Threads

I just posted a conversation, rather than posting in my blog, just to see how it works, and to see what sort of response I get….

https://www.a-n.co.uk/conversations/we-fear-change-our-new-blog-platform

See you over there then?

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It’s been a while now since I finished “that job”. Time and space have given me a little perspective on it. Despite all the stressful circumstances that led up to me resigning, I now believe that the time was not just right, but possibly overdue. Change was inevitable. Because I had changed. I now have a different set of priorities and needs and tastes and wants. When I started it I had no way of foreseeing what changes were going to happen to me, so thought that would be the job I would do forever.

Now, I think I’m no longer employable. Oh, I can do workshops on a freelance basis, I can teach a day or so at a time. Commit in the short term, be extremely professional, then go home. Go back to the studio, and think my own thoughts. Politically and philosophically I am no longer able to buy into the way our schools work. I need freedom, and I need to work where, if I am with children, I can provide freedom for them too.

 

I am unemployable because I am unable to sustain someone else’s thoughts and ideas. I am getting on a bit, and I no longer want to waste my thinking time. (Just like I send back food in restaurants that doesn’t live up to expectations. Waste of calories. I eat too many anyway, so I don’t want to eat rubbish ones!)

To the outsider, to the non-artist, and I think to my husband too… THIS is what looks like time-wasting. But it doesn’t work like that. THIS is the real stuff. Some days I can feel my brain fizzing. I can feel the blood rushing round in my veins. I’m not marking time until some randomly applied birthday hits and I can do what I want. I do it now. This artist won’t retire. Because it isn’t a job, it is my life, religion, philosophy. I can no longer conceive of putting myself through the “proper job” grindstone. Economic circumstances might alter so that I need to I suppose… but it would certainly be the last straw. But I hope to be thinking and making till my brain and/or my body gives up on me. I hope to go to bed one night, at 3am possibly, at the age of 93, having had a particularly brain-fizzy day, and not wake up in the morning.

 

Some ambition huh?

 

It sounds a little egocentric, I think, to non-artists, to say that I spent four hours just talking about my work to people… and yes, of course, to a certain extent it is, but it is more than that. There is a bigger picture.

 

There are all sorts of things in play:

 

The Venue… we had the most amazing space to present our work: The Orangery at the National Trust’s Knole House, Sevenoaks in Kent. A hugely important house, set in incredibly beautiful grounds, complete with deer herds and trees that looked like they have stood for a thousand years. We owe it to them to enhance their space, so that they keep doing it, so that the National Trust see the value of placing contemporary art within their walls… it does favours to both sides I think.

The Curator… Franny Swann did an amazing job curating “The Send Off” (an exhibition to begin the commemorative programme for the First World war). I feel truly privileged she chose my work, and that she placed right by the entrance, to entice people in, believing it to be the piece that would instantly engage people in the whole exhibition, because it is “accessible”. True. I don’t deny it is one of the reasons I use clothing. Everyone wears it, sees it, understands it, and can “read” it. Everyone knows that clothes say things don’t they?

Anyway, from there, the work sat in that historical space, blending in with the crumbly chalky plaster and blue paint, the terracotta and stone, and stained glass throwing light across the floor and the works. Each piece led to the next, it related to the next, related to the two pieces of text by Wilfred Owen and Carol Ann Duffy. The works chosen were poignant, thoughtful. The curation was sensitive, had a light touch, but was strong in its message. We owe a lot to Franny… she’s bloody clever… the artists I spoke to were all saying how proud they were to be part of this, that she had made their work look great, by its placing, and the relationships between the works, and the way they sat with strength and silence in that space.

 

The Artists… Some of us knew each other, some didn’t. Some lived round the corner, some of us lived miles and miles away. Some of us were there, some of us weren’t. We spoke about each other’s work to each other. We made links and associations, contrasted thoughts and materials. We had a laugh, and we had serious conversations. We talked about our work for hours, but in doing so, in talking to our visitors, we imbue the event with emotion, and real life. These are not just bits of poncey stuff, but the evidence of thought and imagination and creativity, taking of concepts and making them exist in the real world, and making them relate to real events. By talking to people who are not used to seeing contemporary art, especially in such a setting, we can infect people with an enthusiasm for art. I heard at least three lots of people on the way out, discussing how great it was to hear artists talk about why they made this work, what compelled them to spend so much time drawing spots on fragile paper, stitching seeds onto an old coat, or cutting ivy from plastic milk containers, to make a display so beautiful, when the sun streamed through the windows it took your breath away. The viewers were in awe of some of these pieces, and the exhibition as a whole. It made people think.

 

So yes, it is egocentric to spend time talking about my work, but the talking about it also helps me understand it myself, it clarifies, and galvanises. It also can feel a little evangelical. I have frequently said in recent years that art is now my religion, and my philosophy.

 

In talking to someone about my coat this weekend, I made them cry, it made them cry… I watched someone’s eyes fill up, watched her swallow the lump in her throat. That the thoughts in my head have made someone have such an emotional reaction is mind-blowing, and I’ve never witnessed it before. I don’t know what this person brought to the work, what associations they made themselves, but I felt totally humbled, overwhelmed by this reaction. How can I possibly follow that?

 

It was the first fix. The addict needs more.

 

 

 

It’s taken a while – I’m feeling a bit thick at the moment, the hot weather dulls my senses – but I’ve just realised something…

 

The way I work, is the way I work. Despite little forays into what I think is the unexpected, I end up doing things in a very similar fashion.

 

Take the songwriting… I want to submit a song for an exhibition. Just a song, to stand alone. This will be the first time I’ve done such a thing, as the songs have, up to now, been another layer/facet/aspect/voice of the visual work.

 

So to make sure it’s a good one, what do you do? You keep working on it. Adding more sounds, vocals, words… and some more…

 

I have two versions of the song now: one is very simple, my voice, and a very spare double bass. I love it. But to make it “worthy” I decide to add stuff, all manner of sounds, effects and so on. I love doing this patchwork layering of sound, I love weaving these unexpected noises between the words. I love it when it has become so intricate you fool people into thinking the washing machine spin cycle recording is a musical instrument… that the train running over tracks is percussion. This is the way I do music. I take the sounds and chop them up and stitch them back together. Same as the textiles.

 

But, I must remember, that process is not the same as product.

 

I look back at my original lyrics hand written in my note book. I think about the emotional response.

 

So, having had two full days worth of mucking about in GarageBand, having great fun, it has to be said, I have reached a conclusion.

 

The song I will submit is the simple version.

A woman’s voice.

Words expressing a craving to not be invisible, to reclaim that which she didn’t know she had until she lost it.

A double bass… throbbing, deeply affecting, a physical instrument… you feel it in your gut, and you can feel the floor vibrate beneath your feet.

 

That’s all it needs.

The rest is just fog.

https://soundcloud.com/elena-thomas/crewe4-bassvox-forg202

 

Even when I do something that I initially believe to be unconnected to the rest of my work, it turns out not to be after all. I find this hugely comforting but also exciting, liberating… because it means I can do whatever pops into my head!

When I embarked upon “Blown Away”* I believed it to be a special project for the US. Separate from the rest of my work conceptually, if not materially.

Over the last few weeks, having made “Daughter”, I start to make connections again. I want them to meet. So far, they have not been in the same place as each other, father and daughter estranged. At the end of August they will be united. I feel this should be some sort of event, it should be marked in some way.

• 
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I put up a statement to such effect on my facebook artist page, here, if you’re interested:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Elena-Thomas-Art-and-Textiles/123618094363659?ref=hl

and Marion Michell answered…

“Post-memory connection – what we hold from our parents, what we’ve gleaned from silences and tantalisingly oblique utterances – use that as a way in?”

Of course… that parental link again. This is what I was thinking… the parent and child and the threads cast between… I’m starting to grope about for ideas to install these pieces as one.

The silences and tantalisingly oblique utterances really got me going… yes… thank you Marion!

(Marion’s amazing blog can be found here on a-n too if you haven’t already seen it https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/sleep-drunk-i-dance)

Even recently, there have been events in my life that have triggered memories, at least I think they are memories, of my mother, things she said and did… her stance and body language. Sometimes it is as if I HAVE HER muscle memory. I am not one for the paranormal, so I’m not seeing it as a possession or haunting, but a passing on of the way we behave/think/move… and the way that brings memory to the fore…

I did something, I thought something, I felt it…. it was definitely me, awake, conscious.

A memory slammed into me like a sledgehammer, of my mother, stood in the same position, saying the same words… and it has made me pick over that set of circumstances and read them differently.

I had no way of knowing, but was she doing what I am doing, thinking what I am thinking, feeling what I am feeling? I would previously have thought such a thing ridiculous… but now I’m not so sure….

 

So this piece of so called separate work gathers more and more layers of meaning…

 

At the weekend, my brother gave me a notebook. He thought that as I was now writing songs and singing it was appropriate that I should have it. It is a book full of my mum’s favourite songs, mostly popular Irish folk, it must be said. Handwritten of course.

If she had had access to all of the opportunities I have now, would she have been a singer and songwriter? I know she had a great voice, was always singing. My childhood memories are full of song, as are those of my first son, Dan. Joyous occasions, I remember like yesterday, him perched on the arm of her chair, barely a toddler, singing “Nud, Nud, Glorous Nud” as he got to the end she would say “hold that note!” and he would, almost to the point of passing out. There would be hysterical laughter, then we’d have to do it all again.

It makes me sad that my younger son Liam, born ten years later, was never to get to know her, as she died when he was 3 months old. But she sang to him every time she was with him.

I need to do something tender with this work I think.

 

*I feel I should interrupt myself here to thank Bo Jones for the title. It’s a corker, and open to so much interpretation from the viewer, it has started so many conversations, given people a point of access to the work, and discussion – artists and non-artists. Titles are extremely important. Cheers Bo!