Threads

Input/Output

The last few weeks it seems to me there’s been far too much input, and very little output.

I am one step closer to the knee replacement, but I am still waiting to hear a date, but it could be as long as 18 weeks away yet. So that is sat in the back of my brain affecting all my decisions, especially when it comes to my diary.

We also had in the back of our heads the prospect of a bit of building at home. Nothing hugely drastic or too much upheaval (hopefully) just a garage conversion, to give us a utility room and a study. This means we have had to sort out all the stuff that has been dumped in there, from the day we moved in four years ago, to all the stuff we have added since. This morning the builder came round again, just to check a few things, and due to planning permission hiccups on another job, he wants to start Monday. So I guess I won’t be in the studio for a while.

I feel my brain is overwhelmed with extra information. I started looking at Substack in a bid to wean myself off Meta platforms, and signed up to do a free course to help me navigate it. So far I’ve only managed one session, but it’s available online at my own speed so I’ll get there. I’m also three weeks into Towards an Experimental Ecology of Line, an online course run by Camilla Nelson based around Tim Ingold’s Taxonomy of Lines. All very interesting, and I do need to carve out time to do that one justice, as I can already feel it will have an effect on my work and how things connect.

I’m still organising my work for the solo RBSA exhibition that will be hung at the end of this month. I say solo, but I have been given a slot to do what I like, alongside two other artists who have been given other parts of the ground floor shop gallery. I have no idea how our work will feel in the same place as it is all very different. I think that is worrying me more than I thought.

The band had the first gig of the year on Saturday. I felt a little under-rehearsed, and under-prepared but it still seemed to go down well. I believe it is still available on the instagram account of HMV Merry Hill. Also, I have now uploaded all the new songs that we recorded in Top Church Dudley onto both Soundcloud and Bandcamp.

So if you do listen, please do send feedback, we love to hear what you think. If you think it’s crap, keep it to yourself! Haha!

Meanwhile… I’m off to do some clearing, and hopefully will get some studio time on Saturday…

Well… it has taken me a while but I think I’ve got a bit more of a grip on things!

I spent yesterday in the studio, heater on, lights on all day, scarf and studio cardi wrapped round me, clearing the decks and gathering together the work I am considering for the exhibition on the ground floor at RBSA that’s booked in from 25th February to April 5th. A good long run, where all visitors to the gallery will see it so it has to feel right. The problem in my head is that most of the work has to be for sale for this, as it is effectively in the shop. I have some large paper drawings, and some large drawings on fabric, that I’m not quite sure how I want to hang them at the moment. I also have some smaller, twiggy works, that will have more “sellable” price tickets on. But I have no illusions. My work doesn’t sell that well usually, and although selling is never my main motivator, it would be nice to come out of it with a few extra pounds in my pocket. However I don’t want to make work just to sell, because they probably won’t and then I’m stuck with stuff I don’t want and haven’t got room to store.

I know I have about a month before the hang for this exhibition, but I have other things I want to be concentrating on. I have signed up to do an online course with Camilla Nelson called Towards an Experimental Ecology of Line

https://www.singingapplepress.com/workshops

And I do want to concentrate on that as I am hoping it will prompt and enable me to untangle some of the complications in my practice, and shine a light on hitherto* unseen connections.

Every now and then I feel the need to sit on a metaphorical rock and view how far I’ve come, before deciding where to go next.

*I typed it and it made me laugh, so I left it in. I don’t think I’ve ever used the word “hitherto” before!

It’s been a while since my last post, primarily because of the Christmas holiday. This seems ridiculous but I think I lost a month or maybe a bit more due to that, and a variety of family events and circumstances. Which is fine, of course, but it does then take me another couple of weeks to get into the swing of things, and I don’t think I’m there yet.

I do need to have a sort out in the studio before I start working in earnest though, as all I’ve done is pick up stuff and dump stuff. The floor and the table need clearing before I can start working on anything. My main focus has to be my exhibition at RBSA. I want this to be an exhibition of current work, but also of work that can be sold, that will hang together as a coherent body. If I concentrate on sticks and stones there’s plenty to choose from. I will probably end up taking everything and seeing what works in the space.

I’m currently hampered by suffering a stinking cold, and could quite frankly do without it. It has sapped all my energy. So much so I have had to cancel a band rehearsal today. I love rehearsal time. And we have an in-store gig at HMV coming up soon. This will be a set of about an hour, so I definitely need the practice!

Like many people, I don’t do well in the dark wintery months. I know of quite a few people struggling to drag themselves into the light. As I get older it seems like a tougher task every year. Especially as over the last year my mobility has got rapidly worse. A knee replacement is on the close horizon for spring, so I am hoping for a speedy recovery so I can cope with rest of the year. It’s all a bit unknown and a bit scary…

But anyway… today I just have to think about today… I need to keep warm, rest, and drink plenty of water…

This has become a useful habit I think, looking back over the year and thinking about what has worked and what hasn’t. Then making sure my plans follow that through.

Compared to other years, I think I have done “less” in that the itemised list of stuff is shorter. But I think it is better in that I seem to have been able to focus on the good things that are professionally and personally rewarding, and I have pulled back on the stuff that makes me swear in frustration. 

I’ve had a few chances to exhibit with RBSA – although that has had its frustrations, I am booked in to have a ground floor exhibition with them in March. I will curate this myself, and although it is in the shop gallery, and two other artists will also have allotted space, my section is all my own to deal with. I will have both 2D and 3D work installed. It will be interesting to see how the things I have been making relate to each other in that busy area. My work will be for sale, but I have no illusions, and I doubt that anything will sell to be honest. I don’t think I am that sort of artist… Time will tell…

I belong to a Crit Club with three other RBSA members and that is always fun, and insightful, and they have helped me in the choosing of work to show.

I also this year joined Eastside Projects’ EOP group and have exhibited with them, and had a one-to-one mentoring session with Ruth Claxton. The question she asked, that has stayed with me has been “Why are you using up energy on that when you could be doing this?”(mentioning no names) …And she was right. So there’s a thing I can pull back from. I already feel better about it, and I don’t know why I didn’t see it myself. I guess that’s what good mentoring does. There were also her thoughts about my work that consolidated things that were buzzing around that I hadn’t dealt with. Thanks Ruth!

I’ve done a few Sewing Circle sessions this year, that haven’t really come to much, and I am wondering if it is worth bothering, but as it just requires me to share my studio with a few people once a month with little planning, I will probably continue to put it in the calendar. If by the summer it hasn’t built up any more, I will stop.

I’ve had the usual cycle of band rehearsals, and some really lovely gigs, and the highlight of recording in the church in Dudley with Dave Shaw. Songwriting continues…

The things that I have thoroughly enjoyed and will definitely be doing more of are the Swedish adventure, The Fish Collective, and Ceramics sessions:

The trip to Sweden for the Correspondence Residency with Stuart Mayes was amazing. I have continued to learn Swedish, which has surprised me, but I am loving it. I am still looking for a local Swedish speaking Fika buddy, to practice on… but I am loving learning a new language. The work I have done since the trip has definitely been affected by the work we did together. Stuart, in his Glitterball Showroom role, is going to the Juxtapose art fair in Aarhus, Denmark this summer, and I am hoping to join him. The travel fund has taken a bit of a hammering, so I am hoping to build it up a bit before then!

The Fish Collective is work done in collaboration with Helen Garbett, Bill Laybourne and Rick Sanders. I’ve not previously found much happiness in working collaboratively with other artists, but have come to realise it’s because I’ve not been doing it with the right people. This lot are experienced collaborators, and they know how to do it properly! It has been very rewarding and an absolute hoot so far. It will continue into the new year and will hopefully gain funding. 

I’ve been doing ceramics at Mac Birmingham with a friend. We share the driving and parking costs, and we have company on the journey, which in the winter months can be arduous. We have not signed up from January to March, but have reserved places after easter. I have found it rather wonderful to be creative in a medium I know very little about, that is (relatively) unrelated to the rest of my practice. I am just playing. It is nourishing. I have been using that word a lot lately. I think it’s going to be my word of 2025.

I’ve been thinking about the direction of my practice a lot this year, in terms of what I’m making, my audience, my slightly shifting philosophies… and in an attempt to put myself in an environment and the right company (hopefully) to think about this in a more focussed way, I have signed up to do a course with Camilla Nelson titled Towards an Ecology of Line. It is based on Tim Ingold’s taxonomy of line, from his book Lines. I’ve read this a couple of times and refer to it frequently. Helen Garbett is signed up too, so I’m looking forward to a year of fruitful discussion.

This year has ended with Kate Murdoch delivering her 10 x 10 cabinet to me. It is now installed in my sitting room with a selection of my own items on it. I am fostering it, just in case she needs it again. It is an honour and privilege to be part of its story. It looks great in my house, and so I am torn between hoping she doesn’t ever want it back, and hoping that she does, because I think it is an important and interesting piece of art. Win/win I suppose, either way!

So goodbye 2024, and hello 2025, I have more concrete plans for the coming year than I usually have, so I am feeling very positive!

Happy new year, dear readers, thank you for your time, support, and comments.

I always reread my last post before writing the next because sometimes the same things are washing around my head and I want to write with continuity rather than repetition.

I think Christmas, and these very short winters days provide a sort of annual root-deepening feeling. I gather my family around me, I cook and bake, clean and tidy my home ready to receive friends and family. I put up the tree, wrap presents and think about them all. Our first born son has moved closer to home in the last few weeks and it is wonderful to have his family within a five mile radius, with our second son the other side of that circle… no more three hour drives up the M1! My brother and I are now at the top of the tree… no parents or parents in law to care for for many years now. There is a sadness, but also a joy in gathering the younger family around us, and we now have a toddler to watch over, and be besotted with.

I find it difficult to think about work at this time of year, although there is a small corner  of my brain ticking away on ideas for January, like a slow cooker … smells eminate, but they don’t need attention just yet… and I am reading still, in between the domesticity. It’s a time for nourishment, not output.

Although I do have one important job I want to tackle over the holiday, possibly on Boxing Day when everyone else is out at a football match: I have taken over the care of Kate Murdoch’s 10 x 10 cabinet. See it here on Kate’s website…

http://www.katemurdochartist.com/10×10.html

Kate is moving studios so doesn’t have space, so I’ve adopted it, on the understanding that if the call comes, she can use it again!

So it’s been installed in my sitting room in Stourbridge, in the state that it left her London studio.

So on Boxing Day, I think I’ll give it a coat of paint. I’ll listen to some new music, and patiently make may way through all 100 apertures. I feel it’s an honour and privilege to give it a home, this backbone of an important art work. I’m very much looking forward to dressing it with my own objects!

(I won’t be asking visitors to swap, that’s Kate’s job!)

This feels like nourishment too…

Thank you so much Kate ♥️