blog…

6^th January R. responded that she thought the bones beautiful and inspiring and that she liked the idea of an imaginary museum. She suggested we met up somewhere that might be inspiring. The British museum perhaps or the John Soanes? ‘Your butterfly drawers sound interesting, so strange that there should still be creatures living in them’ she said. It was a revelation – I hadn’t thought like that.

6^th January. I receive a Facebook invitation from R. to a poetry reading. Yet again I wish I lived in London. The last train from Victoria is no fun nowadays …. 6^th January

‘How about we meet at the British Museum on Monday 18th January and do a trawl around the museum and then a relaxed lunch? Talking about masks has reminded me that when I did my A level we had to do a unit on African art. My final piece was based on the Benin heads in the British Museum – around the fact that they were displaced – I felt a sadness for them that they were so far from the culture they belonged to.
Amazing how our creative core seems to be like a magnet. It just resets itself each time even though we think we are doing something quite different.

When the snows have gone I will photograph the butterfly boxes……
Until then here are some photos I took of a tethered balloon in the fog when I was in Berlin. Not sure how to use it yet. Maybe I never will find a way but I love their fragility and sadness’. 18^th January We finally meet. Rowyda is just as in her e-mails: bright, sensitive, relaxed and good company. We set off to join a free tour of an Arabic gallery. It seems like something we would both be interested in and gives us something to do together.

Then lunch and chatting and more chatting and a relaxed meander around the museum taking pot luck on what we find.

And coffee and more chatting. I have bought the bones – it seems important for Rowyda to see and handle them.

We talk about the bones and the death of cultures, of museum artefacts being far from home, of turtle doves and owls and where we live and books and being vegan.

After we part I go into the museum shop and see an owl postcard. I buy it and send it to her. 21st January. R. writes to say she has just come back from the library with some books on archaeology and tombs. ‘I’m quite interested in exploring the idea of your objects as grave goods – thinking of a context and an owner ‘

Accident and Emergence organise a meeting for all the Pistols and Pollinators participants. R. and I check we can both go and I really look forward to meeting up again. 22nd January. A & E send out a call for artists wanting to perform at Fowle Hall Features [their Kent based contemporary exhibition now in its fourth year]. I wonder if R. might be interested and send her the details. She says she might well be. It is good to be able to pass her an opportunity.

20th December. Running around trying to sort out Christmas for thirteen people, but still fixated in my head on the collaboration. I send R. images of some drawings on the theme of Pampliset and a poem by Graham Greene that seems to fit the mood: ‘It was like a life photographed as it came to mind…’

21^st December. Rowyda sends me some of her poems. They are stunning. 23rd December. I am still sending R. things- this time images of ‘Requiem for a Lost Language’ – my insect installation.

Obviously I am in the Christmas present – giving mode!

I also send on bits that I recall from the research I did at the time….’Have you seen a luna/moon moth? They are huge and an unearthly green…………….

The luna moth lives only about a week. It doesn’t eat, doesn’t even have a mouth. It only reproduces. And when it is exposed to daylight, its green colour slowly fades…. So sad’.

23^rd December. Standing in the Christmas check out queues I stand doodling and writing in my sketchbook. On my return I write to R: ‘I have not been wasting my time in folly and idleness – even in the half hour queue for the tills! I filled a page of A4- the back of my shopping list- with spider diagrams and ideas around Diaspora and our Jewish/ Arabic divergent heritage.I am now ‘interrogating’ as they say in the best art schools- the concept of ‘diamond papers’.
I used to be a jewellery buyer and most of the diamond dealers the world over are Jewish. They carry their wealth in diamonds – in tiny, specially folded papers [with inner transparent linings].

As a race that has had to move from place to place fast they can hide these about their person or property and escape with their money. Anything paper we can of course print or emboss with poetry…………….It might be interesting to marry a Jewish diamond paper with a poem about the Arabic diaspora ……… especially as whatever is carried in the paper is usually deemed incredibly precious.Just a flash of thought at the moment……..will be good to meet up.
After Christmas and New Year I went down with flu but I had bought back with me treasures which were much on my mind. I write to R:

‘I am slobbing about feeling sorry for myself………………. The Welsh party contingent demolished two geese for supper over new year- with the result that I have come back with the most amazing bones; they look like a mask, two skulls and two bangles. I intend to bleach them and then plaster and PVA/decorate/write on them……….
We could inscribe poetry on them if anything about them fires your imagination.
I am thinking of them as imaginary objects from an imaginary museum at the moment- relics or tribal…..somehow the lost art of the Nubians keeps coming to mind’.
5^th January 2010

‘Herewith the goose bones for your perusal………..!
Do tell me if you might be interested in working with them. If they don’t intrigue I will use them to produce work for an exhibition in June.

The snow is now falling thick and fast so I guess there will be no gallivanting about for a while’.

In the time I have been offline some exciting projects have begun to line up for the year. Since September I have been very engaged with ‘Pistols and Pollinators’ – a 26 artist poet collaboration organised by Accident and Emergence.

Excerpts from my diary of the project so far……….

22 November 2009. Irritated. I should be at the inaugural meeting of a collaborative art project but am instead taking down an exhibition. It is always thus- too much scheduled for the same day. One of my friends, a printer, has agreed to go in my place. She is interested to meet the poets and will ‘play’ me in the joint activities that are to be held prior to pairing up poet and artist for the project. 23 November. Accident and Emergence- the artists group who are organising the collaboration – send a list of the participants and their websites.Spend hours trawling through them. This should be very special. Some really interesting work here. 1^st December. Accident and Emergence send us the pairings. Having not been at the first meeting I hadn’t realised that those who were had asked to be paired with others. Maybe this is better. No expectations left unmet. No rejection either. So there it is – ‘Rowyda Amin & Franny Swann’

I send her an e-mail:

Hi Rowyda
We are a couple!!!!!!!!!!!
What a fascinating name. I am up to my ears at the moment. This is normal- I can never say no. I want to do everything the world has to offer and then I run out of time and my hair falls out…..I attach a clip from our local newspaper of my trip to Germany – in November. Am now busy running a two week empty shop gallery in Sevenoaks. We only knew we were going to get it last Wednesday; so all a bit full on. Flyer attached.
I am involved in a collaborative book with other artists at the moment and having a crisis about which way to take my work next year……..
Maybe we need to chat on the phone/meet up?
I am out of London but can train it up no problem.
Some of my work is on www.re-title .com…………………
Must go……am going to an artist’s forum tonight.
How exciting.

5th December. An e-mail! She apologises for not being able to get in touch sooner and tells me she is up to her ears doing a PhD. Suggests meeting up and coming up with some ideas. We speak to each other on the phone; non –stop! Rowyda’s PHD is on the Arabic Diaspora. I am thrilled. Much of my work is underpinned by my Jewish heritage, memory, loss and secrets. We talk about our families and secret keeping, about Diaspora and about our work. 19^th December. In our telephone conversation I mentioned an Arabic poem that I love. I send R. the poem: I apologise…… Unaware and unintentionally, my breezes shook your branches and dropped the only flower you’d ever bloomed. HARIM AL- MASSRI.

Well its 2010 and here I am again. I have just re-read my blog. What a strange feeling – mine but not mine, and somehow it all seems such a while ago.

I hadn’t really intended to restart the blog now but a recent interview as the retiring chairman for the South East Open Studios newsletter came out entitled ‘Franny Swann – Artist, aged 56 and a half ’ and then gave the blog address! So now I feel duty bound to re-present myself.

The blog was very much meant to be my tracks in the mud- for me to be able to retrace; the flour in the bag principle.

Well, the big painting got to Berlin and so did I, together with my elderly disabled mother and her carer. We sat together in the front of an audience far larger than I had expected and listened to my Jewish grandfather’s name being recited and his life recounted and I felt humbled. Humbled by those who had lost so much and had turned out on a cold night in old age to see the painting installed and also by all those who have taken on a burden of guilt for a time when they were not even born.

After so much organisation I returned home feeling as though I had lost something, or maybe left something behind – the painting? I don’t know.

The studio was certainly emptier and I celebrated by moving things around. I have hardly been in since. It has been so cold that I have worked from home. Warm, cosy, TV, food, coffee …..but space limited as far as the work goes.

Being cosy seems to affect the work; I get cosy work! Better that I am in the studio slumming it and concentrating on the job in hand. Time to go back; but maybe after the next snows.

Into the studio with my studio mate Sue and the whole day spent making a huge wall painting for our collaborative work on the regeneration of Dartford Central Park. It is to take up a recessed wall in the gallery.

After the technical hassles and a tussle with the aged OHP we settled to working like two small children with the crayon box- mostly engaged with our enterprise but with the occasional little spat about line or colour or negative space.

Exhausted but pleased with the outcome we finally locked up at 9pm. So much for supper.

It will be interesting to see what we think of it when it resurfaces for hanging at the end of the month as it’s now carefully rolled up in plastic.

I like to mull my work over and I invariably leave it up so I can prowl round it trying to catch it unawares when it’s not looking at me.