Getting paid

I have a working week at the moment, which is odd, and making me a little annoyed (I want my autonomy back now please), but having work and a little planning ahead are also things to be grateful for, I know.

I am going into schools doing big cardboard den/building kinds of things – knackering and loud – then have 5/6 hours cataloguing to do every evening, and full days of it at weekends. Not forever, but I am getting behind with so much already. It’s easier being in Yorkshire because I am in a hotel, so I can just get into pyjamas and crack on cataloguing. It’s satisfying too, working so hard and I am glad to be busy to take my mind off other things (see previous post).

At the back of my mind new things are growing, mainly some work I want to make, a film of crushed and collapsed things, and some text/book work and sculpture around eggs and the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Sounds random I know, but it makes perfect sense to me.

These will have to wait. I really have to apply for some research funding somewhere down the line – although I feel lost and unsure about where to start. Arts Council route always seems unlikely, but probably more so at the moment. I think I know a few people who’ve had R & D funding, so I shall have to see if they are willing to offer some pointers. I will have to have a very good think about these things in my week off in July. Wait, that would be working though. Oh shit. Perhaps I will sleep for four days and think/read/write for three, but only about nice things, with wine and barbeques. That’s not a bad compromise.

Tomorrow is meetings at Yorkshire Sculpture Park so I am looking forward to a good furkle round the education archive and a delicious lunch – seriously, the restaurant there is amazing. There is also the new David Nash show to see and I have heard rumours of a drawing workshop involving Jenny West…. I hope I get to meet her, I LOVE her work, but most likely it won’t be her day. I am also getting the proofed version of the bursary book back, so I am fairly terrified of that. It’s hard not to take these things personally, even though I spotted a typo as soon as I’d emailed it through! At least I won’t get lost; I have spent the last two days doing many extra miles trying to find schools and meet people – my sat nav doesn’t have wakefield’s new roads on and it hates me.

Talk about crash and burn. Why is it that even though I know this always happens after a big install, I am never prepared for it. All I can say is a big grey cloud is stubbornly loitering.

I find the competative aspect of this exhibition pretty difficult and the whole award ceremony thing just seems horrendous. I did just email Ian to check they weren’t going to make us sit on a stage this year (the poor sods last year did). I don’t think I could do that – all those people watching your reaction, infact, all those people just looking at you! I am sure my uncontrollable blushing may return from high school if we were on a stage. NO NO NO.

Anyway, sometimes I have to wonder about my moods – my aunt who died last month had Bi-polar and my mum and sister have some pretty similar behavioural traits, as do I. But bugger that – I’m not even going there while they are just moods, i.e. they go away in a few days. Most of it is anxiety I reckon, which comes straight from stressing out. There just has to be a way of being busy and working hard, but in a less extreme way, right? I am already looking forward to July with joy and dread, nothing to do = bliss, but nothing to do also means I’m not working and no money will be coming in. More consistentcy please.

Anyway, the big thing that I am looking forward to in the summer is some time to research. I realised during A Curriculum and getting work ready for the Liverpool Art Prize how amazing time to play is. Figure things out, mess things up and ultimately see a bit of development. At the moment that mainly consists of collecting envelopes and undoing them. There are some beautiful patterns out there!

Tomorrow I am going back to Yorkshire Sculpture Park, and will be there working with school groups for the next five weeks solid. I feel exhausted just anticipating it! What a relief to not have to collect recycled materials any longer though, Dan will be estatic :D

Right, enough moaning, sorry about that. I’ll be more cheerful next time, I promise.

Hi there.

It’s been a while again hasn’t it? All my energy has been going into getting through everything at the moment. There’s still a lot on, but I can see the end in sight a bit more now (july 19th!!).

My copy of Vision Magazine arrived in the post this morning, which was nice to see. It’s a fashion/lifestyle magazine published in China. I have a teeny section in the discovery part showing Inhabitant. The editor emailed me in March saying

I would like to report your work “Inhabitant ” in our VISION DISCOVERY Section, which is a special section telling of fresh and good ideas in all fields.
I feel “inhibitant” is very good and want to show it in VISION DISCOVERY.

I liked my cardboard adventures being described as very good. The magazine is a pretty beautiful thing too, lots of matt paper and photography/art content. So, very pleased to be in it basically.

http://www.youthvision.cn/

The Liverpool Art Prize opened on Thursday night. Apart from nearly falling through a banner while having my photo taken (thought it was solid), I managed to be pretty respectable all night. I loved working in there, making new things, so when people asked me if I was pleased with the work, I was. That’s not the same as thinking it’s great though, and there is (as usual) many things I would change/develop. Anyway, it’s up, no one kicked anything or got killed by the tower, so a success all round.

http://www.liverpoolartprize.com/

Been thinking about the set-up of LAP though and must send some feedback or suggestions or something. It has cost about £200 to make the work I did, with no money available to help with that. I wonder if the prize money might be better spent with some new-work budget i.e. all the artists get a small participation fee rather then two people winning prizes. It came at an okay time for me, so I could find that money, but ask me in 6 months and it will probably be a completely different story! Strange position to be in really, when you’re getting judged in such a wonky playing field. But I have no doubts that being in it is beneficial – apart from showing alongside some really interesting artists, having a great space and a huge audience, the LAP is sending quite a lot of traffic to my website and probably introducing a lot of people in Liverpool to my work.

Some images of the prize exhibition by sponsors Mycoy-Wynne

http://www.mccoywynne.co.uk/lap_2010/

I am now working on a printed work of Nathan Jones’ poem ‘Slow Magic’ for his opening to celebrate the end of his year as Poet-in-residence. It’s on 16th June at the Lost Soul and Stranger Service Station at the Bluecoat and it seems he has partnered up with lots of people for it. I like that approach and he is certainly spreading his funding around Liverpool! I am making a screenprinted and digitally printed thing that is a turkish-map folded paper bound in greyboard cover. I am enjoying myself immensly. Dan and I were having a look at the poem last night again and saying how much it is like art – difficult, dense but ultimately very rewarding when you spend some time and thought on it.

Details of the exhibition here: http://nathanatthebluecoat.wordpress.com/

Poem can be read here: http://mercyonline.co.uk/flatline/flatline05.pdf

My book for end of bursary at YSP is currently being proofed, so I shall get that back on Thursday and then the real book-panic begins! Pretty much shitting myself about completing such a big task when I am also working in schools solidly for the next 5 weeks. But it will be done, must just make sure I’m not mean to Dan for the duration; he usually bears the brunt of my stress and it’s just not fair! It’s also been a nice task to do though, so I’m looking forward to it, just DAUNTED! It shall be great practice for compiling a catalogue for my show there next year though (I won’t be so hands on with that one though).

Right back to the poem, and some schlepping around in my pyjamas.

Been a bit awol haven’t I? This last couple of weeks has been fairly manic! Several things have happened that I should have written about, but because there is some time lost, they have lost their immediacy. It’s hard to write when it’s not fresh.

Things I will no doubt come back to –

Making a Living’s open letter to Tate and Tate’s ‘No Soul for Sale’ weekend.

The new government and the state of the arts.

The difficulties of trying to make ambitious new work for an exhibition where there is no budget available for anything. Currently £123.81 down. More to go…

So, the sun is a blessing as I am working on a 14ft high tower in the garden. I love making things like this, although I am not the best at it and can get very frustrated when things don’t go to plan. A family friend has been incredible with his van and local wood yard discount. He is taking the work to Liverpool on Monday, so that means I have to finish the thing tomorrow – good deadline; a week in advance. There is no projector, so one piece of the work cannot be shown. It changes it all completely of course, but I just refuse to pay to hire one myself, and I’m certainly not buying one. So, sculpture and drawing it is, there is a slide projector, so maybe that will do.

Anyway, enough whining, apologies! Spreading the drawing paper in London was a joy and prompted lots of great conversations. If you asked me for one and haven’t had it yet, please remind me, I got confused with my mailing list!

I also saw this when I was catching up with the papers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/may/22/fine-a…

What to do with a fine art degree. Hmm, sorry Guardian, but this is pretty useless as far as the title goes. It is essentially saying that fine art graduates don’t so very well as far as employment goes. Yep, we know that. No mention of how crappy the data might be given the difficulty of collecting statistics in this area.

It also goes on to say what skills you may have gained, but the focus is on practical skills and creative flair. No mention of any other transferrable skills or of the kind of roles that a lot of artist make money from.It’s also too simple to say artists might be good in jobs that will use creative flair, because altough this may be true, employers will generally have difficulty making the imaginary leap when looking at a CV with no industry experience. This also misses the vital point that people would need certain skills like using photoshop to a professional level for this kind of role; a different matter to being self-taught and using it to edit images of your work and make the odd flyer.

The graphs at the bottom mean little to me. Data here, collected by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit and Graduate Prospects

This shows the kind of work people are doing – retail, catering etc, gender breakdown, what happens after uni and lastly, a sector breakdown using descriptions like commercial artist, fine artist and photographer. Trouble is, it just doesn’t mean anything. It’s all too generalised and doesn’t account for people saying they are a fine artist, but not receiving any money from that and so on. I remember putting that on a questionnaire for ECA one year. There was no way I was calling myself a waitress, although that is how I payed my rent. It seemed very important to hold onto the fact that I was an artist, however dishonest.

Looking at these statistics doesn’t give much idea of what actually goes on in the art world and how graduates operate. Also, it would be hard to look at this kind of thing and use it to improve things, which is surely what an overview should do; make obvious the big gaps/problems. The only thing that seems obvious is that there are too many fine art graduates per fine art related work opportunities.

Thanks for putting it in though, better than nothing I guess.

I have sent out a batch of Drawing Papers this morning, another one tomorrow or Wednesday when I find more envelopes (there must be hundreds in the house somewhere…).

I reached my limit yesterday for sending out, so if you would like two free copies, please send me an A4 SAE with 81p paid on it. Email me for my address:

[email protected]

Cheers +