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.
Picking myself up by my bootstraps
I am proceeding with the ‘grand plan’ (see post from 24 Feb) albeit as if running through treacle.
As far as my aims for the year are concerned I am slowly working through some new images for Axis and am planning a new website.
But my main efforts have gone into drawing up a project proposal that has been obsessing me for a while. This is ending up merging into an application for r and d funding too. I have had an initial short discussion with someone from ACE and am just about to arrange to have a chat with people from an arts trust, which will force me to complete the first draft of the application pretty damn quick(ly).
I am also booking myself in for various events in order to meet people and network in the real world too rather than just virtually. This is not always easy when you have a family. I know it is impossible but I wish PVs were in the daytime.
And yes I am getting to see more exhibitions.
So a qualified success. The hardest thing as ever is to balance the work that feeds the body with the work that feeds the soul. Otherwise known as trying to pick yourself up by your bootstraps. You need to do work to pay for the time to be able to work but then you have no time.
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.
