We were on the costal path in George VI Park – with Weapons of Sound next door to us as our sound- track.

Great visitors, but a constant watch on the sky and all hands to get the plastic bags on the horses to prevent them getting ruined in the showers made it all a bit wearing.

Ros my partner arrived wanting to try setting them up in a circle reminiscent of a fairground carousel. It took longer to set up but worked well – allowing visitors to go inside and look at the inside rows as well as the outer ring. Less problem with small children wanting to stroke and touch them this time. Last time the parents couldn’t get in to get them out!

Finally left defeated by the weather, accompanied by the drummers, the cafe couple and the visitors. All damp but having had a good day.

All very British by the seaside.

www.farninghamhobbyhorseproject.phanfare.com

Today the Farningham Hobby Horse Project was to have been a presence at the Ripley Arts Centre. We arrived, unloaded the cars, set them up around the lovely sensory garden in the manner of a sculpture park – something we hadn’t tried before – and the heavens opened. We were drenched, they were soaked and the paper and feathers and the PVA and the sequins and the ribbons so lovingly put on by their makers hung damp and dripping. We voted to bring them home and dry them off. The rest of the afternoon was spent drying everything so we can be on the road again first thing tomorrow for the Ramsgate Squall – on the coastal path – weather permitting.

This project is hard work, requiring two cars, a team of at least four, crowbars, electric drill, generator and endless patience. Somehow in the excitement of starting it all we chose to overlook the sheer repetitive nature of the endless e-mails and phone calls to set up each location, and in the loading and unloading, storing and repairing of 120 hobby horses.

Soon we will have to start looking for indoor venues, but first we have to work out how to stand them up. The favoured solution is some form of wooden ‘log’ each one taking ten horses. Then we can be flexible as to venue and space as they can be in a line, a square, in lines… now just how to make ten of these cheaply…………..