My lovely camera has gone funny. I jinxed it. Last night I sat and distinctly thought – that camera the ACE grant paid for has been the most valuable contribution to my career (I’m going to change that word to practice – mmm) I’ve ever had, I actually said the words in my head and bang! – just as I’d formulated the thought, the camera buggered up.
Anyhow, got a nice email from an arts organisation in Oxford wanting to show my work in ‘Invasion of Privacy’, an art event taking over a terraced house in late October, so now I’m heading to Oxford to give the space the once over. A succession of sickly children has thwarted all plans recently but fingers crossed, they’re all back at school tomorrow and I’ll get there to check it out.
Met up with a friend this morning to focus our plans for taking over an exciting space in Salisbury next year to put on an exhibition and succession of events. Next Monday we are due to meet up with two pivotal town council people and we need to get the overall vision nailed down. I’m not going to jinx this one by mentioning the space before we’ve secured it but it has loads of potential, – next Monday, we should know more.
The whole idea of drawing has been on my mind recently so I was pleased to read Rebecca Cusworth’s post on the subject, (also because I’m a huge fan of early/pre -renaissance art). She writes :
I personally think it sickly self-indulgent to draw with mirror like accuracy, I used to do it, shh people away but secretly adore their coo’s and adulations that I was ‘so talented’. And I can only speak for myself again here, but when I drew like that I wasn’t exploring anything, it was a simple superficial exercise of ability. Now if I was to create a representational image I use my camera, I reserve my drawings for notions, suggestion and whispers.’
Art college does something funny to drawing. It (when I went) pulled it, stretched it, challenged it, shattered it and rebuilt my thoughts around it. And by and large I moved away from it or at least from the relationship I had with it.
Yesterday my husband came back from a walk in the woods carrying a whole deer skull complete with full antlers, the sort that cries out to be nailed above a rather grander fireplace than we possess. The children hid and forbade us to keep it in the house so it now sits on the picnic table outside. Yesterday, as I put the rubbish out I stopped and looked at it closely. It had the most exquisite delicate little wiggly line down the centre of the skull and instantly, I got an urge to draw it. The dog was looking too and I thought, how weird that you feel no urge at all to draw, that we both stand here and I immediately want to draw and you have no such compulsion (yeah, I know he’s got paws but come on, he could scratch his nose in the dirt if he was that keen). So what is it that I’m doing, recording, documenting? testing my skills, looking for an ooh or an aah from someone? It can’t be just that. Of course my head gives me the usual response, photograph it, what’s the point in reproducing a purely acurate representation?
Sometime ago in my last blog I recorded the time my daughter asked me to draw her as acurately as I could while we waited for my son in piano lessons. This is something I would not have done off my own bat for all the reasons above. But I was deeply surprised at how much pleasure I got from it. Pure relaxing pleasure. There were no other demands on the drawing, I had forgotten what that felt like. So why do we draw!
Back to reality – studio time dwindling. I spent the entire day at the Salisbury Arts Centre, initially to meet with other workshop leaders and discuss the future impending funding cuts etc., fire drills and day to day stuff, then on to a ‘safeguarding children’ training day.
In between I raced to the doctors to pick up my long overdue diabetic medication. As they will only prescribe a month at a time and a month in my life whizzes past I inevitably miss it and end up out of stock. I thought this was OK (hadn’t told my husband as he would be cross) until I took my sugar levels just before leaving for school drop off, realised they were sky high so dropped everything to bounce on the trampoline for 5 minutes then give up and run around the house like a looney until I was late for school and meeting, in an attempt to bring my levels down.
The result of the safeguarding meeting was that I am woefully protected in most of my work due to fairly slap dash practice from other organisations (not the Arts Centre in case they’re reading this) and that I need to take most of the fantastic photos I have from long ago workshops and dump them in the bin due to privacy laws becoming even tighter. Meanwhile we discovered if you go to 123people.com you can find photos and info (down to address and telephone number) on most people without any consent at all.
Hey ho!
I got home to pick the children up and my little one had a raging temperature. She said ‘I didn’t tell you this morning Mummy cause I knew you had a meeting.’ I got them all together and told them there was no meeting or job that couldn’t be cancelled and they they would always come first over any other comittments. I have already had to give up lunch with Cathy Wilkes to celebrate her Turner prize show and a possible dinner with Gavin Turk and his partner in the past to put the children first (and boy did it grate – but I did it) – let’s hope I’m not tested any further on that one! Today, however, I’m lucky enough to be able to put safeguarding my own children first.
The difficulty with working with materials not traditionally combined in art production is that they have a habit of going spectacularly wrong. Sometimes of course, that produces something really promising but mostly it means going back to the drawing board and starting again. Unfortunately that sort of approach is more suited to an artist with hours and hours to while away pottering in the studio – and that’s certainly not me. So I’ve just lost a weeks work.
Anyhow, Salisbury surpassed itself yesterday with a really successful project. An old pub garden, a (very) old Rasta guy making jerk chicken on the barbie, a good band, plenty of sunshine and a whole bunch of teenagers painting furiously in the Salisbury Paint Off. Thirteen to Twenty five year olds paid £5 for a big canvas, some paints and markers and a few hours to paint a prize winning artwork. And what an atmosphere! It was such a success it looks like it will become an annual event so hats off to the organisers.
