One of those days when things get resolved and all seems good and then suddenly it all evaporates……….
Ros and I had been waiting for the Ramsgate Squall and the Folkestone Triennial Fringe to get back to us about hosting the Farningham Hobby Horse Project and were getting concerned about having enough time to get an installation team together. But we are all back in contact and on track for two great days out with the horses, so thats all ok. I can put all that on the back shelf of my overloaded brain for retrieval later.
Brilliant. I have been lent a pot of dead moths [!] by another artist – had to be didn’t it? I was getting very concerned I wouldn’t have enough in time or that I wouldn’t have the time to finish if they did turn up. Another worry sorted.
So this afternoon has been spent drawing moths alongside the chest x-ray drawings. Thing is that I can only use twenty seven moths between the two sheets of paper as each moth represents a life. Now that I have completed one sheet I am really no longer sure about the work. The drawing is fine. The composition is fine; it just seems weaker than I had imagined. I had thought that the sum of the parts would have a greater impact, even though the box itself is only small -14″ x 10″.
I keep creeping round it, worrying at it, waiting for it to tell me what to do next. At present I think I should complete Box 2 and see if having the two boxes alongside eachother gives the work greater weight.
On the other hand it may just be me. Am I the only one who finishes something, feels it to be totally unsuccessful, walks away and comes back four weeks later to decide that actually it’s ok?
I am hoping………..
This morning’s post bought me a dusky moth in a small plastic box – from another artist answering my call for moths. Finding a moth, boxing it, wrapping it, sending it – how lovely is that?
Feeling that I should honour the gesture I put aside other things and drew it this afternoon so I could send her the image with my thanks. And while I was at it I drew another X-ray; but they don’t look like X-rays. They seem to have a life of their own and look much darker, much more to do with Death, try as I might.
They don’t dominate the paper – the moths images are holding their own, but the piece is now undeniably a dialogue about Mortality between the two – with me in the middle.
Monday. Meaning the weekend has come and gone with nothing done at all in the work line. I am still hoping for an appearance of the French handmade paper as promised. Knowing that they offered to make two Imperial sheets especially for me I feel a bit vulnerable. I shall feel happier when I have them with me.
This morning I spent some time looking up TB; lots of chest X-rays on Google images which fascinated me. Skeletal, but they reminded me of medieval wooden crucifixions where the ribcage is so prominent.
I also watched a medical video looking at a TB patient’s X-ray – such little changes visible and such huge consequences. So fine is the balance of Life and Death, and so arbitrary ………looking at the images I was struck by the medical possibilities of today’s world – so far away from the ‘sea cure’ of yesteryear……..
After much deliberation and trying out of X-ray images beside the moths I made the decision to draw the x-rays and the moths together on my paper. Immediately I had done a couple I had that frisson of excitement that means I am totally engaged and excited by what I am doing. Not sure how others will view the juxtaposition but I feel happy to defend my choice so that usually means it will be ok.
And I have been offered a box of moths……yeah! Ask and it shall be delivered unto you…………….
Meanwhile the Hobby Horse Project saga goes on, two venues still not having got back to me after seemingly being very excited to host us. How often can one phone/e-mail hoping for some sort of definitive answer? As we need a team of people to install them each time it does all get a bit wearing when we are left hanging and we look chaotic our end……….hopefully all will work out fine but it’s all so time consuming ………………now I just want to draw moths……..and X-rays.
No moths…!
I have put a call out for moths. Wrong time of year I guess.
So – I have 10 of the 40 I need and three weeks to go….now what? Draw the same one again and again I hear you say.
Now this is very strange. Maybe because I have been working so long on my big triptych where each insect found is drawn, dated and given a new status in the world I feel this would in some way be cheating. It feels inauthentic.
Strange because this new work is so different in my head; a specimen box of moths, not pinned or recognisable by type, collected, drawn with love but presented as found; vulnerable, damaged and abandoned.
Ok…. Have thought and come back to this. It’s because the work is around young girls who died from TB far from home and were buried in the crypt. It’s their individuality that I would be disrespecting. Not sure why this wasn’t immediately obvious. Two works feeding into each other maybe. Usually an unconscious sump of possibilities but maybe I need to question myself here. Need to have that dialogue with the work where I ask it what I think I am doing……
So. We will see. Will fate provide? Will fate provide before the second week in August?
If not – then what? Change the concept? Change the work?
One of my tutors used to say that work either had or did not have integrity.
Integrity – my watchword. I do believe one can see integrity in work, be it the Sunday painter or the London gallery…………….something to do with the honesty with which the work has been approached and wrestled with, something about not taking the easy road………
Integrity = 30 more moths. Plainly.
Project Three: The Farningham Hobby Horse Project – quite unlike my other two projects this one is bright, colourful, crazy; a collaboration with artist Ros Barker working under the name of ‘FROS.’ We are both installation artists working with memory and memorial and have worked together before. A lot to be said for working relationships that have been tried and tested. I work best in collaboration I have discovered – I miss the ability to talk out ideas with someone who has a vested interest in the outcomes when I work alone.
This community project has now been running for six months – originally KCC funded and part of the Kent Cultural Baton it has developed into a yearlong project and is taking up more of my time than is healthy for either my work life balance or my other work. It is however massive fun and audiences love it, which when you work with the darker side of life as I do is quite a change.
The project was to re-make an ancient horse fair on its original village site by asking an entire village community to make a hobby horse. We had no idea if we would get six or sixty or how engaged the village would be. In the eventuality we got 120 quite amazing horses returned to us.
Following their launch they are now on their way round Kent – Whitstable Oyster Festival last weekend, Folkestone Triennial Fringe and new venues coming up ………. this is however the only project I have been involved with which could do with its own PA!
How does one deal with these runaway projects? Even with two of us this is enchanting, infuriating and administratively top heavy – every day hours on the laptop, phone calls and endless thought time that creeps into my driving and shopping opportunities like a thief.
