Threads

Recommended reading 2012:

I’ve been reading Anthony Boswell’s blog ‘Et In Arcadia Ego’ – Beyond Painting a lot lately…

www.a-n.co.uk/p/2294750/

… he is very eloquent and manages to say the sort of thing I’m thinking, but in a way that is poetic, has a soft rhythm to it. It has a feeling of the internal about it, and feels a little confessional sometimes, very personal. I admire his courage and his writing style, and always come away from it feeling thoughtful, and a little inadequate.

Been reading Bo Jones’s blog “The Art of Teaching” too…

www.a-n.co.uk/p/2544868/

… Those of you that know me, or have followed my blog a while will know that I know Bo quite well, we did our MA together. I’m really glad he’s started writing, as his blog gives me a forum to think about and comment on my teaching, something I never really wanted to do on my own blog. His insight and questioning nature served me well during the course and since. He is used to me swearing at him, as the minute I think I have something cracked and start to feel complacent (see comment on laziness in previous post), he will ask a short and to the point question that throws me off balance and makes me think again. His own art work has occasional links to the topics I think about myself, but his outcomes are completely different, and these differences will often cast light on what I’m working on, and how I’m doing it. His blog widens out the questioning. Good stuff.

Ruth Geldard’s “Two Steps Backwards…”

www.a-n.co.uk/p/2478313/

…also has me hooked. Each post is peppered with great quotes that she’s obviously been collecting for a while, each appropriate to her subject matter. I have made at least two visits to that popular online bookseller since reading her blog. She is funny, and throws in references to her working style which, like mine, is often based around her kitchen table. It is reassuring to read that you can do it this way, anyway you like in fact. As she quotes:

The studio is less important than other things, like the burning desire to paint. If you don’t have this disease, you can’t catch it from a nice studio.” Warren Chiswell

My last recommendation, for now, is Marion Michell’s “Sleep-Drunk I Dance”

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

Her work is exquisite, and rarely, this shines through in the simply presented photographs. They provoke such an emotional response in me. She writes of them as real people, and I see their characters and their lives. The work and the writing about it is poignant. I hesitate to mention the other aspect of Marion’s blog, that of her illness, as she is often reluctant to do so herself. The illness makes her no less an artist, but it permeates her brain and her body so that its effect on the work is no doubt inevitable. But all of us are affected by our circumstances aren’t we? I could make a list of the parts of my life that influence my work, and these crop up in my blog now and then for all to see, and no doubt there are things I don’t see, that are blindingly obvious to others. These are the things that make our work our own. These are the good bits.

This whole blogging thing is great (despite discovering in the book “Information is Beautiful” that there is a 1: 35,000,000 chance I could die whilst doing it!).

Whether I’m reading other people’s or writing my own, it has provided a real focus for my thinking about my work. Even when it doesn’t seem like it – I do wander all over the place a bit!

So thanks everyone, keep writing through 2013!

Well.

That was a busy year wasn’t it?

So… Resolutions… yes or no?

Yes: It’s good to reassess, look at what you’ve done, see what you still need to do, goals and targets all that stuff.

No: Rubbish. Setting yourself up for failure aren’t you?

Somewhere in between: What I end up doing is setting myself tasks that are already underway, so I can feel just a little bit smug and ahead of my own game. I’m quite good at conning myself. I seem able to compartmentalise bits of thought and bits of my life and having internal conversations with myself. Mostly I say things about how I’m so motivated I don’t need resolutions. I can lie to myself with complete and utter conviction.

(men, white coats, secure transport)

Any resolutions this year in terms of artwork should then be concerned with things I’m doing now, cutting holes in respectable clothing, hiding things in the pockets, shining light through some holes. I’m thinking I shall have to knit myself a twin-set. Remember all those tortured discussions about how to display my work? Maybe I’ll just make it and wear it?

(Incidentally, the second tweed jacket has been hoiked out of the studio by my son, who has claimed it to wear – oddly, he didn’t want the one with rude words embroidered on the pocket flaps.)

I need to get some critical feedback about these at some point… make sure I’m heading where I want to. Got such a lot of ideas in my head to be dealt with. Things to be stitched, drawn, torn and mended. Lots of boundaries to keep pushing at…

I think though, I should resolve to address my extreme laziness. When I had tutorials and assessments going on, I was really speedy. I know that I can be, but without that, what have I got to give me a nudge to get these things done? Who have I got to give me a nudge? Maybe one of those internal voices?

Nah… they’re all bloody mad. I’m the only one worth listening to.

You can click elsewhere if you want, as I’m still blathering on about the way I work. I find it useful, even if readers don’t. It’s useful because recognition of the patterns and their effect on my soul/mind/body helps even out the peaks and troughs. If I’m feeling low it’ll be because… and equally, if I’m feeling way too “up” then I need to do… this is starting to sound a little like therapy, but it’s not. Not really. It’s self knowledge.

(As a bit of an aside…do you think as a group artists have less therapy than other professional groups?)

I’m feeling twitchy at the moment. Twitchy means I need to settle to something. Christmas looms and I’ve done sod all in the way of preparation, shopping, etc. And in some respects, Christmas has to be dealt with before I can do the “settling to something”.

So the book of lists has come out, the organisation has begun. Hurdles have been set up to get over, hoops to jump through. But also, don’t tell anyone, but I have a basket of stuff behind my table. The presence of the basket will keep me on an even keel.

Don’t get me wrong, I do LOVE the Christmas holidays, gathering my flock in one place so I know they are all safe, we will eat, drink, be merry and play spoons and sword fight on the wii until injury prevents us, and a turkey sandwich beckons.

And then, when everyone goes to bed on Christmas night, I will want to stay up. The house quiet, the cat snoring… at least I think it’s snoring… she does like turkey. Hmmm. Anyway. Then the basket will slide out from under the table. In it at the moment are a small quilt, pinned, ready to hand stitch; a piece of tweed and a large knitting needle, waiting to damage the tweed with the needle; a sketch book with some life drawings in and thoughts of collage.

I will plug my headphones into my MacBook, will lurk about on facebook I expect, send an email or two. I might fall asleep in the chair and wake up at 3:45 with a crick in my neck and cold feet.

But I won’t be twitchy any more.

Just when I think I might have got somewhere, something happens or someone says something that makes me realise nothing’s really changed. The prejudices are still out there. I suppose this latest rant has been prompted by Marion Michell’s blog:

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

In which she says she is an ARTIST. Not a disabled artist, nor an “outsider”. AN ARTIST! I lament the inability to express this in big red letters here, just as she did.

I thought I’d got somewhere too.

Over the last few years, I have come to terms myself with the fact I use textiles, embroidery, patchwork, quilting, scissors, needles, pins, dye. Blah blah blah. While doing my MA there was no question of my choice of materials in terms of them being a legitimate choice. Also, once venturing into sound work and presenting it to my tutors and fellow students, there was no question of my choices being real, authentic and meaningful. Even if what I did with them at the start, was questioned. I had shaken off the stupid feeling that to be an Artist I had to Paint. Textiles is where my voice is. Where I am fluent, skilful. This had been accepted.

But…

One of the rejection letters I recently received suggested that I present my proposal to a “local craft organisation” as they felt it would be a better “fit” with my work. To be honest, I expected better. Do people not see past the textile, and perhaps the middle aged woman sat beside them? Am I going to be fighting this battle my whole life?

Currently, at the New Art Gallery Walsall, Jodie Carey has an exhibition on. She has previously used textiles, and the one textile piece in the show is a large crochet hanging (which I love) but also several slabs of plaster, coloured carefully using crayons. I like these too, but there was talk in the gallery of her exploring the craft and the obsession of intense making, without actually using the craft to make – apologies if I’m getting this wrong – that is what was being said on the preview night.

Is this a way of eschewing the craft? Is it a sell out to ditch the cloth? Am I being hidebound by sticking with it and then getting stroppy because no one gets it?

I would protest, saying I have ventured out, and “rediscovered” the cloth, and also that I am now using text and sound in a way informed by the use of the textiles. I think I need to talk to Jodie and ask her how she feels about the process of crafting a piece of art.

I know there are other artists writing blogs here, that use traditional, perhaps traditionally feminine, crafts to express their ideas. What do they think?

So as far as I’m concerned, I am an Artist in big red letters and a capital A, and so is Marion (Actually, Marion is bigger and better, and I hold her in high regard, a role model even, but don’t tell her I told you). I will be frank, it has taken me a while to get to the point where I say it loud and proud, it’s been a struggle sometimes. But I’m here now, and I’m ready to fight anyone with a knitting needle if they say it isn’t art because I can sew, crochet and use a sewing machine.

Reading this back, it is a bit long and ranty, and I’ve posted lots in the last week or so, but I have a bee in my beautifully hand-stitched bonnet!

(and this is my 200th post, so I feel it should be something meaty!)