The wonder of stuff
Getting distracted from my ‘Grand Plan’ (see previous post) by rummaging through boxes of stuff from my old studio. Random selection of the nearest bits and bobs: a large sheet of silk paper, bags of dried up Medway silt, lumps of chalk from the North Downs, handmade paper, wire, string (lots of string), wire, lead weights and wax.
Two thoughts emerge from this. 1. There is a wonderful opportunity to make some work or, and more depressingly, 2. I have become an eccentric hoarder.
Probably the last, as quite a lot of this ‘wonderful’ stuff was hidden at the back of my wardrobe.
Hum.
This evening I’m off out to meet up with a group of other artists who originally got together at Fabrica. We meet and look at each others work. It’s vey encouraging; even if things aren’t going well for oneself there is always some interesting project developing and something fresh to see. A bit like these blogs really.
This week I have been doing lots of housekeeping, sorting through all the images of my past work because I want to update and reorganise my Axis pages. I’m also trying to work out what I need from a personal website. I want to avoid the type of website that looks great but is inflexible and static (or is inflexible and doesn’t look good too obviously!). After a very difficult couple of years when there just wasn’t enough time to juggle everything, I want to get things organised and not just blast applications out into the unknown without the systems in place to deal with the possibility of being successful. So this is the year of the grand plan!
Aims for the year:
Sort out website / Axis pages
meet people / network
Draw up the exhibition / project proposal that has been keeping me awake at night
Apply for r and d funding
Get out to more exhibitions
Seems quite reasonable / totally terrifying
The reasonable bits are the easy ones: get out more etc. The terrifying ones are the biggies hidden in amongst them.
Oh the irony! Reading my intro for this blog which so far has had no posts and was started in October 2009 I see that I wrote:
‘I have had two blogs on Projects Unedited for my own work and currently contribute to one for my employed role at an art centre but have realised that I need a new one for that interesting in-between space that is neither here nor there.’
Hmm ‘that interesting in-between space’… Well clearly that was wishful thinking! There has been no in-between space at all over the last few years which has been fairly disastrous for my own work. However a new start is in order, I have moved on from my role at the art centre and am back with a little more time for my real work. Until I feel that a proper start has been made I’m going to make occasional posts to this blog which will allow me to be reminded everytime I glance at the blog intro just how easy it is to be utterly immersed in the day-to-day especially when life throws one a curve ball.
