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Art Party Conference then…

A bit of a jolly? Yes. Definitely.

A meeting of like minded folk? Of course.

A day of great conversations mainly.

The highlight for me, was the witnessing of the conversation between Stephen Deuchar, Cornelia Parker, Jeremy Deller and Pavel Büchler.

In my time I have listened to an awful lot of pretentious, idiotic dross talked about art. But not here. These four were extraordinary in their ordinariness. They said things that made me nod my head in agreement, laugh, sympathise. I came away with deeper admiration, a little starstruck, but also heartened…. These four successful people, unbelievably, are a little bit like me! They have had parents, tutors, teachers telling them they shouldn’t/can’t do things. They did it anyway.

I wrote little notes in my book…

“Theory is not the job of the artist, it is the job of the work. The artist can ignore theory. The work changes/affects perceptions and it is that that speaks to theory”

Halle-bloody-luyah!

I think I might be a little in love with Pavel.

I’ll leave all that to someone else then, and just keep making what I want to make.

Any theory I did when I was writing essays for my MA was dragged out of me kicking and screaming. Partly because I am lazy, but mostly because I didn’t see how I could possibly understand most of it without doing a degree in philosophy beforehand… if I had wanted to do that I would have done that! I felt all the time that I was cheating, jumping through a hoop that I couldn’t really see the reason for… that I was pretending to “get” but didn’t. In quiet corners, with selected fellow students I would confess.

Now, I am out and proud.

This event will stay with me for quite some time. I suspect it will have ripples that go on spreading. It was great to be there. Thank you to everyone involved in making it happen.

As Franny said, we had a good time.

(www.a-n.co.uk/p/564556/)

(do pop over and look at the lovely photos we took of each other)

She was just as I had imagined. We laughed, chatted, discussed and pondered… there were no awkward pauses or anything. I suppose we had had enough online correspondence to know stuff about each other’s lives and work to talk about. It was wonderful to see pieces of her work in the flesh too!

We have had very different lives, but there were enough points of accord to make the conversation easy. I think this may be an artist thing. I have seen a poster somewhere that says artists are dangerous because they mix with all classes of society. Isn’t that a marvellous thing? The thing that holds us together, whatever we make and however we make it, wherever we are from, there is a commonality in the most basic part of us – our brains – the most human thing, our thoughts and dreams and aspirations.

The trappings and accessories are really immaterial. Franny and I could have been sat at any table, in any surroundings and the conversation would quite probably have been the same.

The table thing fascinates me. I might do some drawings…

Whenever my friends and I get together, there is nearly always a table between us, and mugs. There’s the possibility that art could break out at any moment, some spark of creativity could leap at us and we would be prepared. We lean forward earnestly, conspiratorially, cheekily, flirtatiously, confessionally, comforting, teasing, sympathising and taking the piss. We lean back, ponder, relax, yawn and sigh, cry or laugh and snort sometimes to the point of hysteria, we consider, remember, and grasp at straws.

The table provides a platform, a safety net, a barrier, something to put our elbows on when our chin is in our hands, our fingers raking through our hair. The stuff on it a distraction, diversion or focus, something to play with, or throw in exasperation.

But I will tell you this… if I have someone here, and I put the kettle on… we don’t head for “the comfy seats”, without fail, we head for the table.

I expect Franny had “comfy seats” too. But her table was better.

However, the state of her crayon box was bloody shocking.

I expect she is grateful that I put them all in the right order before I left.

I know I said I was going to do teachery things for a while, that the artist would have to wait till December to be allowed to roam free, but an unexpected bonus has cropped up. In the middle of all the teacheriness is a trip to that London…. And so it transpires that Franny is going to take me in hand!

My meeting finishes at 4pm, and by then my brain will be swollen with stuff and guff and I will be rendered incapable of reading the map of the tube. Franny is going to meet me and take over all responsibility for me, like a large confused child… (me, not her).

It is with this impending meeting in mind that I gasp in wonder yet again at the internet. I don’t think our children realise or understand what a miraculous thing it is! They haven’t known life without it.

I have never met Franny or Kate, or Jean or Julie, or Marion, or Rob…..yet I consider them sort of friends. (I have met both Sophie and Wendy though!)

Franny is about 150 miles away I think, but I feel like I’ve known her for years. We have conversations, we bloggers, that cut to the chase. If you “get” another artist’s work, it is a short cut to knowing something of their personality, and something of what is important to them. You don’t make judgements based on appearance, or accent. What people make and what they write is the important bit.

I am hoping she thinks the same, because I don’t think, by 4pm tomorrow I will give a good first impression… I’m not what you would call “well-groomed” at the best of times. By the time I meet her I will be easy to spot… I will have crumpled everything within touching range. My hair will have been raked through with my undoubtedly sticky possibly chocolatey, definitely inky fingers all day. Any make-up applied carefully at 6.30 am will have slid down my face. I expect my knitted coat will be hanging off one shoulder, my bag slung across the other, doing its own version of “lift and separate”.

The almost all day meeting will be interesting and stimulating, I am sure. But I find what I’m focussing on is Franny. I can’t wait to meet you my long-lost, never-met friend!

I don’t usually find it hard to write this blog… it spills onto the keyboard as fast and furious as it spills out of my mouth… I talk too much!

But today, I can’t decide what to write about. I feel I need to round up a bit about the exhibition… but I did that on our joint blog, so I’ll point you there instead:

www.a-n.co.uk/p/2910921/

Suffice to say, we want to do it again. The negatives were outweighed by the positives, and lessons were learned.

I also started writing a post about a couple of weekend workshops I just did. They were really good, I did a bit of a talk about my work, and then the students spent the time making a response to my work. That bit was great. It was in an independent school, beautiful architecture, gardens, materials and equipment abundant. But I found what I was writing about was far too overtly snipy and political!

Suffice to say, I couldn’t work in the independent sector, and I couldn’t send my children there either, lessons were learned there too.

What I NEED to write about is the New York COLONIZE project with Scibase… we now have a kickstarter page, complete with video, blurb, images, rewards and a big shiny green button that says “BACK THIS PROJECT”.

The Grayson Perry Reith Lectures have been a joy to me. I have listened to his words shouting “Yes!” at the radio. “Me too! I also have an inner shed!”

How to be an artist… There’s no instruction manual. For every thousand artists there are a thousand ways to be an artist. I can almost pinpoint the time at which this dawned on me. It took me a long time to get there. I can be extraordinarily naive and stupid sometimes. I can also pinpoint the time I first called myself an artist, out loud and in public. It IS a brave thing to do. It DOES feel a little bit noble. It does feel that I can only be the most Elena Thomassy when I’m being an artist. Anything else is lesser. Anything else is criminal. Anything else feels like I’m not living my life to the full. I’m wasting my brain, my thoughts, my love, my faith in humanity if I don’t make art. My supreme ability to make lemon shortbread is pointless, unless I am also an artist.

My motivation to teach, especially in primary education, is to catch them young, show them what is possible, show them that their thoughts and ideas are the thing that makes them unique, the thing that they can show to the world and leave their mark on it.

This month my diary is filled with opportunities to show myself as an artist to the world. Grayson is right: you have to grab them all, because you just never know who you will meet, who you will end up talking to. You never know what ideas will be sparked, what associations will be made between previously unrelated thoughts. I’m still reeling from the joint show with Bo Jones; I’m doing workshops with students; artist talks; The Art Party Conference in Scarborough; A meeting of the DfE Expert Advisory group for art and design… this last one, I still wonder why I’ve been asked, but I say yes to it anyway. By the middle of December, I will no doubt be almost dead with exhaustion.

The point of all this self-aggrandisement is this: It is a privilege to be an artist. It fills me with the deepest joy. I am thankful for every minute that I have to make stuff, to think, show, write and speak about my work. To be an artist is the BEST thing to be. To see the world around me, be able to process the tricky bits and make something that expresses my thoughts is something I am driven to do. Without it I am shot… shit… and shut.