Hereford College of Arts

I’m watching my friends graduating and feeling like -‘What moves are they going to make next?’ ‘Whats it going to be like for me next year?’

(I’m involved in a group show with them in October in London so I feel a sense of continuity for the time being.  http://rkburt.com/gallery/index.html )

This post is about creating continuity through periods of transition and about  building connections.

As a student I’m quite preoccupied with the question ‘whats going to happen next?’ I’ve a need for reassurance that I will find work after studying for six years! Its like watching a game or party from afar and not participating . ( I have exhibited and sold work etc over the last 2 years so am not entirely out on a limb – more impatient I think!)

I’m reading Share Your Work (Workman Press) by Austin Kleon author of the bestseller Steal Like an Artist. The book is a kind of ‘light read / inspirational genre’ designed as a self-help tool. Kleon maintains that creative people need to share and show their work to get noticed. Through this process of sharing – both on the internet and in ‘real life’  artists foster interest and understanding with other creatives and the ‘public’. This sharing also leads to interesting collaborations and learning and inevitably to work.

This puts me in mind of Emily Speeds project Work Makes Work –  www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/getting-paid. Emily tracks how her work comes about through spider diagrams and invites other artists to do the same http://workmakesworks.tumblr.com/ . Its a really interesting project and its fascinating how one thing leads to another in an organic, unplanned way. The artists taking part spread their diagrams over a period of at least two years and in that time are involved in several creative activities. Well worth looking at.

An essential part of the sharing that Austin Kleon  and Emily Speed talk about in their respective ways is a generosity of spirit. In order to be open about and share your work you have to be generous. In my limited experience of making and exhibiting work I have been met with this generosity – its been incredibly helpful and I hope I approach others in the same way.

This might be obvious to an established artist but to someone new to the art world its something they have to learn about. I’m pretty sure that you can’t operate this generosity to others with out a sense of confidence and integrity in your own work. You have to be honest and open about your own work first for this generosity to really work.

Creative integrity to the uninitiated is something that takes time to understand. As a new student, unless you have prior experience working creatively, it takes a while to get your head around. Writing a journal and sharing your work with tutors and fellow students helps massively.

So for me reading Kleon’s book, whilst helpful, makes me want to start a few steps back – and think about gaining self-confidence and artistic integrity first. For the first two years of a degree course most of us don’t have a sense of ‘what kind of artist I am’ or a clear idea of ‘what is my work about’ and I think that our creative integrity and our true ability to share can only come after this – at a point  when we begin to recognise our own creative character.

Interesting videos –  http://austinkleon.com/speaking

I ‘m currently exploring ideas about the sense of loss and longing for childhood through the study of personal objects from my own childhood.

Is it a universally held feeling to long for childhood in some way? Or is it felt more intensely for some of us and why? As a mother I am also aware that whilst I sit very closely to the childhood experiences of my own children – their childhood belongs to them – I am, by virtue of being an adult, further denied access to the magic of childhood

The problem I’m finding  is that I’m unable to express a sense of this longing in a clear way visually. I really think its because its all too personal – I get tied up in knots about it. I’ve been reflecting on work I made a couple of years ago about the childhood experiences of WWII Evacuees. I used fragile paper, fabric patterns and toys of the day as a vehicle to express a sense of disruption and loss. I was more objective I guess – I empathised yet could stand back –  and I felt that the work communicated their experiences.

So how do I step back from my own personal story – how do I transform the mediums I’m using into tangible expressions of my own experiences?

Thanks Richard Taylor the a-n Art Student online editor for pointing me in the direction of  Thea Djordjadze whose paired down sculptures eerily ring with the feel of a place and time now gone. Her work has personal connections but its so direct. How can I move forward with my work to crystalise the essence of what I am trying to communicate?

And looking through the a-n News page I discovered an artist selected for the Jerwood Drawing prize who also seems to cut straight to the heart of loss and longing. Recent graduate Zoe Maslen works with presence and absence –  see her beautifully haunting work with hair and  incredible drawings on her blog http://zoemaslen.wordpress.com/blog.

I need to go back and simplify things, to stand back from personal entanglements that are confusing my vision.  

The Welsh have a word hiraeth, with no direct translation into English, but which is best interpreted as a deep longing for a connection with the land of Wales. There is something in the essence of this word that is very important to me with regard work – I need to express my own deep longing for the emotional ‘land’ of my childhood. I’ll keep working on it.

I’m studying this object that I’ve known since early childhood through drawing, collage and painting to tease out its meanings to me then and now. In considering its associations I realise that many of our childhood memories upon which we base formative ideas about our identities are perceptions of our realities at that time. Taking stock of these memories makes me realise that much of what I remember about situations was limited by my childhood inability to understand things But the figure is very linked to memories of my twin brother – comforting as we are very close. And sadly reminds me of my little cousin with whom I used to play and who drowned aged two and a half.
Simultaneous to these recollections however is an inquiry into the relevance of the figure to my life now. The figure – absorbed in writing and cut off from the world around makes me think about my teenagers – unreachable and totally absorbed in the virtual worlds of ipad that links them to their friends and to the world as seen through the internet.

Creative ideas and making come in waves of activity – not a steady flow – which might be easier to deal with? I’m mentally tired after working on my dissertation and end of year project. In the process of dissertation research I have unearthed so much interesting material that my brain is overloaded with ideas. The theme – the value of evocative objects and their ability to retain thier significance over time – is directly related to my practice. On some deep level I think ideas are linking up;still to bubble to the surface over time.

I had a wierd feeling about my dissertation just now – I missed my writing – I have spent a long time with it recently and I’ve become attached to it – I feel the need to read extracts for comforts sake – is this totally strange? I should point out that it is of a personal nature – its about my relationship with my late father so perhaps what I’m missing is time to spend thinking about him? Actually the missing is about writing too.

I love using language but I find it hard to get to the point quickly in the way that blogs and social media can require. I need to sharpen up my skills because I want to do much more on-line writng as I come into my final year at college.

Shelley Turkles’ book Evocative Objects contains a great essay about the relationship between an author and her laptop -over time it transformed into her friend, comfort and confident – I can relate to that!

Turkle, S. (2007). Evocative Objects Thing We Think With. Massachusetts: MIT Press.

There was a time when Saturday nights were going out nights. Now (as a forty something) I am very happy to be curled up discovering new painters via twitter! Two exciting finds tonight – Ben Cove – clean exacting lines, strong contrasts within his palette that push the eye around the painting and a backdrop of un primed linen canvas – its beautiful unbleached colour. His 3d work is also interesting. His multi disciplinary approach reasures me as I’m aware that I need to work in a range of mediums myself (and this feels daunting ). Cove does it well.

And James Robert Moore – really dynamic compositons that flung my eye around the canvas like the ballbearing in a pinball machine! And the colours and gestures – highly sensual and moving. I love reading paintings – its so exciting – and if I can leave myself open and sensitive I experience really intense emotions in reponse to brush marks and colours.

In Moore’s paintings he has also used mark making that resembles shaky, raw drawn lines to create movement and immediacy. He has dug into the paint – with the wooden end of the brush I think – and forced the paint away.

This is far far better than beer.