It seems the decision as to when I should leave this first section and move onto the second one has been made for me. I have an Open studios weekend coming up 1 – 3 October at my Euroart studio in Tottenham and I am going to install the work there this weekend. I need to get it out of the shed here anyway – although I have a great new wall in there (courtesy of my lovely husband) it is now nearly 2m wide and I can no longer photograph it in the house. The photo I have just put up is taken in the shed and I had to move to the side to get it. It’ll be good to see it in a different, larger space anyway.
I have had a bit of feedback on the work recently, a couple of friends (also artists) have visited. It was a relief to be able to talk to people about what I am doing – especially when the making process is an odd combination of being fractured and yet intense. Lovely to get a comment on this blog too. Thanks Claire.
Anyway – the result is I am feeling much more confident about the work and being ready for the Big Draw event at artsdepot on the 24th October. I’ll write more about that later…!
Just grabbing a minute to do this blog between feeding and bathing grumpy children! Managed to clear a little bit of space in the shed whilst the younger one had a nap – I am expecting a visit from a journalist for The Archer (local free press) on Monday to talk about the project so I thought it might be prudent to make it at least vaguely accessible! I have to admit I am pleased that it’s going to get a bit more local publicity – I still want paper from a wider cross section of the community and getting the public’s interest is the only way I can think might help with this. There is going to be a collection box for paper outside the gallery at artsdepot from Monday too – so please pop some in if your passing. Paper with info on local history would be good – but honestly I’m grateful anything really!
In terms of the work itself I haven’t done as much as I would have liked lately as I’ve been away for a bit, but the hours I have managed to snatch when smallest has been napping and small has been happily occupied have helped to move it on. It’s becoming a bit more sculptural now with areas being pushed up into high relief and the shadows cast are to do with the form of the work rather than the initial cut map. I can’t allow the work to get much bigger top to bottom but I need to extend it from the sides – you might be able to see I’m starting to do that already form the photos.
Thanks to Chipping Barnet library for the paper by the way.
The school holidays have proved to be an interesting exercise in time management! Trips to libraries to collect paper (thank you North Finchley) and two visits to the delightful Museum of Barnet have been family outings. I am hoping that The Museum of Barnet will be able to find some photocopier erratum with a historical link for me to use in 1894 section. Working on the piece has meant snatching the odd hour when one child is napping and the other ensconced in some activity – however I do now feel it is really progressing. Have done the majority of the intricate first layers the lower ones are less complicated as each subsequent shadow projection is less detailed than the previous. The work is beginning to take on more of a sculptural form and extending from the 2D map format into a softly undulating mass.
Whilst making it I find myself reading the paper I am working with. It is an activity that is both revelatory and anonymous: shopping lists, drawings, texts from university courses…they tell me something about the donor but it is only the briefest of things.
It’s been a little while since I last blogged but I haven’t been sitting around watching paper curl as it were. I have collected a great deal of paper from my daughters school and also from the artsdepot which is great except of course it all makes it rather real. I have to admit on occasion I do wonder if I am going to be able to successfully pull off this project. The work is happening – I am at least making it and working within the parameters I have set myself (using paper collected from the community, layering and drawing and cutting the shadows and so on) and it is beginning to resemble something like I had imagined. And yet…I want a broader range of material from a wider community and I am finding it difficult to know how to access this. Additionally, I am fighting with a natural inclination to want to produce an order to the work – to impose my own set of visual aesthetics on it. I suspect I ought to let the work evolve by process alone, which is what gives it some of its integrity but the ‘arranger’ in me wants to interfere. It also makes it difficult when you know 99% of people who see it will judge it purely visually.
I went into artsdepot today and did a mini install which was useful and allowed me to get some up to date photos for this blog. I put it up in bar depot which is where it will be installed for the Big Draw event. When that happens it will be suspended at angle over the bar and not on the wall but it was good to be in the space to see how the scale is working. It needs to get a bit bigger – at least 4 times the size I reckon. If I mange it I suspect I will have lost all feeling in the tip of my right index finger by then! I have also started the second section – from an old 1864 map of North Finchley which is closer and so slightly easier to work – but more of that later.
Just had an enjoyable and remarkably relevant trip into east London. Amongst other galleries I spontaneously went into Tintype on Redchurch St and saw Joby Williamson’s installation ‘What have you forgotten?’ An archive of post-it notes he has picked up and collected, slides of which are projected from a number of points. It is in turns funny and poignant. Worth a visit. A second, most relevant show was ‘Whose Map is it?’ at Rivington Place. Artists including Susan Stockwell who use maps and mapping in their work. A bonus is the free colour catalogue that goes with the show…collected paper and maps, now what would happen if you brought those ideas together?!
