Sleep-drunk I dance

I’m back although mentally still suspended between two languages and two places – arriving is hard work! Spent lovely, affectionate days with family and friends, feasted on Anatolian garlic soup, Hungarian goulash and too many sweets, sipped sparkling wines and strong coffees, read a mystery for diversion and a novel to bind me in the world, was wheelchair-whizzed through an exhibition until my grin couldn’t keep me upright any longer, bought a catalogue that I can hardly carry, dreamed of museum-sleepovers and waking amongst pieces that I’d get to know slowly, like new friends, and when I lay on the sofa at my mom’s house like a fossilized pretzel I filled spaces with my own work, real and imagined.

Being back at one’s childhood home is a strange kind of dislocation – halfway in, halfway out, the territory familiar, fraught, and alien. Is the past ever as present as where we come from? For a sense of continuity and connection I took LR’s boy with me who was received with interest and questions and whose one-armed siblings lie curled up in the coils of my brain. Temperatures felt more like early spring – disorienting – has the new year really started? It seems so:

Happy New Year to you all! Glad to be posting again.

LR’s girl (2012)
Materials: hand-me-down wool/polyester mixture
Dimensions: 41 cm x 31 cm

LR’s boy (2012)
Materials: hand-me-down wool/polyester mixture
Dimensions: jumper 29 cm x 15 cm, pants 16 cm x 13 cm

2012 has been a rather challenging year, sign of the times-stuff to deal with on top of being unwell, and it’s important to remind myself of what has been good. Posting as part of Artists Talking is in my top ten. It has become a great framing device for my (flatling’s) art-life, a place to present, ponder, vent and wonder, and I’ve been sustained and invigorated by its connective potential. Because some of it has been so personal I‘ve often felt ambivalent about my appearances here, esp. when writing about how the M.E affects me. Illness is such a private thing, and while groping for discerning words and images has become a way of acknowledging its incontrovertible reality and shooting a little arrow into its gleaming eye, it’s also made me feel exposed. And yet it’s the right thing to do, for the moment.

Funny that I wrote so much about pain when its impact is usually secondary to the fatigue. It seems after all there was something that I might be able to convey. The real depths of fatigue are beyond words. You can’t speak from within as there’s nothing but. Body and mind are held to ransom in a barren grey zone and if I can write about it at all it is after the worst is over. I wish there were a kind of litmus test to measure and describe fatigue, but in the mean-time I’ll just have to try to express of it as much as I can. I’m grateful for your comments, always thoughtful, supportive, positive.

I’ve enjoyed reflecting on my art-practice, showing my work, sharing my exhilaration about art-outings and connections. While my art-life in general is somewhat precarious my ideas are clear and strong and excite me. There’s much to learn, to explore, have adventures with. Metaphorically speaking I’ve thrown a big ball of wool into the new year. Let’s see where it’ll drop, how it will roll and loop and knot. Meanderings and entanglements welcome.

And it’s been wonderful reading you, seeing your work, connecting with you. Want more of that, much more. Time for a break though. For now I’ll wish you happy holidays and a good start to an art-filled, heart-filled year. Until soon.

And where, and how (2003/4)
Material: Japan paper
Dimensions: The shoes are life-size. Measured in a row the dimensions are approx. 150 cm x 25 cm x 15 cm

Last week I had a really good, concrete tutorial with Rosalind Davis, funded through Shape Arts’ Creative Steps Mentoring scheme. Kindly she came to my home-studio-home, which meant it didn’t gobble up a whole week’s energies. Rosalind is so open, interested, imaginative, committed, positive, and real, that the tutorial not only gave me lots of leads but turned out to be a pleasure. We ended up on the floor looking at my foundlings and LR’s boy and girl. It meant a lot to have face-to-face contact, to be able to show work. I’ve got an audio-recording to go back to, and a couple of artists to look up: amongst others David Ketford and Nick Kaplony.

Although I am grateful for this opportunity I got upset with Shape Arts, a disability-led arts organisation. After I sent them an enthusiastic thank-you-e-mail they insisted that these tutorials could not take place at someone’s home and that I’d have to go to Rosalind’s studio for the follow-up appointment. When I let them know that it’s not always possible for me to go, given the M.E., they suggested skyping. It seems there are insurance issues. I wonder about artists who are completely housebound, who make great work of which we’ll never know because they are just outside of everything. I for one crave presence – of art, of people, which is why you can see me getting so excited every time I make it to an exhibition. I don’t know what I’d do without the internet, but nothing can replace direct engagement. And to show physical, actual work, not just its image on the screen, surely makes all the difference to how it’s perceived: you get the dimensions of a piece in relation to yourself, the colours and textures as they are, you share the same physical space and from there access the imaginative space the work opens up if it’s any good…

A friend of mine asked why it isn’t enough for me to make my pieces, but it’s not a way of keeping busy, nor is it a rehabilitative work activity. I went to art-college, my work is good, do I really have to make a case for myself? So what if I need support with stuff? By the by: I also struggle with calling myself a ‘disabled’ artist. Labels make me uncomfortable. And this is of absolute importance to me: I make art. Not disabled art. Not outsider art, as an art-professional suggested to me a while ago. Art. If I knew how to change the font-size and colour here, you’d see this in huge, red letters: ART.

Still, skype is a few steps up from chatting on-line or holding monologues, and the opportunities the internet offers to someone who doesn’t leave the house much are wide-ranging. I do want to explore that more, which is why in the new year I will put any Xmas-money I receive into the purchase of a tablet-thingemy (I know I’m dazzling you with my technical terms). I’ve got a computer, but given that my sitting times are’t very long I use a netbook. It sits on my belly while I’m lying down – may it not explode – and has been a great little helper these last few years. However its screen resolution isn’t very good, and looking at art or blogs is done as if through a drab curtain. A tablet is also much lighter and easier to handle. I see it as an investment in my art-future. It will connect me into the world a bit more. And I promise that I’ll keep up with your posts better too.

Good news: I’ve got three small pieces in Mysteryland, an exhibition in Manchester, curated by Blank Media Collective in collaboration with Z-arts. I was ‘found’ through axis-web and invited to participate! Would love to see what it’s like, was promised photographs. I like the idea of a different kind of venue, different audiences – kids will come, families – esp. in a time when arts-education is deemed superfluous.

Edith’s shoes (2009)
Material: tissue paper
Dimensions: 14 cm x 15 cm x 14 cm

Well, by now you’ll know my ‘outings’ are bittersweet, containing as they do the hunger for experience in the world and the knowledge of this being exceptional and exacting a price, although while I’m surrounded by art I’m grin-happy. If I’m lucky the buzz will outlast the exhausted, painful days that follow and pull me through the icy black waters of M.E-fatigue like a rope thrown from a life-boat.

My visit of ZAP-Open was such an occasion: a thoughtfully curated, vibrant show. Rosalind Davis and Annabel Tilley rock! I laughed, was moved, challenged, delighted and wanted to go back for more.

Three pieces I can’t get out of my mind:

Shelley Rae’s Perseveration, completely unexpected and yet utterly recognizable as a work of hers. It pierced me, still does, the photograph’s emotional impact stemming from a beautifully focussed simplicity. It seems full of longing and something else, fear, anxiety? But then you ask yourself – whose? Ours? The artist’s or the child’s whose disembodied hand we glimpse beneath the curtain folds? Did the artist catch the child unawares or is this a staged moment? What difference would it make to know? There are no answers in the work, you just become aware how fraught your gaze is. (Writing this I remember my girl-self standing by the window of our living room decades ago, looking out, which I did often. I can’t recall if I wanted to be outside or just watch the river, its slow, steady streaming, freighters laden with coal gliding past as if drawn on strings, their horns’ grave calls still echoing in my mind – a deep, rather eerie and yet reassuring sound.)

Ben Cove‘s Trans (last year we exhibited together at PSL) is unlike anything else. It collapses categories: is it painting? sculpture? 3D? 2D? abstract? figurative? precious? playful? from this earth? alien? I could go on. As soon as you make up your mind about one thing its opposite spins out at you until you give in and admit that it’s not a matter of either/or but of and, and more. Rather strangely this construction (for want of a better word), most of which leans precariously against the wall, touched me and made me laugh – something is alive in there…

I kept returning to Marina Velez’ enigmatic, powerful Lot. Two photographs of a cluttered room taken from slightly different angles are seamlessly joined together, creating a space where a woman sits/stands, wearing a kerchief/curlers on her head, and maybe one moment you think you’re somewhere in the Middle East, but then it’s probably London, or somewhere entirely different? You go close to inspect the objects in the living room/working room for clues – books, plants, shelves, door frames, light switches… – and settle for London knowing full well that you shouldn’t because while you turn away everything shifts again, including the mood. And why do I think it’s a self-portrait (it isn’t)?

These are works that kept drawing me in and I wish I could remember them better or live with them for a while – they slowly surrender layers of complexity but hold out on you, always. Ambiguity is at their centre: here the heart beats and brain-cells gyrate.

I had a double helping of joy at ZAP, briefly re-connecting not only with Rosalind and Annabel, but the artist Kate Murdoch’s too. Ha!

And merci for your comments! Something niggles at me: Being commended for continuing to make work while/inspite of being ill isn’t what I’m out for, though thanks all the same. I’m not brave, it’s just what I need to do. There’s no way around it. – The question, not only to myself, has to be: Can my art stand up for itself in the world? Is it complex, meaningful, well-made, emotive, challenging in its own way, does it have beauty? I realize that the proof is in the pudding – next year I must try harder to get my work into exhibitions again.

We were wicked, we were wild (2011)
Materials: crocheted from combined viscose and woollen embroidery threads

Dimensions: 19 x 29.5 cm and 18.5 x 31 cm

Wonderful, as I was upset about missing the artist’s talks, you can see the video-recordings here!

And sneak a peak at the ZAP Open 2012 catalogue!

I’d like to report about a brief but blissful visit to ZAP-Open on Saturday, but that will happen with a longer than usual time-delay as 1) I’m still exhausted, if elated, 2) a hospital-outing needs preparing, incl. ensuing modus non operandi, and 3) a bit of not-so-light reading awaits me, in bits and pieces as and when able, of the G4A-application the The Arthouse has been working on for me/with me. So here’s a slightly amended extract from a talk I wrote a few years ago. In spirit it holds true, alas, although I’ve acquired a very long and comfy sofa on which to stretch out. I still mostly lie on the floor, giving in to the earth’s gravitational force which seems to increase with my levels of tiredness (I’m just grateful it doesn’t suck me down to its fiery centre). Plus here my body feels supported best, and it’s easier to have everything around me.

And while I’m getting ready to post this I am struck again by how little I recognise my physical self while knowing full well, in every cell, that this is me, now; by how much I want to present a different self, in motion, in the world, in touch

I have often worked … while lying on my back, only have to sit up for the final precise form-making. This possibility has been vital for my art-practice, as it allows me to continue making work even when I’m very tired. So imagine this: I am lying on my bed of blankets on the floor in the living room and around me I have everything I might need: papers, pencils, letters, stamps, lists of things to do, people to call, crochet hooks and wools, sellar tape, masking tape, sketch book, glasses, remote controls for the tele, scissors, scalpel knife, an art book or two, telephone… Everything needs to be at hand, within reaching distance. This is not my studio, but it is. This is my living room, but it isn’t. It is really the room where I live, I spend most of my days in there, even the really bad ones, on my bed of blankets, as I don’t like lying in bed during day-time if I can help it. The mess created by having everything around me, esp. when I am working on something, can drive me crazy. There is no getting away from it. But art-making is my life-spark, even when my body hurts, even when my limbs don’t function. In its worst stages the illness is a blunting instrument, totally debilitating, mind-numbing, it closes you down, you have to shut yourself off, as everything becomes overtiring. During these times I hang on by a thread literally. If at all possible I need to have even the tiniest thing on the go: one squiggly line describing a knee on the back of a bill, a thin strand of hair threaded through the eye of a needle, a fluttering cut-out tissue-paper figure with arms extended, a small dress cut from an autumn leaf, its curly stalk making it dance… Or I defer and write a note, put to paper the flash of an idea, which I might or might not take up when I feel a bit more energy.

Yesterday I wrote to Kate Murdoch, an artist-friend whose vibrant studio-life I much envy: one day, when I grow up, I want to share studios there too…, half in jest, half in hope: that this M.E-shaped life is just a (long long) passing phase, as if it were something to out-grow and leave behind one day. In the mean-time three foundlings wait for nimble fingers, and another piece, which knows its shape but not its meaning, grows next to me on the carpet. And here’s hoping that biomedical research into M.E., which needs more funding, will bring the longed for steps towards a cure or improvement of symptoms sooner rather than later.