Grains of Salt

I’m on my way!

Plans are laid down; train reservations made… just the small matter of sitting an exam and packing before I set off!

Activity towards my a-n New Collaborations bursary kicks off properly next week with a visit to my collaborators Halen Mon in Anglesey. So far we’ve only been dabbling in ideas via email. They’ve sent me packages of salt and I’ve sent images and tentative ideas in return, but it’s not easy having a long distance relationship with a material and a place. I want to investigate and respond, hence the journey.

The activity of harvesting salt requires (obviously) a coastal location with access to the sea to capture the salt water. I live in Cardiff in South Wales, and Anglesey is an island, north and slightly west of Wales, separated from the mainland by the Menai Straight. Next Tuesday I’ll be embarking on a four hour train ride to get there for my rendezvous with Halen Mon.

It’s hard to know what to expect, other than a glorious location and an extension of the hospitality that’s already in evidence in their emails. And the promise of watching the salt harvest take place has definitely got me intrigued!

The scope of our collaboration has yet to unfold, which means I’m finding it difficult to pinpoint exactly what materials I should bring with me. The usual drawing stuff plus watercolours, obviously, and a camera. For a while I contemplated bringing resin, but I don’t think that’s a very user-friendly thing to bring into someone else’s workspace! Oh, and perhaps wellies (although I have my fingers crossed for sunshine).

Over the last month or so I’ve been playing with the Halen Mon salts and have prepared a number of ideas. These I’ll bring with me, as well as some bits and pieces of my other work which relate to the feel of this project and illustrate my practice. So that’s the visual side covered. But how about the project approach? I need to define this in some way prior to my trip so I don’t feel completely lost or overwhelmed when I arrive at Halen Mon.

So I’ve made a list. It reads as follows (so far):

Collaboration- putting 2 things together so they have a dialogue with one another. Salts and art; artefact and art etc.

Change meaning of object/art by placing in different context. Salt placed within art/art historical context/room.

Juxtaposition.

Measuring time/recording events (crystallisation).

If I’m curious I’m sure other people will be curious about it too. Revealing crystals, chemistry etc.

What is hidden? Store rooms, old stuff?

Contemporary art transforms lived experience into symbolic forms.

How to isolate/choose things to respond to?

Real human stories.

What do I want to get out of it? Make my work relevant to the context.

How do they see my work fitting in?

Clear objectives and outcomes. What will we all get out of it?

It’s all a bit of a brainstorm, but it’s given me food for thought.

I’m planning to update my blog with thoughts, processes and activities as they crystallise (nice!) over the course of the next few weeks. Unfortunately my Anglesey journey coincides with the a-n website being revamped so I’m not going to be able to post updates here for a while. In the interim, all new posts will go to my personal blog www.ruthmcleesart.blogspot.com and I’ll copy them here as soon as I’m able.

#PayingArtists Part 2

Now I must admit that, like any artist, I’ve done my fair share of work for free, enticed by the promise of “good exposure” and “looking great on my CV” etc… And yes, maybe, perhaps this was true when I first graduated. But now, ten years later, no way! During these years of practice I’ve built up a solid reputation, exhibited widely, been shortlisted for awards and worked for big private and corporate clients, and my CV already looks pretty good, thank you! However I’ve only ever been paid once by a public gallery for putting on a show.

Lately the requests for freebies have been coming thick and fast. I was recently approached by an organisation who said “We really love your work and find your research fascinating. We’d love you to work with us on this project…” To which I replied “Great! Fantastic! My fee for a day is £150” (pretty reasonable given my experience). I didn’t receive a reply. Obviously they didn’t love my work or value my experience enough to pay me. What makes me angry and frustrated here is that the same organisation has probably now approached some other artist who has agreed to do the work for free on the unfounded hope that it may, sometime, lead to something paid in the future. As a result of this I’m probably now labelled as a mean, money-grabbing individual in that particular organisation’s books too.

Is it too much to ask that I’m paid accordingly for my valuable skills and experience? I work regularly with large organisations (not arts) who contract me to use these skills to problem solve and deliver creative training solutions. These corporate clients value my unique insights and creative talents and are more than happy to pay me accordingly. After all, I have a very special set of skills highly prized but often under-represented within the world of business. And being paid for this (on time too!!) feels great.

Earning a decent wage is directly linked to the perception of self-worth and the value we place on our talents. It’s so important that we artists are paid properly to feel respected and enable us to invest in and sustain our practice.

This leads me to my final point. Art is my passion, and being an artist is the driving force within my life. But I’ve become tired; tired of being underpaid and scratching around for an income; tired of feeling undervalued; tired of feeling my hard work and creative mind is taken for granted; tired of feeling I’m expected to give away my services freely to the lowest bidder. A-n’s #PayingArtists campaign is just what’s needed to give this country a massive kick up the backside and demand a better deal for artists. I’m backing it 100%, and I really hope it makes a difference. But, I’m not stopping here. I’m a professional and am good at my profession. I want my income to reflect this. I’ve embarked on a programme of upskilling myself; studying and taking exams to add professional qualifications to my already impressive but art-centric CV. I suppose what I’m trying to say here is that even if artists do start to get paid a “fair” wage, what will this entail? It may still only equate to minimum wage, and I believe I’m worth a great deal more than this. The many skills of an artist are tricky to define, and perhaps this means it will always be a challenge to get paid fairly because many organisations/clients will struggle to understand exactly what it is they are paying for. So I figure I need to learn the language of business in order to get recognised for my skills and paid properly, because maybe, sadly, this is the only language that everyone understands.

Yesterday I passed, my first project management exam, and I have more lined up for the summer. Immediately this has placed a recognised monetary value upon my skills. As opposed to being scared about how I’ll survive I’m now excited by the prospects the future may hold. With the removal of financial pressure I’ve discovered a new found energy for my creative art. Perhaps I can now have the best of both worlds?

#PayingArtists Part 1

This post was meant to be about my recently begun new collaboration funded by an a-n bursary, but I’ve been distracted by the #PayingArtists campaign so I’m going to write about this instead…

That artists are paid properly is something I’m passionate about, not only because I’m an artist who wants to get paid, but also because it’s vital that art as a profession begins to be recognised and artists rewarded for their vital contribution to society and the economy.

It was with despair but not a great deal of surprise that I read that 3 in 4 artists earn less than £5,000 a year, a figure well below the national minimum wage. By hook or by crook I’ve managed to (mostly) earn a fair bit more than this for each of the ten years I’ve been an artist since my graduation, and for this I count myself to be very fortunate. It’s been hard work, but for whatever reason I’ve managed to make a reasonable living from my art.

Keeping an eye on the Twitter #PayingArtists campaign, I’m not at all surprised the majority of artists have such a tiny income. It just illustrates the horrifyingly entrenched culture of expecting atists to work for nothing (or only expenses) across the breadth of the economy. What I find especially sad is that so many requests for freebies are coming from arts organisations who must be aware of how little artists earn, many of them being run by artists themselves, and one would hope would lead by example by paying artists fairly.

So what does this tell me? Is it that art is not viewed as a real profession, and as a result no one is willing to pay artists a professional wage? Are the incredible, unique and honed skills of the practiced artist worth so little? Or in actual fact is it that society is so used to asking artists to work for free that it now expects little else? Of course we artists do love what we do (mostly) but we all also have mortgages, rent, families and need food! Thus, this whole premise of the work in itself being enough reward must be unpicked and the practice of paying/not paying artists remade from the bottom up. And for this, thank goodness, there’s the #PayingArtists campaign.

(continues in next post)

Thoughts on this collaboration:

As I see it there are three players in this new collaboration: me, Halen Mon, and the salts in between, and all are unknown factors at this point in time.

Me. I know I’m excited by the prospect of working with Halen Mon, and am excited by the potential of working with the salts, but at this point in time all possibilities are open. The scope of potential achievements is huge but there’s also the unknown. I’m pretty sure I can make beautiful art from these new materials conjoining with science, but, as they say, the proof is in the pudding…

Halen Mon. Within the culinary world, Halen Mon and their salts have nothing to prove. But what’s their take on the world of art? We’ve communicated entirely by email until now and so I’m itching to find a mutually convenient time when I can visit them in Anglesey and set out ideas and scope face to face.

The salts. These are truly the unknown factor! I can be sure of their place in my kitchen, but what about as a material in my artist’s studio? The crystallisation of various salts is something I’ve been playing with for a while, and their natural formations are pretty amazing. But is this art? And if not, how can I make it so? The science behind the aesthetic is a driver for me so I hope I can keep it visible to play a part, not only in the creation, but also in the enjoyment of any art I manage to make.

At the heart of both art and science is a desire for the pleasure of understanding something new and of communicating this to others.

Through an award from a-n New Collaborations Bursary I’ll be working with David Lea-Wilson of sea-salt harvesters Halen Mon over the next few months, to explore the potential of mineral salts in the creation of art.

The discovery of fresh aesthetic potential within unusual materials is paramount, alongside the correlation of the visual with scientific explanation. Results will present a range of possibilities for future developments, utilising these materials in conjunction with the science beneath.

Science will play a role which is both provocative and visually inspiring. My aim is to unite art with science to create something unique and precious; aesthetically beautiful whilst also enhancing understanding and extending our experience of the world.