Keeping It Going

This week I was deeply affected by the news story of the killings in Santa Barbara, California – another human tragedy for six young, innocent people and their families and friends and for the US and their gun laws. How did a gun and over 400 rounds of ammunition come to be in the hands of a young person who both the press and his immediate family have described as vulnerable? More recent reports from US authorities state that he had three legally-owned handguns with him at the time of carrying out the drive-by shootings.

As well as showing us a heart- wrenching display of a father’s pain in response to losing his son, this piece of video is a sad indictment of the US gun laws in the state of California. This is what the father of one of the victims, Christopher Martinez, had to say about the recent shooting incident which claimed the life of his son:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-27562743

There’s nothing much I can add to that – a grieving father of one of the victims says it all for me.

‘Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA.’

I started this blog over 18 months ago, wondering whether it was possible (or not) to maintain it at the same time as managing to continue to create work. Recently, I’ve been thinking about how important it feels to me as an artist to maintain an interest in the world around me. Can I maintain a blog and continue to create art at the same time as being aware of what’s going on socially and politically?

My Nana often used to say to me, ‘You can’t take on the responsibilities of the world.’ But you can, if you choose, be aware of what’s going on in it. If my creative work is to continue to concern itself with celebrating and reflecting the wonders of life and humanity, then I have to confront the human condition in all its varying states. Bad things happen; tragedies such as the above are sadly, not unique and point to a real need for ongoing campaigns for change in the world around us.

RIP All the victims of yet another senseless act of gun violence, Santa Barbara, CA. May 2014

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But it hasn’t just been about mementoes from my late Nana – it’s also about the things that I’ve held onto from my own past. Sorting through this vast lifelong collection has involved having to think about the human condition at large – both my own inner personal issues and the more universal issues of life and death – and love and loss – and other people and my relationship to them, theirs to me. Like so many people before me, I have been let down and hurt by others at various points in my life; I have lost loved ones, too – both through death and circumstances. Certain items of clothing, individual pieces of jewellery, the sound of specific music, the scent of particular perfumes – all these reminders have the ability to stir up vivid memories and bear testament to those hurts and scars from the past. Remember that dress I mentioned a few posts ago …

Someone made a comment about my work recently that struck a deep chord; he suggested that my inability to let go of things might perhaps, relate to an attempt to hold things together – ‘in order to stop things falling apart.’ It’s a fascinating point and one that’s certainly crossed my mind – a sense of exerting control over the present, in response to an inability to control circumstances of the past – it’s a common trait amongst collectors.

But what we are aware of intellectually doesn’t necessarily always equate with how we feel emotionally – nothing prepared me for how challenging this sorting process would be. Revisiting so much of my past through encountering the physical objects from it, has been about needing to process, accept and put to bed a lot of the associative painful memories. An emotionally tiring time – but necessary and cathartic nevertheless. I am feeling lighter as a result of unloading a lot of physical and emotional baggage.

And the added bonus, of course is to to have found a new body of work emerging in such a positive and unexpected way. It feels great to have Nana’s Colours to bear in mind while I’m in the process of sorting, ever more aware of how certain items connect and relate to each other – whether it’s through materials or colour, it’s the grouping together of related items that steers and creates the work for me.

With a less heavy and weighed down heart, then – an empty attic for my sister and a slightly less cluttered studio for me, the sorting continues …

‘Some things are clearly too precious to let go of.’

I’ve been so immersed in sorting things recently that it’s come as a pleasant and welcome surprise to find a new body of work spontaneously developing. Nana’s Colours (current working title) has emerged in the midst of this recent sorting process and has been growing and developing, hand in hand with the sorting – hardly surprising considering the emotional attachment I have made to so many of my late Nana’s belongings. Some things evoke a strong emotional response and are clearly too precious to let go of …

It’s reminiscent of the work It’s The Little Things, work composed of just that – the little things I rescued from the home my Nana left after some 70 years of living in it. Small, seemingly insignificant, tiny mementoes. But from little acorns, big things grow as the saying goes – and as each tiny piece is set aside, so the work develops and grows – one plastic doily, one small scrap of fabric and one plastic flower; one ochre coloured lampshade, one Mills & Boon paperback and one silk flower – slowly brought together over a period of time to create an entirely new assemblage.

Both in and outside of the studio, I’ve found myself thinking quite obsessively about all the different colours associated with my Nana’s life – the colours she, herself wore – the peaches, creams and pinks, mauves and lavenders – and the colours in which she furnished her home, constantly changing according to the various trends and fashions. I have vivid recollections of the deep crimson and olive green colours of the chenille curtain hanging at the back of her living room door, for example – and the deep mustard tone of the painted kitchen walls, contrasting with 1960s geometric design red, black and white curtains.

Likewise, recent sorting through of some of the dresses, hats, scarves and handbags I kept from my Nana’s wardrobe; it’s made me appreciate the true quality of so many of the things she owned and the huge range of diverse colours that faded in and out of her life, according to fashion and the passing of time. It’s like unveiling a history of a life in fabric – from the sensuous feel of very fine 1930/40s silk scarves to the crisp cotton frocks of the 1950s, to the rather coarse feel of 1960s Crimplene.

It calls to mind my The Fabric of Life work and reminds me of the ongoing, never quite resolved nature of this piece. There are all sorts of reasons for so much of it being left, unresolved (a whole new blog piece in itself), but it’s my own closeness and intimacy to so many of the included fabrics (not to mention my dear late Nana’s actual physical association with them) that undeniably makes it difficult for me to truly consider The Fabric of Life finished. There is clearly still more to process – the work itself drawing on the strong parallel between the fragility of cloth and the ultimate fragility of our own and others’ lives.

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I’ve been thinking for a while about taking some of my found objects outside of the studio. In this particular case, my collection of china swans – out onto a pond or lake, setting them free to swim or whatever else they felt inclined to do. In actual fact, what they did do was sink! – into the murky waters of a pond – covered in green algae in no time.

I was excited about doing something more spontaneous with my work and it seemed like the minute I put out a call amongst friends about finding an accessible pond with reeds and waterlilies, I got a response. But I took the word spontaneous a bit too literally I think and turned up, china swans to hand, without properly thinking things through. For a number of reasons then, the ideas I had just didn’t work. I was pleased that I’d also taken along one of my favourite Vernon Ward paintings because the photos I took of it did, at least, seem to work in some way.

This was all last Wednesday when I took a rare complete day off to spend time with friends. I was lucky to be able to take my art with me and to be allowed time to play and experiment on my own for a couple of hours in the lovely grounds of a friend of a friend’s home. The home is situated in the most beautiful surroundings – right in the midst of woodland, currently covered with bluebells, wild primroses and wood anenomes and surrounded by three large ponds. It felt really liberating to be outside, especially after the long recent stretch of being confined to indoors – sorting.

Messing around amongst the ponds and reeds and seeing the wild flowers at their very best in the surrounding woodland, took me right back to my childhood – vivid, happy memories of growing up in the countryside. The Vernon Ward painting I took with me and photographed on the pond’s edge is rather aptly called ‘Harmony in Spring.’

Despite not getting the results I’d hoped for, it was great to have an opportunity to experiment – there aren’t any places I know in London (or anywhere else for that matter) where I’d be able to play around with twenty or so china swans for a couple of hours without being asked a) what I was up to and b) in the interests of health & safety, would I please leave?

Yesterday, for the third time this month, I was in the heart of the country again – very close to Bury St. Edmund’s, celebrating a friend’s birthday. I was in the region a couple of weekends before as well, staying with relatives in a place in Suffolk, close to the Cambridgeshire borders where I was born and raised for the first fifteen years of my life.

In spite of not having lived there for a number of years, it still feels a bit like going home whenever I return to the area – the familiar, flat agricultural landscape of the fenlands and the nearby villages, so reminiscent of the one I was born in; my late Nana, who has had such a big influence on my creative practice, is never far from my thoughts.

Coincidentally, while idly looking through an old notebook last week, I came across a Wikipedia reference which I earmarked some time ago. So much of it resonates, reminding me of my relationship with my own Grandmother and her legacy of respecting the things we own – cherishing and looking after them. Writing about the psychology of collecting, Oxlade-Vas describes the:

‘ … intense emotional bond she had with her grandmother, and the rich heart-warming memories she had amassed at her grandma’s house as a child and even as an adult.’

‘Her grandmother, a product of the Great Depression ‘saved’ everything. As a child, the author recalls the loving and gentle way her grandmother organized seemingly ordinary items: rubber bands were neatly bound together and artfully displayed on the mantle. Tops of pens of all colors and sizes were neatly arranged in drawers and bins. Artificial flowers, saved from the dumpster decorated every room in the house. At her grandmother’s death, Oxlade-Vaz recalls the overwhelmingly pleasant emotions that overcame her as she sorted through her grandma’s collections. Though not valuable, the author kept these collections to remember her grandma’s thrifty, sensible, wisdom- reminders of the graceful way her grandmother was able to provide seemingly useless items dignity and respect.’

A number of things have happened over these past few days that keep bringing me back to the theme of collecting – both from my own perspective as I continue the process of sorting through personal possessions and in relation to other people. There’s been so much emphasis on sorting and collecting in these past few week’s posts that I’m starting to get edgy about making some art.

Last Monday I was emailed an article on the BBC website about mass consumerism and the ever growing storage business – about the amount of stuff we own nowadays in comparison to in the past and the growing success of the storage industry. The person who sent me the link has seen firsthand how I often struggle with guilt about the amount of stuff I own. It’s not uncommon for collectors to feel embarassed – seemingly greedy and materialistic and appearing to be in a perpetual state of want, want, wanting. The reality of collecting is in fact, often far removed from this – people amass certain collections for a whole host of reasons but are rarely concerned with the monetary worth of things in my experience.

Space of course, is always going to be an issue for anyone with any sort of significant collection – and especially when it comes down to sharing space with other people. I’ve been reminded of a 1990s tv series, a ‘Sign Of The Times’ recently. It was a kind of fly-on-the wall documentary about the way British people kept their homes. It had its critics, some feeling the makers patronised the people they made the programmes about, but my recollection of it is simply as a fascinating and entertaining show.

I remember one episode in particular when space came up as a real issue for a young woman moving into her boyfriend’s already well-established home. The camera captured her boyfriend’s rather unimpressed reaction to having to accommodate her vast collection of soft toy animals. He clearly hated them and didn’t want them invading his home; she clearly loved them and had no intention of letting them go. The problem he had with the bundles of (fake) fur wasn’t just about good versus bad taste in this instance – it was also about the amount of actual physical space they took up in an already cramped flat.

Having read the BBC article, I found myself thinking about the amount of stuff I own and the amount of space it takes up; I was coming to the conclusion that a lot of it might be unneccesary.

But then, the very next day, I visited the Haim Steinbach and the Martino Gamper shows at the respective Serpentine Galleries, Hyde Park, London. Amazing exhibitions – so inspiring, both of them.

The collections of Haim Steinbach were a visual feast for the eyes as far as I was concerned. I spent ages in the gallery – completely enthralled by so many of his personally selected objects and relating to so many of them in so many ways. I was fascinated too, by the imaginative and diverse ways in which both he and Martino Gamper chose to display their collections. I even spotted a twin to my own George Best figure amongst the objects Gamper had selected from friends and colleagues. (My George Best features in my ongoing ‘In My Life’ piece, shown in the ‘I Remember’ show in 2012. George featured very much in my life, in the shape of a 1960s schoolgirl crush).

Seeing the respective Steinbach and Gamper exhibitions convinced me that it was okay to collect what I have and that I was right to be cautious about discarding things. I came away from the Serpentine galleries believing that if space was no object, then I’d keep just about every single thing I currently own.

Talk about contrasts and polarising my thoughts around the big question I so often ask myself – what do I let go of and what do I keep? There’s no definitive answer to that question, really – if space wasn’t an issue, I daresay I wouldn’t want to get rid of anything at all.

Seeing the shows has inspired me and I’m getting excited about what feels like a new burst of creativity on the horizon. Well, let’s hope so, anyway – Easter’s just passed after all, with its references to rebirth, hope over despair and so on.