It’s strange watching my year 11 GCSE pupils doing their 10 hour practical exam… to realize just how much I miss studio practice… the luxury of a solid block of time just to make Art… the culmination of research, experimentation and development.
I used to knock this process… “Don’t know any artists who work like that”… “Is about passing a GCSE, not making art”… but today I value it… the training and discipline… and understand better the use of sketchbooks, process and evaluation.
They don’t appreciate how lucky they are… a small minority of them anyway. It’s a chore… a task that needs completing ASAP… because then “Jonesy” will let them escape early… like… so that that’s them and art done… permanent…
10 hours to realize intentions… broken into blocks… 4… 3… and 3… Time in between to reflect… reconsider… revisit…
They come in with those last minute doubts from a night spent up – worrying and finalizing… planning. “Do you think….”… “Can I…?”… “What if…?”… yet still keen to please and seek approval… little realizing that should they continue on with this calling their cast has been set… future years of the same… the myth of the artist… that tormentor of souls…
Reflective practice mirrored in my minors… Privileged indeed… Essence of artist…
Finding time is the key of course… not the space… that can be created wherever … can’t it? Is prerequisite within the head – the processor… the image factory?
Not having the space, maybe I’m just mitigating? My art room suffices during the daytime… is where I make most work… but it belongs to my apprentices… I charter time from them… or is that pocket? At night my iPad expands into a vast space for my fertility… borderless walls… evolution tank…
And yet…
I read my friends blog… new space… new freedom… new time…
Do I covet? Resent? Crave?
Would I trade?
I’m back to the variance… artist or teacher?… Artist-teacher?… Where is Bo’s practice positioned in this? What is my occupation?
Recent events have possibly abstracted my attention… buying into the aspiration is hard to resist… delirium from non rejection intoxicating and swamping… a few kind words heady with hope and intent…
STOP…
Reality check…
What do you enjoy most?… What would you miss?…
I have the best of both… take out the incredibly hard and time-consuming graft… (graft… craft… mmm… interesting!)… Steeped in daily… making… guiding… suggesting… observing… viewing… appraising… commenting… discussing… experimenting… stimulating…
Can anything surpass this – or is it an examination of levels… discourse… engagement?
Am I depicting the artisan or the educator?
Maybe this is where Elena got it right… time out to try the alternative? Am I institutionalized? Are these ponderings redundant or merited on bias and indoctrination? When did I last studio?
What would I do with space?… Where would it take me – my toil?
Here’s the plan… play along… I’m somehow going to acquire myself 10 hours production time… isolated confinement… fresh, unadulterated accommodation… and see what happens… be it listless staring into space… frantic production… or soothing craftsmanship… I’ll have a better inkling of direction… a notion of whether it’s waking delusion or me…
I won’t abscond from what I have… falsify the situation… enter the fantasy… I will hold to reality… shelf the comparisons and create in the now…referencing the work that has recently been considered accomplished… Time might hold the answers… not Space…
