Threads

AUDIOBLOG – Please click here

The plate spinning was a useful metaphor. What I’m finding interesting is the smashed plate and how I end up seeing it…. And how others see it…
“Oh you must be terribly disappointed? No Jerwood selection and no studio!”

Well for one, I never thought I would get selected for Jerwood. (Although I don’t think the bra I entered made it out of the box.) But nothing ventured and all that. I was dreading the traipse back down to London, until Jill Hedges said she would join me. Trudging out to Wimbledon with her was my Not-Jerwood-Prize. We talked of life experience, childhood, issues of trust, the work, and the words… Each other’s, other people’s… Our practices and ways of going about things… We worked out a couple of things… Gave voice to barely formed connections… It was brilliant. The two hours or so on trains and the three hour lunch flew by. The journey home in the quiet coach allowed contemplation of our explorations and discussions. So instead of coming home weary, I was renewed and exhilarated.

Secondly, new studio: if I had got it, I would have made it work, it would have been a brilliant space to work in. But there were compromises that I’d thought about long and hard… So the “No” didn’t disappoint as much as I might have anticipated. Also, the process, much like the journey to London, opened up a side-line conversation that has resulted in an offer to share a space elsewhere. So having dashed a couple of my Sunday best plates to the floor, I find I’m happier with the resulting mosaic.

And then there’s the songwriting. I had a day songwriting with Michael Clarke. It was a privilege and an absolute blast to work with him. We are going to do it again. We wrote three really different songs with absolutely no purpose in mind at the time of writing, other than the joy of making. Organic, natural, follow your nose making… It is rare to find people happy to spend their time that way…. Trusting the process…. Another day sped by, even the lunch break was spent at a local bar/restaurant with paper, pen, muttering and humming. We would have been an interesting pair to eavesdrop on!
I’m about to start off teaching and mentoring another new group of artist teachers next week. We always talk of the toolkit of what they will need over the next year. I hope they find the joy of just making. I hope they find the knack of seeing what surrounds disappointment as a successful outcome. I hope they come to love and trust their process.

 

AUDIOBLOG – Please click here

No one told me that being a freelance self-employed artist would be a profession akin to circus plate-spinner!

I have previously spoken of that in-limbo feeling… this is a little like that, but active rather than passive. I’m waiting for things to happen, but this time they are of my own making. I’m the one that has applied for things. I am the one that has thrown all these plates in the air. I am the one waiting to catch them on the sticks or watch them crash to the floor.

The Jerwood plate has crashed to the floor… ah well… never mind…

The BCU teaching plate is spinning safely, the Artist Teacher Scheme officially runs from July 26th.

(You can join us still if you want, there is time!)

The studio plate is enormous, and I only have a tiny little feeble stick to catch it on, it feels precarious this one, anything could happen in the next half hour!

There are a couple of residency applications in, an open call thingy…

Someone else’s project waiting for funding so I can be a part of it too…

We wait with baited breath… the administration of a professional art career can be exhausting.

I am the Queen of mood swings at the best of times, and this isn’t helping really, but at least I feel like I’m working hard – even if currently for nothing!

Collecting my Jerwood submission was looking like a wretched task. All the way down to bloody London again – Wimbledon FFS! that’s not even really London it’s so far out  – or so it seems to me, the foreigner abroad. Why the hell didn’t I choose Cheltenham? Next time….

But, I have been rescued, by my friend Jill who will meet me there and we will travel and gossip together, we might catch an exhibition, but it is just as likely we will find a good place to eat and drink and stay there for a few hours before setting back home in different directions. My wretchedness and miserable mood has been turned around. I love my friends… what would I do without them?

I have a couple of other plates I’m attending to slowly, flicking the stick, keeping them going until crisis point… they will be ok for a while… their turn will come.

But one of the best plates I have, is whirring gently, self propelled it seems. I don’t need to spend to much time watching it…

I’ve booked a day in a music room at mac Birmingham to polish the 12 (ish) songs written with the band, I’m itching to do this… then we might get a gig or two…

I have also been asked to spend a day songwriting with someone I admire greatly. I am thrilled beyond belief that he should ask. I am far too excited for a woman of my age. It is unseemly! I have this butterfly thing in the pit of my stomach. This still relatively new art I have immersed myself in, has come up trumps. It appears I have something to offer! No one is more surprised about this than me. My words are currency, my lack of attention to the rules that I don’t know, is apparently exciting to others, and useful, and inspiring! … I am starting to have a little self-belief in what I can do in this medium. I can’t tell you how indecently exciting that is. I’m getting on a bit. I have a practice that is growing, and gathering momentum. I could sit back and stitch and I would be fine, but this…. THIS feels exhilarating. Bungee jumping can’t be as good as this surely?

You know why? It’s fast… A textile piece can take months from conception to hang… but I can get the bare bones of a song down in half an hour. I can hone it, record it and listen to it. I can even perform it and get people to tell me what they think. It might not be perfect, but it can be a thing… a new life… in a very short time! I am extremely fortunate to be able to work with musicians that make this happen. But even on my own, I can get something crude together in a day. Something recognisable, that has a form that can be worked with… Bloody magic! This plate is the one at the moment giving me energy, not sapping it. A deep and wonderful creative joy.

 

AUDIOBLOG – Please click here

….in another world….

 

I’ve been working on an Arts Council application supporting a friend in her quest to fund an amazing music project for young people with visual impairments. It is a stonker, and I hope it gets funded, because it will be great! The application form was testimony to her commitment to it, after weeks of preparation and dedication to its worthiness… she is focussed, connected and personally emotionally invested in it being a success. The ACE application portal is a bloody nightmare to me, with my full sight, my experience, fairly good level of IT literacy and a little bit of insight. To my friend (who is a force of nature, talent and intellect, perfectly able to express herself if given the appropriate “interface”) it would have been largely inaccessible. No doubt that ACE will have plenty of fall out to deal with over the changes they have made.

 

HOWEVER…

Where they have more than succeeded is in their handling of what could have been a disaster. I say this on the day we pressed the submit button… Firstly, they paid for me to help. We are exhausted by the process, but they have come up trumps. Their one-to one over the phone and email support of Nicki’s application has been speedy, full, unflinching, positive, encouraging. They have spent time hanging on the phone while we made adjustments, so they could check. They advised us of different ways to go about things, explained the differences and implications of each. They have done so with a high level of knowledge, experience and expertise, good grace and jokes.

Their portal is bloody rubbish, but their people are, in fact, brilliant.

Thanks folks!

 

 

 

 

AUDIOBLOG – Please click here

I suspect, but have no evidence to back it up, that this might be a gender thing. Or maybe men just do it and don’t discuss it so openly?

I’ve been having a conversation with a couple of people on and off, separately, for a while now about my new-found ambition. I’m not used to it. And until now, I never even had a work ethic. I’m 55 for goodness sake!

The task that has prompted this train of thought is my occasional habit of CV weeding.

About ten years ago, If I so much as showed someone a picture of my work on my phone in a pub, I called it a pop-up exhibition and put it on my CV, just so there was something on it, just so it looked like I was actually a real artist, doing something that counted as something.

As I went on, and collected slightly more professional looking things, the pub-type gigs got dropped (as much as anything, out of fear if someone actually checked, they weren’t that real!) So that was an easy “weed”. As I have collected events that are more widely recognised, it has become more difficult, a moral dilemma occurs. There are some things on my CV that, at the time of doing them, I thought were brilliant – they were – but now, they don’t really say anything about me, or my work, or where I want to be, or how I want to be seen. An artist CV isn’t like a clerical worker CV, or the sort of CV that requires an unbroken employment history.

I have likened this to the wardrobe sort-out. Get rid of anything that doesn’t fit, is the wrong colour, doesn’t suit you… even if it was expensive when you bought it, and went with those proper girl-shoes you bought for a special occasion. I’m grateful that I went to the special occasion, I have fond memories, but I’m not going to go to another.

My moral dilemma is this: people that I know and love are involved in the things that I am weeding out. I have to decide if this is misplaced loyalty… I still love these people, but my professional path I think, should be elsewhere now. I have never had a professional path up until very recently, so I don’t really know how to cope with this. I don’t want to piss people off that I am grateful to, and I don’t want them to feel I am belittling their work in any way, because that isn’t what it is about… but it REALLY looks like that… doesn’t it?

Ambition then: To be ambitious, you have to sell yourself, present yourself as the person you want to become… almost inhabit it beforehand in order for it to become true. Fake it to make it? Possibly, which is another dilemma, I have always felt I am an honest person in the way I present myself. This becomes, then, about self-belief. If I don’t believe that I can get somewhere, then the presentation is false. I hate that. I’m not blowing a trumpet that doesn’t exist. I’m even starting to think that writing this blog post might be a way of justifying my deplorable actions… I expect someone will tell me. They usually do.

I have a bunch of really close art-friends who are honest and open and we talk about each other’s work in an open and honest way. I know when I’m not doing a proper job, because, in case I hadn’t noticed, they tell me. Or at least steer the conversation in a way that I notice all by myself! Hahaha!

They tell me that it is OK to be ambitious. But other than the CV weeding, and the mad scramble to apply for things I will probably not get/win/participate in, I don’t know where the “somewhere” is that I want to get to.

When I took a leap of faith and threw myself back at my fine art practice about ten years ago, I had a list of things I wanted to achieve. At the time I thought them ridiculous, funny, mythical and totally unachievable. Unbelievably, I have done them all, and more. What I could do with now is a new list. This new list at the moment is cloudy and unformed, and I could probably do with some help forming the list, let alone actually achieving it!

I also feel that by saying all this, and publishing the list, that I’m really sticking my head above the parapet…

 

The new list involves:

*wider recognition for the work… across a range of platforms…

*a decent solo gallery exhibition, that gets a good review that people see…

*being able to earn a living…

*a sort of breaking-out… I don’t know what from, or to…

*a really big project that means something to other people, not just me, that might leave some sort of trace… fuck me… a legacy even!

*a bloody studio!

 

 

I have no idea how to get any of this. It all still looks ridiculous, funny, mythical and totally unachievable…The first list was easier… or maybe that’s hindsight talking?

 

 

AUDIOBLOG – Please click here

I am a great writer of lists.

In this period of uncertainty, disappointment, and yes, lets be frank, horror at the behaviour of certain human beings who would, if asked, consider themselves cultured and civilised…. in this period, my natural optimism has been tested.

When things go wrong I have a tendency to spend an amount of time brooding, swearing, arguing and so on. The amount of time spent doing this depends on the enormity of the event that has to be dealt with. I have explosive tendencies too. I can be nastily sarcastic and mean. I stomp about. I slam doors. And then I am mortified, apologetic… (but I don’t hold grudges…often)… I express myself verbally, to those closest to me usually, and rather more politely on social media. And then, when I’ve left people reeling, I’m ready to move on, and quite often unfortunately, having felt assaulted by my instant volatile reaction, they are not. I’m sorry. I’m always very sorry. While I was at work in a proper job, I learned to curb this a little. Now I don’t have a proper job I think my social skills have reverted to those of a recalcitrant teenager.

It’s probably a good thing that I no longer work in an environment where there was a closet Farage supporter (I learned this on my last day and was rendered speechless). This week, I would probably have been instantly sacked.

Anyway… while this is all going on, I don’t feel able to work on anything.

But afterwards, when my own personal dust cloud has settled, I have discovered I am at my most creative, and possibly my most emotionally vulnerable.

There is a decisive “RIGHT THEN!” and I dive back in. The events have an effect on the way I work, and what I work on. I work through it all. The hatred and venom are filtered through the fabric. The hot air balloon of indignation is punctured by my needle. The words of spite and cruelty and injustice are scribbled onto a page. (I have been asked by people who don’t know me, how someone as jolly and positive and fun-loving as me can produce work that holds such bitterness and misery… well that’s how.) (The people that really know me, also know that the jolly, positive, social me costs my energy stockpile dearly)

 

(A side note: actually, at first glance the work can also look and sound jolly… it is those people who dig deeper and look closer and listen more keenly who are rewarded with the bitterness and misery)

The “RIGHT THEN!” generally precedes the list-writing.

The list has everything… the things currently being done, and currently in exhibition status… to remind me that I’m not just sat here. It contains the things that are in the pipeline, that have been submitted and hold possibilities. It holds the future projects and proposals. It holds the things I might actually earn some money from (expenses are a dark and different list).

The list then gets pinned up, and I kick back the chair, put my feet on the desk (currently the dining table! scutter!). I drink tea and I ponder the possibilities.

 

The next bit of activity might be either a big bit of paper, coloured felt pens and words… or there might be a tipping out of work and materials to be sorted… This time, I think I’m going for the materials. I’m sorting out my apron collection (currently stands at 11) some have been worked on already, some are just there. The apron seems appropriate. A garment to protect, keep clean, be busy in.

 

Right then….