Threads

I have spent much of the last few years trying to play down the teaching, in order to boost the awareness of myself as an artist, not just to other people, but to myself. It took me a long long long time to rediscover my art practice, and once I had decided I could call myself an artist, I didn’t feel secure enough with it to call myself anything else until it “bedded in”. I do now. I am an artist first now, I think, a teacher second.

I also have spent a long time trying to figure out how the two things sat together. Did I take my art into my teaching space? (No, not really) Did my teaching affect my artwork? (Yes, but in subtle ways).

I find it interesting though, that the more of an artist I become, the more people find my teaching a thing to ask questions about. I try to teach as an artist now, not be an art teacher. Is that a ridiculously hair-splitting pretentious statement to make? So although I don’t take my art into the art room, the artist is there. My art isn’t always appropriate to take there.

I have considered asking not to be called Mrs Thomas any more, but being Elena. Would this make a difference to me or the children really? It is quite a traditional school in many ways) If I visit other schools, I am called Elena. I have considered putting a sign over the door that says studio. (I share the space, half the week it is a “proper” classroom, at the front of the room at least, so this might not be right…)

Some of the opportunities I’ve had as an artist, have come about because I am also a teacher. So I must be grateful to that side of my life, and although I am tempted on occasions to give it up (Michael Gove has pushed me ever closer), I shall be sticking with it a while. There are still things to discover, and every year with every new set of students/pupils, last year’s methods need a tweak here and there. Or a complete re-think.

I hate all the guff that surrounds teaching. But when it comes down to it, there is nothing much more joyous than a room full of children, paint and paper… there comes a moment when the room is nearly silent, all are engrossed totally in whatever world they are creating. I daren’t move or make a sound for fear of disturbing it. I come closer to making artists out of them then than any other time. I have not poured words of wisdom into their heads, or given them a timeline from the Renaissance to Post-modernism. I gave them paint. All it takes. These politicians make things too complicated.

I think I was moaning… I generally am… about the fact that I’d got all these things nearly happening. Nearly wasn’t good enough, and nearly might as well be nothing, as there’s nothing to show for all the hard work spent at the laptop and the sewing machine and the sketchbook.

Well, nearly is now really nearly. And I have gathered another nearly thing along the way.

Nearly starts a week on Friday, and doesn’t stop till December.

Through a circuitous path, involving facebook, twitter, this blog, NSEAD, and an article I wrote for their magazine AD… and being a bit gobby I suppose… I have been invited to join the DfE Expert Advisory Group for Art and Design, as a representative of the primary school in which I work as an artist. (Good job it’s not literacy, that sentence is appalling!)

First meeting is a week on Friday. My stomach is tying itself in knots. This feels like a big deal that I might need an outfit for in order to make myself feel like I’m in the right place and got the right head on. This is a hateful thing, because I will want something that still feels like me, but a professional, clever, insightful, mildly amusing me. Usually I am not particularly professional, clever takes me by surprise, I have no insight unless it’s on someone else’s behalf, and I’m permanently verging on the hysterical when under stress. And if they read this, they’re going to regret asking me aren’t they?

An outfit… a Sophie Cullinan style superhero outfit perhaps? (no cape)

The week after, work has to be made ready to hang for ONE on 27th… no half term for me! I’ve got a weekend workshop to run the week after that. The Art Party Conference in Scarborough on 23rd. In between all this once ONE is done, I am doing materials research for COLONIZE in April. I guess it will take me a good couple of months to turn this World War 2 army greatcoat into the work of art I want it to be, possibly longer. I’ve got a month long group exhibition in Wolverhampton in February, and I don’t as yet, know what I’ll show for that.

Oh yes, and I have a job.

December I shall rest. Unless I get a better offer…

A conversational aside about age and identity in an email from Kate Murdoch prompted a memory…

A few weeks ago I was strolling around a favoured local gallery with a friend.

Picture the scene… short, round, brightly dressed middle aged woman with grey(ish) hair and a patchwork bag strolls around the gallery in the usual manner, striding past some stuff. Getting her glasses out and peering closely at others. She approaches a sectioned off part of the gallery and the young(er) gallery attendant approaches her, her head to one side, and hands the woman a leaflet, and says that it might help her understand the installation. She mindlessly accepts the piece of paper, as if it were a coupon for McDonalds or Subway… and bumbles into the gallery…

One minute later… tall, slim, casually dressed man of a similar age with backpack slung over the shoulder lopes across to the installation. The gallery attendant smiles at him, he says good morning, and enters the same area, where middle aged woman is seething.

He thinks it is funny, but I get this a lot.

I don’t know what is worse, being invisible or being patronised.

I’ve just completed my very first application for arts funding. I know. I’m 52 for goodness sake! What have I been doing all my life?

Anyway, it’s done. I’ve done my best with it. The rest is up to someone else. If I don’t get it I will have to raise the money some other way, as I am now determined to get me and my work to New York somehow!

We wait with baited breath, fingers crossed, touching wood and avoiding ladders etc.

Meanwhile, now it’s done I’d like a couple of days of making please. I’ve got a couple of pieces in my head that I’d like to make ready for the exhibition in Ledbury. One is a tiny little thing, that will probably only take me a morning to make. The other is somewhat bigger, and requires a little construction and forethought. And lots of quite technical stitching. Remember when I had my hand injury and said rather rashly that I might not show any stitching at all? What b*ll*cks!

What that few weeks did though, was make me consider how and why I stitch. It made me consider what was necessary. My stitching has always been my thing… and to have gone through a process of reconsideration through enforced circumstances has been more than useful. I’m sure I could make this second piece with different materials if I chose to, but why would I? It wouldn’t say it properly. I am fluent in stitch and fabric. So that’s what I’ll do.

For the show with Bo, I have stripped it all back. I have considered ONE stitch, and ONE stitch at a time, making ONE thing at a time. I’ve thought about the power of ONE or the weakness, and considered the strength in numbers, the effects that working as a group can have. Stitching is the ultimate collaboration. So stitching stands as a metaphor for the rest of me. I work best, strongest when I have someone to bounce off, laugh with, snipe at, argue with, drink tea with.

So of course I am a stitcher not a painter. Obvious isn’t it?

I’m often found reflecting on the nature and effects of collaboration on my practice.

I am essentially a lazy person. I follow the path of least resistance in many areas. I’m not really driven by money, as long as I have a roof over my head and food in the fridge, and a bit left over to splurge on second hand clothes, I’m ok.

Without collaboration I wouldn’t be an artist I don’t think. I would make stuff… I made stuff for years, quite happily on my own, without any of it being art.

Collaboration is my kick.

Collaboration gives me access to other people’s toy boxes. There is no way I would be recording sound and no way I would have wrestled with GarageBand, or become this megalomaniac event manager without collaboration with Dan Whitehouse. There is no way I would have survived with sanity intact from my recent injury without the input from Bo Jones. No way I would be using digital media… I would still be just stitching – great though that is, it was never challenged. Bo challenges it, coughs the words “comfort blanket” and makes me review my processes and output. Because of that, every stitch now counts. The exhibition that we are working towards approaches… I can’t wait to see this work up, all together, his and mine. It’s been a really good year.

Any ambition I have comes from the need to collaborate. I have to be honest, it comes from a confidence issue too… on my own, my self esteem takes a bit of a dive. If I surround myself with people I value, it goes up. My recent involvement in the group of artists working together to get to New York is not so much about my ambition as an artist, (“How good will this look on my cv?”) but from a desire to talk to different people. To get the work out there, get it talked about. The conversation, as always, the impetus for further development.

The skills I collect, are collected out of necessity. Nothing is spare, all accumulated out of need. If I want to make a song, I need to learn how to use GarageBand. If I want to work with digital images, I need to learn how to use PhotoShop. By exposing myself to different collaborative experiences, I acquire new desires, then new needs, then new skills.

For me, the ideal collaborator is someone completely different… well, no, not completely, but sufficiently different to make an impact. There should be mutual respect, and no fear to say what you think. You develop a way of being explicit about your work and theirs, you have to explain yourself clearly.

Collaboration is my kick. Again I use language that alludes to addiction. Collaboration provides the medium, the atmosphere, the right conditions for validation when done well. If it is a good partnership – I don’t want someone to just say “that’s nice dear!” – I need to feel I’ve worked for it and it is valued. I need to feel they are getting as much out of it as I am. This is rare. I have had a few collaborations that haven’t worked. I was dead against them for a while. But I think I didn’t understand them. I looked for someone the same as me. Big mistake. Having a partnership with an artist similar to me just provides competition, and no spark. There is nothing either can offer the other. It was only when I started talking to Dan that this changed. We were working in completely different fields. We had a completely different language. We were complete strangers at the beginning, and decided between us that we had to be completely open and honest with each other. I learned the skill of very kindly and politely saying no, and for something to be explained for a third time please, as I didn’t understand. There’s nothing like spending time with someone, working hard, coming away from the day exhausted but exhilarated by what has happened, inspired to do more, seeing new ways of working that wouldn’t have occurred to you before.

Collaboration is addictive.