Forgot to say earlier in my despair… I have an article on the front page of excellent online art magazine White Hot Magazine.
Click here for the permalink to the article – it’s a review of Koon’s current Serpentine show.
Have been thinking and making things in the past ten days, even though I haven’t posted anything on here… Actually have made a sort of cube form out of cardboard and am in the process of wrapping all the different bits in woolen thread, I’m pretty excited about it!
By the weekend I will post some new images, I promise. Have been feeling really angry over the past few days about the way I’ve let my artistic activities slide over the past few years, and even in art school I didn’t get to the level of achievement or passion that I hoped to. It would be great as time goes on and I make more things and develop more respect for myself and for my practice that I will write excitedly about art and theory and writing on these posts, rather than writing about not doing enough of these things and about being afraid. But we’ll see…
On another note, I also made a website for a musician friend. Even doing that felt somewhat creative so I think I’m beginning to get on the right track! It took about a day to do, so now I’m motivated to make my online portfolio look a bit more professional and beautiful! Will post the link when I get that done and updated. I think taking care of my portfolio (this is for writing as well as art), updating it regularly and making sure that people know about it is part of this process of gaining more respect for myself and for my artistic practice.
OK… next post will be less whiney!
Thinking some more about time management. I read a nice bullet-pointed blog post on http://unclutterer.com making the most of your time. Intend now to put some of those points into practice, including…
– purge clutter
– order saves time and energy
– streamlined routine for mundane tasks
– determine what matters most to you and learn to say no
– enjoy your work (!), take risks
– sleep
As I’m currently trying to figure out if I have time to take a day off this week, I think some new structures – and more selectivity – are in order.
Will post some drawing soon. This time management this is getting difficult! I’d be interested to know how other people/artists sort out how much time to spend on different activities.
I interviewed an articulate artist on Monday morning who is putting a lot of energy into having a successful and high-profile career at the moment – he has a sculpture on show at the Royal Festival Hall at the moment. We were talking about the romantic idea of a studio artist and how fun, energising, excellent it is to actually have time in the studio to make things, but that often there just isn’t time. With researching and applying for funding, making professional contacts and doing the administration and educational work that often surrounds exhibition-making (or in my case working, studying/researching and interviewing/writing), we both found there’s just not the time for much art-making. While this proportion of admin/working might lead to a more productive/successful career than mere studio work it does make me wonder whether we’ve got our priorities wrong. Shouldn’t there be more time spent actually making things?
On another note, while I’m thinking about how to organise my life and my way of writing about my artistic life, I really like the way Emily Speed’s a-n blog is layed out. Writing about different elements of life/art under different headings really seems to work as a way of differentiating/integrating activites and thoughts in this blog format.
Anyway, will post some drawing when I have time.
Thinking of drawing, I thought I’d post some drawings that I made from photographs I found on the internet… I did these in January and February of 2009 and though they are a decent start I feel they’re pretty wooden, with just a few interesting marks or passages. That’s not to knock them though, as if you’re a beginner in something you have to begin at the beginning right?
The drawings were exhibited in a small show of women’s art at the Reading International Solidarity Centre – a sort of activist centre and cafe. The subject, apart from my desire to improve my drawing skills, is a victorian-era American feminist journalist named Nellie Bly. I wasn’t that happy with the final results but I was still quite proud of myself for actually having done something!
I’m going to begin some drawing experiments today and will post up the results soon. I might also spend some time thinking/writing about the drawings by other artists that I love.
Writer & researcher.
