Our Yesterday Was Precious

——diversionary tactics———-

mucking about with typewriter carbon paper pencil and paper

happy friday

To frame or not to frame? AAARGH. Still mulling it over.

In the meantime some diversionary activity and hopefully an opportunity to get some distance, in the form of a social for HowDo magazine tonight at Hand Made in Bradford.
HowDo is a Bradford grassroots cultural magazine started late last year and is a thing of wit, wonder and beauty. I was asked to do the artwork for Issue 4 back in March this year and it was a joy to be involved. The people who run it are my cup of tea – open, collaborative, inclusive, and not afraid to take risks or be critical. I’m doing a stall of my zines at the event. and have been getting them ready this morning, So nice to do simple straightforward things like fold, and staple, rather than angsting about framing.

Looking through them I found a copy of ‘Mad as Bad Tornado’, a zine I curated last year about the visionary artist Henry Darger. Maria contributed two stunning pieces of work for the zine. I wanted to show one of them here, as a homage to her. Looking through old emails to find the image was hard, a reminder of how much we collaborated, talked and shared over the years we knew each other. so many projects, so many collaborations. How lucky we were to have this. Love you and miss you so much beautiful.

http://madasabadtornado.wordpress.com/
http://issuu.com/howdomagazine/docs/issue4
http://jeanmcewan.com/zines-and-artist-books/

After the buoyancy of yesterday I am beset by doubt about my piece today. This uncertainty and anxiety is probably been amplified by my less than robust emotional state at the moment. This morning I woke up from murky dreams, thinking about Maria, missing her, wishing I could talk to her about the piece, as we always did when either of us had a project. I still don’t believe she’s gone but the silence tells me she must be.

But i doing this blog helps – for one thing because I can look back to my previous posts and see that a couple of days ago I WAS feeling certain, and confident about the work. So maybe this seesawing of responses is nothing to get too worried about. In truth, though I am excited about going to Liverpool for the show, and all that comes with it – installing the work,meeting the pther artists, private view, invigilaition, etc, I am also nervous. I’ve been living in a little quiet bubble for the past few months, not seen many people, and barely been out of the village ( I jest not). So going to the art thing in a city feels like a bigger deal than normal.

I was chatting to N this morning about the presentation of the piece and my rationale for not framing it. Talking it through I began to realise this decision really important; another layer of meanng is there in how the work is presented.this is inescapable, and I hadn’t thought about it enough. Formal v’s informal presentation, pinned directly to the wall or framed – determines in (large?) part how the work may received and understood.

If the work is framed, the glass is further barrier adding to the ideas of denial and inhospitability. The decisiom to frame or not to frame, and if so how to frame – also involves art historical reference points – I’m looking at Matthew Higgs, Mel Ramsden.

Is the work art, artefact or documentation?

I don’t know yet – and I’m late for work now.

The the work