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…
