Projects and Preoccupations

Last time I visited here I was in the waiting place, and now, I realised, I feel like George in George’s Marvelous Medicine.

The pots are simmering nicely and the concoctions I’m working on are alluring and treacle like; with lots of scope for spontaneity and electrifying results. (i’m thinking I should see if I can find a good quote to put here while im on this tangeant..)

Simmering pots:

Residency type work at a local primary school; some of my proposals for projects have been well received/given a green light and I’m now at the costing and planning stage, with some paid workshops in between.

Collaborating with a couple of other art educators to devise a take home project for school children which we’ll then re present as a striking installation.

Planning the Artists Skills Swap in France; thinking about workshop ideas which make good use the skills available and creating a schedule of complimentary combinations of workshops so that ideas can flow from one to another.

Coming up with ideas and proposals for festivals this year, a combination of collaboration and independent work.

Thinking about next steps. Studio? Teaching role? Residency opportunities?

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I liked the artist blog I just looked at that highlighted showing your working out. That reminds me of maths lessons! But rings true for this blog. There is so much need to ‘present yourself’ that its refreshing to think that here you can keep track of the workings out, the labour, the changes in state of mind and motivation. The journey. Still public (remembering interviewer refering to this- thankfully positively!) but a work in progress rather than finished and slick article.

So, notes on collaborating.

Recent experiences have taught me a few things about myself.Strengths are ideas (‘as these are my currency’ I boldly declared on a recent proposal letter, ‘I trust you will not take them further without my consultation’.), networking/ making connections between ideas-peaple-things, problem solving, stubborness regarding the creative ideal, optimism, skills bredth. I’ve realised Im less interested in the detail, until I’m actually doing something, and then I’ll pretty much undo myself to make it work and have really high expectations. So I need to allow time for things, to eleveate the end-of-the-line-make-it-work-what -ever-the-odds stress! Because this is where it can get unhealthy. I remember being like this at school, age 7 doing a project on chimpanzees. Teaching seems to really highlight this in me. Lately Ive been trying to allow for this: by being pragmatic rather than optimistic in my timings in my scheduling re proposals and skills swaps.

A friend said the other day; a healthy collaboration is where you walk away feeling like you’ve given and received back (and achieved something unexpected? – my addition), unhealthy where ideas go unrecognised/ misattributed and you feel like you’ve lost something of yourself. I’m learning there are many ways to collaborate. I’m finding that it is a helpful way of gearing up to activity, as collboration can focus me and make me prioritise, kickstarting activity that Im then happy to run with.

Sculpture – Sculptor

I have been in Dr Seuss’ waiting place it seems. Putting feelers out in all directions getting myself lost and confused; trying to fill out a tax return and having big impulses to do some making, setting aside time for making that becomes tax return/chores time. Tripping myself up, swinging from inactivity to compulsive multi-tasking.

But waiting can be constructive. Last night someone said to me that out of directionless time – the waiting place – comes something new, a change, a transformation.

Another conversation – a talk about sculpture and my urges towards it. Throughout motherhood I have been printmaking and collaging in and around the day to day. Where’s the sculpture? Why the sculpture? Because it is physical and tangeable. Because it communicates with the space it exists in. Because it exists AND alludes. Because it is reflective AND constructed.

I realised I’d even stopped noticing sculpture that’s being made now. I looked at the Turner prize (not my usual source of inspiration) and found synchronicity; Hilary Lloyd talking about film in sculptural terms, ways of seeing as well as what is seen.(This was also my preoccupation during my degree)

Martin Boyce – Autumn leaves and telephone booth. I liked his process; how one thing evolved from another, the work referred to the urban and natural environment, human intervention, the evolution of objects. Using fragments; alluding to nonlinear memory.

Karla Black talking about art in general as a space for behaviour. ‘ Art is a boxed off bit of society where permission is given to behave as the animals we are’.

The Waiting Place

“You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…

…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.”

Spinning plates – This feels like a good metaphor for where I’m at. My heads busy but I feel like I’m actually stopping myself from moving forward. Where am I going? How do I get there?

1) Projects for schools; using my skill set to create opportunities for children through art

2) Professional development – networking with other arts professionals to gain peer support and critique; fuel and imputus for making

3) Making room for making; putting this actively on the agenda – time and physical space and resources

4) Keeping an eye open for opportunities – exhibitions, residencies, commissions – for focus; deadlines help!

5) Making time for research; galleries, photography, art libraries – and recording this research

This summer I developed a proposal for Room for Imagination to create work at Wilderness Festival; which aimed to compliment and highlight the environment that Wilderness was set in. (Cornbury Deer Park Estate, Oxfordshire)

Due to time constraints my original proposal had to be simplified, so I went with creating a flock of birds that could be hung in trees around the site in various configurations.

The pink birds were made from sheet plastic acrylic and the rest were made from recycled estate agent boards and painted, wallpapered/covered using sticky backed plastic.

Some birds were hung in pairs in trees edging the swimming lake, the rest were hung en mass in a beautiful old oak tree at the entrance to the site from the camping field.

Projects and Preoccupations is an updated title. I started this blog as an experiment: an alternative to a studio, a gathering space for ideas and images to help with consistency and fluidity in my work. Three years on..I’m still finding this useful as its proving to be a record of my projects and preoccupations in making.

studioless but still collecting started in 2008

Original blog description:

I recently gave up my studio but this is a beginning for me. I realised that despite adversity I still manage to find creativity. The ideas still trickle in and in fact a little adversity makes the creativity richer in my opinion. So here is my experiment – to use this blog as a collecting space, a virtual studio to gather ideas and develop my practice.