Twelve days into a new year – a good, constructive start so far, keeping busy with sorting stuff in boxes and adapting to no longer having a studio space to go to. I spent a couple of hours in a beautifully sunny Deptford yesterday, keen to keep up my connection to a place I’ve loved for years and still love – the week day and weekend markets, especially. The sun was out, people were warm and friendly and a live band played in the centre of it all. Maintaining my ties to the area feels important, especially after a day like yesterday – I came away feeling happy and uplifted – and of course, with the inevitable treasure or two in my bag.
I’ve no idea how things will work out in the long run with regards to working from a space at home but having my stuff/my raw material in the same place, for the first time ever, is very comforting and at last, I’m able to truly assess what I have.
So far, so good, in terms of that assessment. I started back at work last Monday after a relaxing Christmas and New Year break. I’ve managed to get fourteen or so boxes sorted and fully catalogued and am now up to box 55, with long lists recorded on my laptop, every object itemised in each box. It’s a process I started last summer and it feels good to return to it, knowing that it’s all part of a necessary process for getting back into making work in the future. It’s great to be reunited with things I’d totally forgotten about, a lot of which I know will stimulate ideas for new work. I have a lifetime of raw material, I reckon, in spite of having already let a lot of stuff go.
Here’s a couple of sample lists to give an idea of the weird and wonderful things I’ve gathered together over the years:
Box 1
x5 royal mugs
Small pin dishes of vintage cars
Female figurines (one musical)
China animals + one golden & one black labrador
China & wooden cat figurines
x2 male & female figurines
Soldier figurine
1950s poodle with broken head
Mother cup/mug
x2 china birds
Blackbird pie funnel (vintage)
Staffordshire figurines (cracked)
Shy cat/shy bear
Aberfan cup
Ceramic yellow wool lidded pot
Small head of Punch (chipped)
Dad/Father cups (one with pheasant, one with pink rose – cracked)
Japanese female figurine/Geisha style
Small piece of copper piping, shaped like a pipe
Wade Little Bo Peep figurine & lamb
Small girl figurine on knees, praying
Crazy ceramic goat
50s china poodle
Box 12
Female girl/young women figurines (with poodles on lead)
Welsh woman playing a harp (made from coal)
Black stand (for Russian doll)
Inuit doll, dressed in fur
Bo Peep (miniature Wade) with lost sheep + Wade Old Woman in a Shoe + blue plastic Bo Peep & cute ceramic sheep
Very strange looking clown doll!
Boy/girl ceramic figurines – kissing
Love objects – silk red heart
Footballer’s Wives piece
Gold sprayed pieces from ‘Going for Gold’ – cheap objects made to look expensive
Leaving my studio was all part of a larger plan, part of a re-evaluation of my life and the way I live it, now that I’m growing older. Giving up the 10×10 cabinet was about practicality as well as anything else, as I envisaged it becoming more and more physically challenging to schlepp around in a transit van, positioning it in various venues around the country, as I once did. The main exhibition area allocated for the cabinet at Herne Bay museum when I took it there was on the first floor, with no lift, I recall. This was in 2010 – 15 years ago this year – I have grown older!
10×10 has been very much on my mind this past week, as I’ve continued with the process of sorting – marvelling at the variation of the stuff I’ve gathered together. I’ve been thinking about how easy it would be to gather another 100 objects together, should the (unlikely) need ever arise.
The above lists demonstrate the variety and diversity of the things I have in storage and I’ve been thinking again about the timing, the point in my life at which my collecting habit first started – and continued to grow. Thoughts around that would consist of a whole other new post here and so, for now, it’s back to the boxes for the second week, starting from tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s just one example of the sort of object I’ve been drawn towards over the years – the daft facial expression of this cat, rediscovered again this week, brought a smile to my face. More about that in another post …
