holding down the muse by her tail…

…negotiations with the carpenter… …searching for locations……finding out logistical things……little opportunity to write on this blog, but now that I am actively starting work one of the installations this wednesday I will try and communicate a little more…

The artist in India…

So far I seem to have spent most of my time getting over the jet lag, then the airconditioning induced cold, then getting over getting over and then relaxing after all that…

But it is not like I really didn’t do anything at all.I have taken several trips around the city centre back alley ways, around the inside and outside of the fresh produce market, around the pultry section (which nearly made me faint) and have drawn a man I believe may have been dead.. It’s hard to say with the alcohol induced stupor with which people just lay by the side of the road, and look quite dead, unmoving, eyes wide open… And India being as it is, death and life always to be expected in immediate proximity to each other, well it wouldn’t surprise me if the man was actually dead… So anyway: as I made one of the worst drawings I attracted an audience of about 20.. It is not exactly what they expect of me, the very white woman, top sit on a curb stone and draw in amidst the madness that is India.

I have started to scout around for possible materials to work with and collect the first quotes on prices. Drove around some parts of the nearby countryside to look for some locations for some of my work and this evening finally had a meeting with Tina and her husband, who run a local business and who are going to help me locate some people to work with. (i.e. carpenters, tradesmen, ..etc)

So I don’t even know what timescale I am operating on, it would be great to get most of this work realized within the next 3 weeks. As I have a mad urge to take photographs in Varanassi or around Ladakh.. (Two absolutely opposite kind of places, from the descriptions I hear..)

First:tomorrow I will meet the carpenters and see what comes of the encounter. Hopefully it will be stupidly easy and everything will fall into place. But after the show in the Anglican Cathedral I will never again be so naive as to be unprepared for a hard uphill, swimming against the stream struggle…

Salmon-esque….

And now I am 2 days away from the journey to India, where I will make art work… in the monsoon rain….

Next monday I will already go out and commission my mobile gallery and start working on a series of installations.

Internet connections in Mysore / India are reasonably good, so I will post images as I go along.

There isn't a project title, as I am working on 4 projects simultaneously.

I will give everything descriptions and titles throughout the following 4-5 weeks..

…does anybody else wonder if they are risking too much of their youth on striving for an ellusive carreer..?
I have a lot of unanswered questions. Is this really important enough or just a complete indulgence.
I remember 8 years ago I was wondering if I was too old to change directios completely. If I should try and go and study medicine.. Maybe I should have done something more useful like that..

..and sometimes..

I just by chance find other artists who make me feel brave again, who completely unexpectedly remind me of the magic and the soul that sometimes we can find in art, in words, in sounds.. however these are arranged..

Sometimes, I find one artist like this, in what I once thought would be the very least likely place… but here it is, I found one on myspace. As good as the epiphanic experience that I had weeks back when I nearly cried tears of joy in the Chinese Show in the Tate Gallery.. So my heart jumps. I am inspired. She inspired me. Brilliant! And why..? Because I think not only is her work beautiful, but it is brave. There is courage in revealing something that seems so fragile, but I see enormous strength in there.

But I am still feeling apprehensive about the upcoming journey. (I did get a flight, by the way…although the prices have gone throught the roof..)

It seems strange in a way to travel half around the planet to India, in order to make art work, when I wouldn't mind making it here. But financially and strategically it is so unbelievably prohibitive to work here.. Still, I have spent my dental money on the flight… (yes, my dental money… I have a tooth that needs sorting and will cost exactly what that plane ticket cost… Oh dear…) Making art like this just requires so much of one person, for which I suppose I always imagined there would be a whole team.. Instead the artist permanently does a :'And Again…" on picking up the crazy confidence required to risk an entire existence… For art. It seems laughable sometimes.. art… And still it is exactly the single most important, essential, existing factor, ingredient in my life.

I have projects to write up and haven't even started yet !

So just as well I am negotiating with a conspirator … Tomorrow morning will be filled with trying to get things into writing and with burning images for an impromptu exhibition onto discs.. Just I can barely afford to have them printed out. And disappointingly the printing is almost the same cost out there in India.. And not quite as relieably professional as 'Moorfields Photo Lab' in Liverpool are.

I am clearly crazy. But then we all knew that.

Postcards anyone…????? (Remember I need any that you have sitting around in boxes. Old, new, vintage, with art on them or places… So far the response has been phenomenal: NONE… Help please, SOS… Needed by sunday..)