Threads

I’m rather enjoying the freedom of my art-life at the moment. I have no targets, no deadlines, and apart form the wrapped twigs tangent, I have no work that “needs” to be done. I am revelling in being able to just respond to what comes along.

One of these things is I have signed up for a songwriting residential course, led by one of my favourite singer-songwriters Kathryn Williams.  I have been a fan for many years. Her writing comes definitely from the feminine. It is insightful, imaginative, full of texture and emotion. The Small Elena sat on my shoulder is interested in the fact that I now feel confident to do this. I think it is precisely because it is Kathryn that I do feel able to sign up with a level of confidence. I have a fair few songs under my belt now, and I am no longer hugely apologetic about not being able to play a proper instrument. I can make noises either with the technology or with my voice, so that will do to start with. I am also looking forward to being alone, for a week, immersed in this task, with no responsibilities for housework or catering. I will not be able to escape or excuse myself. I have a load of stuff that I can take with me, and I look forward to learning from someone I admire and respect.

The other thing I am doing away from my studio is I am taking part in a project called Radio Public, led by my friends Helen Garbett and Bill Laybourne. When they asked if I was interested, I just said yes because I like talking to them. So spending time with them, working towards something sounded like a fun way to spend my time. I don’t really do social art or community driven things any more, so it will be good to dip a toe again after many years. I was cautious about working collaboratively though, as in recent years I have not had good experiences, and the fingers still feel a little burned by them, and I still smart a little. Collaboration can be amazing or it can be awful. My collaborative experiences with musicians have been terrific. Those with artists not so good. The difference with Bill and Helen though is that they are very experienced. They know what they are doing. They have ground rules, expectations, boundaries, and also, they have an open and accepting attitude to whatever their collaborators bring, and enjoy the emergence of the unexpected. I do not feel that I will either be steered where I don’t want to go, or indeed taken advantage of. Both of these things have happened before. Dangerous, as I can be a bit of a pleaser… then become resentful of my time being taken, and control over my work being usurped.

Anyway… I’m older and wiser now, and pick my projects carefully. Radio Public has the potential to make a difference, maybe a small difference, maybe bigger… but it’s better than doing nothing. I am becoming more openly political in my work and this I think is another manifestation of that development.

My work has never been overtly political. I often touch on issues almost accidentally as I go about processing my world, and those issues fall more easily into social statement rather than political activism. 

A few posts ago I wrote about the rhizomic way my work seems to develop. Sit on an idea for a while, then it might connect with another and then up sprouts the work, whether that’s a song or a drawing or whatever.

It’s happened again.

I often sit with a cup of tea in the studio, doing the scroll of doom through twitter. Sometimes I have to stop myself, because I just get really angry/sad/frustrated that I can’t do anything to make a change or even deal with things as I would want to. 

The other day I was scrolling through and found an article saying that up to 48% of children in some areas of the town I live in are living in poverty. WHAT?? 48%. I am incensed with rage that this government, in this country that is supposed to be one of the richest in the world, has allowed this to happen. It is time we stopped measuring the country’s richness by how much money the richest have got squirrelled away off-shore, paying no tax on. We should look at how much the poorest have got and take our measurements from that instead. Because this situation is a disgrace and shows us up as merciless, morally bankrupt, selfish idiots.

I then went down a rabbit hole of statistics… looking at the Child Poverty Action Group https://cpag.org.uk/child-poverty/child-poverty-facts-and-figures

And at the 2021 census for my area.

2452 children between the ages of 0-17 years old

31% of all children in the UK live in poverty. That’s 760 children on my doorstep.

49% are in lone parent families. That’s 1,202 children

46% are from black and minority ethnic groups (their terminology) compared to 26% white British. That’s 1,128 compared to 661

75% of those living in poverty are working households.

As I read these figures and work out these percentages I am becoming more and more enraged. 760 is equivalent to a very large three-form entry primary school.

*****

Back in the studio, laid out before me is that increasingly large pile of wrapped twigs. The wrapping I see as an act of care and protection. I have already mentioned here that I see them as families…

I am spurred on to make a huge piece of work. I want to wrap 760 twigs. I have no idea how long it will take, or how much space they will take up, or where I will exhibit them. But it has to be done. I am stating it here, before I even start, just in case I forget the anger, or lose confidence, or get cold feet. 

It’s the immersion that’s the key I think.

To totally surround yourself with something and work with nothing but that. For me at the moment it is the ever increasing pile of twigs. I’ve collected them; arranged them on a range of surfaces; stitched them to canvas; taken photographs of them, drawn them with ink, painted with watercolour; wrapped them in muslin bandaging, white cotton sheeting, blue linen, printed cotton lawn and silk. I’m grouping them in families and trying to find sympathetic collections and arrangements. They are in groups of five/six/seven… then in groups of three: parents and child.

I think the wrapping is interesting, particularly. The fragility and brittleness of the dry winter twigs and their crumbling lichens finds a place in my heart. Metaphor is strong in me, I always search for the analogy and the “what if this was like this?” “What if this twig was like this person?” Our elderly neighbour has recently moved into residential care, and we watch as his family remove his beloved and well sharpened and oiled woodworking tools and dismantle his workshop and the collection of Very Useful Items from his garage. I find a bent and brittle twig and wrap him up. I see families ripped from their homes in Ukraine by fire. So I collect the family of twigs and wrap them up in blue and lay them straight.

This activity of course, in practical terms is all useless, but it does help me to process. I see the small child swinging from her parents’ arms in the park and whooping with joy. I have a bendy fresh twig with a little tiny bud trying to open… Does everyone see this or is it just me? To hold close something manageable, then find something within it that echoes the world. I can’t cope with the world, but I can manage this box of twigs.

There has been an unexpected return to fabric and stitch…

I have now drawn more than 100 twigs. They fall onto the ground and I pick them up as I walk. My eyes are often downcast, unfortunately, to spot unevenness of surface, potholes, and loose gravel. I would rather be looking at the sky, but there it is. I need to look out for hazards that would throw my knee off the straight and narrow, render me unable to walk, the pain striking me like a knife in the centre of my joint, and all the blood rushes to other places, and I need to stop, and preferably sit, until it subsides.

But I have found something purposeful to do with my downward gazing. The selection of twigs. If my husband is with me he might pick them up for me, or select one and ask ”this one?” Sometimes it is, but mostly not. Sometimes I say yes anyway. 

When I get them home, I lay them out on kitchen roll to dry, and for the little beasts to make their escape. Then I put them into satisfactory little families and draw them. In ink, fine lines on white paper in a large sketch book. These are the rules. 

They are families. They have different qualities, surface texture, peeling bark, lichens, injuries and breakages and scars and I draw them all.

I think it is these scars that led me to the idea that I should mend them, look after them until they heal (which of course they won’t). So I cut clean bandages. The width of a child’s finger, from an old linen dress the colour of the sky.

Then like the arranged twigs and the subsequent drawings, I place them on the white paper to capture the images.

Today I think I will start drawing these bandaged forms.

I am often interested in the ways other people manage and organise their lives. One day I might do pie charts or something. Person A spends 14% of their time washing up. Person B spends 26% of their time gazing out of the window. Guess which one is me?

(I am fond of a diagram.)

Anyway… My friend Nicki is able to sort her time as if it was a school timetable. It can include lovely art-related things, but it also includes work, meals, exercise, reading… a very organised daily routine. I couldn’t do that. I’m more:

1. Wake up, shower, breakfast
2. How come it’s already 11:00?
3. Look at my diary, panic, supposed to be in Wolverhampton by 11:30
4. I will do it, because paradoxically, I hate being late.
5. Swan about doing all sorts of other stuff which will definitely contain some art-related activity
6. Remember I need to cook a meal
7. Eat meal
8. How come it’s already 11:00?

I have been talking to the always busy Stuart Mayes recently, and something he said has really stuck with me. People say “oh I must make time to sew/draw/chit my potatoes!” But actually you can’t make time. We all get the same 24 hours. By changing the phrase it makes things more manageable. I must USE my time in order to cook/exercise/prune the raspberries. We USE it. And we can choose how that happens. We can choose how long to spend on some things. I am a speedy washer-upper. My husband is a slow, contemplative washer-upper. I don’t want to use my time doing that. It is important to me to make sure I use that 26% with my feet on the table.

Feet on table time is crucial to the safe and healthy working of my brain.

But I think I will take a little bit from Nicki’s book. I shall start looking at my diary the night before.