Jane Ponsford: visual arts organiser
The purpose of this blog is to focus and reflect on our two main activities this year, the artist residency and r and d for our organisational development. So posts to the blog will be made both by me and by Louise Nason our artist-in-residence for 2009.
Earlier in the year when we posted a call out for site specific / responsive proposals for the residency we were overwhelmed by the variety of approaches put forward. In the end the committee selected a maker whose proposal was deceptively straightforward; to put up a loom in the studio space at St George’s and make work which responded to the materials, colours and light of the building. In the few weeks since the residency period started Louise has settled into the space and has started the process of building the framework of her project. ‘Building’ was initially a literal description as the floor-based countermarch loom had to be constructed in the space and then the warp threaded on to it. A film of this was shown at the launch event and (despite it’s slapstick moments with much scratching of heads and consulting of plans) it has set a theme of concentration and process which has continued as the residency has unfolded. Watching these developments I have been reminded of another blog I have been reading over the year; ‘Making a slow revolution’, http://makingaslowrevolution.wordpress.com which reflects on the collaboration between Helen Carnac and Craftspace. The discussions in Helen’s blog seem very relevant to this project, in their focus on the slow, necessarily unhurried application of skills learnt through doing.
