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The project in my head that concerns chairs is on the back burner. I don’t have the space at the moment to explore it. It will get done, but not here at home, and not now. It can wait.

Until then though I am a little rudderless. I’m not sure what to make, if to make, what to write and if I should write. Writing takes up less space, true. But curiously, I have found that if I am not making, the writing doesn’t come so easily… there’s a vacuum in which it struggles to survive.

I have been worrying about it, to be honest. But, as time has gone on I have decided, and managed, to let it go. I’ll have the space, the work will be made, the brain will kick into gear and away we will go. It is all part of the cycle of my creativity. At some point, it will settle again.

Meanwhile, back in the world that other people call Real, I take a break from the domestic and trot off to Bridgnorth with my friend *brief tourist announcement: It’s lovely, go!*

We drink tea, eat cake, walk around the hill and look at the views across the river, its a cold crisp day… little bit rainy… but still a good day out. (The company helps, thank you H!) Hats are bought, loud laughs are had, and we wander about vintage and junk shops.

Now, If I’m honest, other people’s work in galleries doesn’t really inspire me. It is usually resolved according to someone else thoughts… so while I find it interesting, it doesn’t often make me want to rush home and work.

Junk shops however, especially those with a lean towards the domestic and the textile, hold untold stories, and really get me going. I wandered about, fingering things, picking up, putting down, putting together, not really with any great thought as to why. Its like my fingers know what they are looking for. Handling is important. That is why most of the time (apart from bacon-sandwich-eating-chocolate-smeared-mechanics) I am happy – I encourage – the handling of my work. Most of my pleasure has come from the handling of the items and materials. To deny the audience is denying them a huge chance of connection in the way that I connect.

I reach the front of the shop and chat to the owner almost unaware of the collected items in my hand, and almost unconsciously pay for them, and push them into my bag.

Inventory:

1 fragment of christening gown, cotton, including panels of drawn thread work, broderie Anglaise and lace, pin tucks and hand embroidery. Machine construction, age unknown – guess early 20th C.

2 fragments white fabric trim with bobbly bits, about 12 inches long

1 fragment white ric-rac also 12 inches long, stained slightly.

1 skein unbleached linen thread

6 single keys

1 bunch of 3 keys.

1 doll’s jumper, hand knitted, cream, with ribbon tie

This morning’s work has been to use the linen to stitch a key onto the jumper. God knows why! But I like it…

As I stitch I think of secrets and lies and overheard and eavesdropped conversations… things that children hear but don’t understand… perhaps…

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BEWARE… ranting, sweeping statements and controversial opinions lurk in the text below:

My involvement in arts education as a (sometimes loosely defined) teacher has taken a sort of scatter gun approach, but has taken in every stage from pre-school to post graduate, and in all sorts of settings, formal and informal, universities, schools, sheds, galleries and the occasional village hall and church.

My focus as an educator these days falls mostly into the post-grad. I find I get less snot on my jumper that way.

I’m currently in the processes of organising an event for artist educators, through the Artist Teacher Scheme at Birmingham City University.

(I’m not writing this as an advert, but if you are interested, the information and ticket booking can be found here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/practice-imperfect-tickets-21203642666?utm-medium=discovery&utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-source=cp&utm-term=listing )

Prompted by this, a conversation has started about all sorts of things around the education of artists including how to actually exist and earn a living. The Arts Council England’s new application portal has come in for criticism too. Sonia Boué’s “Barcelona in a Bag” blog continues that conversation and includes a very handy video about applying for funding. But the common thread that crops up over and over is “Why aren’t we taught this stuff?” I suspect, in part, because the people doing the educating don’t know either, because they are in Education. So many of the artists I know don’t apply for funding because it is such a foggy issue… what exactly ARE the secret words/ knocks/ handshakes? The ACE form when I filled it in for Nine Women was very very time consuming and difficult and although I got lots of help and advice it took me six weeks to collect all the information I needed, sign up all those crucial names and numbers, and then write the right words. Six weeks is a long time. Good job I had nothing better to do like, ermmm, earn a living!

So… transparency… I had a successful ACE application, just the one. It was difficult, but ultimately brilliant. Well worth the time I spent doing it. But that has now run out and I find myself still without a studio and without much of an income. But if anyone wants to talk about the process, I’m happy to help.

Don’t get me started on the whole “do more teaching” thing, because if I did more work for someone else, I wouldn’t make the art. Everyone decides where there own line on time/money has to be… and it moves throughout your life.

Applying for funding is a horrible thing to spend time doing. If I weirdly find myself in the mood, I apply for everything I come across all at the same time. This of course then results in all the rejections arriving at the same time too, but hey ho!

Young artists (well, some) graduate thinking it is possible to earn a living just making the art. I can’t think of an artist that I know who isn’t getting the money from somewhere else to support their art habit. I am teaching in universities and galleries and the occasional school (see snot reason above). Most of the people close to me are earning a living doing arts-related jobs at least, but many find this rather soul destroying and a couple have said they would rather do something in Sainsbury’s then at least they would be able to think about their own art while they stacked the shelves, rather than their students’ or someone else’s.

We have to start teaching students the Business of Art. We have to live, in the real world, bills have to be paid. It shouldn’t be the case that a woman in her middle age has to scurry about asking important people stupid questions… but that is what I did.

This education has to continue. The letters CPD trip off the lips of teachers on a regular basis, so much so they lose their meaning. But I WANT CPD! I want CPD that helps me to continue along this path I have chosen, and will provide me with the means to generate some cash. I promise to spread it about to other artists – I already did. I want to learn more, and develop in a continuous, professional manner. I don’t want to do a PhD, but that is what is expected post-MA. It isn’t right for all of us.

All of the current issues about art in the curriculum and so on are inextricably linked to this. How can we expect others to value us if we don’t value ourselves? How artists earn a living is currently not transparent. It needs to be. No wonder parents don’t want their children to “Do Art”. If we swan about, not earning money and not being professional, it will only get worse. If we have this wishy-washy attitude to exactly HOW an artist can earn money, and have little cliques of people who have a little pot of money that they won’t tell anyone about for fear of it getting stolen, no one learns or earns anything. When actually, if you have a bit of funding, spread the news, tell everyone how to do it, and spread the cash too. A little bit of arts funding goes a long way, and has more of an effect than the economical. We need a micro-economy here… lend/give someone a fiver. Charge no interest. Support a kickstarter campaign for a couple of quid. I guarantee you will get it back when it is your turn.

It doesn’t have to be a big project, it might be manageable in whatever the rest of your life is doing. They key is getting on with it, but treat it professionally and conduct yourself as such.

Be Transparent.

Be Evangelical.

Be a Professional Artist…

…even if for 40 hours a week you are stacking shelves in Asda. Get used to telling people what you are doing, and who you are.

So… it was important to me personally, when talking about what sort of event we planned for Artist Educators next month, that we talked about arts practice that didn’t just sit in The Studio. This event is about artists that do it in their school lunch times at their desks amongst the marking, on their laps in front of the tv with their children, on their laptops, on the train to work, and while they run… and into their dictaphones in the car, and on the back of the gas bill… and on their phone…

…and in their heads.

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Work is being done, but  of the loose ends variety… I’m not tying up loose ends, I’m making them. Working among boxes in my dining room is not conducive to joined up thinking. Not that joined up thinking is always my forte, but I can at least feel as if I’m closer to joining things up if my studio is arranged around me as a sort of physical sphere of influence, a bubble of physically expressed thought. Even when not inside it, the thought of it being somewhere helps keeps track of my thoughts. So I work on these loose ends that will hopefully one day soon be drawn together: some lyrics, some sounds, some stitches, some drawings…

I have a group of artist teacher students that I am supposed to be guiding through the beginnings of their engagement/re-engagement with their art practice. This week I barely feel I’m ahead of them in this process. But maybe I’m not… Maybe I’m just less scared now?

We looked at the work of Laura Lancaster in The New Art Gallery Walsall yesterday. I am always reassured by artists who have more than one approach to the work, more than one type of outcome. It makes me feel better about my multi-discipline approach (I can’t really call it multi-media because that now implies something different don’t you think?) Laura’s work was arranged in two camps: paintings, large gestural brush strokes, expressive, somewhat sinister in places, but assured and knowing. Loved them. Then a series of drawings on paper and card taken from old books: inside covers and endpapers (with £2.99 written on etc). Small, detailed and multi-media(see?) from charcoal to biro to watercolour. Beautiful. Each a snapshot from an anonymous found photo album. A frozen moment (the large paintings too). Each image a potential song. Each photo a representation of our own albums. Each group recognisable in composition and format if not familiar in face. Family likenesses are seen… But they’re not ours. But they hold the place for us to substitute our own important moments. We talked of the relationships between paint and photo that have changed over time…
An interesting time spent in the gallery.
The space next to Laura’s work was inhabited by that of Jan Vanriet. I’m not going to go into too much detail about his work, but I recommend the show, and I will be returning without the students to see both.
The close examination of one photo of his parents fascinated me: they met and survived the holocaust, vowing to meet and marry if they did. The pose is awkward, together but faces turned away, close bodies, shoulders together, but hips apart, her hand on his chest, maintaining a barrier, him treading on her toe…. Jan’s reworking over and over; close ups of these details; a change in colour or composition; one photo sucked dry; over examined; deconstructed in an attempt to understand two lives just from one frozen frame. This over examining in an attempt to unearth something not seen or to find evidence of emotion or intent reminded me of Marion Michell’s work with photos of her father. The period of the photo similar, World War Two…
These two artists at Walsall are both working with photos, but the motivations are very different, and so is the process and the product. The link on examination is tenuous, superficial, but the differences highlights each other somehow.

From this day in the gallery I take reassurance: I too work at the same “problem” from various angles, and I too bang on about the same things. I too mull things over again and again. Rework the same thought over and over…

I think perhaps where I am in relation to my students is that I have found the thing. You know, “The Thing”… I know what obsesses me. I am at it all the time:

How do these relationships we have endure? How do they change? How do they exist beyond death? How does the memory of that relationship work? I bang on about it. I poke at it with a stick. My mother, my marriage, my children, my siblings…. I try to make sense of it all by looking at others’. But basically it is egocentric. I’m trying to work myself out.

Even these loose ends…. They will meet up once I can get back into the bubble…. They will find their place.

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It’s been ages… it seems… since I was here last!

It has been a busy couple of weeks, building up to The Sitting Room’s first ever gig at the Artists’ Workhouse PV on Friday night.

We had a couple of rehearsals, and I had a bit of a worry as my throat decided to shut down… I didn’t actually lose my voice but at one stage it was extremely painful and unreliable in terms of the pitch and volume! I wait 54 years to be in a band and at the first gig I get a sore throat!

We managed though. Much was learned that can only be learned by getting out there and actually doing it. Such is life eh?

I’ve also managed to get myself into one of those slumps again. As I write this, the contents of my studio are heaped up in boxes behind me. I HAVE to find another space soon. It is doing my head in.

Emotionally I feel Fragile.

Intellectually I feel Stupid.

Physically I feel Broken.

Socially I feel Inept.

The benefit of having a blog is the knowledge that this has happened before and will undoubtedly happen again. While I have the joy of the boys in the band to buoy my spirits, my visual work lies mouldering, unable to find physical or brain space in which to flourish. I know in my heart that it will…. really… all the evidence of the past points to this. But I’m not feeling it. I am forcing myself to do tasks that should have been done weeks ago. My very small but very important tax bill was paid at the very last minute, fingers crossed that the website would be up and running and would allow me to do so (yes, phew).

Next week I have vowed to undertake more studio hunting. I have new contacts and new ideas. I keep telling myself that crossing possibilities off the list is still progress, but it doesn’t feel like it today.

I also know there is a taboo in place about such things, but fuck it… Being a pre-menstrual, pre-menopausal woman with joints that don’t work properly feels like shit. I feel like an old bag.

I KNOW that next week I will feel better. But today? Nope.

(Apologies to those who follow my Audioblog, I’ll catch up soon, when my voice is behaving itself)

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This morning  has been a bit rubbish to tell you the truth, and it has all been of my own making.

I went to a really great gig last night, a couple of friends were playing the support spot, so that’s always fun…

Anyway… you don’t need to know the ins and outs, and frankly I would be embarrassed to list all the reasons here, but afterwards I was feeling full of self pity, self doubt, I felt stupid, inadequate, pathetic. I had full knowledge in the rational part of my brain that this was ridiculous, and yet the emotional part of my brain continued the tantrum. Toys were thrown out of a pram and I should have been placed on the naughty step until I had had time to think about what I had done. Wasn’t there a Supernanny formula that you should spend a minute on the step for every year of your life? Well, it took me more than 54 minutes to get myself out of it.

In the end I took to stitching. Yes! You remember stitching? The activity that keeps everything right with the world? Well it seems I had forgotten.

So having thrown my breakfast in the bin, and spilled my tea down my jumper. I decided to stitch. As soon as I had made the decision I knew it was right. I have absolutely no idea what I am stitching. Except that I decided I had to take something pretty and then proceed to make it not pretty. I expect there are all sorts of metaphors in there, but they don’t matter at the moment. Just keep stitching. I have not stitched like this since the bras were finished. I have been stomping about, feeling unsettled and unfocussed.

So I start the stitching. I already know, three hours in, that all will be well. This may well end up as “a piece of work”. Or it might not. It doesn’t matter, really, it doesn’t. Process over product.

I posted a bit of video about drawing a while back. Now I post a little video of me stitching at the beginning of this piece. There is something about the sound the needle makes as it punctures the silk, and the sound the cotton thread makes as it is drawn through. I may transfer these sounds to a song at some point.

Obsession and compulsion.

I remind myself that I have in the past stitched myself into a state where medical intervention is necessary. So there has to be something in it right? My stitching is akin to a fix. As I sit here doing it, I really and truly can feel stuff being released into my brain and sloshing about my blood stream. My blood pressure is reduced, and I reach a trance like state induced by the rhythm and the textures and the sounds…

I’ll be back….