Threads

The exhibition has come down now. It went well. I expect I will write more as I spend the next month or so evaluating and collating and putting together the images and video for a short documentary.

The making of the drawings is a solitary task, writing lyrics is a solitary task. Putting the exhibition together is a solitary task mostly… I had guidance and help yes, but the responsibility and decisions are mine alone.

So taking it all down, spending time to carefully wrap and label the work is an act of self care… saying thank you and goodbye for a while. I turn off the music, and look forward to listening to things other people have written and made decisions about.

The antidote to this solitary creativity is collaboration. Throughout the project I have been buoyed by the creativity of Michael Clarke, and the way he receives my offerings, it can make you feel very vulnerable, putting the early roots of ideas out for review and consideration. Trusting the person you give these things to is crucial.

So after a couple of late mornings and lazy starts to the days, still rather tired, I head for a band rehearsal last night. Working on things with the band is a different beast altogether. I feel held up, part of something bigger than my own ego desperate for attention… ha!… what becomes important is the whole… more than the sum of its parts. Harmony, a counter melody, rhythm, and the vibe of it all. How does this song make me feel? Small changes can refresh, make one song sit happily among the others… building a set… perfecting the small things that make something magical.

With the permission of my co-writers and musicians Andy Jenkins and Ian Sutherland, I’m posting this rehearsal recording of Long Grass. It’s a song I wrote about my long childhood days in rural Worcestershire. Andy took it and gave it this evocative, gentle melody that also hold a tension that we know this idyll can’t last forever… it’s one of my favourite lyrics, and one of my favourites to sing. It’s a deceptively simple little song, that carries a lot of weight I think…

Remember The Tenth Woman?

The Tenth Woman was a concept conceived in the times after my Nine Women project. The Nine Women spoke (unheard?) about loss, loneliness, life, love and lust …and invisibility…

The Tenth Woman came into existence as a way of dealing with these things: patience, stoicism, strength, speaking out, taking up a space in the world, pretending to be confident until you were. The Tenth Woman became a bit of an alter ego. If Elena feels too small to do something, too timorous, then The Tenth Woman can do it.

I am sure both Nine Women, and Drawing Songs have told a tale entwined with my life, from working in art education, to not, from having my youngest son go to university, move away, come back and move away again. My oldest son through career changes, marriage, and more moves, through my husband’s retirement, illness, and my move from employed to self employed and into independent, funded, freelance professional artist… and a difficult acceptance of a certain level of my own disability. It has been quite a time, and The Tenth Woman has assisted to greater and lesser degrees through it all. She is a powerful force (you can borrow her if you like). 

There is much talk recently about menopause and its effects on women, families, the work force, mental health, physical health, and the breaking of the taboos surrounding it. As a menopausal woman… I feel I am sort of coming out of a decade of inner turmoil, into a state of “I don’t care if anyone thinks I’m too old, too fat, too white haired, badly dressed, I’m no longer scared of you, and I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, I don’t need your approval!”

And I have to say I’m happier for it.

The Tenth Woman then… needs some more thought… I believe her to be a personal philosophy rather than a project, but she will accompany me as I close up this project and consider how best to use what I have learned in the process.

Having said how nice it is to sit in the gallery and contemplate the work as it is, and the possibilities of what might be next, I find that visitors to the gallery have started asking me now too.

Thing is there are many possibilities. And of course, there are still drawings in me that probably belong to this body of work, so they have to come out first, before they morph into the “next”.

I think then, the next period will be one of following up, exploring. I have said I will visit other artists, carry on the conversations we have started. In those conversations are the nuggets of new ideas… or rather ideas that seem to happily follow on from this… extensions, revisions, consolidations.

Michael Clarke and I have plans to carry on writing songs together. I’ve been writing while the show is on, seeking solace in the verbal rather than overloading the visual. This is a common way for me to go about things. If I hit a sticky patch, I will switch languages and see where that takes me. I’ve been writing about water in its many forms and uses… accidentally, and then I noticed… so now intentionally.

Bill Laybourne and I will carry on making noises, and carry on having interesting chats over cups of tea, it is in conversations like this with him and his studio partner Helen Garbett that I find myself navigating through a tangle of ideas and lines of investigation. Clarity of thought only seems to happen when I am communicating with others. I can’t seem to figure it out in my head, it happens when it is expressed beyond the edges of me… my voice, the lines I draw…

Sarah Goudie has been a critical guide through this, a periodic gentle questioning of what the hell is going on… an objectivity of sorts… a view from a different spot… useful… I am sure that will continue too.

That’s the how and who…

Today I find myself pondering the what and where I travel to from here…

The thoughts are vague, but connected… water… the air between… those bits beyond me, as above, the voice and the lines… molecules and connections… the bit where the bicycle becomes part policeman and the policeman becomes part bicycle… (Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman). The stuff of matter… how the doorposts might have a gravitational pull upon my atoms and if I pass through slowly enough I might disappear…

I muse along thoughts about the digital and the material. I was told when I joined the RBSA that they hold a material, real life archive of all members. In this digital age that seems both archaic, yet forward looking… the digital moves on so fast, becomes corrupt, is deleted… a collection of paper and real work if looked after carefully can survive for centuries, long after the digital has disappeared into the ether. I write this blog, digitally, it sits there… it has sat there for ten years… but for how much longer once the technology moves on?

I have started reading ‘Correspondences’ by Tim Ingold (having been enthralled by the ideas in ‘Lines’) and I am caught up in the idea of writing letters. Real letters on real paper. In real ink. With a real pen. I sometimes think of this blog as letters to myself, rather than a diary or journal. Who can I write to? And will it be important they write back? or, like Ingold, do I write to the things?…. the doorposts… the water… the drawer that contains my archive for people to handle an read two hundred years from now if they can be bothered?

One good thing about being in the gallery with the exhibition – with or without visitors – is that it gives me the opportunity to live with this body of work for a while. I can consider the things that have gone well and those which haven’t. I can think about which direction to go in next.

The things I particularly like are the works which sit on the dark grey wall. Particularly during the days when the sun streams through the skylights, the texture of the paper seems more sumptuous somehow, and the way the ink sediment sits on it and sinks into it is highlighted beautifully. I like the swathe of muslin, hanging from the apex of the skylight, as it gathers the light and brings it down into the space, glowing.

I think I’d have preferred the other wall to be dark grey too, but some things cannot be controlled, so we do different things, it offers a different range of possibilities, and I have painted lines and words on the wall instead… carrying the lines beyond the edge of the page.

I wrote/painted some lyrics on the stairwell wall… I think I should have taken more time and prepared the surface a little first. But it’s done, and I know for next time.

What I am really loving though is the listening. This is how it was supposed to be. The links visual and aural between the lines of ink and the lines of music and lyrics are definitely there. I think yesterday’s event helped fix that for me too. It was a bit of a risk, I’d not done this before… Bill Laybourne and I had had a day drawing and making sounds, but to do this in the gallery with a live audience was very interesting. I think it took about 30/35 minutes, but there were times i zoned out and just drew, unaware of audience, and times when very aware of them, when a sound made me laugh and they laughed too… connection… Bill playing… and making me giggle. It felt appropriate, because I like to find laughter in amongst all this. Too serious is not good, it makes me think that people will think I take myself too seriously, that pompous thing is a real turn off!

There are moments in the music too, that have a little bit of the ridiculous, and I love those! This song, Undertaker Bees, is a good example of that underlining of the serious with the ridiculous and I love it (thanks Mike).

As I have sat here, I feel this work is a true reflection of who I am as an artist. Can’t ask for much more than that can I?

Onwards…

So much to write about, and where to start?

The opening weekend of Drawing Songs went well. I had some lovely conversations on the opening evening, some very positive feedback about the drawings and the songs, and much discussion about that combination, the blurring of edges and so on. Good stuff. On Sunday afternoon I performed some of the songs with Michael Clarke (writer, producer, musician, friend) and it was really lovely to sing to the drawings – who knew that was a thing? It really felt like I was saying thank you to them. We had a small but beautifully formed audience, restricted of course by space and covid, but actually it made the whole experience very intimate, casual, friendly and caring. I must confess to having a little emotional moment. I had been nursing a cold and sore throat for about a week, but it all came well in the end. No high notes were missed, although some of the lower ones could be described as sexily croaky (my own description, ha!)

I have sold quite a few of the limited edition CD/lyric book packages already – feedback is good too – very gratifying!

Much interest in the drawings… but no sales yet. However I do understand that buying art is a very special, specific thing… I may sell none of them. It would be nice, but I am a realist.

The big thing for me is seeing the project come to this point, to see this body of work and hear it, all together in one place, to assess it and move forward from here.

I have one eye on the fact I have to evaluate this for the Arts Council. So I have been looking at my original proposal. Have I done what I said I would do? Yes. Most definitely. But what is terrific is the big chunk of MORE that I have achieved. It has exceeded all my expectations by miles. I have a pile of things to look at, more songs to write, a couple of drawing adventures to continue, contacts to follow up, conversations to continue.

I have an artist talk online if you would like to listen to that, a conversation with Bill Laybourne in my studio, a few weeks ago, as I was pulling it all together.

https://soundcloud.com/elena-thomas/field-works-extract-intro

Bill will be working with me next Saturday afternoon on a live drawing session with sounds from Bill, based on the songs – collaborative, improvised – a bit daunting to do this with an audience, but I am looking forward to it. If you’d like to join us in Stourbridge for that please book through Eventbrite

I’m also doing a workshop for people to join in with the fun, on 4th November in the afternoon. You can book here

The gallery is open 11-4, Wednesdays to Sundays, until November 7th. If you would like to come and these times don’t work, please get in touch and we can maybe make an appointment out-of-hours.