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I do know that I have written before about the secrecy surrounding “getting  work in a proper gallery”. I do think that things are getting better… processes are more transparent than they once were, in some places. But I find the whole process actually quite stressful, and ultimately disappointingly negative. I ought to say this is not coming off the back of bitterness through receiving yet another rejection. I do feel though that it’s as if someone has a secret knock, or password that they’re not telling me… that I couldn’t possibly afford, or that I’m just not good enough to be given. I am stumbling my way around, bullheaded, determined, although actually quite naïvely. I don’t know anything, so I ask stupid questions, then feel inadequate and pathetic.

I should know that some galleries are booked three years in advance and that the work I’m doing now will be completed and over and done with by the time they get round to me, even if they say yes. To expect current work to be in the gallery is silly. If I want to apply for a residency to work within a particular setting, on a particular topic, I should know they might be booking a couple of years ahead too, so in writing a proposal for that, I should be sufficiently vague to enable the work I’m doing then to fit. Well that isn’t going to work is it?

Am I missing a trick somehow? I am just being ridiculous aren’t I? I will have to apply for work such as nine women to go into a gallery three years from now, when possibly I’m no longer interested in it. I will have to write a proposal for a residency that really I’d like to do within the next twelve months, to a gallery that even if they say yes, it won’t be for another two years, by which time my work will undoubtedly have moved on, and the submission I wrote now irrelevant.

Even if I decide to go for a hire space, time is still an issue if it is a good gallery that has some sort of selective procedure.

 

Ideally, I want the work I’m doing now to be the work I do in a residency now. Ideally I want the work I’ve just finished to be the work that gets put up in the gallery now.

 

Never going to happen.

 

So……

What I’m going to do is this:

• I shall apply to a few hire space galleries of good standing to show work I’m proud of, that hopefully will still stand up to the rigours of exhibition in three years time…
• I shall write a proposal for a residency, in the hope that I will still want to do the work in a couple of years’ time. But I think the crucial thing here is to establish and maintain relationships with the people concerned so that whatever turns the work takes in the meantime, can still be accommodated, if they say yes!

 

 

If I look back over the last few years, I think my work, although changing, still has my own personality and preferences and favourite themes at the heart of it. My brain still ploughs over the same field perhaps… albeit in a different direction, maybe wearing a different hat….

 

So I think I need to get over myself. I need to stop thinking the galleries will halt their programmes just so I can do what the hell I want. I need to find a way of writing to fit.

 

As I reach the end of this piece, I am wondering whether to post. Whether it is cutting my nose off to spite my face. But you know what? Blundering around, asking stupid questions and being a bit dense has stood me in good stead so far. Also, if I don’t post, I’m just perpetuating the problems.

I know I have been very fortunate recently, getting Arts Council England to fund my project. What I have found is that because of this, people seem to assume I know what I’m doing. I have no idea!

So there you go, it’s out there. I’ve come out. I don’t know what I’m doing for the most part, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.

(I show this image as a way of reminding myself that work done three years ago is still good, relevant, and I would be pleased to show it anywhere, even now! So get a grip Elena!)

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“Right then” I said…….

Nine Women is up and running, work complete and installed. Yes of course there will be follow on issues and admin and trying to get it into other spaces, but this body of work is now complete (unless I change my mind and find out it isn’t at a later date).

“Right then” I said again……..

I mentioned that I had another idea to be getting on with, in a previous post. Now that the exhibition is up and running, I actually have time to attend to that idea. It has been an itch that needs scratching, for about four years, and now, it needs treatment, infection imminent!

Running as an underground stream of thought since about the middle of my MA… Maybe early 2011… Has been this thought: we are touched by that which doesn’t touch…. The things that make us who we are cannot be weighed, counted, audited, scored…. It has no physical weight, form, mass…. But nevertheless it weighs heavy. It lies between us. It affects others, and we are affected by that of others around us. It is the thing that is extra to our bodies. In pinching and appropriating the words of Aristotle, we are greater than the sum of our parts.

This thought has got bigger in each piece of work since then. In Nine Women it looms large…. Well… For me it does… I’m not sure if it does for others. But regardless, this now needs to be dealt with.

I sit in the studio today, with a new sketchbook. I have bits of writing that I’ve cut out and stuck in from various other sources, backs of envelopes and so on. It has been a while since I started something new…. And I have almost forgotten what to do. I write, I draw, I think, I drink…. Some of the mental meandering will come to nothing, some of the visual will be nonsense, but all part of the process. I went through my songwriting notebook, which is full of notes about 9W of course, technical stuff and sound ideas, set lists and running orders. In among all of this “working document” sit lyrics, bits and pieces here and there, or so I thought, but actually, upon reading, counting and labelling with the ubiquitous post it note, I discover I have twelve songs! All of these songs allude in some way to these new ideas…. It appears I have already started processing!

The visual will emerge from these thoughts… I will keep wrangling nibbling and worrying at it until something appears…. At the moment, I do have a song about a chair… The sort with someone’s “butt groove” (Homer (Simpson)). (I hope you’re impressed, Aristotle and Homer in the same post! ) I can see this chair, so I shall draw it and see what happens. I like chairs…. I made a chair before….

 

The Chair

I talk to the chair
But the chair ain’t listening
I don’t really care
As long as I can say it out loud
It’s been a while since you sat here
Been a while since I looked at your face

I want to keep asking
But I know you’ll say no.
I want to keep trying
But you still have to go

So I’ll talk to the chair
The chair ain’t listening
At least the chair
Can’t see my heart break

Thing is, you always say the right thing
Thing is, you’re always fair
Thing is, you make me feel good
Come back and sit in your chair.

 

“Right then……….”

 

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When I first started out on the pursuance of some sort of art practice, I laboured under a bunch of misapprehensions, misunderstandings, and misconceptions about what me as an artist should look  like. For a very short time at the beginning, I thought I should paint. I denied my quilts’ existence. That was never going to work. I learned, through the process of the Artist Teacher Scheme (which I now find myself temporarily leading) and subsequently the MA in Art Practice and Education at Birmingham City University… in that glorious Victorian School of Art on Margaret St… that the shape of me as an artist was not ever going to be like anyone else. I learned about other artists and saw that the work that I loved was the work that came directly from the person. Raw, honest, real life. So I began a tentative process of trying to find out what I was. That is vaguely when this blog started just over four years ago. It seems like only yesterday, and yet feels like a lifetime away. I feel those first entries were written by a different me… I was a different shape then… the place I held in the world was different.

 

I feel more me now than I ever have I think… scales have fallen away. I know myself better, and I certainly like myself better. I know what I want now and how to make sure I get it. Confidence is an over used word perhaps… and this feels more like conviction than confidence. I have the confidence to demand what I want in terms of my work and my life, because I have that conviction that it is right for me, and for my work.

 

I have no illusions that my work will suddenly make it big, that I will become some sort of Big Art Cheese. But I know that the work I do now comes from my heart, comes from some of the raw parts. Some of the prettiest embroidery and the sweetest songs have come from the most raw. And yet I cannot leave it raw and exposed. The process of making it a different shape is like therapy. The process makes it easier (for me)to understand. To leave it raw and unchecked to me seems pointless. That might be the shape of another artist, but it isn’t the shape of me. I am a middle class, middle aged, white woman in the middle of England. Some of my recent work is about reputation, appearance, hiding the self – the bras being a case in point. It is who I am. But my processes are aware now. I experiment with how much to reveal. Some of the text I have written is partially obscured, can’t bear to expose all at once. Some confessions are couched in metaphor, or in the voice of another. I mix everything up with stories from other women… in a bid to disguise which bits are me.

 

Knowing the shape of me on the inside somehow makes me fonder of the shape of me on the outside. I’ve forgiven myself. I’m fifty four, wrinkly, fat, hairy in all the wrong places, bits of me don’t work properly. I wear clothes I like. My hair really is, often like a bird’s nest. But I quite like it.

But getting to know what’s happening on the inside of me, projects a different shape. I swear quite a lot, and sometimes I see people wince. Sometimes I apologise, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I am quite reserved. Antisocial. Sometimes I am way too much. My influences are all over the place… music… poetry… art… second hand shops… food… family.. friends… talking to people… not talking to people…

 

But this is all part of the artist I explore, and get to know better every day. The better I know the shape of me, the better my work feels.

 

When I am talking to students, or emerging artists, I look for the bit that’s really them. It might be obvious, or it might be the bit they are most reluctant to talk about, but that’s where the juice is.

I love art that is about life, not about the intellectual philosophical theories of art… if anyone sees that in my work, it’s their problem not mine. I’m not that shape.

 

 

 

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Yawn!

(That’s tired rather than bored!)

I feel I should blog about it… but quite weary!

I’m just going to say that live music works well in the gallery. I will be organising more of this.

The gallery looks great, Steve Evans’ work looks fantastic on the nice newly painted white walls.

Dave Sutherland was fab… I love his songs and his playing.

He took advantage of the fact I’d had a couple of beers and made me sing too! Turns out, actually, after a couple of beers I don’t have to be made to do anything, I just say “Yeaaaahhh!”

But it was a bit of a practice I suppose for July.

If anyone out there fancies having a go at having an ArtSpace Conversation, let me know… I’m going to be pairing people up in my head now all the time!

 

so… That’s it for now. I’m going for a lie down!

(It’s not a hangover, I’m just tired!)

 

 

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I’m up to my ears in white paint and printed matter…

I decided that the gallery space next to my studio at ArtSpace Dudley, could be used to get people together that might not necessarily do so otherwise. I am, as you know, evangelical about my art and music, and how the two work together, and how they stimulate each other, and inspire and prompt… So, because I didn’t really have much else to do, I have organised the first of what I hope to be many such events.

One visual artist is introduced to one singer songwriter and I leave them to their own devices. I give them the space, a glass of something nice to drink and perhaps a nibble or two. I invite a load of people and see what happens.

I hope it works, because I think it’s a great idea!

If you find yourself in the area, please come, listen, see….