Threads

I can’t decide which to choose, so I’m posting about 15!

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Had a conversation with a friend about whether I should blog my miserableness of the last couple of days. I emailed my miserableness around a few friends, but blogging is different.

Who wants to read this?:

I feel I’m living a double life.

Even while feeling quite ill, I was able to function as an artist, but not a teacher. I was able to draw and make notes on certain concepts in my sketch book, but not even think about the stuff I had to do for school. I was able to concentrate on working out quite complicated designs and methods, but couldn’t contemplate doing simple printing with 16 children for half an hour. That’s what I’m doing this afternoon.

I don’t want to think about it. I know it is a good thing, and in principle want this sort of artist/teacher thing to be provided, but some days, like today, I don’t want to be the one providing. I very nearly wrote this in a blog, but thought I would probably regret it. I don’t know if after writing it here I’ll press delete or send at the moment… but it feels better to write it anyway.

I know I’m being particularly miserable about it at the moment, and it will pass I’m sure, and I’ll be all keen again. But at the moment I don’t want it.

perhaps it’s my age?

yeah that’s it.

maybe.

So I shall be slow today I think, take it gently, sit alone.

So I sent it (and now I’ve blogged it).

Then I went to work.

I don’t often talk about my teaching here, and welcome Bo starting his blog about teaching, because I’ve done quite a lot of discussion about my teaching there instead.

I was like a bear with a sore head.

Kept myself away from everyone as much as possible.

Great. Heating broken down. So like a recalcitrant toddler I stomped about. I’m ill! The one saving grace about taking myself into work was at least it would be warm.

No. It wasn’t. We all kept our coats on till lunchtime.

Still stomping and scowling about after lunch, I managed to get half of year one into aprons, and give out their printing blocks they’d made the week before. Did this without any getting broken. Then we squeezed ink onto tiles and rolled it out and spread it all over the tables, the roll of wallpaper, the chairs, the floors, up each other’s arms, up Mrs Thomas’ shirt and down her trousers. Then we printed. A row of smudgy, glorious houses, some fancy, with flowers and trees and tiles on the roof, some gently rounded rectangles, leaning to the left, with hundreds of round windows, Some with too much ink, some with not enough. I love them SO much I could cry. This little street of different houses from different children. Each one telling the story of the child. Some meticulous and careful, two or three perfect samples, others, making dozens of them, scarcely touching the paper before being whisked up and rolled over again to within an inch of their lives.

By 3.30 I was filthy, so were they, I am DEFINITELY going to get parents complaining.

But I was happier than I’ve been for days. Took me till 4.45 to clean up.

Still not very well. But now have sense of perspective. Thanks Year 1.

A blog, especially one here on a-n, is not just for other people, other artists, to read, it’s for myself. I have been feeling a little rudder-less, and needed to look back at the process and progress to see where things are going. Sometimes when you look back you can see a clear path, trajectory, or can see that you’ve wandered away a little, taken yourself down a cul-de-sac.

I had another rejection email. This now means that the flurry of panicky-post-MA applications have all gone away. To be honest, that’s a relief. When I came away from the MA I felt free and successful. But these rejections made me feel out of control, judged, and failed. So I’m not doing any more for a while – maybe never. They did my head in. I know that’s the way it goes, I’m not so naive I don’t realise that I have to submit loads to get one positive response but I don’t think this is the way I want to go about things. So I am now – for a while at least – going to control my own destiny, or at least do things that give me that illusion! I am going to be very careful about who and what I say “yes” to. I am going to do what Bo suggested, and do the work, and see where it takes me.

We don’t all have to go about things in the same way. I know that by choosing this path I’m probably not going to make any money. Maybe I’ll do that a different way. Sell some crafty work on Etsy maybe? Or those patch paintings I did?

I’ve not told you what I’ve been listening to lately either. This is silly, because the music, to me and my working method, is crucial. It accompanies my every move and mood. Sometimes it changes my mood. Sometimes it reflects, but it’s always there. This last couple of weeks have been dominated by a couple of people…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_QEh7nigpc – Peter Broderick, I love this video to this song. Collage of images, text, sound, music, lyrics. Just my kind of thing.

And also Ron Sexsmith.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT_BzN5PqWQ

Brilliant songwriters that deserve to be better known. They are helping me get my mojo back.

There, that’s better.

I make a rod for my own back don’t I? Right at the beginning of this blog I was wrestling with how my work should be displayed. Fortuitously, by my MA show, I happened across something that worked for that particular body of work.

I’m now stitching things where they won’t show. Impossible to display as they are.

What I will have to do with these new thoughts is perhaps have them performed. The whole point is that they are secret and undisclosed, but want them to be “flashed” and be seen by the observant viewer.

It’s just not going to work is it? Unless I have someone wearing the garment, and some capable/glamourous assistant saying in a stage whisper:

“Look! He’s got ‘Fuck off’ written in his pocket!”

More conversations and clothes have been in my head over the last few days. Which words belong to which people? The clothes and textiles are the people. Sometimes the text chooses the textile, sometimes the other way round. Sometimes the words hang around in my sketch book / note book for ages waiting. Sometimes I find an amazing garment, and it hangs in my studio for months waiting for the right conversation. Conversations don’t always mean text.

I have got two tweed jackets now. I feel they should chat to each other in some way, but my original search for the tweed jacket was initiated by an idea for a collaborative project with Bo Jones towards the end of our MA course (Bo’s blog is great, if you haven’t read it yet: “The Art of Teaching” www.a-n.co.uk/p/2544868/ )

So will no doubt hang on to these ideas until we can talk them through, but you never know… I might just hijack them if the idea gets bigger in my head.

Another garment is a very small silk slip. It is about 20 inches from neck to hem (can’t be bothered to go out to measure it accurately, not that important right now) and it is cream, hand stitched and blemish free, and about 75 yrs old. It feels important, but fragile. It waits for something very special… I have a vague idea, but it has to brew for a while yet. It has survived a war this fragile piece of silk, so feel that it should say something of that survival. It will come to me. I have a similar silk adult’s garment, I think these two are talking to each other too.

Been writing about fantasy and reality a lot lately too… there’s a lovely embroidered pillow case in my drawer… perhaps I should introduce the text to the textile, and while I’m stitching my dreams and nightmares, I can be stewing over the jackets and silks…

It feels better to be pondering the creative rather than the wording of a proposal, or the filling of a form. Just been reading Jean McEwan’s blog too: www.a-n.co.uk/p/2540360/ about the double standards surrounding artists and money, how we need it, but don’t seem able to talk about it openly, lest it corrupt and defile the work. Can art and money co-exist peacefully?