GOING PUBLIC

Thank you for the offer of a cup of tea Elena, but may I have a coffee? I don’t drink tea!

You see…we know eachother so well and then again not at all.

Well. Here we three all are at last. The private gone public. Artists in very different ways, very different people, and miles and miles apart we have discovered….

It seems such a long time ago that the others invited me to join them in thinking about what has become in my mind the PTB – Project To Be. So, so lovely to be asked on the basis of the work I was posting at the time.

The PTB is still to be. We meander on discussing art and with our backstories slowly unfolding. The chaos of our lives is echoed in eachothers lives, as is the discipline and thought space that our work entails.

My e-mail mates have become a support, a resource, a sounding board and a crit. We look at art and see things that resonate with not just our work but theirs as well and instantly feel the need to share……..

Going public does make me nervous, I feel worried for what we had, that it might not survive the glare or that the voices might change. It feels very vulnerable.

……….and exciting.

Where to begin? I was thinking about pasting in snippets of our first conversations but I’ve decided to write about how I remember things coming together instead.

I’m not going to talk to much about what I think now about Franny and Elenas work, at least not at the moment, I’m going to talk about what I thought when we began before they became an every day part of my life. I was first attracted to Elenas Shed and quilt work, colourful, bold and fun and the shared interest of microscopic images; this was August of last year. Elena introduced me to Franny and I immediately fell in love with her drawings which I first thought were etchings. Meticulously and beautifully executed. I understood nothing of the ethos of their work and with both it was the aesthical value of their work that first attracted me. Although I continue to appreciate the beauty, technical and talented approaches it is so much more now. On reflection I have found that the things that attracted me where the things that connected with my work or the way that I work. Now above all else I admire the way both Franny and Elena meticulously work in their different ways.

I am still interested in connections within our work but it’s not that important anymore, it’s about us now…

I suppose in the very early days I wanted to find connections as an excuse so we could work together but now I don’t need them.

Julie Dodd

I’ve started this off, because the other two are so busy at the moment, I’m the one with a bit of free time, over the holiday.

We’ve spent ages discussing exactly how we should do this, but actually, in the end have come to the conclusion that we just transfer our conversation to the blog rather than email, let the readers catch up, and just get on with it. “It” may not happen, we may never get round to whatever “It” might be, but we enjoy the conversation and though it’d be interesting to read. Or not. We’ll see eh?

So, to start off, I’ll tell you just what I think of the other two… whoever they might be….

Julie’s work attracted my eye because of its careful obsessive labour intensive construction. I love to see the artist’s obsessive nature, I love to see pattern and repetitiveness. Text is a new area I’m exploring in my work, so to see someone working with books and magazines was fascinating… sometimes the text was clear, but sometimes totally masked. I liked the sense of secretiveness.

What also appealed was the use of throw away materials, using potential landfill (I never use new fabric in my work). The materials are so modest, ephemeral, but in Julie’s hands become things of beauty, tactile (although I have yet to touch them). The mundane becomes precious. Julie’s ability to make beauty from such small beginnings brings a smile to my face.

Franny’s work has a sensitivity to history which drew me in. Painstakingly skilful drawings of things long dead. Memory, and a careful respect for lives lived struck a chord with how I work. I use old clothes to evoke the long-gone people who once wore them. Franny’s insects are a metaphor for all human nature, warts and all, wasps and all. The cataloguing of a heap of dead moths, treasured and memorialised, loved. In contrast to this sadness, is a rank of gaily decorated hobby-horses. A symbol of play, youth, hope, celebration. This contrast is intriguing. We all have both sides to us, Franny expresses both eloquently. The ability to enjoy life, while enduring its sadnesses is a way of living to be envied.

This is why I want to continue speaking to them both, however far apart we are.

Here’s some cake and a cuppa. The internet doesn’t get us close enough to do that properly, so virtually will have to do for now.

Grab a macaroon then my virtual friends, and off we go…