The Spaces Between

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Yesterday I went out on an art teacher’s CPD event organised through the Birmingham Artist Educator network, 4MAT UK. We took a trip on the Ikon Gallery’s barge to make clay houses, part of the Black Country Voyages art programme. The lead artist on this project this year is Mahtab Hussain and his project is called The Auspicious Journey. He has used the barge as a vehicle for exploring ideas about the displacement of people from his homeland in Kashmir in the 1960’s resulting from the construction of the Mangla Dam. Many of the affected people did not move on to the nearest settlement in Kashmir, but came to the UK to find work around the Black Country canals. You can find more information about the project here.
The day was a great opportunity to relax and spend some time making – it’s a long time since I last used clay; it was very therapeutic, especially throwing it at the start to get rid of the air bubbles. It was also a great chance to chat and network in relaxing surroundings with other artist educators from the region; Emma, a fellow sketchbook circler; Lisa and Karen from last year’s Artist Teacher Scheme; Emma from the Ikon Gallery; Philip, part-time skipper and art therapist.
The workshop started me thinking about my own work in new ways too; where to go with my tubes made out of drawings and written extracts; new ways of making my mark on paper and on the world; new materials to try. I am pondering ideas about making my tubes out of clay, and the interactive, inclusive element of asking members of the public to make pieces for a project.
Next week I finish my job and take a step out into the unknown; I will be a freelance artist educator. I am scared and excited but am looking forward to the challenges and the changes, and seeing how these manifest themselves in my art practice. I will certainly have lots to write about in my notebook, lots of thoughts to illuminate, lots of ideas to make into tangible objects.

It’s been a patchy week in terms of making time for my own work; business appointments and writing applications to register our company, parenting and the day job. I feel unsettled and uneasy; I need the mental downtime that writing and making give me.
I have managed to make some drawings using soluble graphite on wet paper. I have snatched half-an-hour here and there to relax with some jazz music and sit on my living room floor drawing and spraying, letting my mind unravel, watching the graphite bleed and run.
I’m intending to use some of these drawings to make more tubes with; I like the written thoughts on them, the combination of fragments of drawings, and the inner lighting; lanterns shedding a light onto my thoughts.
I’ve been experimenting with hanging the tubes on a string of fairy lights (a safer alternative to using candles inside paper structures, I felt!), and although I wasn’t overwhelmed by the overall effect, I liked each individual ‘lantern’ and I managed to achieve some quite painterly effects by increasing the contrast in the photos.
This idea is still rattling around in my brain amidst the rest of the clutter, and I know that I want to continue to explore it through a combination of making and writing. My thoughts now are directed towards how to present it. I’m pleased to be moving my ideas out of a sketchbook and making them occupy a physical space, drawing in 3D, shedding some light on what it means to be me.

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On Saturday I visited the Eva Rothschild exhibition at New Art Gallery Walsall with the Artist Teacher crew. We then visited the gallery studio for a workshop with the current artist in residence, Chloe Ashley, whose work you can see here. Chloe is an analogue photographer who presents her work in sculptural ways rather than in a  traditional framed format.

Chloe’s work also reminded me of a body of work called The Last Silence by Sandra Meech, and represents the artist’s experience of the silence, the cracks in the ice and sound ‘marks’ whilst out walking on Baker Lake in Canada. You can visit her website here.

I felt drawn to both of these artists’ work; Chloe’s because I am interested in photography, and altering, overlaying and colouring images of my own work and ideas; Sandra’s because of her representation of sound and physicality, and her limited use of colour – something I have been exploring in my own search for my own practice. Both artists interest me because of their sculptural, 3D presentation of 2D pieces.

So I have spent the weekend sitting on my living room floor surrounded by strips and pieces of my torn up intuitive mark-making pieces, making them into tubes of varying sizes. (Don’t ask me why tubes; I followed my intuition). Some of them are made from two seperate pieces of work; some of them are tubes within tubes; one of them doesn’t stand up very well by itself. I tried different ways of securing them into tube shapes, but after a couple of setbacks I settled for stapling them or pinning them with dressmaker’s pins. I’ve made apertures in the tubes and lit them from inside. I’ve written some of my thoughts and ideas on them.

And that’s where I am now. Another twist to the tale. I’m still not sure where this journey is headed, although I’m pleased with the sculptural pieces made from my drawings. I’m trying things out, following my impulses, seeing where it takes me.

This week I had a sudden urge to revisit the poetry of T S Eliot, which I first encountered in undergraduate English Literature; I recall feeling baffled by The Wasteland and unable or unwilling to get to grips with its imagery and layered, fragmented meanings. Now, all of a sudden, Eliot’s snapshots of the realities of daily life speak to me; I don’t get the whole picture (am I meant to?), but phrases leap out at me from many of his poems which seem to articulate some of the ideas I’m grappling with and trying to represent in my work – physical presence, process, thinking made visible, fragments, memory.
I have also been exploring the idea of artists’ books; the versatility of this medium seems to be a fitting way to capture both the fluid nature of what I want to express, and my ongoing obsession with writing by hand. Whilst researching the subject I came across this comment by Joan Lyons, quoted in ‘The Century of Artists’ Books’ (Granary Books), which resonated with my own particular perspective as a self-taught artist;
“Inexpensive, disposable editions were one manifestation of the dematerialization of the art object and the new emphasis on process… it was at this time too that a number of artist-controlled alternatives began to develop to provide a forum and venue for many artists denied access to the traditional gallery and museum structure.”
I’m still struggling to put into words exactly what is inside my head, and I don’t feel that my writing is doing my ideas much justice at the moment; but I’m hoping you’ll stay with me whilst I try and figure it out.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.

From Burnt Norton – first of the Four  Quartets by T S Eliot.

Wow… this week has been a busy one, out training and attending meetings in preparation for launching Your Turn, our little Community Interest Company. Our company registration will be complete and ready to roll by the new year… new year, new start, as my mum said.

I have been so busy that I haven’t had much time to make art work, in fact the last piece was featured in my last post on the pleasures of scribbling; although I have managed some doodling and writing. I have been uneasy for the second half of the week; daily making has become such a part of my practice that it has felt uncomfortable not making an image of some description each day, and although I have put pencil to paper to make entries in my notebook, it has felt forced, scratchy, disconnected; a final effort at the end of an exhausting day.

On Friday I felt more relaxed; before my daughter woke up I was able to get in some quality quiet writing time, and I felt my brain shift down a gear; I felt as though I was tuning back into my artistic mojo, and I began to appreciate and understand how and why maintaining my own regular artistic practice informs the other work that I do.

So this weekend I have holed it up at home with some good quality paper and some water-soluble mark-making tools, and made drawings. These drawings are muted, ephemeral, blurred, quiet; my brain unwinding on paper. I layered and sprayed, and the pencil marks dissipated and blurred; I relinquished control and let the drawings take on their own life. The movements I made became slower, calmer, reflecting the slowing of my breathing and heart rate after an adrenaline-filled week.

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