The lasts are laughing at me. My son wants them out of the house – ‘like dead men’s feet’ he said. I have been given the lasts ( along with a number of other artists) from the curator of ‘Made to last’, (the exhibition to be cited in the Cathedral during the Salisbury Festival), to be returned having undergone a spot of clever artistic alchemy. Unfortunately, I am in receipt of my lasts somewhat late in the day (due to e-mail muddles) so I fear other artists have had a head start. In a state of naive optimism concerning my technical skills, I have conjured up the basis of the video piece which, having submitted and confirmed the proposal my husband turned to me and said, ‘you’ve set yourself quite a challenge’. Coming from a techno-God ( in comparison to myself), his comment has rocked me slightly. Still ‘no one will die if it all goes tits up’ he would say comfortingly. I may, in the end, have the ‘last’ laugh is it were – time will tell.
Another thorn in my side at the start of the week has been removed to much relief after a series of e-mails back and forth with tactileBosch in Cardiff, where I’m soon to exhibit with. Crossed wires as to which work was available to exhibit got me a little shaky at first but soon came the e-mail everyone wants to hear, ‘Go for it, we have plenty of space and you have free rein to use it as you like.’ Why can’t all galleries react like this.
And so, with all this work ahead, (not to mention two community-based project plans I need to nail down and the proposal and budget for the Salisbury exhibition to pull together), why am I writing this blog when I have one morning where all the children are busy elsewhere and should be in the studio. Because when you’re overwhelmed and don’t quite know where to start, blogging is quite the very best form of artistic procrastination anyone has ever invented – (better than the pre-Internet days of mindnumbing morning TV that’s for sure).
It was necessary to start another blog. This sister blog if you like, charts the progress of the project I’m pushing forward in Salisbury. In short I am juggling two blogs. Try as I might, my juggling skills are seriously limited both in the area of balls and in the area of blogs. My recent entry in ‘Lighting the Touch Paper’ refers to a day-long meeting at my home with curator and artist etc. held Monday past. It contains the facts and little else. It does not contain the added details such as the fact that sitting in one chair for five hours is a surefire way to get excruciating backache and that a dog who eats a camembert will inevitably throw it up at the most inconvenient moment, under the study table. This meeting was sandwiched between a village event on Sunday where I was tasked to build the biggest globe in Wiltshire with the local scouts in about 40minutes flat (this was a bit of flannel really as we don’t actually know if Wiltshire has any giant or even rather large globes to compare it with) and another task on Wednesday to set up a schools exhibition in Salisbury, part of which required producing yet another giant sculpture, in this case a pair of spotty wellies. During the week I have also been milling around the dilema of how to deal with child care when I take my latest piece of work to Cardiff for the Wunderland exhibition at tactileBOSCH. On Wednesday evening, after a diet of a diabetic pill taken too late washed down with a heavy red wine, I crashed exhausted into bed only to wake up feeling ill a short time later and in a state of blind panic with all these events whizzing around my brain in some horrific giant sculpture workshop nightmare. Morning arrived and with it a bit of sanity – with half term on the horizon, let’s hope it lasts.
Yesterday my 14-year-old son rushed in from school and told me he had heard the most amazing idea that day. He said Mum, Mum listen – “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” he stared at me, waiting for my reaction, unaware that the rest of us”grown-ups’ have heard this phrase so often we have become numb to its particular magic. It struck me suddenly how new and fresh it all was to him and how jaded I had become.
Walking around the streets of Salisbury, I kept turning over this phrase and relating it to life as an artist. Some years ago now the news stories which covered the horrific Tube fire contained in the smaller section – ‘a sculptor was among those who died’. It has always stayed with me. On hearing it I instantly thought of his work, of all the pieces he had laboured over, all the ideas he was exploring, did they leave a sound as such? And the many blogs from newly fledged graduates facing an uphill struggle to recognition, the artists who like me, persevere to combine work with family etc, – when one day they find the going too tough, when they decide perhaps it’s all too much and pack up their tools to keep a roof over their heads, as they close the studio door for perhaps the last time, does it make a sound?
