Threads

Well, it’s over for another year Life & Other Art Festival… fondly known as LOAF, has been packed away. My shed is back in its place in the garden, The musicians have toddled off to other gigs, and the art works and quilts have all gone back home to their makers.

I am exhausted!

It was brilliant! I love it so much, this event we create and curate every July. It is hard work, but by the time the weekend arrives, I can pause with tea and cake, enjoy the art, the poetry and the music, and can chat to people. This in itself can be exhausting. I am on my feet all weekend, existing on a diet of hastily snatched bits of (delicious) cake. By Sunday night I crave savoury protein! This year I also ended the evening with a rare shared bottle of chianti. By 9.30 pm I was asleep (which for a habitual and proud insomniac, this is rare too!) I’ve just realised that reads as if me sharing a bottle is rare, as if usually I drink it all by myself… but no… the drinking is rare! haha!

Today I have slobbed about, chatted with my sons, another rarity is them both being here at the same time. It’s lovely to have my flock safely gathered in!

I was badgered, on facebook, by a couple of friends to do this thing where you post three “happinesses” a day for five days. I did this, and found it a good thing to do. I’ve done it for about ten days now. I have discovered that I am blessed with quite a lot of happiness in my life.

Therefore I should shut up bloody moaning and get on with it.

 

 

 

Day 1 of LOAF14 is over, and it went well I think…

The art exhibition is looking good, I’ll post a few pics tomorrow maybe, if I get time to take some. The quilts look bright and beautiful… true craftswoman-ship at every turn. The shed looks resplendent in her new threads, and the performers are enjoying her shelter from the sun (and a little shower).

Some fantastic music already… we’re only half way through the weekend.

 

Breaking news… I sang, in my shed, at my event, in front of about 10 people I knew!

I didn’t die… or at least if I did, I am blissfully unaware of the fact!

 

It was fun. Every time I do something like this, I feel another cog clicking into place… I’m not going to start gigging all around the place, I’m not that sort of performer. But, I do have a sense of this leading me somewhere. I’m following my nose, being brave, trying new things, challenging and pushing and experimenting. I have a sort of faith. Not faith in a religious sense, but faith in a human sense, that people should make leaps and strike out into new ground. People are astonishing.

 

I was recently talking about the sort of television programme that seems to be all over the place at the moment… television that shows humanity in the worst possible light. And some of the people watching seem to be saying to themselves “well at least I’m better than THAT” then sit back on their smug behinds. I want to watch television that shows humanity at its BEST… brave, creative, enduring, caring… changing the world a bit at a time, affecting the lives of others, having faith in each other. That’s the sort of faith I mean that I have. I want to watch people that inspire, push, initiate, and provoke positive thought and action.

 

Now I’m not for a minute suggesting that me singing a two and a half minute song about a train journey to Crewe is life-changing for me or the listener, but it is breaking new ground… for me. Over the last few years i have had a series of life-changing events. I have come to the practical, not just theoretical conclusion that life’s too bloody short to waste time giving into nerves.

Of course I feel nervous, everyone does. But it feels great to sing a song, and people clap afterwards and tell you they liked it. You don’t get that sort of instant response for a piece of visual art.

 

I have faith that, as time goes by, the reason for these songs and performances will become clearer. But for the moment, I’m happy to just follow the scent and see where it leads me.

 

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I have a sitting room full of sleeping, hungover teenagers. They are surrounded by pizza boxes and beer bottles. I have to climb through and over them to get to the kitchen, and the garden, to finish work on my shed. I don’t know that I can quite face it yet…

 

Meanwhile, I look at my diary and my commitments for the coming month. I look at the list of applications I’ve done, and the submissions I have to write.

I don’t really know how I fitted in the proper job! Well, I do really don’t I? because I couldn’t say yes to these opportunities, I didn’t even have the time to discover they existed…. and when I did, I invariably missed the deadlines for submission!

 

My greatcoat – “Blown Away” has two more exhibitions before the end of the summer, in Birmingham, at the Custard Factory for United States of Art (July 4th,  of course) and The National Trust’s Knole House in Kent, for “The Send Off” an exhibition curated by Franny Swann to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the First World War. The new, related work “Daughter” has been made for the Liverpool end of our Colonize adventure. So if you are in Liverpool for the Biennial, do call in at the Arena Gallery to see it, and all the other art too, interesting and beautiful works…

 

*****

 

Having been away from writing this, and come back, the shed is now finished, apart from a fetching length of green upholstery fringing which will be fixed along the edge of the roof. She will need her floor swept and her windows cleaned once she gets into position for LOAF 14 in Stourbridge on 12th and 13th July. Please visit my website for details, or follow the action on Twitter through #LOAF14. If you like live, original acoustic music, cake, quilts and other textiles, drawing, ceramics, and all sorts of surprises, do consider popping along. Seek me out and say hello, it’s a very small venue, it won’t take long! It is a family friendly event and has disabled access to the upstairs gallery and tea shop. By the time the weekend arrives, I am usually exhausted, but once we get going, my stress levels start to settle down, and I can sit with some tea and cake to watch the musicians and poets perform… it always feels like my own private party!

I’m also hoping I will get some time to spend with my long suffering husband, who has a very special birthday that weekend, and I’ve stomped all over it. Thank you Mike, I couldn’t do any of it without you. Happy Birthday!

Stuff happens. That’s life. Some days are great, some days are rubbish… and all points in between.

Whatever your opinions on art as therapy, some days, it’s the only thing that hits the spot.

 

Talking from the artist end of things, I can’t not make art. I can’t not have something close by that I am making. I am thinking about where the concepts came from, working them into my psyche, my view of the world, and my place within it, all the time. When I have had jobs or other parts of my life that take up too much time and the balance is out, I go a little mad, or a lot mad if it goes on too long. I don’t see things properly any more. I become somewhat paranoid, snipey, prickly, angry… self-esteem goes down the toilet. These days, sometimes, I have insight, and I (mostly) see it coming.

 

Immersion is the only answer. Repetitive manual tasks. Haptic reward. Totally engrossed in a task, I disappear, time stops mattering. It can become a little out-of-body… another set of eyes watch my hands in wonder. On days such as these, sometimes, it is physical pain that brings me round again. Six hours straight doing nothing but hand sewing has terrible effects on my tendons. But even then, the euphoria of that mental state makes me want to continue. Addictive behaviour.

 

Despite that… as I slowly emerge from this trance-like state, I do feel healed, balanced, calmer, re-set. I feel it as a rising back to consciousness, slowly awakening from being hypnotised almost. I feel it physically as well as mentally.  There is an element of self awareness, proprioception….

 

I don’t know how I feel about applying “art” to someone else in the name of therapy. But I do know that jobs such as fence or wall painting, brick laying, digging, knitting… all have that haptic reward, the repetitive task that allows the mind to wander off, whilst still being totally engrossed and concentrating on the physical task, these jobs do us good. Many years ago, I worked in an occupational therapy department of a psychiatric hospital. At first, I mocked some of the “creative” projects that people were given, but actually, they had/have value. Concentration, repetition, physical activity. Providing opportunity for the individual to discover in themselves the ability to find that state and heal some things independently, is invaluable.

 

So that’s what I do on the rubbish days. Immerse myself in the mindful mindlessness of the repetitive, the comforting, and the satisfying.

 

When I look at other artists’ work it is this that I love to see… signs of obsession,  the detailed, repetition, pattern, the physical, visual signs that they found it hard to stop.

 

I have adopted an air of “Yes, I can do that!”

Because I am now self employed person.

 

I have also adopted an air of “No, I’m sorry, I don’t do that!”

 

(Edited later to include “I’ve spent a whole bloody day working on this, what do you mean you don’t want it?”)

 

…and of course, the phrase every artist should practice in front of the mirror with immoveable expression “No, I do not work for nothing!”

 

I have had to decide pretty sharpish what sort of work I want to do, and what I don’t. I am seeing this as a sort of spring cleaning exercise now the “proper job” has gone. Get rid of the things I no longer want to be associated with and build on the things I do. Not exactly re-inventing myself, but perhaps re-stating.

The advantage of being paid the correct rate of pay as an artist is that, compared to working in school, I don’t have to do so many hours, I can slow down a little, be selective. It is too easy to panic that I won’t get the work. But so far, so good…

(keeping fingers crossed)

 

This might be a bit of a manifesto then?

 

I don’t want to sell at fairs.

I don’t want to make the stuff that would sell at fairs.

I don’t want to work with very young children.

I don’t want a teaching job.

I don’t want to make stuff that I don’t want to make (so commissioned work is limited).

 

I do want to exhibit all over the place.

I do want to sell from exhibitions.

I do want to work with adults and older children

I do want to be called Elena, not Mrs Thomas.

I do want to make stuff that I want to make, think what I want to think, when it comes to me.

I do want time and space.

 

I do want a residency somewhere… bras… want to talk to middle aged women about bras… anyone out there want me?

 

I do want to deliver this lovely plan I’ve written for activities to do with text and textile, memory and narrative… it’s very flexible in terms of time and target group… anyone fancy it?