0 Comments

A bit of harking back….

Franny’s words that make me go aha! Include:

Mantra

Security blanket

Mirror the past

Found and made

Memories

Repetitiveness

Authenticity

Struggle between control and letting go….

Julie’s words that make me go hmmmm! Include:

Landscape with words

Recycle

Delicate and intricate

No use pretending I’m something that I’m not.

Engulfed and overwhelmed

Knuckle down, get cracking…

Breathing

Joy

These were from ages ago, and I jotted them down in my Franny-and-Julie sketchbook.

I seem to have been struck by combinations of words about their work, and words about how they work, and words about how they think.

I feel some sort of Franny/Julie/Elena Venn diagram coming on…. We might have to do that when we’re together?

Geography then…

Julie > Franny = 241.1 miles (4hr 4m)

Julie > Franny Via Elena = 263.2 miles (4hr 43m)

Julie > Elena = 101.5 miles (1hr 53m)

Franny > Elena = 162.2 miles (including a chunk of the M25)

(numbers courtesy of AA website)

Avoiding motorways takes longer, but distance is shorter.

I feel the need to document all sorts of bizarre facts such as :

How many Tesco express stores between Julie and Franny?

How many times do we cross bridges?

Which is the best tea shop along the route?

Which is the best pub along the route?

How many times do we turn right/left?

Worrying huh?


0 Comments

‘I’m in for a penny in for a pound!

I don’t have anything to add really, I agree with everything you say’.

Julie


0 Comments

I wrote this in response to Julie’s post, in an email. We obviously all have our worries…

Ok…
> When I started working with ******, we said right from the start we would always tell each other what we were thinking and feeling, and if things weren’t going how we wanted, we would say so. Open and honest. This has worked. There’s been the occasional moment when we might have felt awkward saying so, but if it said kindly and politely, and received in the same way, with a sense of respect and good will and humour, that’s fine. I think when you meet someone new, and start working with them, you don’t have a history to base any guesses on, so you need to be told.
> So how about we do the same? This might work really well, it might not, but the finding out is fun. If we know that the other two people will not harbour a grudge, we’ll do ok. We might have to explain why we think things, or why we don’t like things, or why we DO like things. Don’t make presumptions, don’t assume the other people can tell what you’re thinking. We can agree that right now, we are a democratic organisation! Unless all 3 of us agree, we don’t do it.
> I promise you will know what I’m thinking, and I promise to be kind, and respectful.
>
> I chickened out… I was thinking I’d post this on the blog, but I didn’t. If one of you would like to do it instead, that’s ok!
> e

After a bit of discussion, and removing names to protect the innocent, I’ve posted it after all.

I like emails. I’m a bit thick sometimes when it comes to picking up signals from body language, so I like the fact you have to be straight and explicit and clear about your message.

So…are we writing some sort of constitution/manifesto here? haha!


0 Comments

I have been considering the road trip idea. These where the first thoughts on the idea of meeting up:

I’d love a road trip adventure with you both…

I’d love to show you around Liverpool…

I’d love to visit art galleries with you…

I’d love to show you my work and see some of yours…

I’d love to chat for hours over coffee…

Seconds later…

It suddenly feels very real…

This on-line version of me is much more outgoing than the real me…

Oh no what am I doing?

What if I can’t think of anything to say…

What if everything changes…

What if this isn’t the beginning but instead is the end…

Then in a mad panic I emailed Elena and Franny convincing myself that meeting up too soon would change the dynamics of our friendship and our communication. That it may completely ruin what we’ve got

A couple of hours and a few emails later I was back to loving the idea of meeting up.

Oh what to do?…

Elena wrote:

you know what?

we can do what we like!

change our minds as often as possible I say!

As for the project, ideas are swirling in my head still. I’m just stuck on how to develop them further than that. I always feel like this and usually find that swimming or a really good spring clean clears my head and then I can get stuck into something new. I’d rather swim but the house could do with a really good tidy so maybe that’s what I should do this weekend.

Or maybe I should just pretend I’ve tidied up and put everything in another room to make way for a messy art weekend instead!

Julie


1 Comment

JUST SOME PAST SNIPPETS:

The college work will get done, but you know how it is, you go zapping about on adrenaline then when it’s all done you slump!

I love the idea that this time for thinking has led us into ways to include our relationship in work we are already doing, the way we already work, so it’s new, but intermingled somehow.

I have been also thinking about keeping words secret, embroidering, then unpicking so you leave traces, but not so legible.

For me everything has changed since we’ve been emailing and it’s become about the distance between us being stripped away because of the internet usually but also about it being so evident when I just want to talk to someone face to face, go for a coffee etc.

I have been keeping snatches of our e-mail conversations in a file. I think it’s the concept of sharing and support that interests me …. the fact that our back stories are unfolding so slowly………..

I have no real concepts for a work yet.
I think I said before that in my head our conversations are linear and when I try to think of them as an art work they become tapes – like the kids school name tapes.

To obscure the text because I don’t really want others to share our secrets…

Hmm…..maybe I will blog about that. When I have done some work!

Can’t find the matching paper I put aside now.

Aren’t we lucky to have each other?

Then I think I’m going to embroider tantalising bits of confessional text all over it… maybe…

Thinking of you… both of you…
Things are plodding on quite happily here for me at the moment, but as they do, even as the eternal optimist, I am aware that things can turn around in a second, for better and worse.

That’s the problem but often the excitement too with being artists isn’t it, you just don’t know what’s around the next corner and when you’ll have to put things on hold… I can wait.

So instead of lurking about on facebook, I thought I’d make you two suffer instead – because that’s the kind of good friend I am!

I have just come back from walking the dog and we have a huge and beautiful moon outside. Have a look. It might cheer you up.

I need to win the lottery…
how much do you think I’d need in order to give up work, be a full time artist with all the expense that entails, and be able to afford to hop up north or down south whenever I felt like it? I’m itching to see your work in the flesh!

I did wonder about sending songs, but it is quite a big part of my practice, so here goes….

hope you like it.

Something in his songs always follows me like mist even after I have walked away.

I’m rubbish with music, I loved it when I was a teenager and would spend hours listening to various things, but once kids came along and jobs and then art that was it.

Ooh !
A parcel of delights! Thank you so much, this is just the sort of cast off I like….

This inevitably led to me talking about us 3, and he was really interested in the fact that we didn’t know each other and that we’ve still not met, and yet have suggested working together in some way …

Added by Franny.


0 Comments