Since completing the work for the residency I’ve been wondering what next. Over the last few weeks I’ve had a real sense of deflation, which has led to questions about my practice and my role as an artist.
I was happy with the work in the residency but afterwards felt a bit let down because my work wasn’t a true representation of what I want my work to be about. The work I produced was a response to the mill and the archives, which they wanted and which I was very happy to do during the residency. What I want to do now though is concentrate and develop my own work and my practice. I want my work to be a bit different and edgy.
So I’ve been busy doing research looking at others’ work in books and on the internet, looking for inspiration. I’ve got a couple of days planned in London between Christmas and New Year so I can immerse myself in some art exhibitions. There seems to be some great stuff on at Tate Britain and I plan to spend a whole day there. What I want is to come away brimming with ideas so I can come home and start working. I love it when I’m busy with ideas and working on something. It seems to fill up part of me and I feel more whole.
I’ve already started to working on some stuff and I’m getting a great urge to make some sculpture again, which is a bit of a lovely pain as I’ve no space to do it but might have to just make some small things sat at the dining room table! I’m not usually that keen on Christmas but the thought of making some things, when I’ve seen too many relatives I only see at Christmas and have eaten another full tube of Pringles, could make is just about bearable.
I’ve found that one of the important things is to have a plan about what kind of work you’re going to do and hopefully things will fall into place and motivate you for a bit.
My early New Years resolution is to focus on my art and get some stuff done!
So I didn’t get the job at the children’s centre and I actually felt quite bitter when I got the letter. I did the drawing workshop with the kids, and we had lots of fun, but no one was really watching what I was doing, which I thought was odd. They just left me to get on with it. I think I was the 3rd out of 4 artists that they were seeing and they actually had to ask me to finish the workshop because someone else was coming in i.e. the 4th artist. In the letter, it said that they had decided to appoint 2 artists because ‘they showed the most dedication to the Reggio approach’. What a laugh really, they didn’t ask me anything about this at the interview and ironically, the Reggio approach is a holistic way of childcare and I didn’t see much of it in the centre. I think now that they’d had decided which artists they liked even before the workshops, so that they got some free workshops out of us. I was still in denial about the naivety of the children’s centre, they didn’t even put the correct postage on the application form they sent out and I had to go to the local sorting office and pay a fee of £1 to pick it up. I though it was too good to be true when I saw the advert for ‘artist wanted’. Another thing that should have rung mental alarm bells was the breast-feeding display in the foyer of the centre. There were knitted boobs on the table….3 of them!!!!!!!!
On a better note I finished my PTLLS course this week after doing a 30 min micro teach on the pleasures of contemporary drawing. I had to be aimed low as a majority of the other students were health professionals (no offence intended) and a gave them a 10 minute presentation which included a (very) short history of drawing and also some slides about how its not all about pencil on paper. We did a few drawing exercises including portraits where they couldn’t take their pens off the paper and one where they had to draw some objects on a box, which were moved every minute, and the drawings had to be over the top of the previous drawings and if they made a mistake drawing the shape to not to rub it out but just to redraw it. There were a few weird looks when this was being done and someone said that they found it difficult to do this because it goes against everything that they’d been taught. It’s interesting in the differences to what our concepts of drawing are and I expected most people to say that they couldn’t draw but most were quite positive and some used diagrams etc at work in order to convey points across. I got some really good feedback and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and there were some fantastic drawings. A couple of people said that I’d really inspired them to go and start to draw which is a huge compliment.
On the course the main things that I’ve learnt is to how to organise my lessons correctly and also to get the students to do lots of the work by getting them involved right from the start. I’m contemplating progressing to the PGCE, which starts next September. (Only part time though!)
