Threads

I know I’ve said before that I’m ok with lyrics. I feel confident that I can do them. Looking back at my notebook (one idea per double page spread, titled, dated and indexed) it averages out over the year at more than one a week, but how this works is in reality I will maybe spend a day or so writing, come up with a few then stop for a while, until I get another idea that kicks me off again. Having done the residential with Kathryn Williams and Michele Stodart at an Arvon course at Lumb Bank, I have more. I have a bundle of notes ready to trigger even more words. I’m systematically working through them. But what I think I need now is an equivalent residential to kick start the musical side. However… I can’t afford it. I’ve been saying I should just do it. I’ve got the gear. I don’t play an instrument properly but I have a small keyboard, things that make noises, my voice, and the technology to record. So why don’t I just do it?

When I walk into my studio, front and centre is my big drawing table, usually with a big drawing on it, or my drawing board with paper and pens… 

Behind the door on another table is all the aforementioned music gear. The idea being I can move from one table to the other as the mood strikes. But I don’t.

What happens is I walk in, the door hides the music table, I instantly see the drawing in progress and what needs to be done. So I flick the switch on the kettle, hang my bag up and start drawing.

So if I’m serious about playing musically I have to literally shift focus. I need to set up the music stuff on the big table. So today I’m going to finish the big drawing in progress, hang it up on the wall out of the way, and sort myself out. 

It will take a bit of time to shift everything… speakers especially as they are heavy and a bit unwieldy. I need to set up that spaghetti heap of wires and leads so I have my laptop and interface, keyboard and microphone all set up to go before I leave the studio. This way, it will be the thing I see first, all set up and ready to go. It will be too much hassle to shift it all back again, so hopefully I’ll flick the switch on the kettle and start making some noise. 

So now I’ve shifted it all I’m going home.

I’ll let you know if it works…

Sometimes, the studying of website stats leads down curious paths, and suddenly you find yourself on familiar ground again, five years later… (I wrote about the revisiting thing in a recent post further up the mountain, from a slightly different viewpoint…)

Someone had read this blog post, from 2017, I don’t know why, or how they found it, but it does seem odd to read a five year old blog post out of the blue, and I have no connection or context with which I can make it make sense. But, whoever you are, thank you for bringing it back into my sights.

I insert an excerpt of it here:

A piece of my work was handled in a way in which damage might have occurred. There’s a small mark, invisible to anyone but me, it will wash out. Catastrophe averted. Upon deeper thought and analysis I realised that said potential damage was more to do with my emotional attachment to the work and what it means to me, in its concept, and in its materiality.
The potential for damage felt like a brutal act. I drove home, feeling very on edge, so much so I pulled into a lay-by to get a grip. I stroked these pieces as if I was comforting a child, making her feel better. I had no hope of explaining these actions to anyone else in the moment. We are better now, but I feel it a cautionary tale, I will leave more explicit instructions next time.

I have been known to call the Nine Women bras “my girls”, and the Are You Listening?  pieces using children’s clothes “my babies”. I thought this was a joke. Clearly it’s not. It’s very serious. They are looked after, loved and cared for, stroked, twirled, talked to. Yes… Talked to.

The piece in question is a poor orphan of a thing, scrappy fabric fashioned into makeshift garments. The stitching is the only thing holding it in shape, take out even a quarter of the stitches and they would disintegrate.

I don’t expect people to know this, so I should tell them. I should be more explicit and not expect people to see them as I do. I should tell people, even if they think I’ve lost the plot, that this is a REAL CHILD, and should be treated as such.

My attitudes towards children are a huge part of my work. Not just my own children, and me as a child, and maybe even my parents as children… Deep waters… But children in our society, how the system is letting them down. The guilt I discovered I STILL feel at deserting them and leaving my school job. How we treat our children and those around us shows us up as human, either at our worst or our best…

My work then… My relationship with these pieces, guided by the personality and history of a garment, or piece of fabric, it has a reality difficult to explain. I don’t know that I’ve done it here really. But I have started to think more deeply. So the work I do now will be informed by that realisation of a relationship to childhood, it’s brutality, and beauty.

So here it is then, a real example of how my work circles round back to the child. I could say a general “children” or “childhood” but no, it’s one child. One at a time. Me as a child, a photo of my mother as a solitary child that I drew from a photograph as one of my first pieces of art college work, that I still have framed on my dining room wall. My own sons, born ten years apart, almost as two only children siblings. Both small and premature at birth, requiring love and care beyond the usual. When I was an artist working in a primary I taught children in groups, but the individuals that burned themselves into my memory are still there. The ones that needed the conversation more. They’re still with me.

And now I am wrapping twigs, caring for the individual child as I do so. I do want to make this particular body of work bigger and more visible than my work usually is, to draw attention to the issues. But really? I’m thinking that maybe I can do something to make one child’s life a little easier. I am wrapping hundreds of them up. But if one child’s life is made better in whatever way because of it, it will have been worth every second, every scrap of fabric, held together by very few stitches.

I guess we can’t escape ourselves.

And here I am back in the studio again, trying to re-establish some sort of creative routine. It’s not that I haven’t been creative – quite the opposite. It’s just that I’ve not been in this room much over the last month or two probably. There’s much to be said for routine.

It actually took me a while to settle down to start with… first off I had to park further from the studio than is ideal. I am usually able to park on site, or very close, but, as I arrived the hearse and funeral cars were in the drive (our studios are above a funeral home) (not as weird as it sounds, but their vehicles obviously have priority). The usual street spots were full, so I parked further away, and loaded myself up with my bags and lunch and walking stick – often more trouble than it is worth, but I never know when I will need it at the moment. When I got to the studio, I clambered and clattered up the stairs and dumped my bags, only to hear the downstairs door slam, and I looked out of the window to see them all pulling off. I decided before I settled, I might as well go and get the car to park on site, it’s unlikely to be blocked again today, and then I would get away quicker later this afternoon. When I got back I did the usual fannying about making tea, and decided to have an early lunch and then start. So having left home at 10:30, I didn’t actually start work till 1:00.

The balancing act is ever-present isn’t it? There’s The Work… and then there’s the work you need to do to make The Work happen, get it seen, heard, hung, performed… and sometimes the amount of time the work takes, overtakes the time available to do The Work.

I am determined to get back to the twig work, drawing and wrapping. Really I just want to do that. But I have been distracted by my tax return…which never seems to be straightforward. I sometimes think it would be nice to just get a single payment once a month, tax deducted at source etc… but then that would mean getting a real job, so that’s not going to happen is it?

I can see that even the writing of this post is a bit all over the place and distracted… when what I wanted to talk about was the routine thing. I work better when I am in the routine. I can get to the studio and dive in, immerse myself in the task of making, and think a bit deeper while it happens. Those are the best days. I might be writing, making, drawing, or a mixture of art and music but it’s great. I come away feeling fulfilled.

Today I have come away from the hot studio to write my blog at the cool shady end of the garden…

I suppose the purpose of this post is to remind me that the making is key. Whatever admin needs to be done, whatever distractions there are, and whatever I need to do in the way of project preparation, I need to remember that my sanity lies in the routine, and the weight of my working week needs to be with the hands-on making.

Don’t let me forget that.

As usual when I have had a break from blogging – I think about two or three weeks? – it takes a while for me to decide what to blog about.

I have just come back from a week at Lumb Bank, formerly the home of poet laureate Ted Hughes. It is now owned by Arvon, a company that put on workshops and residential courses for writers of all kinds. I did a songwriting course, led by my heroes Kathryn Williams and Michele Stodart. Two excellent songwriters. Kathryn in particular has been a huge inspiration to me. It took a huge gulp of courage to enable me to sign up to do this. All those imposter syndrome questions reared their ugly heads: “Am I good enough?” “ Will I be able to do the work they set?” “Will it matter that I don’t play an instrument?” “Will I be the oldest there?” “Will I understand what’s being asked of me?” You get the gist… anyway, after asking a few people I admire and trust for a bit of feedback on the work I’ve done, I decided to do it.

I have to say it was marvellous. Of course I was good enough, of course I could do the tasks set, of course it didn’t matter that I couldn’t play an instrument, and no, I wasn’t the oldest, and yes, I understood perfectly well! The group of my fellow students were lovely, supportive, encouraging. The culture of the group was set as a safe place to play, collaborate, experiment, and show each other what we had done. Apart from a small hiccup in proceedings, ultimately solved by Kathryn and Michele, the week was inspiring, interesting, full of imagination!

So I have come back all fired up with enthusiasm, but completely exhausted. I think it will take me a while to recover, and to get to a point where all I have done has been digested and contemplated and possibly written about too. Maybe here, maybe not…

Having slept better than ever on Sunday night, and Monday night, and after having extra top-up naps, this morning I felt the need to visit the studio. Having spent the week inside my head, I felt a great need to draw, large, arms reaching, making marks as far away as I could. And so that is what I did, I only lasted about three hours, but I spent it making large marks on large paper. I used coloured soft pastels on watercolour paper, then spread them with a little water. The paper is crumpled and creased a little, and my marks follow those contours. Next time I will draw over them, probably in ink.

It’s good to be home.

Alongside

For the Radio Public project on Dudley High Street I have been working with a group of six artists, which then became eight, except working with isn’t quite right… we worked alongside each other, helping, overlapping when needed, but mostly doing our own thing. I wasn’t sure what this was going to be, but as the weeks went on I found myself working with words. A recurring medium: found, collaged text, overheard words, volunteered gossip and secrets. I’ve used different forms of this in drawings, and also as a prompt to my songwriting. So I suppose not unusual in itself, but the method of gathering and putting together was different. I took photos of text around the high street, then edited, printed and cut the images into separate words, (I supplemented with headlines from the Radio Times) from which I could construct surreal, and nonsense sentences. On one of the Tuesday evenings this became a spontaneous, focussed activity for the whole group, causing great merriment! The smaller phrases were turned into badges to give out, and they were very popular. However bizarre, people did seem to find something daft to identify with, and claim for themselves as a thank you for participating in the activities and giving feedback.

While reflecting on these last few weeks of convivial making, I realised I have missed having Louise around at General Office. Just knowing she was there was a tangible comfort. I’ve had other neighbours since (three) but not that relationship. We didn’t work together, but we did work alongside. Even if it was down the corridor with the door closed. That might seem weird, but I know what I mean! A mutual coffee break or chatting over lunch was always welcomed.

I have decided that following on from Radio Public, I should seek out opportunities for this alongside business. I think it is good for me, and good for my practice. I am less isolated. Even though I like my work to be separate, a close and allied group is supportive.

Having returned to chopped text, I find myself looking at a couple of drawings in the studio, thinking they might benefit from a small amount of collaged text. I’ve not been completely happy with them, and they were rejected by the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, so I lose nothing by reworking them slightly. I might then enter one or both for the RBSA Prize exhibition.

All this will come after my songwriting retreat though. I shall leave the studio tidy, then come back to it refreshed.