Threads

Deep breath, and then GO…

Arts Council England said yes.
Thank you.

I’ve been at this for over a year. If you count the first abortive attempt, nearly two years.

This was the seventh attempt. Six unsuccessful applications.

So the lesson is, keep going. If you need it, if you think the project is worth it, keep at it. Like a dog with a bone. Don’t let it go. And actually, you do get a bit hardened to rejection. It’s character building! (Not that I need any extra character, frankly, but you know what I mean?)

I do have to thank ACE also for the feedback, support and unrelenting cheerfulness with which they answer queries, and in some cases, they seemed genuinely gutted that I didn’t get it, and were very encouraging all the way through. They are, in spite of difficulties, technical issues, covid-19 nightmares, a true national treasure. Keir Gill has been an absolute star, so he gets a special mention.

The first six unsuccessful applications were essentially Research and Development. Every bit of rejection feedback centred on audience and engagement… and I was having a tough time trying to meet the requirements for that. It was speculative, and from my end, I had a hard time with that… predicting what the outcome might be, and consequently how people would engage with this mythical outcome is hard. I know they say they welcome R&D applications, but if you are going to give that a go, try to figure out that bit and pin it down.

The difference this time was that over lockdown, with a chunk from the ACE emergency fund, and a chunk from the government SEISS, I was able to do much of that research. The seventh application therefore, was able to concentrate on the actual project itself. And therein, I think, lay the success. Now I knew what I was going to do/make I could reliably state what sort of audience and how they would engage, even in the current circumstances. The application was much clearer for the writer as well as the reader I’m sure.

So what am I going to do?

I have two blogs on a-n, one that is the same as the one posted on my website, and the other just on a-n concentrating on my musical output. (I’m posting this on all of them, but may start a separate project blog…?) The music over the last few years has become a stronger entity, and in my head, if not in the exhibition space, runs alongside, through, is entangled and enmeshed, fully integrated… but only in theory really. Because music production is expensive, and requires technical skills and music knowledge I don’t have much of. But the thing is, I can hear what I want.
The money then, will pay for the time and space (and people) for writing, recording, experimentation and eventually production of the sounds and music at the same pace and time as my drawing, and will be cross-pollinating. I have very basic recordings, a library of sounds waiting to be manipulated, drawn out and drawn on… the drawings are pulling out from the page into three dimensional drawings, and now I can pull them further out into sound. This will culminate in an exhibition/installation/event/performance in 2021 which will definitely have an audience to engage!

It’s going to be a fun year!

So this is where it has led me…

The drawn song has rhythm, repetition, a top line that meanders… then returns to the place it started.

It has a focus you are drawn to. The wire draws out the lines from the surface. The lines, the wire and the shadows are a three-part harmony.

Mix up the metaphors.

Scratch out the similes.

Acknowledge the allegory.

Accept the drawing is a song and the song is a drawing.

Now take me to the bridge.

(well… four actually, but who’s counting?)

I’m currently reading Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert.

I liked the bit about ideas having their own life, and looking for a person to collaborate with in order to be realised. If that person doesn’t notice, or doesn’t pay it enough attention, it moves on until it finds someone who can. Interesting. I have definitely had ideas that run out of steam during the time it takes to find the time, particularly when I had a “proper job”. I’d make notes in my sketch book, draw diagrams etc, fully intending to come back to them when I had the time. Only then to discover I just didn’t have the connection with it when I did. It had moved on to someone else perhaps? What this does is shift blame. Which has to be a good thing. I don’t need any more guilt about not doing stuff. Thinking that the idea has found another home with someone who can do it justice is better.

Years ago… possibly about ten years ago, when I was making quilts and covering sheds and so on, I made a decision never to buy new fabric. And I have stuck by that promise unless I need something special like vilene, or a large piece of something like calico without seams for a particular commission. During this time, I’d cut up men’s shirts from charity shops (and my husband) to make things, and get left with the bits like collars and cuffs that I didn’t want to throw out, but found difficult to use. I made a few things with button strips, and some mini bunting out of the collars, but that’s it. Because I’m a bit of a hoarder, other quilters started giving me their leftovers too.

Move on through the years… I am no longer sewing much. And the sewing I’m doing is small occupational-therapy-fireside-tv-watching stuff. I’m clearing out the loft, a box at a time, and came across the stash of shirt bits. Reluctant to throw them out, I began to think about other artists I know who could give them a better home.

My friend and fellow a-n blogger Stuart Mayes who lives in Sweden is currently doing work with shirts and ties, and I wondered whether a large quantity of collars and cuffs might be something he could play with. Sometimes, having a huge quantity of something, instantly, presents possibilities that might not otherwise have occurred when you only have half a dozen…

So I have squeezed down and wrapped up four packages – each around 2kg – consisting of 150(ish) shirt collars and 300(ish) (mostly) corresponding cuffs to post over to Stuart, in the hope that he will throw them in the air, and roll about on them in glee, then come up with an idea that has been floating about in the air, waiting for somewhere to land!

(photos please Stuart! Hahahahahahaaaa!)

BIG has to have a reason.

Students used to say to me after I asked “what next?” “I’m going to do a really big one!” And my next question was always “why?”.

If a piece of work is successful, why do you think it will be more successful just because it is bigger? I’m all for experimentation, but just because something is bigger it doesn’t make it more important. I’m all for questioning the size of the paper (or whatever) we work on. If you are working on A3 just because it is there, yes, try something different. It may well be that it works better much much smaller, or yes, bigger. (With students, I rarely found smaller was where they wanted to go.) But making things bigger just for the sake of it, trying to be impressive…? No.

So why do I work big? What’s my excuse?

Well I didn’t have one. I’m still trying to work it out, but it feels right, and I’m getting closer to the why…

A couple of years ago I was forced to work sketch book size for ages – A5 handbaggable even. Then managed to stretch to A3, A2… but that still felt very contained. And the things I was drawing were also contained within the edges of the page. They became motif-like. Botanical drawings, diagrams of something else.

When circumstances and finances allowed, I went big, desperate to escape the small format. I didn’t know why particularly, except it felt right, and I could. But I could still hear the teacher/mentor inside me asking myself “yeah, but WHY?”

I skirted past it briefly, a glancing blow during Cause and Effect. Something about one drawing not stopping at the edges and the paper just being one part of something more. But that little thought didn’t really go anywhere, it got caught, lodged in the weeds at the edge of the pond.

I’ve also gone on about how I don’t like it if I’m asked about art and philosophers. That crowbarring thing one is sometimes asked to do as part of a course. I’m mostly a really shallow pick and mix person. Ask anyone who had to mark any of my essays. I’d latch on to one thing and say, “Yep! That’ll do!” without digging any deeper. I’m still like that really. But these little bits do help me think about the why.

I liked the Rhizome that belonged to Deleuze. I could see how that worked in myself. I dodge all over the place, doing this and that, thinking about this and that, and something would get trapped in the weeds, as above, until something else came along and added to the thought, helped it grow and set out shoots and flowers. Yes. I can see how that works. I can feel it happening.

The BIG has been bugging me for a while though. I knew I wanted big work, but I was having trouble articulating it. I waved my arms about a bit…

And then, a chance conversation with fellow Stourbridge artist Helen Garbett led me to Tim Ingold. Lines. I’ve ordered the book on the strength of the paper she gave me to read.

Suddenly I am starting to grasp at the reason for BIG.

I need the lines I draw to be bigger than me. I need, like a spider with a web, to draw out the lines to see where they go when they get beyond me. I want the edges of the paper to be beyond my reach. By drawing over the edge, possibly onto the next piece, I am extending the path and the trajectory and the possibilities into uncharted territory. When I draw at this end, the other end is out of focus… I can acknowledge the leakiness of my mind and body into additional space.

When I draw it out into the third dimension with wire, the world beckons… I am exploring further. Tendrils of thought seek out something to join onto, like the growth of my cucumber plants on the windowsill. Curling three dimensional lines. Reaching out and grasping on to pull and support a new trajectory. I write lines on my page, a continuous hand written ink line… holding on to the feint-ruled line….

I had contained my terrified thoughts on small sketchbook pages. But those thoughts were seeds. They have begun to germinate now. I can look further. My terrified thoughts are still inside me, but I’ve begun to stretch them out to find something to grab onto.

The materials I am using have changed slightly, and the things I draw have changed accordingly. My thoughts still linger on the cause and effect. One person on one person, one ink line on one piece of paper. But then where?

Out.

I’ve been talking today about leaving space.

Initially the conversation was about songs. Musically there should be phrases and pauses for thought perhaps, depending on the type of song you write, but the songs I write benefit from a bit of air to breathe I think. I’m not a musician, so I don’t have the vocabulary for that… is it a thing that has a name?

The conversation focussed on lyrics though, and meaning. Specifically how the same set of words can mean different things to different people. This is a good thing. (All opinions here are mine, others may exist.) I like a little ambiguity in a song. A little space for a listener to insert themselves and their own experiences. It’s an investment.

I wrote a song with Michael Clarke a couple of years ago, it might even be three… among the other things we wrote, this one keeps revisiting us in the form of earworms, and visual triggers. It’s a lyric I really like, and he wrote the perfect music for it. Because of this staying power he has decided to have another play with it.

Interesting conversations ensue… is this suitable for a male vocal? Does it need editing to make it so? If so, how much and what?

Interesting not just in topic, but in the tone of it. Michael was gentle in his approach and tiptoed around me a little to start, wanting to respect my writing: “Did I mind? Is it going to be ok if…?” The answers were of course, “yes, go for it. I wouldn’t have given the sheet of paper to you if I didn’t want it touched!” I think what it came down to was that he wanted permission to find the space for himself in it. I would be extremely foolish to say no. He is brilliant, and will elevate it! We always have good chats, me and MC. About life, art, music, people… the result being that there is trust, and therefore plenty of room in this song for Michael to play. It’s not cast in stone, it isn’t a prison, it’s a tree, it can bend and stretch, it’s strong enough to take it, and so am I. I have no doubt he will do something with it that I couldn’t have imagined, and there will still be room in it for the listener.

After the Zooming ended, I put the laptop away and looked at the drawing and thought some more about leaving space.

One of the things I have loved about going abstract is the space. I’m not tied…except by my own fluctuating rules. It’s like I’ve thrown open the windows and doors and invited everyone in. There’s space for everyone to find out what it might mean to them. The words people use are fascinating. They’re different but also, kind of the same. There’s a visual, observed, acknowledged vocabulary common to all.

Veins, roads, rivers, microscopic cells, lungs, rocks, stones, planets, galaxies, plants, stems, roots, forest architecture, blood, sap, bodies, organs, joints, bubbles, corporeal, visceral, familiar but strange, tight, internal, restricted and constricted…

These things float around in my head of course, undeniably. There’s room for all of them, but there’s also room for me. The point of origin is mine. In the drawing or the songwriting the first point, and where I take it, is mine… for a while…

Over to you, Michael!