Threads

I’m not sure to what extent one should use ones art or ones blog as personal therapy. I have used my work as a way of exploring the relationship between me and my mother, and me and my children. It snuck up on me, but it’s there. Certain behaviours, reactions, opinions become clear. The reasons for decisions made have become obvious. I find I look upon certain things with a kinder eye. This may not be in the work I show (or maybe it is) but it is definitely in the thought processes. If I’ve come to any conclusion along the way it’s that parents do their best (sweeping, generalism I know). Also, awareness is good. I react to my children in this way because… My parents did this because… I work like this because… I teach like this because…

However… sometimes things pop up in my work that I haven’t seen. Unbidden. Exposing things that I might have preferred to be left hidden if I had been aware.

As part of the show ‘n’ tell Wednesday I played my new bit of song. I chose to play just me singing, because I hadn’t yet edited all the other sounds around me.

This is the first piece of work I have shown anyone that is just me. I hadn’t noticed, it snuck past me, but not past eagle-eyed Bo. Everything I have done so far is a collaboration: with someone else, someone else’s clothing, someone else’s words, sounds from another place, something with a history.

This 2 minute recording was me. My words. My voice. My incompetence. I was fine until he told me, but now that’s a bit scary. I’m not ready for it. I shall chop it up, mix it up, in the hope no one else notices that I’ve exposed myself. Not a pretty sight.

The inevitable has occurred. All that knowledge about ox-bow lakes will have to move out of my head to make space for everything else that’s going on. I need to wipe all extraneous files from my hard drive and find extra working memory. My processing speed is abysmal.

We didn’t have any seminars today, so we sat around, drinking tea and yacking. We had a small, impromptu show n tell session. Two hours later I’m in danger of over-heating and feel I should sit with my head between my knees.

I’ll not discuss my fellow student’s work-in-development here, that’s up to him, But when I went in on the train this morning, I was under the impression I was in a bit of a lull, rut, or similar (ox-bow lake? Damn it, I’ll have to put that bit back in).

I have recorded a bit of singing. It’s patchy, the levels are all over the place as it’s been recorded in bits then chopped about and put back together in a different order. It’s come about over a fortnight. The reason I did it was I wanted a bit of a song in another sound piece… the one I crashed together after seeing Bhimji’s “Yellow Patch”. So bits of a song turned into a whole song.

So I’m back in that place again. Intention has changed the work, then the work has changed the intention. I have a 2 minute raw song, just my voice… no sound… no music. So now I have to ponder its use again. Shall I turn it into a proper song, then chop it up to use in the other sound piece as my original intention? Shall I turn it into a proper song and have it stand as such? Shall I just re-record my voice so it is a bit more polished, but still just my voice? Shall I leave it as it is, a patchwork of time differentiated construction, where all the joins show?

Or shall I forget all about it safe in the knowledge that I know how ox-bow lakes are formed?

This is my 100th blog post. I feel it should be more momentous than this self-serving twaddle.

Kate (see comment on last entry)has just asked about the combination of working on the art, and writing in the blog. There is a curious relationship and balance between the two that I wouldn’t have thought about before actually experiencing it. If you aren’t doing much art, there’s nothing to write about. If you are doing lots of art, there isn’t the time. I am currently appreciating the fact I can do both, and the attached photo shows how it is physically possible in the same small space, while ignoring gardening and housework. I didn’t tidy the table, or arrange it artistically, I left my grubby tissues and makeup bag.

Jo Farnell – /p/1708896/

also uses the writing of the blog to explore her work in similar way to me I think. When I read her blog, and see her work, although not like mine, I can follow the thought patterns that get her where she is. This is the fascination of blogging. I either read it because it is like a foreign climate, strange and incomprehensible

David Riley

(www.a-n.co.uk/p/1101656)

and Anthony Boswell

(www.a-n.co.uk/p/1800346 )

make my brain hurt, but I go back again and again. Or sometimes it’s like being at home, there are echoes of my life, that reassure me:

Kate Murdoch,
(www.a-n.co.uk/p/1689794)

Julie Dodd,
(www.a-n.co.uk/p/648002

Franny Swann,
(www.a-n.co.uk/p/564556

Sophie Cullinan
(www.a-n.co.uk/p/1147789)

The process of writing helps the process of thinking. And although I also write in my sketchbook, the knowledge that this has an audience makes the process of choosing the words different. I think more carefully about what i write here, so that makes it different. I also get responses, though not necessarily to that which i feel I need a response to. That also is informative. If I’m not making a strong enough connection to prompt a comment, perhaps it needs further thought… or I’m just talking garbage and people are politely ignoring me.

Whatever this blogging thing started out as, it isn’t that now. It has become part of the way that I work, so the thought that I might not have time to blog doesn’t come into the equation. If I’m working, I’m thinking, and if I’m thinking, I’m blogging.

So that means you’re stuck with me. But feel free to carry on ignoring me. It does me good!

More fast sewing… I might be obsessed.

I have a few long running projects on the go at the moment, and some pieces of work that are labour intensive, with a finish date well into the future. But sometimes, it’s nice to start and finish something in the same day. Had a lovely bit of left over old blanket, blue and stripy, having used the plain white bit for something else… will show you that another time maybe.

I wanted to just stitch into it. Play. I had a phrase in my head, one that I use with my children when they are about to do, or have done something reckless… it indicates my concern, but kind of tells them to do it anyway.

“Oh, do have a care!”

My hands are/were there, either physically or metaphorically, waiting to catch them if needs be, when they hurled themselves into something or from somewhere.

When I started to draw and stitch around my hands, it was a nothing piece of work, for no purpose just the “joie de faire” (having a French tutor must be rubbing off). But now it’s done, it fits. My hands, protecting, but my voice encouraging the risk, but with caution.

It took me half a day to make. I suppose the moral of the tale I tell is this: every piece of work I make fits, because it is me that makes it. My brain thought of it, my hands brought it into being. So if I want to make something, make it, don’t over-think it. Just bloody do it. I might make another one tomorrow… got more stripy blanket, and it was fun.