Threads

At the end of March I wrote about performing, and singing and songs.

I feel that there is a shift happening with regard to this part of my work.

I’m not looking to be on X Factor, God forbid! And to be honest, I don’t think I’m one of the worlds greatest performers, as I am always paranoid about forgetting the words – even the ones I have written and sung a thousand times, so have to have them printed out in big writing so I can see them without my glasses, on a stand in front of me.

But I think I can deliver a song, one at a time, for a particular reason. I think I am gaining in confidence too. But the bit I love doing, is the making of it, and the recording of it, the piecing it together. It feels like magic to me.

My question is, how can I make this part of the work that I exhibit? Will it just sit online on Soundcloud waiting for someone to wander past?

The subject matter doesn’t always sit with that of the visual work. That doesn’t bother me, but unless it is part of the same thought train, I won’t want it to sit with the pieces I hang/install.

So what is the alternative?

I’m probably only ever going to perform at the end of term Songwriters’ circle show. But I have recordings in various stages of completion… and I think they stay incomplete, many of them, because I can’t yet decide what audience, or environment I will finish them for.

Any suggestions gratefully received!

https://soundcloud.com/elena-thomas/numb-live-songwriting-circle

Guitars: Chris Cleverley and Dan Whitehouse, and the bit at the end isn’t a mistake, I asked them to do it on purpose!

www.dan-whitehouse.com

https://www.facebook.com/chriscleverleymusic?fref=…

…and tomorrow is my third blog anniversary! (thanks for sticking with it!)

It’s about confidence isn’t it?

Or maybe I mean bullshit?

A couple of years ago, I had very little on my cv, so put everything on it, hoping that volume of words would speak for me, would fool people, but really they were there to give me strength.

I now feel able to drop a couple of the lesser events, that were, to be frank, fillers.

Just because I put my work up somewhere, doesn’t mean anyone saw it… or thought much of it.

I’ve now got a few really good bits on there. But it is still all about the spin isn’t it?

“I have exhibited in New York” being a case in point. I feel this very humble/overly modest urge, before people even comment, to say “Jamestown, not New York City”. This is ridiculous, because in terms of our experience as artists, I sure we had a better time in Jamestown than we would have had drowning in NYC. Jamestown doesn’t need to be excused, it is a perfectly marvellous place! But people make assumptions, and I suppose part of me doesn’t want to be “found out” at an embarrassingly later date, in a public place, that it wasn’t NYC… (akin to the dream of being discovered naked in Sainsbury’s). So I blurt it out.

But the thing is, the other side of it is it gives ME confidence. Having “Events of Worth” on my cv helps me stride into places with head held high. (Who bestows the worth is another conversation, Grayson Perry discussed it beautifully and hilariously in his Reith Lectures).

I’ve recently been working in the New Art Gallery Walsall, doing a small research job on the education team. Later in the summer I’m going to be delivering some workshops with them. The thought of working in this, my favourite gallery, a few years ago was a pipe dream. I’m doing it, in a small way, but I am. It makes me feel alive to be doing something new again. It makes me excited and happy, in a ridiculous way that isn’t really dignified for a woman of my age.. But you know what? I don’t give a damn what you think. I’m not cool, I’m a 53 year old woman, now doing something she loves. I am deliriously happy to do it. And I don’t care if it shows. I do have something to offer, I am confident that my weirdly diverse experience seems to be quite useful at the moment…

So… the spin is there, but most of it is for me, and if questioned I will crumble and confess.

It just happens to be the way that things have fallen this week, the week that would have been half term week. I don’t live by that calendar any more. I’ve got something planned every day, work (paid… woohoo!), training (paid for… woohoo again!), a trip to Liverpool, to see my youngest son (hurrah!), and calling in at the Tate to see Wendy Williams for the first time since COLONIZE in Jamestown (yippee!). Good job I’ve got my voice back, because I have lots to talk about on all these occasions.

Never happy though are we? I am positively ITCHING to get into the studio for some serious making time. I have work to finish, and work to start, and some experimenting to do with some baby clothes and wire. A friend (the aforementioned “H”) peered over my shoulder in the charity shop (she can do this easily, I am short, she is tall) and muttered “Is there something you have to tell me?” as I bought baby clothes. “No,” said I “I’m just one of those mad old bats that buys baby clothes”. I was given a strange look and served quickly.

Certain types of baby clothes must be bought when they are seen, because they are rare… I call them blanks. A while back I bought a plain white cotton shirt for a 9 month old… no adornment whatsoever. This is the one I have used for heart protecting purposes. The event above made me extremely excited… a plain white knitted jumper, two buttons across one shoulder. No adornment of any sort, for a six-month old baby, 70p! bargain! I am unsure what I will do with it… I have a couple of ideas, but it will sit folded neatly on my studio table, next to the neatly folded bras, until I find the right thing. I am experimenting with all sorts of wire framing to make these garments stand up on their own. Three dimensional, but uninhabited.

I don’t know why uninhabited has become important. I have in the past made headless stuffed bodies to insert in the suspended garments. Now, being able to see inside seems relevant, but I know not why… I expect that will turn up later. These things usually do. And I don’t want these garments suspended either… no movement, still, standing independently.

Half-formed ideas float around my head, trying themselves on with other ideas… eventually finding a fit…

Interesting…

Having been totally overwhelmed by the whole job thing, with just one afternoon left to do, I find myself thinking about my own work again. I read Marion Michell’s blog

( www.a-n.co.uk/p/2157883/ )

with new thoughts, prompting me to look more deeply at my own thoughts, finding I again have the capacity to do so. I look at the garments, and fragments of garments, and hints of garments, they prompt memories, and they are occasionally false… and sometimes hold evidence of truth.

EVIDENCE… proof… available information… traces… beliefs upheld…

Evidence of what?

The layers of fabric I stitch become evidence of love, the more layers, the more protection I offer my child, the more I love them. And yet it is a paradox, as I disable them with the stiffness of the layers.

It is about the show: “Look everyone! See how much I love my child!”

EVIDENCE…

The word is also relevant as I handle and work with these bras.

Evidence of self-neglect?

Evidence of poverty?

Evidence of a level of self-unawareness rather than self-neglect?

Modesty? A virtue?

I have been avoiding the issue of sexuality in these pieces. First wanting to explore the self-ness… the intimacy of how the wearer feels about themselves. There is not an asexuality, more a denial of sexuality in these garments…

But I run their imagined lives through my own mind, through my own filter of middle aged woman head…

What was this bra finally discarded in favour of? What replaced it?

Was this hidden from a partner? Does the partner care what the bra looks like?

Can I find evidence of love in these garments if I look hard enough? Love, desire, lust, passion, affection don’t disappear with poverty do they?

I am being presumptuous. I am only seeing/imagining the evidence that fits the stories in my head.

I draw these items, and photograph them as they are.

Perhaps my next task will be to make them beautiful?

and so… one job shrinks, as the other one grows.

The stress of the old fades, as I detach rather more successfully.

The room, as I remove my things and “tidy up” starts to look less like an art room and more like a classroom. No longer mine.

As the children find out I’m leaving, I’m getting slightly damp hugs in corridors, and on the playground.

The new job will expand over the coming weeks: there will be different children (and adults) to have fun with. I can’t wait!

Meanwhile, I’m still a woman waiting… two more afternoons to do. Friday, 3:30, or thereabouts, I will walk out of the school I have known for 25 years.

Feels very weird.