Keeping It Going

Death inevitably rakes up a lot from the past – all those universal feelings associated with loss and mourning, as well as forcing us to face our own mortality.

Besides the obvious issues that come up when thinking about the end of one’s life, for me, the what happens if I die question raises, in particular, issues around the amount of stuff I’ve accumulated over the years. Selfish, unfair, inconsiderate are all descriptions that come to mind – derogatory terms used to describe classic hoarders.

 

I resist the idea of considering myself a hoarder – apparent when I recently met with a fellow artist for the first time. As we talked through our respective work, I found myself correcting her use of the word ‘hoarder’ to ‘collector’ every time she said it. Being referred to as a hoarder clearly touches a nerve. There are all sorts of psychological issues associated with hoarding, after all – and none of them positive.

Feelings of guilt and shame are emotions frequently experienced by collectors, it seems. On my part, I’ve felt fine about collecting over the years – just accepted that I had a lot of ‘stuff’ for want of a better word. But bringing my collections together for the first time ever this summer meant confronting exactly how much I do own. The transparent boxes purchased especially for the purpose of storing it all are now crammed full of stuff; one hundred 30 litre boxes (and counting), there’s no longer any room for denial about the volume of it.

This recent revelation, plus ageing (my own) and rising storage costs have made me think differently; made me think about being more discerning about what I collect in the here and now, and about the things I want to keep from existing collections. It’s a common response, I’m sure, as are the questions I find myself thinking about: at what point does collecting turn into hoarding and how fair is it to leave behind such a mass of stuff in your wake – stuff which is so deeply personal, that it’s unlikely to mean very much at all to anyone else. What percentage of this stuff really is raw material for my art work? How far is the sheer volume of it a reflection of how hard it is for me to let go?

These are all questions that I will continue to address as the cycle of sorting, re-evaluating and making decisions about what to keep/let go of persists. For now at least, I can see more clearly what I do have and while it occasionally overwhelms me, I never seem to tire of the sorting process – from writing about it, to the actual physical sifting itself; what the sorting unearths in terms of past memories and how I respond to the feelings they evoke. Some items just make me laugh, while others can stir up a whole host of deep rooted emotions.

Small wonder then, that I have a tendency to flit from one piece of work to another, the butterfly approach I take to the work I make being as much about survival as it is about maintaining a keen interest in what’s going on around me – not getting too bogged down in the past, especially the sad parts – and maintaining a keen interest in the present; what’s here, right now, in front of me. A couple of weeks ago, I rediscovered a pair of my late Father’s pyjamas, carefully packed away – momentarily forgotten. They will be the subject of a future blog post here, I’m sure – once I’ve allowed myself time to properly digest and process the impact of finding them again, that is …

It wasn’t quite the last box I looked in, but it was close. Over one hundred 30 litre boxes contain a lot of stuff. Editing the contents and transferring items into transparent plastic boxes over the summer, at least means that finding things is relatively easy. Certainly, with the cardboard boxes gone, I don’t have to search quite so thoroughly and most things can be identified pretty easily in the see-through containers without too much rummaging.

I put aside Tuesday as a sorting day in the garage where the boxes are currently being stored, committing myself to being there all day if need be and deciding on a plan of action beforehand; to be focused and systematic in my approach and crucially, to keep going until I found what I was looking for. I was after all, looking for something specific. Organisational skills like this don’t come easily to me and past experience has taught me that I need to be resolute and stick to a plan of action so that I a) persevere and don’t give up on the task of searching and b) prevent myself from getting completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff to sort through.

 

 

As it turned out, it took a couple of hours to locate them, and I was finally able to lay my hands on a set of wooden letters that I’m hoping to re-use in a new location in the next few days. They were more concealed than I had expected and Tuesday’s sorting made me realise that the boxes aren’t quite as well organised as I had thought – and hoped. There will be time in the future I’m sure, to fix all that – labels and proper documentation and cataloguing eventually, perhaps – who knows? But for now, finding the letters and heading off to a new location with them feels like a positive step forward. I’ll be back here soon, I’m sure, reporting on how and where I use them.

 

‘All the long gone darlings …’  Sylvia Plath 

It always feels important to me to properly acknowledge anniversaries; specific dates etched on my brain. October 13th is one of them. In the same year of taking the letters H A M E and placing them around Scottish landmarks in memory of my late father, I placed this small picture frame amid autumn leaves in the Princes Street gardens, Edinburgh in memory of another Scottish relative, dear to me. It was 2009, the year the Scottish Homecoming was launched, a world-wide call to people with any connection to Scotland to come home and celebrate their connection to a beautiful and unique country.

The postcard’s sentiment says it all; always remembered, never forgotten  – another ‘long gone darling’  to quote Sylvia Plath from her extraordinary poem ‘All the Dead Dears.’

RIP Katy.

‘All the long gone darlings …’
Sylvia Plath

Collecting and the consequent sorting process continues to be an integral part of my creative work and the various pieces, created as part of the Nana’s Colours series were developed purely through this process.

I’m always excited when new ideas start to emerge in this way; and adding new pieces develops the creative work even further. I’m more discerning than I used to be, but that doesn’t stop me from continuing to find and introduce new items to my collection, a collection made up of so many different pieces; from swatches of fabric, debris from the streets and beaches, magazine cuttings, family photos, small mementoes of people from my past – all manner of things that for many different reasons, have caught my eye. Any collector will identify I’m sure, with the excitement associated with finding something ‘special’ – however much that might be open to personal interpretation.

Letting go plays a key part in the sorting process – it’s as important to let go of certain objects as it is to hold onto them at times, making way for fresh ideas and inspiration, not to mention creating actual physical space to house the things you really want to hold onto.

I’ve finally got round to making space in my home to accommodate the more precious objects from my collection. These are the things that I felt unable to leave in my friend’s garage or in my new studio, following the massive move I made at the start of the year. Small, precious things, snaffled up at the last minute, wrapped in newspaper and laid carefully in boxes in order to transport them home.

Organisation is key; I like to be able to put my hand to specific objects, if and when I need them – either for a particular piece of work or simply, to reacquaint myself and derive pleasure from seeing and handling them again. Sentimental objects, especially, belonging to people I have loved – ‘all the long gone darlings’ to quote Sylvia Plath from her extraordinary poem, ‘All the Dead Dears.’

I found a bag of unused soap bars in one of my recent searches, carefully preserved in tissue paper and nestled in the corner of a vanity case which had belonged to my Nana. A recent piece of work ‘Five Summers Without You’ came out of this find, made in response to the anniversary of my Nana’s death in September 2010. I selected five soaps to represent the number of summers that have passed since my Nana died – the number of summers we have been without her and the number of summers in which we have no longer bought soap for her birthday. The scent of the soaps takes me right back to being with her, close to her – especially as a child, cuddled up right next to her – sweetly fragrant. The evocative nature of floral scents and perfumes – lily of the valley, freesias, magnolia and roses all come to mind.

There is so much more to explore through delving into the past lives of such ‘long gone darlings’ and bearing in mind that death has had such a strong presence in my life this past year, to do so will require a substantial amount of time and patience. As things stand, I’m unsure about just how much background I want to continue to divulge about the work I make. It’s the subject for a whole other blog post, but it’s a thought I keep returning to. Time will tell, I suppose how this all pans out.

In the meantime, it’s all about getting on with making the work – keeping it going, crucially.

Seventeen weeks have passed since the General Election resulted in a Tory government with its austerity programme of draconian cuts. Bread and Roses has already seen some changes.

This past week has seen the most dramatic in terms of the change in appearance; both the bread and the roses are now covered in patches of mould.

The impact of neglect, even in these early stages, is already evident. We have four and three quarter more years of Conservative rule to go …