I sort of feel as if I should be making more effort to save the planet. I’ve been thinking about it in my work for quite a while – how to use more environmentally methods and materials – but actually there are bigger questions about whether to be making things at all. After all – if we all wanted less THINGS, made less THINGS, surely that would be the best way of saving the planet’s resources and beginning to de-clutter the world. But how to make art without making THINGS?
A good place to start must be in my overcrowded, cluttered studio. Here surely is the place to start reducing, re-using and recycling. I have made a little pledge to myself not to buy new THINGS until there is no other option. I have drawers and drawers of old paints, pencils, pens and paper. No more! I will buy no more! Until I have used up ALL the old ones. And paper has two sides – not just one, so why not use them both (well for trying things out at least) – and double sided drawings can always be made into books. And old work can be cut, pasted, folded, re-arranged and re-configured. I even write this in my artist’s statement which just goes to show it must be true: “My creative process mirrors processes of evolution, with work being made and re-made, revisited and reconfigured to reflect new knowledge, understanding or ideas, sometimes over periods of years.” So there.
So today I have been persevering with making my experimental bio-plastic. It’s not very good I don’t think, but I guess I won’t know for sure until it has dried out fully, which can take some time. It’s not that the process doesn’t work, it’s just that the end result doesn’t seem to be very workable. I’m not sure what I can make with it other than thin sheets of polythene-like material. We’ll see. I tried moulding a bit of it into little balls – not very good. And I made some sort of cake-like discs.
I’m currently reading The Mushroom at the End of the World (which may be contributing to fueling these feelings about waste and consumerism). It’s quite hard work but obviously interesting because I’m still persevering with it, and usually manage to read a whole chapter without going to sleep.
In response to what I read yesterday, I made some more salt and flour dough (which is definitely more successful than the bio-plastic) and have made some mushrooms and some “money”. (Yes, I know – the money’s not very good – looks more like buttons. I’ll have another go tomorrow. Perhaps here’s the answer – we should all start using buttons as money).
3.30pm
One of the things that I made a considered decision about during the Once In A Universe project was that I would embrace the use of the materials of the Anthropocene – silicone, plastics and batteries being the main ones that worried me. In the past I have questioned art which relates to environmental matters but which blatantly involves considerable environmental cost – but to be honest what is there about living as a 21st century human which doesn’t involve environmental cost? Anyway… I’ve decided that now that phase one of the project is done and dusted, the next phase of the project will involve more of an investigation of materials and how to try to cut costs (not the economic sort – although maybe my new approach might also help with this!)
4.45pm
So… small steps first. Continuing with the cluster motif I keep going back to at the moment, I decided today to make some salt and water dough and see what sort of clusters I could make with that. They’re in the oven, baking at the moment.
5.33pm
Hmm… nicely browned on all sides but a bit flat on the bottom. Still it’s a starting point and brings new thoughts to consider. Tomorrow: Home made bioplastics.
Who’d have thought it would be so difficult to make more art? The problem arises when scale and ambition outgrow workspace. So my NYR#1: Make More Art! starts with a concerted effort to find bigger spaces to work in during 2019 as visiting artist or artist in residence, especially in environments where there are opportunities to engage with other artists and the public. My focus for the year is on continuing to increase the scale of my drawing, creating room sized installations in which drawing acts as a framework or structure combined with objects and still or moving images. You can see a five minute film about my 2018 residency at Eastbourne’s DC1 space here on Vimeo. If you’d like to host a residency please do get in touch!
NYR#2: Finish one thing before rushing on to the next exciting thing. This one’s interesting. I’ve made quite a good start with it, editing, organising and sharing the documentation of my Once In A Universe project on my website. That’s the positive aspect of tying up loose ends; the downside is that moving the work on from where I left it in the autumn seems to have been on hold for an age while I’ve been refining, editing and publishing the documentation. This leads me to NYR#3…
NYR#3 Draw every day. Not make a drawing every day, just draw every day, even if its only for 10 minutes. At least this creates a sense of continuity when studio time is limited and it acts as a constant source of ideas which can be developed in two and three dimensions.
One thing I’m pleased to have achieved is a collection of short videos from Once In A Universe. They include great presentations by artist Shardcore and writer/poet Chris Parkinson, plus a fantastic Skype conversation with complexity scientist, Dr Alexandra Penn from my How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Machines* event. They are all in my Vimeo album. I hope you can take the opportunity to view and enjoy them and find out more about the project, especially if you weren’t able to make it along in person.
* How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Machines was produced in collaboration with Amy Zamarripa Solis/This Too Is Real
Films by Anna Winter and Skype.
The subject line of the e-mail reads “Information only: Grant closure Project Name: Once in a Universe”; so that’s it then. All done. Except it feels far from all done. The year long project ended with a two week residency last October and now the evaluation is done, the final payment has been received, but the next phase is just beginning. My aim for this year is to make more work, show more work, and make sure that by the end of the year I have a solo show in the planning stages. So now I need to make sure that the project documentation is properly edited and shared with those people I particularly want to see it. Then the next step is to try to put arrangemments in place to make sure I can continue to develop the work on a new, large scale with space and time for it to grow and mature. For now I’m focusing on updating my website and reviewing the archive of documentation so that it can be shared as a taster of what might come next. Here’s a tiny snippet. There’s lots more to come.
