Threads

A rethink, a fresh look, a prod in a different direction.

I’m banging on about “the conversation” again. The conversation that keeps things on the right track, sharp, prevents complacency and comfort.

I don’t think it matters where it comes from as long as you have it. Actually, YOU might not need it in the slightest, you might be capable of doing your own clear thinking. I, however, need help. I’ve had help from courses, tutors, other artists, musicians, books, other art works, music… all sorts. But it seems I can’t function as the kind of artist I want to be without the conversations.

Since 2010, Bo Jones has been the other side of my artistic conversation. And even when he’s nowhere near, I can sometimes see him smirking at me, and I think again… or ignore it at my peril!

After a couple of hours with him, doing what might seem to other people like arguing, all is clearer, and I am now focussed on the task ahead. I had taken a whole pile of work with me, textiles mostly, but a couple of the scrumpled up drawings and some digital images.

At the pile of textiles, Bo said he’d seen all that before. It was my comfort blanket… in the case of one piece, literally. Oh. Right. Ok. I pulled out four balls of scrumpled up tracing paper drawings, and started smoothing them out.

Why are you doing that?

Why did you screw them up?

What does the scrumpling add to it?

What do you like?

Whywhywhywhywhywhy?

Frankly, he’s a pain in the arse.

(in a good way, Bo)

(He never reads this anyway, so I’m safe!)

But I recognise his worth, so all is well eh?

We discussed (well, I might have ranted a bit) the fact that there are different kinds of artists, and if the MA we did together had one fault, it was that this wasn’t discussed. There was an implicit expectation that (fine art) success was judged along one path, or at least paths that vaguely led in the same direction: an Arts Council grant, a residency in a “proper” gallery (you know what I mean), an Axis webpage… blah blah blah…

Well.

Bo isn’t that, but he’s a bloody good teacher (and he’s still mine, long after graduation).

I’m certainly not either. If I was judged by those criteria, I can put several ticks in the failed boxes. I have the rejection emails to prove it, from the time when I thought this was what I should do.

But failure makes you feel rubbish.

Change the criteria.

Be a different sort of artist.

Be a bloody good art teacher

Be a runner of workshops

Be a planner of your own event

Hire a space and be your own curator

Or just make stuff.

Sod ‘em!

So… do these two things live together? Can I still take part in the critical conversation without buying into the arty-bollocks prescribed pathway to “success”?

Yes. I can. Because I can move the goalposts.

As long as I am participating in the conversation that satisfies my own sense of critical worth/ validity/strength/robustness or whatever you want to call it, I don’t care. As long as I can find myself enough to do to carry on doing it, I don’t give a monkey’s…. Erm…. Well…. Nearly….

Trouble is, that’s all fairly internal isn’t it?

How valid is it? Is it valid just because I say so?

How do I measure success then?

Does it have to be measured even?

What are my criteria?

Is this the place to say I really enjoy having my blog in the top ten? (thank you)

I like having been asked to write things.

I like being asked to go to New York.

And Bulgaria.

And Wolverhampton.

I like being asked my opinion.

I like putting up my shed and asking people to sing and play in it.

I like it when people like my work.

For now, that will do. When I have another difficult conversation with Bo, and decide it’s not enough, or just plain wrong… I’ll move my goalposts again.

Sketchbook

I had an idea ages ago that I thought would work really well, would take this body of work into the three dimensional, and allow me to project digital images onto something other than a wall.

I’m very impatient.

Having written about it and drawn it in my sketch book, I was certain it would work. It took me weeks to get going on it, I felt I needed the place to myself, uninterrupted to get this up and running. It didn’t work. I turned the air blue with foul and despicable language and now will have to go back to the original idea, and my test pieces, to try to figure out why it wouldn’t work on a larger scale.

I remember having another idea some time ago, that I wrote about in this blog, which prompted me to accuse my sketch book of lying to me. A perfectly sensible idea on paper, just doesn’t work when you do it for real. Where is the lie happening? Before I even get it on the paper? In my drawing of it? In the testing? In the execution?

I am impatient.

I don’t have much staying power. If things don’t work I get very annoyed with myself and the idea, and frequently ditch it. I have boxes, drawers and bags full of unsuccessful projects, abandoned. I will undoubtedly abandon songs too (how fortunate they won’t need storage space).

Occasionally I tip stuff out of the boxes, and review them, can they be used in some way? Dismantled and reassembled? This does, I realise now, have resonance with some of the work I have done with Bo. See? Even when I think I’m doing something new, eventually some previously unseen link rears its (sometimes ugly) head. But the fact there is a link makes me happy nonetheless.

Staying power then… I’m a bit of a grasshopper perhaps? It might seem like that, but in retrospect I see patterns and paths, in the work and my sketchbook. I’m flitting about, in the knowledge/hope that at some point all will become clear. These patterns are reassuring, and ought to give me faith to carry on regardless.

Directionless?

So I feel a little directionless. I don’t know what work belongs where.

I’ve got bits of fabric stitched together with bits of text, ostensibly for the work for “pix” with Bo. Pieces of things. Elements and thoughts in fragments. I’m ok with these things but the edges aren’t there. There are overlaps with other work. But good grief, isn’t that what the pix stuff is all about (for me): the edges not being where you expect them?

I have these tracing paper drawings – not the bra ones, but others, a dress, a hand: These feel connected to the elements, the touch, the fragments, but is it real enough? There are material connections, and a drifting concept. I think it may just be a lack of confidence that makes me want to pin it down. I’ve been here before. I do pin it down, but then there is an obviousness about it all that weakens the work in some respects, leaves no room for the viewer.

All is well in my head, right up to the point where I have to decide what to show in October, because at the moment it is all TOO bitty. I don’t feel the elements have a strong enough connection. I need fresh eyes on it.

Actually, what I probably need is a bit of faith.

I’ll start with this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzTbEnUtz9M

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I managed to just about sustain a whole day of songwriting. After a couple of hours of input, trying out ideas and such, off we were sent, to isolate ourselves and get on with it. The challenge was to come up with 20 song sketches in about 6 hours. As soon as the idea is clear – ish, record it, move onto the next. It was liberating to be honest. I didn’t make 20, I got to about 10, exhausted and fuzzy of brain. I love that feeling, when your creative juices flow, you buzz, keep going, unaware of the time, then flop, eight hours later, wondering why you are hungry!

The thing was though, when we came to play/perform what we had done during the day, in the evening session, I had pretty much forgotten everything I had done. The ideas were fleeting, created, not edited. So listening back I lurched emotionally from embarrassment to a state of disbelief, and the occasional “ooh I like that bit!”

So, in an effort to carry on being brave, here is one of the songs I worked on. I’ve had the lyrics for a while, just a verse really. But this is exactly how I left it, to come back to at a later date, unfinished, needs more words, more music… and without the mangled bit at the end. It’s a note/scribble in a sketch book.

https://soundcloud.com/elena-thomas/crewe

A few posts back, Jean McEwan and I started a discussion that I thought best opened up a little, so I’m posting my over-long comment response here so it perhaps gets a wider reading – I’d like to know what other people think…

We were talking (again) about work that is personal and autobiographical, and validity…

Jean said:

“…I’m fascinated to read your reflections about the autbiographical in your work. I think there’s a general feeling that if work is too directly personal then it somehow has less value? Is there a gender thing in there too do you think? Women artists who make ‘personal’ work being dismissed or perecived negatively? It seems to me a weird thing to judge- for all artists it comes from within, the personal. What happens after, how you desribe it, how it is received, is an external cultural thing .”

My response was:

“….. I think there are all sorts of factors going on here… it is perhaps to do with the intellectualisation of the work. I have “owned up” to what the work is about for me, and where it comes from. Maybe this is a dirty secret I should have kept to myself? Maybe I should detach myself from the work and choose to hang it intellectually on some far-removed French philosopher in order to present it to the viewer? I could do that… I have the technology as they say… I am always very concerned that I exclude much of my audience by spouting arty bollocks, and am very reluctant to do so. Also…. there is the order in which things happen… I cannot wait for the intellectual to attach itself, or for me to find that link, before I make or show the work in order to validate it. I am just compelled to make it…to express it. In my working process this happens after, or during, I’ve often said here that the thought happens during the long processes. Sometimes I make a piece of work that feels right, but don’t see the connections myself, but trust that they are there. If I don’t see them others will. They may be their connections rather than mine, but they are valid nonetheless. When people tell me my work is too personal, or autobiographical, my response/excuse whether voiced or otherwise, is quite often “Louise Bourgeois”. I can do what I want. And more… (maybe this should have been another post rather than comment) I don’t know that I am best placed to judge the gender issue. It is my issue, and I am female… and the work I produce is undoubtedly feminine. Don’t think there is a truly objective answer to that one! Working in collaboration with a man, as I am currently, shows difference in working style/attitudes, but they might be Elena/Bo differences not feminine/masculine differences.”

(both comments have been very slightly edited)

Maybe it is a gender issue? The people I talk to about this are so far, exclusively women…

I have heard accusations to artists doing personal/autobiographical work that it is self-indulgent occupational therapy. I am incensed by this… for a variety of reasons…

Hmmmm……

Still drawing bras, still stamping and embroidering words on bits of muslin. Still playing pick ‘n’ mix with patches and pieces for the joint show with Bo.

I’ve now finished teaching for the year and can really focus on these things. I have decided, other than today when I have decided to draw bras all afternoon, I shall have to spend the six weeks ahead working with Bo, and the work for our event. A priority. I don’t usually like deadlines and setting priorities, but it has to be done.

Except… I have booked a day of songwriting next week. My friend Dan Whitehouse is leading a day for songwriters using the Immersion technique… I will do nothing but write songs all day… bang them out is apparently the thing to be done. Not worry about how they sound, quality, whether they are “right”, just get down as much as you can in the time available. Then look at it all at the end. This will do me good, as I spend a lot of time worrying about the words, and then worrying about whether it is a poem or a song, or whether it has a chorus, or if I can write a chorus or if it just looks stupid on paper. I worry that I can’t play an instrument. I shall do hideously self-aware noises into GarageBand and hope for the best. I shall suspend self-consciousness for the day hopefully, and by the end of it, even if I don’t end up with anything useful, I hope to have broken the bad habits and feel freer about the whole process.

I would quite like to have a sound element to my show with Bo, but I’m trying not to force the issue, just hoping that something appropriate lands on the page, and that I can make something of it.

I have shied away from doing anything musical since my MA final show… but feel if I’m going to keep myself challenged, this has to be done. I’ve gone back to listen again at what I did. Dan had so much input to both of the songs I wrote. I would quite like to get something further along the process on my own before I plead with him for help this time. It is far to easy to rely on someone that you know will do a great job, but I’d like to learn to rely on myself, to find out what I can do by myself first. To become more confident and comfortable with my own processes….

Time will tell.

I post here links to soundcloud as a reminder of what went before… so that if I manage to post up some new sounds, the comparison is easier to make.

https://soundcloud.com/elena-thomas/elena-lullabymp-05-10-11

https://soundcloud.com/elena-thomas/keep-calm-loop-elena-thomas