Threads

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.

So here are some of my twigs… results of the playing so far:

Six boxes/seed trays. They are crudely made, rough sawn and I really like them. They are functional and any beauty is in the basic material, not the manufacture.

I gather what I have collected and made, into groups. Each type of fabric speaks a different language. There’s ivory silk, medical swab loosely woven cotton, scrim, cotton lawn, linen, calico, cotton muslin… some very cheap, some expensive, but nothing new (unless you count the medical swab squares which are old but obviously not used! Ha!) The cloth has been collected from: a wedding dress, children’s clothes, men’s work shirts, women’s dresses, table and bed linen, and the donated old swabs of course… I’ve had the pack in my collection for years, just waiting for the right way to use it. 

Some fabric initially I found more satisfactory to work with than others. The swabs for instance are so loosely woven I need to use a lot to cover the twigs and the finished appearance is quire hairy. The silk is quite the opposite. But, when there are lots together in a box, they take on a different character, and now, I have a fondness for the roughness, the hairyness…

The silk is expensive, the wrapping with that is smooth and easy, but underneath, they are all from the same box of twigs. The bones of them are the same.

I didn’t originally like the printed cotton lawn, but actually, they are quite cheerful and jolly. The contrast between the box of colour, and the black-painted box with the silk twigs in is pleasing.

As I wrap, I also draw. I have almost completed the A3 sketchbook, currently standing at 155 twig drawings, grouped at about five to a page. 

Every drawing different, every twig different, every child different. I still don’t know where this will end up, but I feel it has some mileage in it yet. I will continue to collect, draw, wrap, assemble in different ways… and look for ways to display and show to others.

I enjoy thinking about processes. I like to see how other people work and I quite like to analyse my own processes. This comes in part from a desire to not panic about periods of what seems like not-working… or periods of mindless repetitive activity that seem devoid of thought and consideration.

I have been really busy in other parts of my life lately, and now that has finished, I found I just wanted to be in the studio making. The making I had lined up was the work concerning twigs. I wanted to just get here, draw half a day, then wrap up the twigs I had drawn. I have about 150 wrapped twigs and the target is to get about 800. So this is the period of mindless repetition. It’s actually quite joyful and restful as I don’t need to think about it. My decisions about materials and method have been made, I just need to get on and do it.

I started to think, while I was wrapping, about where this idea had come from and the process the thinking followed, and I realised this is common for me.

I’ve drawn a cyclical diagram, but the point I am going to jump into that cycle to explain what is going on, is the bit where I am hanging finished work, because every end holds a beginning right?

So while I was curating and hanging Drawing Songs, as I assessed what had been made/drawn/recorded etc over the two week exhibition period, I started to think what would be the next thing to work on. What had I learned, what had this project done for me? I felt somewhat drained by it. There is a level of exhaustion and relief that comes at the end of a project (yes, I do seem to work on projects, one at a time?). So I started to think about what would be needed to refresh me. The abstractions were organic forms, and as I looked at them I found myself thinking that in order to feed the abstraction, what I needed to do was spend a while with reality. Go back to the observational, to the primary source, the raw material. This was to be my next period of development. Once the work was packed away, labelled and stored, I cleared the trappings of the exhibition process and period from my table and started to think about drawing from observation again, and of course, I would be thinking about natural forms… leaves… trees… flowers… feathers… seashells… water… clouds… but what actually happened was during a walk in the park after a very windy weekend, I started to pick up twigs blown down to the paths. They were covered in lichens and moss. On some the bark was peeling… so I filled my shopping bag and brought them to the studio, along with a new A3 sketchbook. On the first page I drew the first few twigs out of the bag, arranged separately like specimens. Drawn with fine ink line, no shadow, all tone built with line. I read about the lichens – did you know some lichens only grow 1mm per year – did I really have in front of me 50 years of growth on this gnarled twig? I started to think about the building up of time. Some of the twigs had buds. Some were very brittle and dry. All sorts, and very interesting to draw! I decided very early on, within the first half dozen pages that this book would only be for twig drawings. Not only that, but they would all be done in the same way with the same pens. A catalogue of sorts. When I had drawn the twigs they were put into a basket under the desk, so I didn’t accidentally draw them more than once.

Then of course, give any artist a load of objects and they will start to play with them and think about the possibilities. I had said I would just put them onto the compost heap once I had drawn them, but this did seem to be a bit of a waste. So yes, I started to play with them. I painted a few, a broke a few up, and then started to wrap one or two of them with some fabric scraps I had on the shelf behind me. I often return to the textile when I play. It is a language I am familiar with, so I can concentrate on what I think about the objects I am wrapping. I started experimenting with different types of fabric and different methods of wrapping, stitching, or not stitching? An idea started to form about these twigs being individuals. At the same time I was reading an article about child poverty. The high numbers of children in the UK living in poverty (31% across the country, obviously higher in some areas, in some demographics). So I started to talk about it to people. And then I made a decision to make an installation that represented all the children in one particular area in the town where I live, who live in poverty. (See post from April 1st – 760 children). 

So now having had thoughts, done a bit of reading, talked to people and experimented, I am now in the process of drawing and wrapping all these twigs. A mindless and repetitive making. It is comforting and reassuring to know what I am doing. It won’t last long, but while it does last, it makes me happy.

I am looking at spaces where I might exhibit them, and at how I might display them, as each method of display highlights some different characteristic of the work.

This cycle of work development isn’t a regular, one speed process, and sometimes I might pick up a “miss a go” card, and sometimes take two steps back, or leap forward at any time, but it is a process that follows this path, for pretty much every project I have done.