My work, reasons behind it and what happens to it.

The interesting outcome of setting up the facebook artist  page is that so many people have said to me ‘I thought you just worked with paper’.

Hmmm…

Although I haven’t got a large following yet, I like the fact that people I don’t know are liking the page. I’m going in the right direction then.

I was talking to one of my work colleagues yesterday about it and she suggested I  use instagram as well.  Not really sure how that works with building an audience, but as its free, there’s nothing to lose eh?

Finding the time to do all this promotion though is really hard. Using things like axisweb isn’t working at all, so I probably won’t renew my membership for that.  The biggest hits to my website come from twitter funnily enough, so I’ll keep tweeting.

Now though,  I’ve finally got a whole weekend off, so I really must get down to the studio to do some work.

I’m not very good at documenting my work. I realised this when I decided to set up a facebook ‘artist’ page, to use as a tool to separate images of my work from personal posts .

Where is my work???

I’ve spent hours and hours, searching files on both my laptop, the old pc I don’t use any more and endless discs that have been stuffed in drawers and forgotten about.  Absolutely no order or logic in filing them .

Most of my work hasn’t been documented anyway. I work on it and then show it (sometimes) and then it’s abandoned. Forgotten. No record.

It was important to ME in my head, but not necessary for the eyes of others.

So how did I get to this subject? Well…..in the last couple of weeks, I was introduced to two artists on two separate occasions. We had a chat and they asked me what I did…

Even though I move in similar circles (or so I thought) and my CV appears better, there was no recognition of me or my work. That’s no major concern I know, but I had heard of them.

Why is that?  What are they doing to make their profile more obvious than mine?

I discussed it with another artist and he suggested a facebook page.   I’m not sure about this, but I set it up and will load it with a variety of things I’ve done.  Even commercial things which I would never show on my website.

It feels like a loathsome thing to do (IMO) but do or die as they say.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wendy-Williams/1401933143438923

I can’t get into the habit of writing again. There’s just too much going on to be able to set aside time to put my thoughts together.

How can I condense what’s been happening over the last month into one sentence? Hmmm Ok – I’m preparing for an Open studio event at the end of the month.

Although we talked about it ages ago, It was kind of a hurried decision to agree on a date we could all be free and then just do it – giving ourselves barely two weeks to prepare.

How much time do you need anyway?

Basically, its opening the doors and letting people see what we’ve been working on.

The preparation (if I can call it that) has been good for me though.   I’ve been feeling a bit low over the whole reasoning behind being an artist kind of thing lately. I do this every now again…getting this feeling that it’s all a bit false and pretentious and a bit pointless, but then when I start to get involved with my own work again – I mean really involved, the feeling  blows away and I feel like the reasoning doesn’t matter as really I’m doing this for myself.  Because I want to.

I spent most of the day in the studio today. I’ve finished off work and I’ve cleaned up…and I can’t really think of anything else to say.

I’ve just come back from the studio, having primed  several different items I’m working on. It is considerably warmer today, but not enough for the paint to dry quickly, so I couldn’t start on the top coat.  It’s frustrating, but at least I can move on to the smaller sections of the installation that I’ve been working on, at home.

I’ve had three more wooden houses made by one of the art handlers, so I’m really eager to get on with it.

Although it’s annoying (for want of a better word) to go off and do paid work 5 days a week, I find that I’m using those days for ‘thinking time’ and I’m suddenly finding myself in a  rare position of having a spate of ideas.

Keen to start the ball rolling on a public art work I’ve been thinking about, I wrote to a local councillor to find out best person to speak to about getting planning permission for my idea.  No response.  Not even an acknowledgement.  So 5 days later I tried councillor No 2. A better response, even if it was ‘try this person…’.

I’m still waiting.

Its not even money I’m asking for – its just finding out how to go about things in the correct manner. But anyway,  I see this as a longer term idea.  I’ll need permission, then I‘ll need to cost out a budget …and then apply for funding etc etc.  It’s not going to happen this year.

It’s a really weird feeling, deciding to have my work removed from an exhibition. Weird, but I feel a huge sense of relief about it.

Friends on facebook will already know about the WCAF saga, but for the sake of others (and a record for myself) I’ll go through the details.

Due to time restrictions, I haven’t been able to get across to Warrington since the exhibition (the Warrington Contemporary arts festival) opened on 3 October.  I was going to go next week.

But then, several people, who had seen the exhibition started to contact me, alarmed at the way my work had been exhibited.

I searched for images from the PV night and found this…

I don’t think I could describe the shock. It looked awful, the plinth was clearly far too small and really, it would only take a child to grab the truck and the whole thing would fall off. (Plus, it was back to front….. but that’s just an irritation) I mean, who would look at that and think it was OK?

It was difficult to get in touch with the gallery as no one responded to the original address on the email. I tweeted them and got a response to try a different email address. I did this, but no one responded to that either.

I’ll just add here that I prefer to email as its easier to keep a record of what was said ( past experience and all that)

Then I was sent 4 images of my work by the Interpretation & Design Officer at the gallery. He thought that’s what I was requesting. On my reply, he asked me to send the original email again ( this was the 3rd time I’d sent it)

I’d deliberately kept my email very light, thanking them for showing my work and suggesting that perhaps a board could be placed under the piece to support it.  I would be more than happy to pay for this board.

In response to this, I received  an email off someone more ‘senior’ at the gallery , stating that my work should only have been accepted if I had provided a large plinth.

Oh OK, so its my fault apparently :-(

I’m just accepting that this was an open exhibition, they didn’t have enough plinths – or maybe they just accepted too many works?  It doesn’t matter.  I just want my work out.

I don’t want to enter any more ‘opens’, it just isn’t worth it.