My art work, reading, thinking and writing has wilted and is in desperate need of nurturing. This blog is hopefully going to be stage one in it’s blossoming…….
I mentioned in one of my posts the other day about a piece of writing which I read when in India. Well, I thought a good starting point would be to share this. The book I was reading at the time was ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’ by Rebecca Solnit. However, the piece within her book which follows here was taken from Stephen Batchelor’s ‘Buddhism Without Beliefs’.
“SHUL” (Tibetan word) = TRACK
“A mark that remains after that which made it has passed by – a footprint for example.”
In other contexts ‘SHUL’ is used to describe the scarred hollow in the ground where a house once stood, the channel worn through rock where a river runs in flood, the indentation in the grass where an animal slept last night.
All of these are ‘SHUL’ – the impression of something that used to be there.
A path is a ‘SHUL’ because it is an impression in the ground left by the regular treading of feet, which has kept it clear of obstructions and maintained it for the use of others.
As a ‘SHUL’, emptiness can be compared to the impression of something that used to be there. In this case, such an impression is formed by the indentations, hollows, scars and marks left by the turbulence of selfish craving.”
And from his website:
“A path is a ‘SHUL’ because of its essentially negative nature. An impression in the ground left by the regular tread of feet, a passage which is clear of obstruction.
We can translate ‘SHUL’ as track which in English means path/impression left by animal or person. To experience the track like nature of emptiness would be like recovering a path that had been lost, or stumbling into a clearing in the forest, where suddenly you can move and see clearly. To know emptiness is to experience the shocking absence of what normally determines the sense of who we are. It may only last a moment before the habits of a lifetime reassert themselves and close in once more. But for that moment, one witnesses oneself and the world as immediate, vivid and vulnerable.”
Also, just like to say thankyou for the comments a few people have posted, they are most appreciated. I can’t quite figure out just yet how to reply to anyone, but when I do, I will….
So, it’s been a fantastic weekend, but not much work or thinking has happened. It was a friends 30th birthday and she hired out a haunted-house-style, 4 or 5 storey mansion that slept something like 17 people! It was awesome and I have had an amazing time. But today is Monday and it’s now time to get back to ‘work’……
I have just been asked to take part in a Creative Partnerships project in North Baddersly , Southampton. This will be an 8-10 week project working with 2 classes of 8-9 year olds within a junior school. The school are extremely environmentally aware and have several ‘ecology projects’ running through the school. It seems that they want some more of that sort of stuff but combined with a ‘multi-cultural’ theme. Apparently there is a large tree in the play area of the school which is having to be removed, and they are quite keen to use this tree in someway within the project. I agree entirely. I think this is an excellent starting point and am really excited by it! I have no idea what I might do there yet, but I am thinking that this could be a great opportunity to run a ‘community project’ alongside a ‘personal project’. There are many cross-overs between my practice and the schools ethos (but I guess that’s kind of obvious or they would have chosen a different artist!), so I think I will try and juggle two projects at the same time but both dealing with the same thing – whatever that may be….. one thought is something based around Japanese Zen gardens but that’s as far as that thought has gone yet!
Chunk 4:
One thing I have done a bit of over the past year and a half is community projects. The WEA in Southampton asked me to run some workshops with 2 of the community groups. 10 weeks, 2 hours per week with a materials budget of £30. Yes thats right, £30. So I did these and they were great. On both projects I was working with groups of fun and eccentric Asian ladies making various cultural patterns – we looked at Aboriginal, Rangoli and Islamic. They seemed to absolutely love it and produced some truly fantastic and beautiful work. It wasn’t until the last day of the first project that I realised just how much I had the work and couldn’t wait to get started on the next one! The groups were just lovely to work with and it was incredible seeing such a big change in these peoples confidence, perception and ability in just a few hours. They all started out wanting to take part but all thinking they weren’t good enough. At the end of the project they were all producing well thought out work which was of a very high standard and quality and they all left with a sense of achievement and success. It was great. I loved it. I wish that was my full time job sometimes!
I feel like I could just keep writing and writing all afternoon but if anyone out there is actually reading this then I’m afraid of boring them with just ‘background’ information. I think maybe it’s time to get on to some meatier stuff which is more about art than about me.
Since moving house and doing all the packing and unpacking, I have gathered all my diaries and journals from the past 2 years into one place. I am going to start looking back through those and condensing what is relevant into a new place and try and make connections and patterns and get some reading and writing done about the things it is that I am interested in. I need to narrow things down a bit, right now, I’m sort of thinking about everything, but also I’m thinking about what I’ve made in the past. I need to find a middle ground whereby I am re-phrasing some of the pieces, not re-making them.
Chunk 3:
Reading it back, it’s almost like a list of excuses as to why I haven’t done what I know I should have been doing, but I just got swept along with life really and now here I am….
But things are turning a corner it seems. My other half, David, has a 12 month residency as a Lead Artist launching a new studio complex called Chapel Arts in Andover, and I have left the gym and am now working at Peter Symonds College in Winchester as the Textile and Photography Technician. Life has got much better. We have a beautiful little flat which is SOOOO much nicer than what we had in Southampton and we both have jobs we a) enjoy and b) are what we actually want to do and c) are surrounded by art day in day out!!!
I think for me, this is the only way it works. I need it around me nearly all of the time. I know that I get distracted and I find home, family and friends to be more important to me than art. This is another huge discussion / argument I have with myself regularly – As much as I love art and I enjoy it, it’s not my number one priority and I wonder all the time if I want to be an ‘artist’ should art be number one. Should I live it and breathe it? Should I be that archetypal artist living in squalor, spending the rent and electricity money on paints and pastels? Should my life be dedicated to art in every sense of the word? If the answer is yes to these things then I think I’m heading down the wrong road. For me, the things that come first are the simpler things like wanting to be married, wanting a family and a home. I love spending time with my partner ,my parents and brothers and tucking up at home with candles, a cosy book and something yummy to eat. Even as I write this I’ve got a pan of soup on the hob that I made from scratch this morning and I’m still wearing my apron!!!
