Usually I cast February off as the month to just get through – the coldest, dullest, quietest. . . isn’t it funny how lots of exciting things seem to happen when you least expect it.
Last week I was contacted by Lauren Healy, Jobs and Opps editor for a-n. She asked for my views and experiences regarding making contacts internationally, social networks, approaches that I’ve used to begin /continue my international practice and for some specific information related to the French arts scene.
I think she plans to write an article for the Jobs and Opps page. My response attempted to sum up my experience living here up a mountain in the middle of the Pyrenees whilst trying to have a foot in a happening art-scene. I outlined the ups and downs of my working practice and concluded:
. . . it seems that my working practice here reflects that of many contemporary artists – it’s about collaborating, creating art events and not relying upon the established gallery system. Where I show isn’t restricted to where I live, which is mostly made possible through online networking.
In an ideal world I would exhibit more in France, but, as yet, the internet is not used in the same way by artists and curators for networking, i.e. they don’t have an equivalent to a-n.
[An hour after I posted this blog-post I was telephoned by a curator in Agen inviting me to have a solo show in a museum. She saw my work during the open studio event I participated in last May. . . so it looks like I’ll be showing in France pretty soon, made possible by old fashioned personal contact, funny how things turn out.]
I went to check the Jobs and Opps pages and stumbled across Nick Kaplony’s selection for the current Choice Blog – I recognised the photo which accompanied it, a photographic scan of my village I made during the summer (I held a flat-bed scanner up and waved it about a bit). That was a nice surprise to be chosen. So people do read my blog, which is a bonus as primarily I write it for myself, it helps make concrete my sometimes vague ideas and acts as a pseudo journal recording any developments regarding my working practice.
He wrote this about the blog:
I checked out his work and it seems we share a common interest in Rorschach ink blots – all fuel and inspiration for this new aspect of my work.
I’ve been working on the book of the images from the video ‘St Louis. Path 1′ – I’ve decided to create it through Blurb.com as a record of the project and give the proceeds to charity. A writer friend who specialises in Surrealism is going to write an introduction for it. Everything seems to be coming together, just one aspect to organise, the ISBN. I contacted a friend, Silvie Turner, who also used Blurb for one of her projects and who has published many books on printmaking – not only did she send me the details for the ISBN, but invited me to show my book at an artists’ book event she is organising. She has a great collection including books by Lanyon, Caulfield, Chadwick, Emin, Long, Paolozzi, Pasmore, Phillips, Tilson,Tyson. . .
So, the dead month of February has sprung into life – no time to let the bitter howling wind get me down.
