Threads

In an effort to keep my brain fit, and keep in touch with everyone at BCU I’ve signed up for this post-MA reading group for researchers and (prospective and current) PhD students. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I’ll be in contact with everyone again, be able to give a hug to my long lost chums, and hang on to reputation as perpetual student. What’s wrong with that then?

Absolutely nothing, great idea! Except for one small, minor, but nonetheless irritating detail… I don’t want to do the reading.

Jagodzinski, “Badiou’s Challenge to Art and its Education:or ‘art cannot be taught – it can however educate!”

Catchy title huh? There is another text I’m supposed to read. I really can’t be ar…bothered.

So my decision about not doing a PhD is clearly the right one for the moment. As I ponder this little silk petticoat in front of me, circa 1940, and decide which idea to stitch onto it, and as I laminate painted leaves that year 1 did the other day, and as I write these words and record these sounds, as I plan a mural for the school library, I can’t help wondering what the hell Badiou has to do with it all. None of his business, so just let me get on with it all, I’m a busy woman!

Seeing Ruth Geldard’s leaf painting has reminded me I didn’t post these photos. I was somewhat thwarted in the accurate documentation, as my husband decided to be a bit over-enthusiastic with the rake while I was out. Such is life! In future I shall leave explicit instructions!

The whole point of doing the blog is the conversation, I’ve said it before. The driving force behind most of my art is conversation. Recently I spoke of the difficult conversation that questions and challenges and clarifies. This week I had a different sort. Chris and I gabbled at each other for a couple of hours, like we had never spoken before and would never get another opportunity, over the top of each other, off at tangents and back again, punctuated by tea, coffee and cake. We spoke of ideas and plans and projects in our heads, and those almost and actually realised.

Then suddenly, in mid air, one of her ideas crashed into one of mine, I don’t know how the other inhabitants of the coffee shop didn’t see the blinding flash of light from two spontaneous and simultaneous over-the-head lightbulbs, but they seemed curiously unaffected.

I have had this idea swimming about for ages, and I get the impression some of Chris’s ideas for a project had been mulling around too. We have come to the conclusion that they might fit together, and we can both dive into it!

We hugged, kissed and parted, we are relatively new friends, but both think it doesn’t feel that way. We strode off in different directions, invigorated, stimulated, all fired up, buzzing. And it wasn’t just the caffeine.

Time gets used up really quickly on my day off these days, but it does at last feel as if a few things are starting to happen. Tomorrow I’m meeting my friend Chris, who, with her husband Brian, runs a Christian charity in Bulgaria, making crafts to bring back to sell in the UK.

http://www.krasifaid.org.uk/index.html The commitment they have in supporting this community is overwhelming, infectious, and inspiring.

I am hoping to go over with them at some point, to support their work and maybe get a new project going too. If anyone has any experience how I might get funding, please get in touch.

Thursday, I’m taking my “Are You Listening?” babies into Dudley for an empty shops art project: http://www.facebook.com/ForgeForwardDudley.

Also in the middle of re-hashing my website. I felt it needed a bit of a shush after the MA was done. I need help with the start of this, so my friend Briony has been here this afternoon, I have sat beside her, in the support role of cake and tea and coffee maker. It has now had the structure shuffled about, but it still needs some new writing done, so I’m going to be busy for a few days yet.

I have a few applications and proposals I’ve sent off and I’m waiting to hear back about. One of which has a real emotional kick to it, and is far more important to me than I dare admit to the people I’ve submitted to. I will probably cry if I don’t get it, but I’m trying really hard to be cool. If you have any tips how I do this, you can get in touch about that too.

The Project-To-Be I’m working on with Franny and Julie seems to be shifting along at a pace too, but any news about that will be on our joint blog GOING PUBLIC: www.a-n.co.uk/p/2133404/

My friend Bo has started a blog called “The Art of Teaching” which has sparked a load of discussion about his teaching practice. I’ve joined in, and think it’s great that he has created a forum for me to discuss my own teaching!

www.a-n.co.uk/p/2544868/ have a read – it is very stimulating and thought provoking.

So, my own blog hasn’t been paid much attention to of late – sorry folks!

Difficult Conversations. Embrace them!

Through difficult conversations I have reached peace, insight, revelation, and inspiration!

My Best Friends don’t have difficult conversations with me, not really. They love me and they tell me and they support me no matter what. I love them dearly for it of course.

BUT… the “difficult conversation” is where it all happens in terms of my creativity and the way I express myself. The friends I have that ask tricky questions, or ask me to clarify what I’m saying, that make me squirm a bit, hum, and errrr, and welllll, ummmm, they are the stuff art is made of. It is in the difficult conversation where I feel awkward that I nudge my way through the cloudy thoughts and the woolly thinking and the ill-conceived. To have a conversation where you really have to listen to what the other person is saying, where you frown, because they come at things from a completely different angle. The end of these sessions are marvellous, and send me away buzzing with ideas. Don’t walk away from that sort of chat till you get to the bit where you’ve reached the top of the hill and can lift your feet off the pedals and go WHeeeeeee all the way down the other side.