SUNDAY 16 AUGUST
9.30am – At the studio bright and early. HAVE to get this packing finished. Windows open, radio on, coffee made, let’s get on with it!
10.50am – Blogging seems to play the same sort of role for me that smoking did (when I was a smoker). It provides the excuse for a break, a sort of reward for all that hard work, but ultimately a work avoidance technique. Time for a biscuit (or two).
11.54am – Nearly done I think… or maybe not… making progress anyway.
12.52pm – Enough. One more morning & one more trip to the dump should do it.
PACKING
My brief burst of work was a short lived interlude. Now it’s back to packing. 6 years worth of accumulated STUFF. What to keep… what should go… another couple of days should get it done – at least that will be one job to be crossed off the list and one step nearer to a more settled working routine.
SKETCHBOOK WORK
09.45
Never mind the packing, the admin, the preparation, the research! I just NEED to do some work… something to get some of these thoughts out of my mind and into reality! Just for a couple of hours everything else can go on hold.
11.55
Ok, so it’s going to take more than a couple of hours, but at least I’ve started.
12.20
Hmm… well there’s the first step towards making my own little island… bit flat at the moment, but maybe I can build up some more contours… let’s see what happens.
PARADISE OR PRISON
I suppose there are similar things about both islands and forts. Good and bad things depending on what’s happening to you. You can be self-contained, enclosed, remote, cut off from threats, safe. On the other hand and in other circumstances, the remoteness can become isolation; defence becomes a siege; self-containment becomes confinement. Island paradise? Or island prison?
The world’s:
largest island – Greenland (assuming that Australia is classed as a continent)
smallest island – apparently it’s Bishop Rock off the south-west of the UK.
Also apparently, according to www.didyouknow.org “In 1861, the British government set out the parameters for classifying an island. It was decided that if it was inhabited, the size was immaterial. However, if it was uninhabited, it had to be “the summer’s pasturage of at least one sheep” – which is about two acres.”
PARALLEL BLOGS
Earlier this year Sharon Haward and I (along with 10 other artists) made new work in response to the Redoubt Fortress, Eastbourne. It was a great location and I think we both loved working there. It made me smile today to read Sharon’s latest blog post about forts, bunkers and blockhouses, with her photograph of a bunker near Cap Gris Nez. We both seem to have moved on with a new common interest in our practices, each picking up a trail to these half-forgotten defences.
Perhaps we should get together and compare fort photos Sharon!
