Threads

Today I have cause to pause, and ponder the nature of friendship.

I am going to see an old friend. I don’t think she would mind me using the word old. I have known her for about 35 years. I knew her before I was married, before children, freshly dropped out of what was then polytechnic, scared witless in my first proper job. She had children the same age as me – ish. She didn’t mother me, so much as treat me as she would want her own children treated. She was my guide and mentor through “How to be a working woman”. She would take me to one side and whisper “like this” in my ear, if something was going wrong… as things frequently did! She knew I was pregnant before I did. She knitted things for Daniel when he was born, and at the same time, taught me to knit from a proper pattern, complicated stitches in expensive yarn. I had chips on my shoulder which she gently brushed away, seeing me for what I really was, not the person I was pretending to be, or the person I thought I should be.

I don’t see her often, but always feel I should see her more. She waves a hand at this and we just carry on as before. Life being way too short for scolding grown women perhaps.

I feel excited, looking forward to telling her what I have been up to, and can’t wait to hear what she is doing. Because although retired, she hasn’t stopped being the woman she is. She has taken up painting. I haven’t seen what she has done, and I don’t know if she will show me. But I know that her painting will come from her fizzing brain and her heart, not just from the ends of her fingers. She is a role model, in that she is honest and astute, she has insight, and clarity of vision.

I look at the friendships I have made since, and all of them have had to, in some way, measure up to this. I have no idea what I bring to a friendship, and it is undoubtedly different depending on who you ask… But the friends I consider the closest, no matter if I have known them thirty five years or five years, seem to have the goods on me. They know something of me, a couple of them know the very worst there is to know, and they seem to love me regardless. And that goes both ways. To know someone’s really irritating humanity, their awfulness, but to be able to see past it all and get to the soul of them, and realise that the awfulness of us is exactly the thing that makes us interesting. To smile at it… hug it… and carry on.

Sometimes it takes years of being jostled about by someone, close by accident rather than choice or design, to realise what you have. Sometimes the growth of friendship is quicker, and people get scarily close, scarily fast.

I have made new friends recently, through this blog and other social media. They are different sorts of friends.. but they do appear to have similar qualities. They know me through the work. My art as clues and shorthand to the stuff that’s taken me years to understand, and in some respects still don’t. It appears that bits of my awfulness leech out through my work, as if every stitch betrays me. There’s no hiding any more. These new friends see me for who I am. No point in hiding or pretending any more then eh?

I find myself ridiculously excited.

I am going to a meeting in London on Friday, all art and education related stuff, which I’m really pleased to still be involved in, even after shucking off the job a few months ago. We all have an interest in education, even if we no longer work in it, or have children in it. Or at least we should. I actually think it would be a good idea that those who go to university should get it for free. Society as a whole benefits from people who learn, and keep on learning. A more diverse and more widely valued post 18 education system benefits all of us. So all of us should pay for it. (Idealist andSocialist, I know!)I was lucky enough to start my higher education when we got grants, and lucky enough to continue it recently when my MA could be funded… or at least 2/3 of it, with the support of NSEAD. Whether a person is suitable for such an education should certainly not be solely decided by whether they can afford it. Society is missing out.

We could end up with a government full of rich-boy waxy-faced clones who all went to Eton and Oxbridge for goodness sake!… oh…. hang on…..

anyway… all that aside…

My son stood me up. He had a better offer than traipsing around London with his mother, so I found myself free for most of Saturday. What to do then? So many exhibitions, events, galleries, and yet really, so little time.

So I have opted instead for a rather more homely, personal experience, and I’m going to see Marion Michell. Don’t worry, she knows I’m coming! And I can’t wait. We have conversations now through Facebook, Twitter, emails and our blogs. She is the latest in a line of people that I would never have met without the internet.

I am travelling light, to enable me to carry some selected pieces of work, so she can look at mine “in the flesh” and vice versa. People who work in textiles, I have observed, are always very keen to get their hands on other people’s work. People who work with textiles often say “please touch” rather than “don’t touch”. The experience of finding my items, stitching them and thinking about them is so tied up with the part of my brain that deals with touch, how can I deny the viewer that experience? (I do insist on clean hands: bacon butties and chocolate cake do not make for happy textiles in the long run)

Marion sent me a piece of her work, that I have hanging in my studio, a pair of itchy woolly crocheted elongated pants, complete with luxurious curly pubes. I have taken to tickling them on the way in each morning, as a way of saying hello to my studio. Every time I do it I giggle!

Sets me up for the day!

So, I can’t wait to meet this mysterious woman! I have no idea what she looks like. From her writing I can kind of guess at her age, but I’m not sure. I just know though, that we will talk and talk until I have to go. We will play, and laugh, and talk seriously too maybe.

THIS is why I am evangelical about blog writing… so many people I have met through it, particularly Julie Dodd, Franny Swann, Sophie Cullinan, Kate Murdoch, Wendy Williams and so many more I hope to meet in the future…

The conversation shapes my work, frames it, gives it context and layers onto it more meaning than I could hope to do on my own.

See you Saturday, Marion!

So here I am, feeling completely and utterly lousy. The result, I suspect, of yesterday’s fishcakes and salad. It is 3:25pm and I’m only just able to drag myself from my bed, to the shower, to the armchair, thoroughly exhausted.

Through this haze of blurred vision and wobbly legs and headache, and the other symptoms not to be shared on a public forum, I found myself able, while horizontal, to complete and submit my Arts Council Research and Development application. It is my first ever. Shocking. I am ancient (more of that later) and this is the first I’ve ever done. I feel nauseous now for a completely different set of reasons. I feel it is the best application I could have done… I have drafted, rewritten, got lots of people to read it, and lots of people to support it, and my husband financial advisor has checked that the numbers balance. I am highly motivated to get this right, and I feel confident that I have done my best. The rest is up to some stranger now.

It concerns the work with the bras and the songs. Obviously I will share if and when I get the funding, but for now, not jinxing anything! I am not normally superstitious, but did feel a pang of ominous-ness (yeah, whatever, I used up all my wordiness on the form ok?) when the wire from my bra escaped as I was dressing and poked me in the ribs.

We wait with baited breath. Those of you that are veterans to this process, do you still feel sick? Having got yourself all enthusiastic to write the proposal, how do you then get real and forget it?

I expect I will need therapy, if I get it, or if I don’t!

********

Old. Yes.

My lovely, inspirational and supportive MA Course Director, Carol Wild (naming and shaming, getting my own back) is, I think, now, after two years from my graduation, considered a friend, rather than “Miss”…. However…. She has just nominated me for Selfridges “Bright Old Thing” initiative. My first reaction was rather ungracious, and to be honest, I was a bit indignant. I spend my whole life trying to disprove that I am old. But, again, get real, I am. I am Too Old for Turner…

which means I should come to terms with it and take what I can!

Thank you Carol, you said some really lovely things about me and my work, which I will print out and keep next to my Arts Council rejection letter… Balance in all things as Bo would say!

I can be quite sweary…

I am currently stitching “Why don’t you just fuck off?” repeatedly over this knackered old bra.

My finger hovers over the delete key, because I am cautious of my audience…

As I get to know people, I get swearier, if I think they will be ok with it. I like these words, all of them. Even the REALLY bad one. I do use the full extent of my vocabulary in my songs too, should the need arise.

There are tensions and balances in my work, ambiguity, confusions… I like that too. I like it when people are drawn in by the children’s clothes, or the very nicely stitched embroidery… and the best bit is when, they have been lulled into a false sense of security, that they think they know what they are looking at, and then go “Oh!” or even “Urgh!” and take a step back again.

(Curiously, I don’t think my greatcoat has this quality… others, but not this)

The bra is stitched with angry obscenity, but in white, on white. You have to get up really close for the opportunity to be offended by it.

I think about this as I stitch. Is this part of the work and/or part of me? Is this fictitious mythical woman I stitch for the sort of woman who would say these words? Does she just think them? Are they repressed and hidden. I wonder if, in wearing this bra for a long day, whether “Why don’t you just fuck off?” would become embossed onto the skin of the wearer, to be read later by the one that is being asked to fuck off?

Is it just me being a bit scared of offending the viewer? Or is the choice I make more about how the work is literally read?  I don’t want to shout it… FUCK OFF! stitched large and red would be a different message wouldn’t it? Far more violent. White on white is a wish, a mantra, a prayer… that is far more frightening I think, than a woman who isn’t scared to shout it, be direct and open. A muttering under the breath… a snide look out of the corner of the eye… Maybe one of the bras I stitch will be more blatant, brash and bold… but not this one. This one is a little bit scared of herself.

A while back, after the open studio day I had, I wrote about the studio being my space, and not a social space. My studio at home (dining room) had always been social as well, and the stuff of art frequently moved aside to cater for family and friends. This was never begrudged, it was just how it was. Having a separate studio, away from home made a big difference to how I work. Even this space, I wrote, occasionally gets invaded by people who don’t understand the boundaries… some people still just walk in unannounced without even knocking… some people knock and politely wait to be called in. Occasionally, I have started to hang a sign on the door so I am not disturbed. It doesn’t say “sod off”, it says “please do not disturb, recording may be in progress” – and this isn’t always a lie.

The business of being an artist isn’t always visible. The work I do doesn’t always involve me doing something with my hands. Sometimes the most creative bits are when I have a mug of tea nestled in my hands on my lap, my eyes gazing unfocussed in the middle distance. This is hard for the non-artist to understand… hence the sign.

Also, the timetable of the newly self employed artist isn’t always predictable, if there aren’t teaching sessions or workshops booked. It is sometimes difficult to convey the need to work. THIS is my job now. I have to do things, I am highly motivated to get my work into the world, get it earning its keep. So no, I don’t have to be at work at times set by other people, but it doesn’t mean I am free.

At the moment I have a lot in my head. I need a good stretch of time to deal with some of it. Some of it is making, yes, of course, thank goodness! Some of it is the form filling. Some is record keeping and financial planning (doesn’t take long if you have no money). Some of it is the abstract thought… this is the one that takes the time and needs the space.

Yesterday I was thwarted. Yesterday I was angry that the time and space I need wasn’t respected.

This morning, less emotional, I understand that this transition isn’t just mine, that others are finding it difficult too. All I can do is be patient and explain what I need and why.

So… this morning I am off to the studio earlier than ever. A proper working day even. I intend to stay as long as it takes, not time limit, not limited by me or anyone else. Going with the flow, getting engrossed, letting it make me tired.

I have often joked over the years that I don’t have a very strong work ethic. I now think this was wrong… I think I was just doing the wrong work for it to apply!

I will be hanging the sign up… it might not be a lie.