Just a quick one today with a couple of photos. I like working with these old clothes and threadbare household textiles. There is a feeling that they might fall apart in your hands as you stitch them. I’ve come to love the softness and the whiteness tinged with yellow, or stained. I think perhaps I’m intervening… or interfering?
If the long school holidays do one thing for an artist who supplements their income by teaching, it’s that they give time for the play I mentioned in a previous post. You can carry one train of thought from one day to the next, without it being derailed too much. However, as the end of August looms, I find I start to panic. There are things I need to do before I go back. Things with my family, my home, and of course my art work. I need to set things up so that I’m kept going through the autumn. Clear the decks for the weeks to come. I have to be back at work on 5th Sept, so I’m a woman in a hurry!
So…
I’ve had a busy businessy sort of week: I’ve put in a proposal for a residency; arranged a photo shoot; a recording session; framed and delivered work for exhibition; decided on dates for next year’s Life and Other Art exhibition; made preliminary approaches to a couple of musicians I was unable to book this year, paid a couple of research visits to a place I’m thinking of doing an installation/ residency.
In between all this we’ve decorated my son’s bedroom, and erected the ubiquitous flat-pack desk so he can start his A level studies with a fresh space.
I’ve been thinking about what to plant in the garden next to the shed for the photo shoot as everything that looked glorious in June now looks like a brown dead patch of twigs.
I must do some practical ironing, not just little bits of fabric and useless but attractive items of children’s clothing from charity shops.
Been life drawing.
Finished a piece of tricky embroidery that’s taken about 6 weeks.
Written some lyrics I’d like to become a waltz.
Had a bit of a display brainwave…
Some weeks are like that aren’t they?
Lullaby. Lyrics, not poem:
Swaddle the baby
Tuck in the child tight
Don’t let him suffer
Don’t let him fight
Put him to sleep
Switch on the alarm
Hear every breath
So he can’t come to harm
Stand beside her
Hands bind her
Sing him to sleep
Stitch his fear
Inside his skin
Sing him to sleep
Sing him to sleep
Zip him up cosy
Wind round the scarf
Mittens on strings
Wrap round his heart
Don’t let him out
In the cold or the night
Don’t let him struggle
However he might
Stand beside her
Hands bind her
Sing him to sleep
Stitch his fear
Inside his skin
Sing him to sleep
Sing him to sleep
Stitch him a quilt for wherever he goes
A portable mother to comfort the woes
Stand beside her
Hands bind her
Sing him to sleep
Stitch his fear
Inside his skin
Sing him to sleep
Sing him to sleep
Over the last few days I’ve come to ask myself what is the difference between work and play? Much of my work stems from play: with materials, ideas, words, the happy accident.
What has made me think more seriously about this is the song. I have had so much fun with it. Producing sound has made me rethink the whole display possibilities of my visual work. Mostly I have items of clothing, household textiles and all of them embroidered, many with text… or potential lyrics. How will it fit together, how will it be seen and heard? It feels like an integral part of my art practice, it has grown from it. The collaborative element has allowed me to do things I would not have been able to do alone. The words may have been written, then stitched, perhaps even spoken. They would not have been sung, there wouldn’t be music. They would have been a little bit “up themselves” and pretentious and I may well have discarded them as “Arty Bollocks”
So I find myself looking at Play. With a capital P. I have played with my own toys, by myself, imaginatively. Now I’m starting to look in other people’s toy boxes and play socially. I wonder where Piaget would put that in the scheme of things?
Collaboration: I have a new definition for Nicola ( www.a-n.co.uk/p/641894/ ) if she’s interested…
How about…
“Stealing someone else’s talent and expertise to make you look/sound better than you are” ?
I’ve had an amazing day with Dan Whitehouse (www.dan-whitehouse.com) who I feel privileged to call my friend. We’ve been recording my lullaby.
The words I had written, I was moderately pleased with. But now they have been given bones to help them to stand up. I’ve been attempting to explain to Dan in very un-musical terms, punctuated with ums and ers, how I’d like this lullaby to feel: lilting, low, a little sinister perhaps.
I started the day with a mixture of trepidation and excitement, wobbly knees and probably a wobbly voice. Dan encouraged, telling me which bits were good, ignoring the mistakes, just suggesting I sing it again. (I’m not sure he knows how good a teacher he is) By the end of the afternoon he was able to say (and more to the point I felt able to take it) “No, you can do that better, do it again (brutal!)
I have learned (and that will no doubt continue as I absorb the details of the day) so much from this process – not least a new found respect for the minutiae of the recording process, and the accuracy demanded.
Dan has taken my ill-expressed thoughts and projected them back to me with his guitar and his voice. My words have become a song. Not a pretend one, a real one!
The process is akin to collage: Do the bits that are the same, or similar at the same time, put them down, add to them, step back and look at it. Re-do bits, stick it together, accentuate parts, fade bits back, bring other bits forward, re-draw the lines, paint in a counterpoint, check the light and dark tones, add texture. In many ways it is the same. In many ways it is totally different.
So thank you Dan, for your time, your talent and skill. It was a great, creative day in the middle of Birmingham city centre, springing out after the destruction of the last few days.
It feels good to be an artist.
Drawing Stitching Songwriting Singing Talking and teaching now and then.
