What a very different week at the studio! There are artworks being made and thought about!!
My upcoming show will feature a number of new works that are inspired by missing pieces in a second-hand jigsaw that a friend and I started last Christmas. The original jigsaw that we began together but which I only completed long after my friend’s return to London took months to finish (it was actually Easter when I put down the last piece). A combination of other commitments and adverse work conditions (a cramped bedroom with poor light) made the ultimately rewarding activity a somewhat arduous task. How different it has been to have time and light at the studio in which to work! I am amazed at how engrossed I become and at how quickly time passes.
I am becoming fascinated with the processes and thoughts that I experiencing. It has been a while since I was so aware of looking. Looking and looking, and how seeing – seeing where a piece belongs – is so different from looking at the piece. It is as though I am able to look but not to see, that is to say that I consciously look for a piece but the seeing it seems to happen elsewhere or at least differently. I feel that I can challenge myself to look, but seeing remains elusive to me – coming when it chooses rather than at my command. Perhaps because I do not draw I am particularly aware of the looking that I am doing now as I make these jigsaw puzzles. This is something that I want to return to.
It has been a wonderful week – and I mean ‘wonderful’ as in ‘full of wonder’. Funny that a week ‘full of awe’ probably should not be described as an ‘awful week’.
Next week, being in London and at my grandma’s funeral in Devon, is going to be considerably different, but absolutely not awful. My grandma, like John, left few but very clear guidelines for the service, neither of them wanted people to mourn – they both enjoyed a good party and wanted a ‘good’ send off. With her “green door” coffin, three uplifting poems, and Frankie Vaughn singing “Green Door” my grandma is going to have the service she wanted. The secret that the green door has been keeping is not a secret to her anymore – she is on the other side.
My grandma decided years ago, and told family and friends, that she was going to have a “green door coffin” – I thought that she wanted something ecological. But she was actually referring to the Frankie Vaughn song that was a favourite of hers, and she carried in her glasses case a cutting from an advert for coffins painted to look like doors. My brother’s partner – a very talented draftswoman – has drawn up the design for what will be a unique ‘green door’ casket. And in her purse my grandma carried three poems about ‘remembering fondly’ rather than ‘mourning’, in one of them she had amended a man’s name to “mum” and now it makes perfect sense for my mother to read it about her mother. I will read the poem titled ‘Death is nothing at all’, the funeral will be just a few days after the seventh anniversary of John’s funeral and the sentiment seems especially poignant
” … Nothing is past; nothing is lost … “
New year is always a good time to reflect on things and set ambitions for the coming twelve months. With the somewhat unexpected, though not entirely surprising, death of my grandmother at the age of 103, wondering about what it is exactly that I am doing and where I am heading seems even more poignant and pressing. Add to this that I have spent the last four days making an application for a teaching post that is bound to attract a very high standard of applicant, whilst finishing up the last of my duties on the Introduction to Artistic Research course, and it is easy to understand my almost overwhelming desire for some sense of certainty.
So, new year, new goal setting!
- focus on making art
- that’s it … focus on making art!
- and just that
Putting together a truly comprehensive CV for my application I came to see just how many things I do at the same. It is no wonder that they over lap and compete for my time which ultimately makes it difficult (nigh-on impossible) to achieve the very thing that they are supposed to contribute toward – a sustainable practice!
This blog, and with that I refer to the processes of reflection, synthesis, and expression that it requires, has been an obvious casualty of my diverse and demanding activities. I had neither time to write it nor much content beyond the occasional comment on art produced by someone else. So with the cancellation of my teaching and my leaving the gallery committee here at the studio I intend to redress this somewhat sorry state of affairs.
Firstly I need to get on with making work for the upcoming exhibition that I have here at the studio. I know what I want to make and how I want it to look. The short time in which I have to achieve it (or at least something approaching it) will ensure that I do not get distracted or tempted to do something else. There are several practical issues that I will need to resolve, and I look forward to doing this! I also look forward to seeing if I am able to pull the whole thing off!!
“Dormant” – an appropriate word as it puts me in mind of the mouse (dormouse) at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, and describes the recent state of my blog here! In an only somewhat tenuous way the condition of my blog and the story of Alice in Wonderland are not unrelated. Over the past few weeks I have been quite busy assisting Tim with feathers, hats, and headdresses for the launch of a collaborative project between him, Lisa (Sweden’s only hat-maker) and Haakon (a make-up artist and mask-maker). Their project: House of Mad Hatter.
The opening was on Saturday. I am very grateful for being invited to join them in Gothenburg and to have the opportunity to meet people that Tim has worked with over the years. Once again I found myself feeling inspired to get on with my own things, and see if I can not find ways to do it more collaboratively. I was reminded once more that an artist’s relationship with their gallery, curator, institution, financier, is (or should be) a collaboration. And that the only way to build collaborations to get on and do it!
Working with Tim has also made me very aware of how much of his knowledge and skill is based on really understanding his materials. His level of competence is not only technical but also historical, and of course aesthetic. In the past I have always been seduced by more conceptual approaches to my own practice that in turn has led to working with a range of materials and processes. I am quite envious of how focussing on a specific range of materials develops an expertise that I do not recognise in either my work or myself. The trouble is that my mind runs away with itself – my mind is certainly faster than my hand! And this is how I find myself with a studio full weird and wonderful materials and ‘academic’ art works that simply do not pay the rent!! I enjoy learning new things, new techniques, however if I were to be critical of this I would have to say that it the attraction (distraction) of new processes and materials might well be hindering the deepening development of the more crafted qualities that I admire in other artists’ work.
Sorting through the shelves here a couple of weeks ago I came across a length of blue velvet that was intended to be used in my degree-show piece. Prior to dying feathers this piece of fabric was the only thing that I have every dyed. My degree work was a large wooden double-sided sculptural wardrobe. The top-side of which should have been upholstered in this deep midnight blue velvet. Due to various, serious, issues during the final term the piece eventual presented as its component parts rather than a singular object. The length of blue velvet remained uncut, unworked. The theatrical camp aspect of my current work at Mejan includes creating a costume for a dandy satyr. Blue velvet. Dandy satyr. One very fitted short-tailed jacket with ‘M-notch’ lapels made in the 25 year old velvet that has followed me from Dartington to Stockholm.
I recently learnt that the ‘Introduction to Artistic Research’ course that I co-lead will not be offered in the new year. This is disappointing. Not only do I enjoy the work but we have also received such positive feedback from so many participants. Anna and I had even began to discuss the possibility of developing and extending the course over the full academic year to increase the amount of one to one project supervision and to enable us to programme more visiting guests. Hopefully we will have the chance to propose this in time for it to be considered for the coming autumn term. In the meantime I am looking forward to a spring term when I can focus on my own projects both at Mejan and here in the studio.
