So here I am, done all the distracting tasks, nothing left to cause any further avoidance. I have to practice this song. I have committed myself to doing a live performance tomorrow, on a dimly lit staircase in the basement of the School of Art. Hopefully the audience will be kind, they know I haven’t done this before.
In practising this morning, I have discovered my inability to count to eight (at least without moving my lips or using my fingers). Also, having done it perfectly ok four times, on the fifth run-through I forgot the words. Oh shit. What will I do if that happens? How is it possible for my brain to forget words that I wrote and have read hundreds of times and sung dozens?
I asked Dan. “Oh you forget the lyrics sometimes, don’t blink, and make something up” he said. Oh right. That’s ok then. Easy bloody peasy.
Glorious day!
I wrote on GOING PUBLIC that I had a huge list of things to do over the next few weeks. I’m surprisingly un-panicked about it today as the sun shines down on me and my shed. I’m sat up here at the top of the garden in it, looking at the sun on the daisies in the grass that needs cutting. I’m sat in the shade of it, because when it comes to sunshine, it appears I inherited the Irish genes not the Serbian. I’m pale and a bit freckly.
I’ve been to my all-time favourite shop today to buy a dress. Not to wear but to add to, embellish and embroider on. This shop is chock full of clothing and household textiles from the Victorian to the 1980s horrors I wore in my youth. I could easily spend all day in there. I knew what I wanted… ish… and tried to explain it to my husband, who helpfully would prise things out from crammed rails and say “What about this” to which I would scornfully answer “No!” I knew that I would know it when I saw it. I wanted an ordinary dress, from late 50s to early 70s… ish. It could have a slight pattern, but preferably plain. It needed to look old, and everyday. These sort of items are rare, as people just throw away or wear out the everyday, and keep the posh frocks. I found a green one that was the perfect style, but in silk. Too expensive. My mum would never have worn a silk dress when I was a child. Nor linen, too creasy. Cotton or wool mix, yes, polyester even (the horror!), but not silk.
I found it in the end. Pink cotton, pale, washed out even, with slight pit staining. It has a self coloured belt and a bit of pleating/gathering from the waist. Simple. Everyday. Once I’ve washed it I’ll take some photos. I can see what I’m going to do with it already…. But God knows when!
http://www.readersheds.co.uk/share.cfm?SHARESHED=3…
Voting starts today for the Shed of the Year 2012… please click on the above link, and vote as many times as you can! We would LOVE to win it this year, as we have worked so hard to get our little shed out into the world!
I find myself incensed by an overheard comment Wendy Williams quotes in her blog, incensed enough to post twice in one day:
www.a-n.co.uk/p/1534479/
“If you can’t be a full time artist, then don’t do it at all”
I have the good fortune to be able to work in a creative educational environment for two and a half days a week. This brings me some cash. Not a lot. We have enough.
In my head, I am a full time artist. To me being an artist is not about the job you do to get the money to pay the bills. Whether you stack shelves in Sainsbury’s or get funding from the Arts Council is irrelevant. Being an artist is about how you think, what’s in your head, how you express that. Expression.
Some full time artists have to compromise that expression in order to get the funding to pay their bills. Sometimes. Some don’t. I prefer the way I work. I don’t have to adjust my output in order to sell or to fit. But however I work, I would never tell an artist they could not be an artist. How could I?
Someone’s given me another plate to spin. My work has been accepted for this year’s Junction Festival of Contemporary Art in Chapel Ash, Wolverhampton. I’m chuffed to bits. I have a fondness for this festival which started last year, and for which I did a one-day residency with Elena Cassidy-Smith. The reason for my fondness is directly connected with my thoughts about my work. This community of artists is connecting in a very real way with the wider community, providing links and a sense of helping each other. It is a strange, strung out area on the edge of Wolverhampton city centre, bisected by a tremendously busy 4-lanes of traffic, and roads leading in all directions (hence the name). I don’t yet know where my work will be placed, but to establish a new relationship with these businesses and people is a real pleasure. More people could and should do this sort of thing, get to know each other, have a drink, a laugh, support each other, get to know each other’s children, keep each other out of harm’s way and out of trouble.
http://junctionwolverhampton.org/
Also…
I have decided that the advice to have a separate blog for the shed is a good idea. That way, I can point people in the direction of that blog so they can just see the shed stuff and not have to get entangled with the rest of my life and sift through the twaddle that goes on here. “Shedding” will be shed-related twaddle only! Over the last few days I’ve written some entries, just to see how it reads and if it’ll work. So I shall hop over there after doing this post and publish it. There’ll be about 5 posts to start off with, but then as things happen to the shed I’ll post them there instead of here.
