Threads

(I should have kept my mouth firmly closed! One of the parcels got lost along the way… fortunately it was found. It arrived safely in Jamestown NC, rather than Jamestown NY. I’ve been informed that is, at last, in a van on the way to Debra’s house and will be in the gallery very soon. So now I have the task of figuring out how I get myself there! But that is a task for another day.)

I had a lovely chat with Stuart Mayes yesterday, zooming from my Stourbridge studio to his Uppsala studio. Both of us wrapping/stitching while we did so. Most convivial! We find ourselves in a similar position in many ways. Our work is comparable, the stage of our practice also, he is a few years younger than me, but neither of us spring chickens… we know a thing or two! We have similar attitudes about the sort of places we “should” (I use that word cautiously) be showing our work, and how it should be shown and seen. We have stopped mucking about and now see the need to pick carefully where we put things. We both surround ourselves with good people and are having a good time making our work however the hell we want.

Currently I feel confident. I feel the work stands up well, I can speak about it articulately. Also, I feel confident about saying that I don’t have all the answers. I’m still working. My practice is exactly that – Practice! It is a moving, evolving, building and collapsing thing. Sometimes I know exactly what it’s all about. Sometimes, at the beginning of new work, I really really don’t. BUT I now trust my processes. I trust in myself that if I keep exploring, playing, making, writing, at some point a connection will be made. All of this happens inside my own small brain, so none of it happens in isolation… there are connections. Sometimes I don’t see them for ages, sometimes I don’t see them at all. Until other people point things out.

Already, even before I actually see this Elena Thomas Retrospective called “Full Circle”, I see connections I didn’t see before. It’s called Full Circle because it starts with me wrapping wood in fabric, and now I’m wrapping a different sort of wood in a different sort of fabric, twelve years later.

If an artist has subjects that interest them, and they keep on reading, listening, writing, making about those interesting things, things connect. If they have a particular fondness for certain materials and methods, things will connect there too. What you have to do is stay on the bus and keep doing it. Then, when you are 62 and have a retrospective show in NY, you have a coherent body of work that tells all your secrets.

PS I’m having an Open Studio weekend soon… hoping to raise a bit of cash so I can take Debra Eck out to dinner while I’m in NY

I’m a bit all over the place to be honest, but things are calming down enough for me to write a post.

The work for my show at The Weeks Gallery has now landed in the US, so I can stop panicking so much about that … although it hasn’t arrived at its final destination yet, so I’m not totally calm. When it does, only then can I think about shipping myself over there in March. It has been stressful working out what to take and how to get it there. But I can’t wait to see it all up! It opens first week in February until 17th March if you happen to be in Jamestown NY, pop in and say hi! I’m not sure exactly when I will be there yet, but certainly towards the end of the run.

This morning at the crack of dawn we (The Sitting Room) had a radio show recording session for Black Country Radio Xtra… it will be out on February 2nd at 5pm and for a week after you can listen again. It’s a show about songwriting, influences etc, and features six live performances. That early in the morning is not great for me at the best of times (9:00) but singing at that time was a challenge. I warmed up by singing in the shower and on the way in the car, but it wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked… I think it will sound ok, but it felt “scratchy”.

The final mixes for the new EP landed in the inbox this morning and I think they sound great, so all I need to do is get the master to the guy who does the reproductions… we will have a few real CDs as well as launching for the first time on BandCamp etc.

In amongst all this public facing productivity I am still working in the studio on the twig wrapping and work for my solo installation at RBSA in May. I have also been asked by the RBSA director Sanna Moore to help select the new artists for the Graduate Artists Programme. This feels like a real honour to be asked. I was chosen because I have a practice that is multi-disciplinary and broad based. I’m really looking forward to what and who turns up! If you are based in the Midlands and you have graduated in the last ten years you are eligible

That will happen once I have returned from the US… then I have about a month to finalise arrangements for my solo show. (At some point I will need to get down to Devon in April to work on the song/sounds with producer Michael Clarke.)

I’ve also been invited to join in with the next phase of Radio Public, focussing on the black country town of Brierley Hill. This way of working isn’t my usual thing, but it is local, sociable, interesting… I enjoyed the last one in Dudley, and always enjoy working with Bill and Helen, so I feel no stress about that bit!

Over the summer I’m going to be doing some community-based, twig-related projects in the local park with Rick Sanders, and we hope to get some funding for that. 

This feels the busiest I have been since I became totally self-employed to be honest. I am enjoying the prospect of getting stuff done, and getting my work out where it can be seen.

And then I am also looking forward to August, when I can hopefully get some time to sit back and reflect, and relax a bit! I might go on holiday!

I’ve always been determined that my blog should reflect the real life of this particular artist. Not just all the good stuff, but how hard it can be, how stressful, as well as how amazingly wonderful it can be.

The last couple of months have been all of those things!

I am on the verge of (hopefully) shipping nine boxes of art, representing twelve years of work over to the USA for a retrospective show, lasting six weeks. (I say hopefully because until they get collected from my house and put on a van, and then arrive safely, I have to stay a little cautious, it’s just my nature.) This is truly amazing, and I am hugely grateful to Debra Eck for asking me.

The process so far has shown me lots of things about myself that I would like to share:

• I hate all the admin. Passport applications (mine had expired, because I didn’t think I would be going anywhere), form filling, taking photos, parcel wrapping, weighing, unwrapping because you forgot something, wrapping again. I need a PA or an intern. If artists actually invoiced for this “office time” nobody would pay us to do anything.

• The emotional weight of selecting from twelve years work has been heavy. My work is emotional while I am making it. Bringing it off shelves, out of cupboards and washing, ironing, dusting it down, then assessing it with as much objectivity as I can muster has been tough… is it worth the air fare?

• The biggest thing though is the nagging feeling “Am I worth the air fare?” Now I don’t want loads of sympathy here, I’m not fishing for compliments or anything like that. I’m just saying that this feels like a big deal opportunity, but I don’t feel like a big deal person. It’s close to imposter syndrome, but something else as well. I was not brought up to expect success. Every success is a huge surprise to me. I always expect it to collapse at the last minute with someone saying “Why on earth did you think YOU deserved THAT?” Some people seem to have the knack of reinforcing this feeling. I am trying very hard not to take on their shit. I have plenty of my own thanks.

• The process so far has been mentally and physically exhausting both for me and my absolute star of a husband, Mike. If this isn’t love then I don’t know what is. I keep crying… and almost crying. And he keeps just doing what I ask of him, and supplying me with tea on a regular basis.

• I am so excited I can hardly sleep. I think when the parcels are on the van I will relax a little. But for now there is no room for anything else.

• I am managing myself by looking at just the next step, the next form, the next item… I am surprising myself with my state of calm organisation in amongst the chaos. I am able to tell myself I will get there, just by doing the next thing, as and when I can do it.

• How tightly the physical and the mental are tied together!? My arthritis is being a bastard. Once the parcels have gone I will begin the task of booking my own flights. I shall do this and feel no guilt about booking assistance between connecting flights. I will need it and I will feel reassured and less stressed because of it. I am good at pretending to be OK, but sometimes you just need help. I feel simultaneously fragile and determined.

I have just been brought another big mug of steamy decaf Earl Grey, so I shall sign off there and come back when I’ve waved off the parcels!

It’s good to review what has been happening. End of the year is as good a place as any, and lots of other people are doing the same so I might as well join in!

As I read my diary and look back on the things I’ve done, 2022 seems to have been a year of looking outwards into the world, spreading further, and making plans to go further in 2023. 2021 was a more introspective year I think.

I have continued to show work with the RBSA, and continued conversations with fellow members, and I have had a particular interest in showing up for a small Crit Group I was invited to join.

Drawing Songs drew to a close in January. I started to collect things – particularly twigs – on my daily walks. My intention was to feed the abstract, to ground myself after the internal, cerebral nature of Drawing Songs… to look outward, deliberately. The drawing of the twigs and lichen became an almost obsessive cataloguing.

Alongside this early in the year, I note the completely failed expedition into trying to show and sell work at the RedBrick Market in Birmingham. It failed commercially. I sold nothing, and nothing (in comparison to my fellow artists) was stolen either. A complete waste of money and time and effort. But hey ho. I had a couple of nice outings there with my friend Sarah Bagshaw, and I learned something. This was NOT my audience. That can sometimes be a painful thing to learn but I was actually heartened to discover that I do have an audience for my work and that I have found that with the RBSA… not without its faults, of course, but it is more aligned with how I think of myself perhaps.

I’ve continued writing, rehearsing and performing with The Sitting Room. We are now back to the original trio we started with, and it is a thing of joy. We are working hard on new material nearly all the time, and have a good collaborative relationship. We have just recorded our third EP, called Three or maybe 3… undecided as yet. It’s sounding good. Produced by Michael Clarke, who also did Drawing Songs with me. It will be released soon… final mixing and mastering happening at the moment.

In another period of outward looking, I found myself over the spring and early summer working with Helen Garbett and Bill Laybourne (Workshop24) again on a social art project called Radio Public. Social art is not a thing I usually do. But under the guidance of Bill and Helen I found it rewarding, and stimulating, and again, good to look out at the world around me. I am happy to turn up at anything they put on. Always fun, and also always peppered with interesting and thought provoking conversations with intelligent people who know different things to the things I know… I hope I will be doing more with them in 2023.

I also was selected to show work in the WM Open at New Art Gallery Walsall. This felt like a very special occasion, and it was good to look around the room at other artists I admire and follow, feeling I was among friends and comrades. I have also benefitted hugely from online and email conversations with both Kate Murdoch and Stuart Mayes… thank you both for keeping me going!

This year of venturing out (physically as well as artistically and intellectually) also has seen me become more active in a political sense. I have been a member of the labour party for a few years now, but couldn’t really see how as an artist I could offer anything. This year though I have been painting placards, and encouraging others to do the same. Small steps. I have had a few conversations about my new work too, as for the first time I find myself doing work that sits very firmly in the political sphere.

My work drawing twigs turned into twig wrapping, and then became an exploration into the statistics of child poverty in my area, and after talking to my councillor and the team at local Labour HQ, I have decided these wrapped, cared-for twigs will stand as metaphor for the 33% (ish) of children in my area that live in poverty. Fellow artist and poet Rick Sanders and I , inspired by the Bank Job film made by Dan Edelstyn and Hilary Powell, have decided we will do some social art in our community, in the park where I have collected most of my twigs, and hopefully with one of the local schools too.

Following a conversation with the RBSA, I submitted a proposition, which was accepted, to put on a solo show in May 2023, called Five, Six, Pick Up Sticks. It will be a challenge I think, but one I am definitely up for!

I became a member of RBSA in 2021, and I was the first artist ever to include a sound piece in their candidates’ submission. This still feels like a big deal, and I’m very proud of this. RBSA had an extraordinary general meeting in 2022 to allow photography, and a wider range of media to be accepted, and this motion was overwhelmingly agreed. It feels like the time is right to push gently at boundaries. This is why I feel like I am in the right place. I have been asked to help select the applicants for next year’s Graduate Artists Programme. This is such an honour and privilege and I am thrilled to be part of this movement towards opening up the society to a broader range of art and a broader demographic group of artists too. A gently push to move a 200 yr old rock into the future, so that it has a future!

I was also asked to be a judge for the Frontier Gallery Open exhibition at Exchange Studios in Sheffield this month. It is the first time I have done such a thing, but really great to be part of another art conversation with my fellow judges.

As I read back over this, it does seem a bit like a trumpet blowing exercise, but there are lots of things I failed at too. Two more rejections for small funds, and yet another rejection from the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize. It’s not all rosy. I think it is important to state both sides… it can be tough. I am still broke. The ACE money ran out quickly. But I have another application in for funding the solo show, and intend to apply for something for the Pick Up Sticks community work with Rick too.

In amongst all of this, I have had to apply to renew my passport! Debra Eck has asked me to revisit the USA in the spring, and also to ship over a load of work for a mini-retrospective exhibition of my practice over the last ten years. I am so thrilled by this, and look forward to 2023 with huge enthusiasm and excitement! (Hoping my knees stand up to the stresses!)

Due to all sorts of reasons, I’ve not been in the studio now for over a week. The cold weather, having a few days away, impending Christmas holidays and the possibility of doing some computer based work at home have made me lazy.

It’s not good for me to be away for so long really because I lose my rhythm. How do other artists feel about being away from their work over holiday periods? I’m ok for a few days and then I get a bit twitchy and feel the need.

I have a very busy 2023 ahead of me, more details later, as things get sorted, but initially I need to make a list of work from the last ten years or so that shows a sweep of my practice, in order to ship it out for an exhibition. Not a retrospective exactly, but a sort of pick and mix, maybe a mini-retrospective? This is definitely focussing my mind somewhat! I’ve done LOADS – so what to choose? Are my favourite pieces necessarily the ones that tell the best story? I expect before I send them off, I will change my mind several times! And also, which music?

This afternoon I am at home again, sat at the computer, writing this blog post, but also listening to the first mixes of the band’s third EP (called intriguingly ‘3’) to send back to the gloriously talented Michael Clarke who is producing it. I worked with him on Drawing Songs, and he truly is a miracle worker. 

I feel the need to decorate the tree and make mince pies. But while I do this I keep thinking of the work in the studio. And when I am in the studio all I can think about is mince pies and painting something festive on my front window. I’ll be like this till about 3rd January I expect… and then it’ll take me ages to get back into a rhythm.

I am torn!