Researching, mentoring and making

I wanted to write about the mentoring which I’ve had during this process and what I’ve discovered.

The two people I asked – Nicola Shipley, from Grain in Birmingham, and the artist Sian Bonnell – have different roles in their careers. I met with them several times over the time of the support, and found it hugely enriching. 

As this support via the bursary has gone on over a much longer time frame than was intended, due to the pandemic, I’ve probably reflected on this more than I would have put in a single blog post describing ‘a mentoring event’. I feel I can more fully say that the purpose of mentoring has exceeded my expectations, and it’s now become an integral part of my practice.

There is the practical stuff – ‘Don’t take on anything else until you’ve done that other thing’ (Nicola)…or ‘Delete that app, you know it’s no good for you’ (Sian).  There’s deeper practical work about writing proposals, who to talk to next. And the philosophical stuff – what’s this about, is it a black hole, yes it is.

But really, I found it much more fluid than I’d imagined. It takes time. It’s about relationship building with a person who’s got a professional investment in what you are doing. 

Adjacently, I developed a really enriched dialogue with another artist, through WhatsApp. I took this back into one of my mentoring relationships too – a back-and-fore discussion with no interruption. It’s been transformative and I have since broadened this use with other professional friendships, where we are going to use it as a writing gathering tool. So what started as one thing, became quite another. I’d have never been able to afford mentoring for my practice if I’d not had this bursary and it fed into a subsequent proposal for a DYCP grant. I had a better understanding of what I was hoping to get, and then I was able to be clearer of why I was asking for the support in that successful application. So the support from a-n has been critical  because it came at a time when I really needed to get a formal structure in place which kept me going.

https://vimeo.com/556169533

Finally I got to see a very important manuscript.
In person.
This has been such a milestone I could hardly believe it was reached. This bursary has been in part supporting me with ‘due diligence’ on a project and I can officially now say I went to the source.
The ‘source’ was this manuscript in Leeds Armouries, and as the library part of it wasn’t actually open until May 2021 it’s been impossible to go and look at it. But finally I went.
And it was great. The manuscript is The School of Fencing by Dominico Angelo, 1765. I have previously been studying the 1787 version and this one is more vibrant, with exquisite plates and lots of detail. It was stunning. I also asked the really helpful librarian to assist me in any other material that he thought might be useful to me as he really knew the collection. He brought out some amazing books that I would not have known about. I am 100% sure that libraries – and librarians – are one of the best inventions since the wheel. They cannot be replicated by a search-bar. Fact. It’s about people.

This is my own photograph of the manuscript, held in the Royal Armouries, Leeds.

Alongside this, I added in a trip to Manchester, to visit Platt Hall. Platt Hall is home to a lot of costume, and I was able to meet with the curator Miles Lambert and access original pieces from the 18th century and look at embroidery details. It is absolutely fascinating doing primary research. I could feel all the light-bulbs going off, where connections were made to other things. Amusingly, I found a book at home a month later, but which I had borrowed two years ago and lost. It completely ties to all this primary research I had gathered. It was deeply satisfying to see these two things come together – it made me realise how much I have been thinking and reading in the right area over a number of years and this is gratifying.
What I learned was how the embroidery on the coats were far more suited to my purpose in their weight and texture, that the lines they followed were closer to those of the actual body. Which makes sense, because the idea of a coat for example follows the contours of the back more accurately than a dress.

It was also interesting to see how fine the fabric was in reality – some of the embroidery on the women’s clothing was done on muslin or other very thin fabric, which was extremely delicate. Massive thanks for the access at Platt Hall, who let me take my photographs and look at such amazing items.

As this research ties into a body of work I have been making for a long time it now feels like I have a really thorough understanding of my idea from all angles. It is particularly important to me to scaffold this work with this historical research….It’s tied to the politics of making work as a woman with my own body using a needle. I feel I need to cover all bases… to make sure that it can’t be…demoted. To say this with 100% certainty: I really know what I’m talking about.

I went to stay with my friend and mentor, the artist Sian Bonnell. Sian has a practice which includes performative photographic elements and is also in her own work, so I felt that she would really get where I was coming from and also be able to help me identify if I had any gaps in my thinking. We had an ‘official’ mentoring session as part of the bursary at the end of my stay, but to be honest there was so much sharing and thinking going on throughout a few days that it felt much deeper than an ‘official session’. Mentoring is a real art – to be mentored and to be a mentee. There’s a lot going on and it’s reciprocal. It’s not adult-bullet-points. Although sometimes it can be…But it’s more of a chemistry… to help someone get where they need to be. In my particular practice, and with this particular body of work, I wanted to build an army around me. And Sian is brilliant to have in my army.
I’m going to write separately on mentoring as I think it deserves it’s own discussion.

I have now undertaken a session of 1:1 tuition with an expert printmaker, Martyn Grimmer, at Spike Island. While this is about a transmission of skills, I think I should also explain the embodied knowledge that was part of it and is part of the reason I wanted to work in this way.
Martyn also taught my mother. She was an artist who used a lot of print in her work. Most of my work is about using my body as a tool, exploring the idea of being the end of the line….recognising that it’s a repository of family feeling and knowledge and history. So it seemed incredibly vital that I was able to learn this in this particular way. I should say perhaps, that I also did a workshop a few years ago in something similar, and without that connection, that feeling of belonging to a lineage, it didn’t really ‘land’ with me at all. I just found it a bit unsatisfying.

With this time….I can tell you it was really great to learn how to ink up a plate I had made from a photograph, I can tell you about ink warming on the hotplate, I can tell you about ‘paper fingers’ to stop you getting ink on the paper, I can tell you that the print looked pretty good. I can tell you I won’t be using a laser-print to generate my initial drawing because I’ll get a rubbish half-tone you can see under a lupe if you look really hard. I can tell you that my paper seemed to have lost half it’s size because of the way I’d stored it. I can tell you it demystified the process, which is kind of good, kind of bad, because everyone likes a bit of magic.

But in the end, it just was actually just that – magic. Because really, what my work is about – is yearning. I’d been yearning to make a mark, yearning to use my mum’s press, yearning to connect. There’s the process of learning a skill – which I did – and the process of connection.

That’s the bit that I really learned something about.

I went back to get the print yesterday after it had properly dried… Again, it’s hard to share this at this stage because it’s meant to be a ‘surprise’. But I was extremely pleased with it. There’s a bit which is absolutely sublime.

Side-note. I have been having a lot of conversations with another artist friend about using mediums not your ‘home’ medium. Who gives you permission? Because no one is in charge. I’ve long been wanting to do this. Its been knocking on my internal door for so long I almost can’t bear it, its so loud. The bursary – it has been really important.it shouldn’t be ‘validation’, but it sort of is…I find the labels of art-making very frustrating, because really ‘Artist’ should suffice. And some of the things I’m working out about this is through trying things out with other mediums.

There’s a saying about certain plants – first year sleeps, second year creeps, third year leaps. This process has been a bit like that and I’m currently in a leap.
Which is a relief.
Last week I had an email from the librarian at Leeds Armouries about visiting in person as it’s now open only on Thursdays. This is brilliant. I’ve struggled to get around with the restrictions as daily life is now completely different to when I started, but I’ve enjoyed the time it’s given me to make work with less travel.
The print-making is almost underway – I was meant to go today but my tutor had to re-schedule to next week. I’m itching to get on with that part, as I have many ancillary things that go along with it (which I can’t yet share as it’s part of the big reveal).
I am also building more of a relationship with one of my mentors in particular, who I am going to visit when I go to the armouries. This has also been difficult to plan as the lifting of restrictions, which got changed this week by the government, impacts that. I think what is hidden is how much artists eek out budgets by help from people – in kind or otherwise – where you go and stay at someone’s house or get a lift somewhere, and that has a real-cost impact on how you carry things out. Leeds is a relatively long way from me in Bristol and the train-fare there has gone up over the pandemic. It’s ludicrous, so I’ll have to drive. I’m trying to turn it into a trip where I can do several things at once and have a really deep mentoring session as part of that where I lay everything out on the floor and look at the whole lot. I think that doing that kind of work out of the studio – out of the home as well – will be critical to seeing it through someone else’s eyes. It’s difficult to do that when you have been working on it for five years….