Threads

Drawing and Dimensions – Part 2

In part one I wrote about the lines of ink on paper, wire in three dimensions and the shadows cast back onto the paper. I have a handle on where I am with them. The ink and paint travel right to the edge of the paper, implying its journey goes beyond. The shapes I bind with wire have defined edges, the lines form the mesh that can feel like a surface. Whether it is or not depends on who you talk to. But it could keep going…

I have the good fortune to have a clever son who has an impressive background in physics… and incidental philosophy… our conversations make my head hurt. I do have to sometimes remind myself after the conversations that the scientific truth is not necessarily to be held onto in my art work, or in philosophical terms, but an exploration of terms and meanings in those  disciplines is really useful. Thanks Dan! Our references range from Aristotle, to Kierkegaard via Homer (Simpson) and Terry Pratchett, in an attempt to aid (my) understanding of dimensionality. The conversation we had attempted to place sound within my work. I’m trying to establish a few rules for myself to explore the issue.

If I see the drawing on paper as two-dimensional drawing, and the wire sculpting as three-dimensional drawing, then the song, of determinate length, becomes a temporal fourth-dimensional drawing. The extent of this is defined, and explicit, and a lived experience over that time. And it is still a drawing. My questions and rules now then, as I create these sound-temporal-dimensional drawings (I’ll probably find a better term as I work) are as follows (for now):

Will they be separate pieces, made to sit alongside specific drawings? 

Will a stop~start of the sound be a sort of annotation of the drawings? A point from which travel occurs, for the duration of the song/sound?

Will it be a continuous looped piece, to reiterate/echo that carrying on past the edge?

Will this create a possibility of different starting points along the continuum through paper/ink/wire/sound that can travel in any direction?

What quality of sound do I want to convey to the viewer/listener?

Is there a direction to this dimensionality? Does it all come from the paper, outwards, or does the cause and effect travel in both directions?

I ask these questions, aware of overlap between them in the phrasing of things, and also that I may never answer them.

The experience of the viewer/listener, in the gallery at the end may effect how I construct things… but it feels too soon to be considering that, and yet it is in there… If you see a sound piece in a gallery that runs for 45 mins, do you stay for 30 seconds and walk out? If it says 3 minutes do you stay to listen to it all. If it is a continuous loop do you treat it differently and just stay as long as the installation holds you? So how much of this produced sound will be actual proper songs?

Should I be bothered? Yes… because another ‘dimension’ here is the mutability of the sound drawing for the viewer/listener. There is the possibility, if they stay in the gallery long enough, that the thread of it stays with them, when they leave, and they find themselves recalling it later…

I read in order to extend my ability to express what I’m doing… trying to do. I’m not looking at other people’s words in order to crowbar their thinking into my work so that I look clever. Because I’m not clever.

I draw in order to explore and express and order the ideas I have no words for. That’s kind of the point. But sometimes I need to find words in order to explain myself to myself. Other people’s words help, whether that’s a conversation, or through reading.

I don’t read much compared to many of my artist peers. When I do it does tend to be an after-the-fact thing, or three different people have recommended the same book/author to me in the space of a month “There might be something in it then?” I think if I was led by the reading, rather than my own thoughts and experiences it would seem like I was cheating. I’d rather read afterwards and say “oh so that’s what it might be?” Than follow another’s path. We all have our own. Of course it isn’t really like that because what happens is, having read something, it then affects the forward thinking. A light has been shone on something. There’s a clarity that allows me to move up and around the spiral a little. I am influenced at certain points.

One such book is Tim Ingold’s ‘Lines’ at the moment. It is helping me to explore and identify where my lines are drawn, manipulated, formed, cast, sung, handwritten… I can see previous diagrammatic forms and can see how and why they mutated into what I’m doing now. Those early forms were contained, pinned down. They had a clear body, a boundary, edges. They were contained, bound, surrounded. The shapes were held captive by the edge of the page and the size of the handbag sized cell. One could read into this that at the same time, life was also similarly curtailed. (It might also be now, but for different reasons.) Gradually as life expanded again, I let out my lines, let the paint and lines travel to and over the edge. There is an implication that they could continue… that this is just a slice of something spreading, forever on the move?

Currently the drawn lines travel towards the edge of the paper still, and now up, into the wire drawings into a third dimension. They pull away from the paper and the wall, but are still tied in some way by the cast shadow lines.

I know that my next move out and away is with sound. The reading has helped me think about the lines, but I need a different conversation about the sound. I think I have a grasp on the surfaces and the edges… but now I need something extra to help me think it through, it’s a bit amorphous at the moment and I think what I’m looking for is that set of rules that I can work within, and then break out of.

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!)