The pasting table, lining paper and biros took a trip to the photography studio at college yesterday. This was not a stress free experience – half an hour of country roads followed by a full carpark at college, three trips back and forth carrying everything to the studio accompanied by unpredictable gusts of wind. My carefully folded roll of lining paper became more precious by the minute and my anxiety about folds, tears and creases grew.
Once in the studio itself all was well. I had a lot of help from our studio technician/tutor. Photography is not my strong point. It was interesting to see the work in a different place and to have it scrutinised under the studio lights. This process of displaying work via photographs, online and in presentations is something I want to explore more after the degree.
As part of our professional practice module, we are in the throes of preparing a presentation about our work – hence the photographs and the studio time.
I know that this is not just a requirement for the course but one for pursuing any sort of career in the arts. It’s not only what you do that’s important, it’s how you present it to other people, peers, colleagues, funders….the list is endless.
My work is not particularly photogenic. It’s monotone, repetitious, mundane. It’s not going to make a big splash on a page. For me, that’s part of the work. I don’t want to do ‘show and tell’, the big ‘ta-dah’. I suppose what I’ve done by reducing my activity to making lines and grids, I’m trying to present a question about activity and how time is spent in daily life. Why choose one activity over another and how do we value our time?
I am making the same number of lines every day and recording the time it takes me to make that set number of lines.
Each day the time fluctuates. I use my iphone to record the time by using the voice memo function – the by product of getting an accurate time in minutes and seconds is a recording of each drawing.
I started to record the drawing process in the installation room at college and have continued to do this, primarily for the time accuracy. These are not specialist recordings. Of course the acoustics in my home are very different from the breeze-blocked room at colllege. What I have noticed, however, is the quality and speed of the lines I am drawing which vary quite dramatically. This may be a mood thing or (more likely) a time thing – as I said in my last post the drawings are becoming so much a part of my routine that they are slotted in across the day – much like everything else I do. I found myself completing some of the smaller daily sketchbook drawings at the kitchen table whilst my kids were getting ready for school.
This isn’t because I feel they are unimportant but I have definitely decided, particularly with the smaller, shorter activities that I’m more interested in the time they take rather than the specific outcome. Some of them are not going to be resolved as well as they would need to be for the degree show I certainly won’t be presenting everything. I want my submission to the show to be carefully considered and impactful.
The larger drawing, though, is recorded every day. It sits in my office/space at home on its trestle table – the three sections folded in on themselves, taking up almost all the floor space.
Tomorrow I am taking it into college to film and document it for our degree catalogue. Perhaps it might be interesting to take the drawing to other places and make recordings there?
Something to consider.
I haven’t drawn yet today. When I started 13.4.13 – 13.5.13 I worked on the drawings first thing in the morning, on waking, completing my daily creative task before beginning the rest of my day.
By midweek the drawing tasks were being pushed later and later into the day, crowded out by work, family commitments, daily tasks.
On Thursday, I made my drawing at 11.30pm and on Friday I’d fallen asleep early, woke in a panic and got up just after 11.30pm to complete the task. Yesterday I finished my drawing two minutes before going out for the evening.
The act of drawing and making this work has slipped quite quickly alongside the other activities that need to be completed every day.
This task I set myself as a separate act of creativy and significant part of my degree show work has become so part of everydayness that it is pushed and pulled around my waking hours alongside all the other things on my to-do-list.
I like the idea that by the end of the thirty days, the habit of drawing like this will have embedded itself into my daily life, just as the biro is being embedded into the lining paper with lines darkening and broadening as I work over them each day.
The art of lying
Within five days of my daily tasks, it has become clear to me that I could lie. I could lie about the tasks I’m performing, the lines I’m drawing, the work I’m creating. No-one would have to know – would they?
What is clearer is that it’s easier to lie in the real, analogue world than it is in the digital one.
I have to confess to making mistakes already. I am trying to remember to photograph the drawings and sketchbooks I am making each day. This doesn’t always happen. When it doesn’t happen, I have an internal debate about whether I should just make it up – no-one would know, would they?
A few years ago I would have been able to take and develop a photograph and it would be quite difficult for anyone to say exactly when it was taken unless I told them or perhaps included a watch or clock within the frame. Now, even the tiniest digital camera records the time and date the photograph was taken. Maybe I could be clever and alter the settings on my cameras but once that photograph is uploaded on to my PC, the record is there, the date and time logged as clearly as the pixels.
I’m recording images a little more frequently over at immaterialpractice.blogspot.com and sorting the photographs of my various activities as I go along. As I repeatedly work on some of the drawings I have realised that the photographs will become the only record of each stage.
For example I am repeatedly adding gouache lines to a small square of watercolour paper and each day it changes – the previous marks disappear under the new lines, changing the colour, not always for the better – as I work my way across the gouache palette, each day the lines get a little muddier, sometimes a little less defined, sometimes a little more. I’m not a painter. I’m just interested that I spend a little time every day making these changes and recording them. It will be finished, not in terms of an aesthetic decision but because its time is up. I won’t paint it again after 13.5.13 – that will be it, its time will be done.
wake walk drink draw time record eat cut wrap slice click wash dry dress drive work listen search help listen eat drive check email cut slice cook drink eat talk draw write sit undress brush read sleep. Today is the first full day of home/work/drawing/writing. A challenge is a good thing…. www.immaterialpractice.blogspot.co.uk
