Threads

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!

Thank goodness for the internet!

I’ve so missed the conversations in my studio with my fellow General Office colleagues and friends. I’ve missed the prodding at my brain that makes me continue to question. Especially at the moment as I am trying out new ways of working and presenting my ideas.

But I do have the internet, the comments under the blog posts on a-n and on my website.
I’ve been “chatting” lately with fellow long-term a-n blogger Stuart Mayes. I “met” Stuart about 8 or 9 years ago, through the comments on blogs medium, and we have continued. We have met in real life just once, when I was visiting Sweden a few years ago. I cherish the memory of that afternoon in Stockholm. Oh boy, we talked a lot!

Our conversation continues, through the blog world. These last couple of weeks both Stuart and I are looking at our work, looking at what we consider of value in our methods, and should those methods be challenged after all these years. I’m a little older than Stuart, possibly a lot older? Who cares? My point being, we are both mature, established artists trying to keep ourselves going in difficult times. We are quite different people, with very different practices, living in different countries. Despite this we have common ground…

There is something about a conversation that is written under a blog that has real value. It can be referred to and examined, and revisited.

He said:

The other day I was looking at your wire drawings on Instagram, I really like them and what struck me was how different they are from, for example, ‘Nine Women’. Looking at your wire work and thinking about other aspects of your practice helped me formulate my own questions about my practice – its intention(s), ambition(s), form(s) and aesthetic(s). If it’s okay I will say something (the thing!) that really helped me – as you seem to have already made the leap that I am about to take – it struck me that Nine Women tells me something whereas the wire drawings invite me to think.

(He said lots of other lovely things I was tempted to paste over, but I must at least try to be modest! Ha!)

The thing is… the conversations we have with other people about our work, and particularly other artists, keep us fresh. Keep things relevant, and keep us checking that they are. By “us” I mean “me”

Thank you Stuart!

Titles are important.

And, as with the rest of my work, I find that I have rules that govern how I choose them.

I am trying to come up with a title for the project I am working on. This title will be used for my Arts Council application, will probably be the exhibition/event title and may also be the title of a published product… words and/or sounds.

I would be interested to hear how other people choose their titles and whether other people agonise over it like I seem to do.

I want the title to refer to the way I work, or my thought patterns or an underlying theme.

I don’t like puns

I am trying to avoid the sort of title that I am sure will abound in the post-covid world… (restart, stepping out, branching out etc.)

I absolutely hate those titles that have unnecessary and confusing characters inserted for example [Re:Bōund//] they make me very cross indeed. 

I quite like pairs of words “Nine Women”, “Cause and Effect” or single words, short and snappy, not long sentences.

For me, a title of an exhibition, a piece of work, an album… has to hint at what it is, but not be too explicit. A little ambiguity is good, as it leaves room for the viewer or listener to bring some of themselves to it. They look at it in the light of their own experiences.

In other words I make things far too difficult for myself.

I have a list of words on a big piece of paper that skirt about what I’m looking for, but not quite there yet. I shall get out the thesaurus and add some more, then start crossing things out. I’ll get there. Watch this space…

Visitors and Chronology

These two things might not at first thought be connected, but I found myself considering both today, tied together…

I have started venturing back into the studio. Not just popping in to pick up/drop off materials, but to stay and work and think. I have missed it so much, that alone time. Isn’t it strange that lockdown has made it impossible for some of us introverts to find our own space and time, while seeing others lonely, and craving what we have?

I’ve been working in my sketch book a lot at home. Trying things out, almost mindless, doodling, when other thoughts crash around demanding attention. When I brought the sketchbooks into the studio (4 x A3 size) I started leafing through them. Some pages caught my attention more than others, and I started to wonder why. But inside the books it is really hard to relate from one page to another, from one book to another… so I started to tear them out.

(I smile to myself as I could list about 4 artists I know who would gasp in horror… back to that later…)

I laid them out first of all on the table, in the order I had torn them out, as if assembling another book. At first, respecting the left to right, top to bottom… until I realised that this drummed-in conformation to the chronological wasn’t what I was seeking, it was what I was trying to get rid of! Why do we do this? Paintings hung in museums in “the right order”… books alphabetical, chronological… cds by surname, then chronological, stock rotation? Some of these obviously useful. Some unnecessary. My books are in colour order…

(I smile to myself as the three librarians I know gasp in horror…)

Then I started to group them by materials… nope.

Then by colour… nope.

Then by the motifs I have repeated… nope.

By shuffling these sketchbook works I realised that there are elements that recur, colour palette is fairly narrow, the lines are similar, but there are subtle differences and break-aways that are interesting and worth pursuing, if I can be reminded of them.

Which brings me to my studio walls.

As I sit at my table the busy-ness of the materials and equipment shelving is behind me.

 

Directly in front of me the recent works…

…and then in the corner a sort of “sale table”hangover from open studios. It occurred to me that I’m not going to be opening my studio for quite some time to the public, and not even for the casual visitor. This changes everything. Why have I got old drawings on the wall? In the hope of selling? When they are clearly no longer the work I am interested in, so why should anyone else be? I don’t want to talk about that work!

So I took them down.

I have now blutacked up the torn out sketchbook pages. I have not attempted to tidy them up. I may well slot them back in to the sketchbooks at some point. But for the moment I can see them. Jumbled up, for me to look at, out of their chronology, in order to make connections and decisions.

• 
• 
• 

It’s so good to be back. And very good to only be considering myself here.

Kettle’s on.

Too Easy?

And so I carry on thinking…

The question that has lodged itself (thanks Franny) is the one about it feeling too easy.

This is one that has come back over the last ten years or so to haunt me frequently. It is a question about how I value myself and my work. It’s also the judgement I make about other artists’ work. Is it skillful? Have they spent a long time on it? (this might be time spent before the making of the thing itself, but it would show in some way, not be slapdash) Does it look considered, thoughtful?

I am aware these are sometimes seen as “old-fashioned” considerations, but they are mine. We get where we are, and we are who we are because of the lives we have led, the education we have had, the people we meet etc etc…

I feel in regard to my own work, whether it is stitched or drawn, that there should be some meatiness in there. I can stitch decoratively, I have skills, I can draw fairly well too. I can draw from observation so that a thing looks like a thing. But I feel that making without substance, without the meatiness, without the concept and so on… is not professional. I am a professional. I make pretty things, and they are my hobby if you like. Ironically I would probably sell more. There was a period in my life when that is what I did. I made nice things and I sold them. I make nice things now for myself, or I give them away to friends and family out of love, not for money. They are the things I do while I watch tv in the evenings, because I cannot just sit.

But the Art with a capital A I take seriously. (I hope that I don’t take myself too seriously, because that would be very irritating). It is the thing I hold my faith and belief in. It’s how I do my thinking. I owe it. Big time. It has changed my life. So yes, if I feel if it is “too easy”, then I’m not doing it properly. I’m cheating. When that happens, I sit back and think a bit harder about what I’m trying to do.

Does this make sense to anyone else?

Does anyone else feel this way?

Not that that matters. It won’t change the fact of how I feel, it would just be interesting.