I've got an idea niggling away at me about setting up a collective / network for artists who are parents, with a view to organising a gathering of some sort (with childcare obviously) – some combination of a seminar / residency / peer network /meeting / exhibition /guest speakers/debate/ gallery visits / space for thought type of thing… might be something to talk to NAN about…
Her: Great – now you're feeling better, you can wash up your own frying pan
Him: I'll have you know I've done trainer loads of washing up lately
Her: Trainer loads?
Him: (chuckling) Yes, I'm so good at it I train people to wash up. And I didn't use a frying pan but I'll wash up and tidy the kitchen.
Her: Great
Him: Who left this plate covered in poster paint in the sink. That's got to be the kids. They should deal with this.
Her: I put it to soak last night. It's left over from when I started to decorate an egg with youngest daughter for her school competition. We never finished it because I worked loads of evenings that week. She cried at school when they awarded the prizes.
Him: Oh. I'll wash it.
He washes it and puts a greasy tray in the sink and fills a pan with soapy water. Then he goes to the toilet with the newspaper. She puts away yesterdays pots from the draining board. He returns. He sits at the table with a coffee.
Her: (concentrating on keeping the accusatory tone out of her voice). Can I just ask something? I just wondered – are you going to do any more or have you finished? What? I'm just asking a question? It's just weird to me that you have stopped to drink coffee. I genuinely don't know if you've finished or not? It's sometimes hard to tell.. (she glances at the crumbs on the surfaces)
Him: I haven't finished. I'm having a cup of coffee now. Then I will wash up, and wipe the surfaces like a normal person.
I am struggling to work out how to do something… how do I give myself a breather, feel happy with the progress I am making as an artist, and stop feeling intimidated by my lists (short/medium /long term ambitions v day-to-day life lists). It's making me grumpy.
ps. no mouse activity to report.
continued from previous post (told you this was a subject liable to get me going)
So – based on my track record up until 1997, and the small projects I'd done in the intervening 10 years, ACE were prepared to fund me for a research trip to Kyrgyzstan to learn yurt making techniques. This trip changed my life. Two weeks without mobile phone or email contact. I had no duty to anyone but myself. This was the start of things, and I've really got my practice at the core of my life again now.
I've had a couple of great mentors, Jane Sellars from the Mercer Gallery and artist Rebecca Chesney, who really gave me the confidence to make work from the starting point of my experiences as an artist and mother. This is what underpins all my work now.
My practice involves an investigation into how we become who we are. I had to undo the version of myself that I had constructed as a mother, and reinvent my artist self. Now I have to be vigilant, to nourish and feed life into both roles. We all 'get into character' for our different roles in life, but I observe, document and analyse these roles, looking for a revelation in the details of domestic life.
I am interested in the way that subtle injustice becomes invisible, and therefore more insidious and undermining. In households with two heterosexual parents working full time, the woman is statistically likely to be doing 80% of the domestic work in the home.
My work, my art, my life are all intertwined and overlapping, each one influences the other. My life is rich, my children are at the heart of every thought I have, my art tries to express something about the subtle hidden elements of family life. The process reflects the content, to the extent that I don't know which element influences the other more.
There are side effects to talking on this theme – it doesn't represent everything about my work, and some people enjoy looking at my work without ever knowing about this starting point, or identifying any feminist angle. This subject matter is an anathema to some people. I hope that the process of making the work is an evolutionary one, starting from the point of view of a parent, and resulting in something relevant to anyone. Some of the content of the work is entirely imaginary, mixed in with biographical information, which confuses and upsets people who think they know how I should be.
So – parent as artist – artist as parent is a big theme for me. And I haven't even mentioned the discriminatory aspect of many artist opportunities – particularly residencies, which offer accomodation for one person and require you to commit intensively for several weeks. It precludes parents from a significant income stream.
Ooh I'll be chuntering away all day now. Better go and see what the kids are up to – they've been worryingly quiet for ages.
OK – so – artist and parent..
I became a parent in 1997, and immediately came face-to-face with some hard realities. I had been living a very easy going hand to mouth existence up to this point, working into the night on art projects, living on pasta when the money stopped flowing, able to do things on a whim.
The baby cried a lot and slept very little – not usually for more than an hour, followed by a long period of crying.
I had always coped with difficult things in life through making art, and it just became impossible to do this. The baby needed me constantly, my partner worked long erratic hours in a theatre, and the only time I could afford childcare was when I was earning money. I carved out a living through developing and running various community based projects, flirted with health and arts work, managed an arts centre, and generally felt more and more despondent as I compromised my creative ideas to meet other people’s agendas.
In 2003, after 6 years caring for preschool children I decided something needed to change. The options were;
1. run away and reinvent a new life
2. get my art practice back on the road, instead of a furtive, squeezed between other jobs, and hidden from prying eyes and sticky children’s fingers type of activity.
The other persistent issue during this 10 year period was a growing resentment that I seemed to be making all the compromises while my partner ran all manner of exciting events, worked all night, did things on a whim etc. It wasn’t because he was callous, simply that his work earned money we needed, and my art practice didn’t directly earn enough.
