The (Secret) Life of an East Midlands Artist

This month seems to have been one of significant revelations, both in my practice and my career path. Spending a lot of time preparing for various interviews (of which none were successful!) has made me consider that perhaps I'm not ready for a formal art job yet. These thoughts combined with a Facebook page full of my friends photos and tales from their adventures abroad to give me the inspiration to travel! I've realised that, like most things in my life so far, if I don't organise this then the opportunity will not come. I don't want to hit 30 and still be living in Nottingham without memories of tropical beaches and community projects in beautiful but impoverished areas! Thankfully, these thoughts have opened up a potential structure that I've been missing since leaving university: if I start a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course now, I could leave in September for a paid placement almost anywhere in the world! Perhaps I may even do a PGCE on my return! This last idea, which I have been avoiding for fear that it means I am a failed artist, now seems to make perfect sense – I don't think I'm cut out for the constant disappointment and effort of trying to earn money directly from my art.

The question now is…can I teach?? Public speaking turns me into a shaking nervous wreck but this is a phobia that I must conquer for my own personal development as well as my professional one. So, Phase 1 of my new Life Plan has begun – I'm volunteering to help at the Play Parade workshops next week to get some experience with kids, then I should have a better idea of whether I like children or if my ex was right about being a joyless hag…

With my practice, the new piece about engaging with the world in a rebellion against the inevitable condition of becoming my mother seems to be a better way of inspiring and reigniting connections in my world than I could have imagined. I've already met up with one old friend who I'd not seen since last September, who donated her collection of empty, "they may come in useful one day," shoeboxes. Terry, the caretaker at my workplace, even found an old cabinet in a skip for me to start making pigeon-holes for these unwanted objects from! So, if you're reading this and I've met you, I need one unwanted item or one unwanted collection for the piece! I've deliberately made it ambiguous so the pieces not become contrived representations of their owners but the donations so far have been very telling – one friend has so far failed to give me anything unwanted and keeps finding new objects akin to his love of practical jokes whilst another cycling enthusiast has given a broken helmet he couldn't bare to throw out.

After much uncertainty, our main focus for Beacon will now be Kelly Large's performative artwork in April; an event to highlight the tide of school children which floods Sleaford every weekday afternoon that she observed during her residency at Sleaford and Kesteven High School. Having met Kelly last week, Dan, Nicola and I have been frantically trying to think of the best way to film the event from overhead without influencing the flow of people. Our ideas have ranged from model helicopters to scaffolding to hot air balloons but we have still not hit the jackpot. Nicola has even talked to the chief of Lincolnshire police to try to commandeer a real helicopter!

The Cildo Meireles exhibition has greatly inspired my own practice – I've been reducing a sentimental piece of my mother's furniture to sawdust to make paper that the audience will be invited to take away (in a subverted homage to Feliz Gonzalez Torres) but could not think what form the paper should take. I'd been considering flick books (so they disintegrated with use, dispersing the cabinet even further), portraits of my mother, origami, and so on but Meireles has reminded me that sometimes a open ended gesture is best. If I simply allow the viewer to take a piece of the handmade paper away, they are completing the act of the cabinet's destruction without enforced symbolic meaning.

This has led me onto the second breakthrough! Having planned a solo show for April (or thereabouts) at Backlit, I need to have a second piece of work to occupy the second room…which was as far as my planning had got. Now I feel as though the first piece is more conceptually complete, my thoughts have been clearer about what this second piece could be. Having seen the Trent Mid-Point Review last week, I am inspired to be more experimental too. Where the first piece is dismantling a cumbersome object (and consequently readdressing a balance of possession as the viewer takes a piece of paper), the second piece could be collecting objects. Where my mother rejects the world around her, I can actively rebel against this to avoid the age old curse of becoming your mother by embracing society. I have always wanted to try and meet everybody in the world, so maybe it is time to try this impossible project! I'd like to turn another piece of furniture into a unit to house evidence of this…but what to house?!! A possession from every person I know/meet? The first piece is about possession as a burden so perhaps I could ask each person to give or send me an item they wish to get rid of? I'm itching to get in the studio now but I've got a difficult week of interviews and Beacon work to get through first!