In my last post I wrote a bit about a project that I’m putting together in which I would travel across the North Downs from Surrey to Kent, round the coast past Dover to Brighton and back to Surrey again. Enroute I would talk to people, make things, make things with people, and respond to the landscape and the materials of the landscape. I was about to have a few meetings to gather support and to talk to people to find particular places to stop off and make work and run workshops.
I have been completely bowled over by the way that people have responded to my slightly hesitant proposals. It’s been like running at a door to break it open and finding it’s unlocked. People have been so supportive and positive both here on the a-n blogs (thanks so much for your comments) and in the outside world. I’m not really able to wrte too much about it until things are more concrete but I have been offered the opportunity to work at some wonderful places with some wonderful people and I am so excited.
It’s all getting a bit real!
More stuff..
Stuff. n, Material, substance or things of uncertain kind or not needing to be particularized or of inferior quality….
A bit about my preoccupation with stuff…
I am very interested in materiality and process in response to place. I love working with the materials of particular settings and landscapes, the chalk and clay and silt and the traces that they leave.
Much of my work involves papermaking. I love the contradictory nature of working with a fragile, ephemeral material in difficult, dirty surroundings at the mercy of the weather. Working in response to specific places has become increasingly important to me; and all my work; whether employing papermaking or not, involves getting traces from particular spaces or landscapes. These traces have included in previous projects, earth, volcanic ash deposits, water from the Medway, impressions and castings, photographs and stories.
I am in the process of developing a research project in which I would visit and investigate a range of different places in contrasting landscapes across South East England. I have a wish-list of places and landscapes to visit, which would be linked by the journey from one to the other. The journey would follow a roughly circular path starting and ending in the woods and commons of Elmbridge in Surrey, taking in a route across the North Downs, the Weald in Kent, onwards to the Medway and round down the South Coast until Brighton and back again up to Surrey. At each place I would make a small piece of work collecting traces and impressions and making use of pigments found in the landscape (chalk, charcoal, clay, and natural dyes etc) and I would also collect materials and impressions which would form the basis of larger works to be made during the course of the project. I really like to involve people in making work in response to the colours and textures of the natural environment and to build this engagement into the heart of the project. I love working with people and enjoy the reciprocal give-and-take nature of sharing skills, stories and expertise.
Right now I’m talking to people to find places to stop off and make work and run workshops.
Stuff. n, Material, substance or things of uncertain kind or not needing to be particularized or of inferior quality….
I’m finding it really difficult at the moment to write about my creative processes which is confusing me but I value the connections and feedback that writing a blog brings so I’m probably going to just treat the blog for a while at any rate just as a work diary..lists of things and what happened next.
It’s been a busy few days.
Monday: meeting with local arts charity to discuss an exhibition that they have asked Rebecca Price and I to organise. We are engaged in tracking down all the visual artists that the R C Sherriff Trust has worked with over the last twenty years with the aim of bringing it all together to celebrate and follow up the work of these artists. Some of whom have disappeared without a trace and some have shot to stella heights! So it’s going to be interesting!
Tuesday: meeting with Pete Allen the Arts Development Officer for Elmbridge, my local borough. I want to tell him about my new research project, working title, ‘Land, material and memory’. Although it has a basis in research it will be carried out in a practical way through doing and making and travelling and I wondered if he would be interested in supporting the project in some way. I have already gained some funding towards the project and really want to get feedback and see if I can use Elmbridge as a start and return point. He was very encouraging and wants to help. He is going to introduce me to some people who might be able to help in specific ways and also is interested in providing a base for a few workshops. So a good result. Later on I got in touch with Alison Clarke, the Surrey Arts Officer to arrange a meeting next week. Now for a total rewrite of the project summary!
Wednesday: Studio all day and also time to prepare for some papermaking workshops in Kent.
Thursday: More of the same and in the evening a wonderful talk from Freddie Robins at Zap. I feel as if I am wrting a weekly advert for the Zeitgeist Arts Projects talks and events so I probably won’t say much more than… go to them, they are good, demystifying, humanising and make me feel better about my work and practice rather than worse. http://www.freddierobins.com/
The rest of the week was prep for workshops and running them. The one in Kent at the Singleton Environment Centre near Ashford was very full-on and very enjoyable. I very much enjoy working with people which is why I want to buld that into any projects of my own.
Another exciting installment from the world of ‘stuff’ coming soon…
Home Ground
I’m not very good at this am I? My last post was in the spring when I had just embarked on the process of implementing what I had called my ‘Grand Plan’. This was so named half tongue in cheek but also half acknowledging how hard it is to make up lost ground and / or balance priorities. I’m not sure that I have quite managed the whole ‘balance’ thing but I do feel more settled in my work again.
Looking back at what I have been doing since I last blogged I feel rather encouraged. I have updated my Axis pages! (This was one of my stated aims!) axisweb.org/artist/janeponsford
I have been to some brilliant talks at Zeitgeist Arts Projects and met or reconnected with some lovely people. I would really recommend the programme of talks and events that Rosalind Davis and Annabel Tiley run http://www.zeitgeistartsprojects.com/index.html
They are very encouraging people and very open. One of the reasons that I stopped blogging in 2009 was realising that I couldn’t write about somethings because I needed to be able to work with people even though some of the things they did were so unfair to artists. Rosalind and Annabel seem to be the opposite of that and epitomise an open rather than behind-closed-doors approach.
I have a new studio with A.S.C. http://www.ascstudios.co.uk/ in Kingston which while it’s not the centre of the artworld is very convenient and therefore gets used. I have also been out and about running quite a few art and papermaking workshops hither and yon. One of the most interesting of the year was a weekend working in and near Barnard Castle in County Durham. The organisation I worked with, Teesdale Landscape Partnership http://www.heartofteesdale.net/ were wonderful, hospitable people and the landscape in which I worked was jawdroppingly beautiful and made me long for more time to just look and respond to the particular spaces and specific materials of the place.
Which brings me on to what I have really been concentrating on which is building a proposal for a project. More of which next time.
