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Ok!

I’ve moved in… not quite lock, stock and barrel, but a boot load of stuff went over this afternoon, and I’m piling up the next lot to take on Tuesday.

It felt weird… my son asked “ooh! can I come?” and after a really loooonnng pause he said “I’ll take that as a no then”. I was thinking, because I didn’t want to seem mean, I didn’t want to say no outright, but that’s how it was. So no, he didn’t come with me.

Maybe some of you will know how I felt. I didn’t know this space. I have never had a studio away from home or college/university before. I don’t know how to be in it. I don’t know how to work in it. So I want to be on my own in it until I know, and I’m confident about the studio owning artist Elena before I let people in. Sounds selfish? Yes! Absolutely! I don’t think I’m going to apologise for it either. Having a studio is totally self indulgent, self obsessed. But I’ve been that anyway. On occasions I have been horribly so. By having this separate space, I am hoping that will stop, or at least be contained. The time just ran away with me… I had three hours there, basically cleaning and moving furniture. My mind raced over what I was going to do and make and listen to and think about. Suddenly, my time was up. I can see me having to set an alarm on my phone.

I have some work on the walls and hanging from the ceiling. I have a quilt and a few books there. I have fabric, thread, paper and basic kit. On Tuesday I will take my ironing board and cutting mat etc. Practical items for making….

But the huge huge luxury is this space with a window and a door. I can let the world in, or shut it out. It is mine only. It has a lock on the door. Part of me feels it will be quite some time before I invite people into it. I anticipate spending lots of time just getting my head straight and sorting the ideas out. I moved the furniture round many times, but decided that if I have a view of a castle, my workspace should be where I can glance up and see it! I envisage moving my thoughts around, until the internal view is clearer too.

Someone posed the question “I wonder if your work will change?”

I wonder…

Imagine a huge pair of doors… in my mind they are the scale of the baptistery doors in Florence. I have no idea what is behind them. A key has been turned. I search in my memory to find when, but the actual moment is elusive.

But I can hear the tumblers shifting, slowly. It is a complex lock. It will take a while for the doors to open. But they will. It’s too late now to stop them…

Over the last 300+ posts, sometimes I have written twaddle, just for the sake of it. I have treated you to a whole new level of mundanity.

Today dear reader(s) I have a proper reason for posting, A proper artist’s reason for posting.

I HAVE A STUDIO!

I’m sure some of you know how HUGE this is. Some of you perhaps take it for granted.

This blog platform doesn’t allow me a big enough, red enough, shiny enough font to express how excited I am!

I’ve just driven back from Wolverhampton in the rain, in the knowledge, via email, that I have a studio. I sang loudly all the way, in a high and squeaky voice to Loney Dear’s “Hall Music”. I hope I have driven slowly and safely, because I have no recollection of the journey, the roundabouts or the traffic lights.

It is in Artspace Dudley, well, above it really, above the “empty shop” it occupies in the town centre. The studio is big enough, light enough and clean enough for a textiles person. I have a big window from which I can ignore Farmfoods and the bus station, and see the castle and surrounding views… Dudley is quite high up. Compared to other studios I have visited, it is in a good state of repair. It’s not a great area, but artists studios generally aren’t are they? It is cheap, I get the opportunity to mix myself up a bit with other artists and get involved in stuff.

I have no idea how I am going to occupy this space. I’m going to move some stuff in. I’m going to pin stuff up on the white walls. I am going to have some books, a comfy chair (maybe two) and fabric and thread and old clothes hanging all around me…. Then we will see.

I am going to have some sort of event to mark this. I will have music and wine and nibbles and tea and cake. I’m more of a tea and cake person I think… I will have an exhibition that is all my own. I will open the studio and invite people in.

THEN I will tell them all to clear off, because I have work to do.

http://www.artspacedudley.com/

I have to be reminded, by other people who throw my own words back at me.

Jo Farnell Brown, recently, and Bo, constantly.

I have to have faith in the work, move confidently with it, allow it to do its own thing, allow my brain to chug along as I work, and all will be well.

There is often a gap though, between one piece of work and the next, when a bit of panic lodges itself at the back of my throat and asks the question: “what is the next thing then?”

Given a sufficiently complex piece of sewing, and a conscious effort NOT to panic, something always pops up… the next step becomes obvious… no… not obvious… clear. “Obvious” makes my mental, inner Bo whisper “comfort blanket” and I have to guard against that don’t I?

I have these 200 dandelion seeds to work… I have done about 120 now. The meaning and reasons for them have now settled, they are sitting well on the coat and in my head. They have grown in emotional depth since their conception, which is gratifying… and this is what I aim for. This is the thing I need to have faith in.

Happily, as I stitch the remaining seeds, the next piece of work has germinated. It stems from the work done for ONE with Bo last October, stretches from the pieces I had already started to make before the coat intervened.

I don’t know how some artists work in isolation. I couldn’t do it. The developments in my work come directly from the collaborations and conversations with other artists. I might be trying to explain to them my own work. They might be talking to me about theirs when a phrase resonates and sticks with me. All of these nuggets of conversation gather, ferment, put out shoots of growth. I might say it is Rhizomatic, but some of you already know I am allergic to Deleuze, so couldn’t possibly….

I feel compelled to make more and more clothes, children’s clothes, out of nothing. Well no, not exactly nothing, but out of the useless bits that couldn’t become anything if I didn’t use them for this. So far I have the dress I made for ONE, the vest I made during ONE and the pants and shoes I have made subsequently. We think there will be a ONE(2), as both Bo and I have begun a new strand of work since the show. As yet, I don’t know the why, but I can see it in my head, this collection of clothing… familiar shapes, familiar fabrics that relate, are used repeatedly from one garment to the next until they run out. There’s lots of sewing to be done, and during that feat of endurance, the why will turn up. I know it. I feel it in my bones to be an absolute truth.

Bo and I have decided we need to do some real-time, same-space collaboration. The long-term email exchange was great, but want to see how it works when we do it up close and personal. While we did the 2 year MA, we had once-weekly long conversations about all manner of things. Then that stopped abruptly and we had a different sort of communication for a year. We want to push on, a year after that, and see what happens if we do it this way. I’m curious to see how it will work. I don’t think we have exhausted this collaboration yet. I fear/hope we will be collaborators for a long time… the work might not always look that way, but the support of the conversation and influence will be there. We have enough in common to make it feel easy. But enough not in common to make it interesting.

Myself as template… I started out fitting it, after all, I made it for myself….then bit by bit I push bits over the edge… Stretch out from it or pull back from it… Until I notice I have grown and no longer fit it at all and the shape is unrecognisable… I have become a different person. Sometimes people notice and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they are happy for the change, sometimes not. Or they insist there has been no real discernible change. Sometimes they don’t notice, and sometimes they don’t care. They carry on using as if you were still the template you used to be. Because that works better for them. This will never work for me. Find a new situation where the new template fits… then push out again!

My haircut as mentioned in a previous post, is the physical manifestation of the changing template. That and my recent penchant for wearing dresses. My hair used to be one of the things that polite people used to describe me to others. What will they use now? Maybe they will be less polite, and just say short, fat and old.

This has been wandering around in my head for quite some time. Marion Michell brought the word template to the front of my brain, where it slotted in nicely, and gave shape to the thoughts. Thank you Marion. Maybe that is why your work always finds a deep point in me, and pokes a sharp stick at it.

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

(To my readers, THIS is my 300th blog post… so I shall be like the queen and have an official birthday! Thanks for reading my twaddle)