I am very excited, in fact so excited I justified a new spend on an iphone…oh well. I have been granted a Grants for the Arts application with the lovely curator Catherine Hemelryk from Bury St Edmunds Gallery to travel up and down the country responding to stately home collections. I am really excited particularly that I will be working alongside writers that will really throw my work hopefully into turmoil along the journey, creating articles and new writings that can only add to the mix of responses. Gavin Wade will be Catherine’s mentor on this one, which will I am sure create new ideas for her too. I am, as a result, going to be traveling up and down the country for the next 18 months creating new shows to new and existing audiences. The venues and writers will be revealed shortly.
I have a number of shorter other projects that are happening and I will post anything to do with soon.
I am finding the lack of time to work frustrating. Juggling my teaching, proposal submissions, group commitments and the like have become overwhelming although it is hard to complain as I should consider myself lucky in the current climate. Having shows to work towards gives me a direction but it does leave you constantly feeling unsure about whether your work stands up to constructive self critique let alone critique from any other directive.
I have to prepare a talk to students for next week too. Time and time again I find the idea of a talk quite daunting with little else other than powerpoint to direct the visuals and I always have that feeling of despair rushing through my bones when I see the images through this mode of transport. However, I have signed up for a scheme titled 3 minute wonders in April in Southend which will give me the discipline of talking through 10 slides in 3 minutes. This will, I am sure, be quite a challenge although too late to well prepare me with this one.
New drawings are being shaped and I am seeking a good sized workshop to create new sculptures. I am devising ways of making new sound works too, so I feel overwhelmed by the starting of new works before finishing others. Still, the back – stories being told somehow appear to be holding it all together in some way, which is rather reassuring in itself.
Whilst working on these new works I have become infatuated with Ludwig II of Bavaria. I wish sometimes that my head would stop, although I understand that for some, ideas are sometimes long coming, so I should feel blessed. Sleep patterns are becoming erratic, black circles are becoming more evident. Am I in my own way following the path of Ludwig’s so – called insanity? Time will no doubt tell. I am also reading the Count of Monte Cristo again, so perhaps the two are becoming intertwined?
Oh dear, its now 2010 and I have been lapse with my blog. I will attempt now to keep it running again, with a little more time at present to allow this to happen. I have been busy accumulating artists and work for ‘post’ a travelling show that had its first port of call at TROVE in Birmingham. We are close to the next deadline for works to move forward to TAP, Southend and in the meantime, I am working on new pieces for a solo at Backlit in Nottingham.
I moved into a new studio at Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridge in January and have been asked to be part of an art fair there as 1 member of the arts collective C-O-L-L-I-D-E-R. This has in the main part been good with hearing recently that the collective has had approval from the arts council for a research bid that we have applied for just before Christmas.
So, with a steady trickle of shows in front of me work appears to be less rushed, which can only be a good thing with where I am now, but with a lot of potential work just around the corner, I had better keep my head down.
My stories are growing steadily in haste with current work being made alongside. I only hope that it all makes sense for the future.
