Below, surface and above interwoven relationships
I have put up work I made on the residency at Ashburnham and am quietly chuffed if not a little surprised with the professional way I have hung it and the environment it is in. Work made and exhibited in the environment where it has been created genuinely seems to have a deeper resonance with the colours the textures and the invisible energies of a place.
During the summer in France I loved the freedom to be in a place without recent or creative history for me it was warm and welcoming, wild and creative, it was generously given by friend and artist Claire and her family, without complication of expectation.
Annemarie O’Sullivan’s teaching is the same – generous. I went to learn how to make a basket – I wanted to learn a skill to create better 3d forms. My maquettes were fun but had got as far as they could without more skill. Annemarie provides time and space without limit, no rushing, just acceptance and interest, generosity too is a skill and I want to learn that. To receive it is like being given a long cool drink in a hot desert gradually you become aware of your surroundings and not your discomforts, you are free to look outwards to grow.
I have signed up for a two-year course in basketry at City Lit to learn how to make things that don’t ultimately fall apart. I want to learn construction methods that use materials that are reachable (more than metal and its technical and expensive requirements) I want to play with learning the rules and then breaking them or adapting them, using different materials once I have acquired a new language of line describing space. It feels very very exciting, not something I EVER thought I would say about basket making!
This is a somewhat unexpected outcome of Revolution and Resonance but a very fitting one. It builds on knowledge and experimentation I have gained through doing the project and fulfils a need to learn a generic set of skills that will enable me to play and experiment at a new level in the future. It also provides me with a source of potential income making baskets as I practice or perhaps an endless supply of gifts to my friends…beware.
People have been a very important part of my support and learning throughout this project – I feel privileged to have received their time and unconditional support, it has been a strongly nurturing process and this helps me see the whole, the gestalt as a life changing opportunity I can embrace this as my mentors Judith Alder and Annemarie are my role models I admire their ways of working and philosophy. As my mum died this time last year, this role modelling is an essential part of the process of becoming independent again a bit like when I first left home. I am learning more of what I want to do or to be like for me this is an integral element of ‘being’ an artist, it is about who I am and who I believe I am as a person as much as it is about the work and the ideas.
These relationships that we depend on, the hidden and personal, how we interact on the surface and what external factors influences the work.
Below, surface and above – interwoven relationships are all potential ‘drawn’ lines to explore I think I may be beginning to understand what my practice is about.
September and the Sculpture has eased into a new form changed over a season by the elements…
