Simulacra And Simulations

Myself and Sally Lemsford braved the snow and ice to drive down to Colchester for OpenAIR: Effecting Change last weekend. We unfortunately had slightly misjudged travel times from AA and arrived an hour late, missing some of the keynote speeches, however, we both took part in workshops and networking, and it was exciting and inspiring to see some projects that are going on and to be involved – we both agreed that we need to know about what’s going on so that we can participate and support them, and that there should be wider events taking place in a variety of locations across the UK at the same time in order to raise the profile for what we’re working towards.

We met some interesting people, and when I dropped by Mum’s on the way home, I came across an article in the local newspaper that seemed to highlight the very issues that we face. The article is about some Network Rail workmen that were criticised for building a snowman instead of “working”. Of course, we all know those workmen are most likely artists themselves, and that the kind of nimby attitudes of non-artists out in rural Lincolnshire inhibits the ability for artists to create, or. more importantly for artists to be considered as “working” and not “doing something for fun that everyone else expects to be given on a plate” so as such, inhibiting ordinary people trying to get to work by building snowmen at roadworks is a dynamic action as protest.

Gosh, haven’t blogged on here since the beginning of December!

By mid Dec the kids were off school, so I was forced to take time out to play hostess to my Mum and brother for Christmas. I can’t say I envy all of you on here that have been blogging right up and over Christmas – do you never give yourselves a break??!!

Refreshed for 2012, I blogged here: http://helend-blackbird.blogspot.com/ about collaborations with Apparatjik.

I’ve made a few remixes in my initiation into becoming a pop/rock star (!) my favourite is probably Don’t Eat Brian Sewell’s Banana, which is less of a song and more of a sort of art critique:

http://soundcloud.com/apparatjik/00029-dont-eat-br…

Yesterday I re-edited this to reflect some news about Velvet Underground suing Warhol http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/warhol-foundation-in-bana_n_1200180.html but Apparatjik haven’t uploaded any new tracks yet.

For Christmas, someone bought me one of those crystal kits, with little cardboard Nordic pines and solution to grow crystals. This is forming part of the animation, but my printer seems to get through a lot of printing ink to print the starry sky for the set. i want it to be absolutely perfect before I even begin to animate anything, otherwise if I change something it’ll look wrong. And not in a nice William Kentridge fashion – it’ll just look Wrong.

Kurt (son) has a new laptop (from Santa!) and has put After Effects on it, so I hope to put the animation together using that, but am starting to wonder if I’ll manage to get enything even started (let alone finished) before the deadline, but plan to use one of my Apparatjik songs as the soundtrack.

It’ll effectively become a music video :-)

Meanwhile, my youngest son is finally being converted into a mad artist! He used to say he wasn’t a mad artist like me, but the other teatime he illuminated his kinetic wooden flag sculpture that he made in Design Tech with a bike light and videoed it along with sounds played with a stylophone.

I did not teach him to do that, he’s been annoyingly watching what I do and copying me. I should be paid the salary of a teacher, but I do not earn anything from these kinds of things, so I try my best to discourage him.

Last week I went to Nottingham to attend the AIRInsights event at Surface gallery, hosted by Rosalind Davies and Helen Jones from Walsall, who curated my degree show back in 2008.

Lots of insights into approaching curators, and developing relationships between artists and curators, commissioning work etc.

As it happens I’ve been applying secretly for Bend In The River at Gainsborough. This was the proposal I was putting together. I applied just after I graduated for work that I now realise really wouldn’t suit the location. Since then I’ve been to see Roy Pearce’s work there, and have been to several exhibitions at Bend In The River, met the curators and artists, I met the lovely Claudia Pilsl not so long ago, so I’ve gotten to know the kind of work exhibited and the spaces. I never knew how my work could respond to that unique location, but I’ve realised that it does. Fingers crossed I get that commission this time.

I got up early on Thursday morning to meet up to look around an empty shop space in the centre of Lincoln, which is outlined as a skillshare space with Lincolnshire Co-op. The Co-op are running the space and are having a cafe and workshops there, and I was hoping there’d be space for us to use on a regular basis, although this seems somewhat more limited to what I had in mind for Lincoln Artists’ Network. However, it’s an exciting prospect, especially as it won’t cost us anything other than a percentage towards overheads, and we won’t have to worry about all the insurance etc, because the Co-op will deal with that.

It’s not likely to be available until the new year now.

All of a sudden there was some excitement about some new studio spaces in Lincoln. An article I read by Susan Jones about how a majority of artists are giving up studios sat there glaringly in my mind’s eye. I prefer to hide away and work in my studio at home, especially when I get no reply from emails to these people, and once our Empty Shop space gets going, we won’t need to charge artists as much, which will be a bonus.

Yesterday was another busy networking day, an EMVAN meeting that started off well… but it ended up becoming difficult to be heard, then I bumped into Jack Hutchinson on a lunch break before taking part in Lincoln’s first AIRtime event.

I was glad to receive some positive feedback from Catherine Burge, especially about the possibility for the empty shops space, then really enjoyed talking to students and gaining support for the Cash For The Community fundraising efforts!!

In between all of this, I was offered a stall at the Indoor Market for the Christmas Market, in lieu of the empty shop not being quite ready yet, so I’m using this as an opportunity to promote the Cash For The Community, sell illustrated cards and some of my limited edition comics with fellow artists. I never make as much money as I’d like at markets, but it’s worth being involved in the Christmas Market for networking and spending a day chatting to interesting folk, I managed to negotiate the stall for free, so can’t really lose.

Yesterday the kids were off school on strike, and a lack of sleep the past couple of nights means I spent a day making proper Norwegian pepperkaker for gingerbread houses. I bought some shop ones from BHS last year and they were awful!!! Looked lovely, but tasted horrible. Proper pepperkaker is more-ish! If they turn out well I’ll sell some at the market! If not, the boys will eat them!!!