Sleep-drunk I dance

After last post decided to take a break from blogging; aim to be back in September. Until then I’ll be pondering the links between snippets of texts, ideas and images mixing it up in my tired head: Iphigenie, Grimm’s The Girl without Hands, Otto Dix’ invalids, LR’s girl, Crivelli’s child watching the annunciation, Elfriede Lohse-Wächter’s work, Suetterlin, nursery rhymes, primary colours, polymorph modernist shapes, bodies and psyches, right (and left) arms, the gestures/deeds they are capable of, sleeves, stares and stories, hand-me-down memories… Will look at old photos with my mom, maybe record some of our conversations, crochet, draw, cut, tear, note, think, but first of all take long series of deep breaths and unwind the tightening coils of my brain.

Closed my Linkedin and Facebook accounts, when time is right will start from scratch and make better use of them. Skull-pains much better – good reason to break into stand-up song and lie-down dance. Dizzy though much of the time, esp. when supine, seem to be floating feet up to the ceiling, flat and flimsy as a tissue paper doll. Tune in for whispered version of Louis Armstrong oldie Nobody knows how tired I have been…

On Saturday I received a letter from the Arts Council – my grant application, supported by the Arthouse (for money to pay art-professional to support, evaluate and enhance my practice, establish ways of more effectively linking me into the (art) world and researching how artists who, for reasons of ill-health or others, are excluded from regular direct participation in networking, face-to-face contact at exhibition openings, training, interviews, studio visits and other events, can build and sustain relationships with arts professionals and audiences) has been rejected. Set in motion all kinds of useless dispiriting thoughts about where they’d found me wanting – my art, my project, myself… Luckily had been bolstered a bit by lovely, constructive art/life visit from Kate Murdoch the day before. Brushing off, bumbling on. Threads to pull, see what comes. Until soon. Have a good summer!

Another series finished. In terms of presentation/ documentation I rather like the black background.

Came up with a little poem to go with the work, of nursery-rhyme simplicity and sting, tieing the pieces together in a different way:

The soldier’s child
knows hollows to hide

The soldier’s son
hoards hush and won’t run

The soldier’s daughter
shakes the hearts he brought her
and daily deftly gaily bereftly
cuts the hiss from slaughter

Soldier’s daughter (2013)

Dimensions: two pieces 53 cm x 28.5 cm

Materials: crocheted from wool/polyester yarn


During the last two weeks I lost (truly) three whole consecutive days as a crushing wave of ever worsening M.E.-symptoms washed over me and hardly let me come up for air. When it finally deposited me it wasn’t on a beach… Even on normal M.E.-days every small activity exacts its disproportional pay-off. I’m struggling to keep myself motivated, feel like I’m heaving myself from post to post and have been wondering if I should continue writing or maybe focus my minute energies on reading other people’s blogs (when fatigue doesn’t blur my vision) until I start the on-line project which is part of my G4A-application. One of the things I hoped for here – direct feedback for my artwork – hasn’t really happened much, but maybe my expectations were too high. Other artists get out and have opportunities for exchanges and evaluation of their practice, be it in their studios, a pub, or an exhibition – my art conversation eggs are mainly in the Artists Talking basket and direct engagement is the exception (one art-visit coming up next week – yeah, Kate!). I do value my blog as a record of and framework to at least some of what I’m doing and thinking about, and a few closer and really fruitful exchanges have developed and are keeping me going. Just now I am esp. excited by two blogs: Jean McEwan’s Reciprocity and Rodney Dee’s Art as Therapy have widened the scope of my thinking, not only in relation to my own art practice. Jean sent me a few of her poignant zines and I posted photos and a poem to her – it’s wonderful to have something real to hold, to ponder, to connect with.

Latest highlight (still struggling to recover physically) was this sunny Sunday’s visit of Ben Cove’s beautiful, intelligent, mysterious solo-show Vernacular Hangover at ACME Project Space, which he helped make possible (thanks, Ben!). The exhibition, with its critical and engaging interplay between found photographs and original paintings, exploring the politics of looking, its pleasures and pitfalls, – was the impetus for a kind of time-travel, and made me regret once more my rather superficial knowledge of art history. It was good to see work that in approach and execution is totally different to mine (note to self: stop searching for work that I can easily identify with) and find connections, and I much enjoyed the conversation with Ben. Plus: I wore sandals for the first time this year!

Jean McEwan: Reciprocity
/p/2540360/

Rodney Dee: Art as Therapy
/p/2422257/