Flesh on the Bones of the Belfast Child

Dear God if that school doesn’t open it’s gates tomorrow I may have to break them down. Much as I dearly love my children, I don’t think I can cope with another days bickering- this doesn’t bode well for the summer hols. On a lighter note I have finally finished the piece of film I was creating with the older women in the village and I’m fairly pleased with it. After endless fiddly editing I think it’s finally done. Time to get back to more studio based work.

The next term is a little scary. Two giant totem poles made with the children of the local primary school need finished and erected for the summer fair. The school is also involved in the ‘Take one picture’ thing which luckily for me is based on Verrocchio’s Tobias and the Angel, an era I am totally devoted to. On my birthday last week we took our four to the National Gallery to see the painting ‘in the flesh’ as it were. The response was somewhat less enthusiastic than I’d hoped for despite my excited commentary on all the interesting scraps of info I knew on the period. I would go as far to say they hated the National gallery with a vengeance. One plus though was that my husband, who had never been over the threshold was enthralled by the pre-Renaissance stuff and finally got why I loved it so.

Anyway, the school wants something big and visual on the subject, the church wants a ‘stained glass’ window (made with the village children on acrylic) and the local art centre wants a puppet workshop. The totem poles, the stained glass and the arts centre all joyfully fall on the one weekend. Oh and I’m also working with the ‘talented and gifted’ set, or is it ‘gifted and talented’, TAG or GAT, I don’t know, what I do know is they will be any age and could be gifted in anything from maths to football. Seriously though, it’s great not to have a job that is the same old thing everyday.

Talking about jobs, my husbands just been informed he may be dealing with researching low libido in young women in Brazil, working with the Brazillian beach volleyball team as an indicator of the female ideal – I googled the team to see what they looked like, yep, – just as you’d imagine. His response on email to this news was ‘Jackpot!’. great eh.

Struggling to send out recent work to email contacts etc. I find it so hard when the work is so personal to package it as if it’s detached from me in some way. Talking to curators etc is even worse. Somehow I’ve got to distance myself, lay my work out and talk about it objectively as if this broken and often fragile experience is something to be dissected and categorised over a coffee. How weird it is to lay out that which I struggle with in my own mind before the gaze of a curator I hardly know when I can’t share it with my own family. My fault for making it I guess.

A friend stopped by yesterday, a pentecostal preacher turned carpenter turned recent divorcee teacher, a man I treasure. He looked at the work and said ‘You’re having a conversation aren’t you….that’s what it’s all about’ and I instantly thought ‘but that was my secret, just for me, how could you!.’ Does anyone else do that – make work they hope no-one will really get to the bottom of as that would reveal to much – perhaps that’s what we all do to some extent I guess.

After tedious nights trying to resize my film I have finally beaten it into submission and squeezed it onto the Axis website so if you get the chance have a look at ‘Only say the word’

http://www.axisweb.org/seCVWK.aspx?ARTISTID=13808

(let me know if the sound is Ok as I think it’s possible I made a cock up there).

Now, on another subject and, not meaning to be contentious, but at least a third of the blogs currently listed on the initial page of this site are from artists on degree courses. Am I missing something here or are the degrees unedited blogs in some way not serving their purpose. It’s bloomin’ tough surviving as an artist post degree and I really value sharing that with others going through the same thing. It seems like the distinction between the two areas has kind of eroded away – maybe everyone agrees that’s a good thing – I don’t know? I’d genuinely like to know.

Anyway, back to work, editing film prooves to be the only thing achievable with the children off school as the computer is closer to the kitchen (where I spend most of my time) than the studio.