doing. action. verb. l’herbe.

Self-development is a focus for me this month. I am working through The Chimp Paradox by Prof Steve Peters which has come recommended by 2 artists I’ve spoken with recently.  Finding it really helpful.  (Got it for Midwinter – I have wanted to read it for months).  I got a full sized tripod at last (gift from husband) and a DAB radio for my shed.  Over the last few months my shed has got more and more crowded, am sorting that out so I can move again in there.

I have a massive reading pile, re-visiting Jenny Holzer monograph.  Was just going to look at the pictures in it last night and got drawn in to an interview she had with Joan Simon sometime after 1990.  I’ve been interested in finding out the reading lists of Fine Art Masters programmes and find many have specific lists and one creates reading lists from staff writing on the programmes.    Jenny Holzer’s reading list from her time at The Whitney program (1977) is the most often discussed aspect of her time there – it was a prompt to her writing Truisms (from interview in Jenny Holzer book by Phaidon.  Apparently ‘The reading list was Ron Clark’s list, and it was important.’  I am curious as to what is on this reading list.

My most up to date way of explaining what I do is:

My practice explores the textual and physical world’s (separate and overlapping) realities.

I make art to trip myself up, like that jolt in a dream, while drifting off to sleep.

The Mobile Library Performance is the project which is all-consuming now, but I need to allow space for other work to germinate because I don’t want the project to stagnate – I need to keep up the momentum, but not only work on the mobile library project.

Within the next week I have meetings covering all groups involved and a funding application is due in by the weekend.  I need to consider whether I’d like to guide the music created for this or to leave this open to interpretation.
Receiving funding would be great, but I am planning the whole thing to be done on a shoe string and so funding would enhance it.
I want to write a piece to clarify the context I’m working in with this project-currently this is a wish and hasn’t got into reality yet.

Scratch card update:

(Living close to a local shop I frequently find discarded scratch cards. I started to collect these, shortly afterwards meeting a poet and mathematician who then wrote a poem about these discarded cards.)

I am considering ways to return the poem back into the physical landscape of the rubbish-strewn pavement (a performance of some kind).
I have noticed that slugs and snails eat the wax from scratch-cards as I often find the scratch panel chewed up in that slug and snail manner.  I have also noticed that I occasionally find cards with the ‘game’ unfinished.  Still plenty of room to win any amount (see photo).  One (yellow one) has been fully played and won £1 but has been thrown away anyway.  This is quite hard to understand why someone would discard a card with £1 unclaimed…

I could collaborate with snails on this one.

Scratching the void

By Martin Evans (http://www.hiraethog.cymru/)

Three hundred million
Lucky Sevens printed.
Four foot wide rolls
tall as a company
a hundred and sixty strong.

John’s last pound
bought a number three from the shop
that had been two feet deep
on roll ninety one.

Outside, guarding,
a dog with its catch
hope fell to the pavement
with each fingernailed scratch
futile scrapings
to get at those numbers below.
An artwork of despair at
this milking parlour for
the hopeless.

The poem has 346 characters, including punctuation.  I could return the poem via live snails by writing the characters (or words..) onto the snail’s shells and then set them loose on the pavement (in suitable conditions, probably damp at least, don’t want them drying up).  I have been thinking I would most like to involve the wax and or the gastropods in some way.

I am working on getting parts of the text of Border Country by Raymond Williams (https://www.waterstones.com/book/border-country/raymond-williams/9781902638812

) printed onto fabric tape, but also considering how this might work on the Mobile Library vehicle.  Spring action maybe so the tape reels back onto a spool, like a tape measure or dog lead.  Am currently simply working out how large the text needs to be. I would like the audience to be able to see the words, or at a distance, to at least see it as text.

So far I have tried printing out onto paper from my laser printer, onto ribbon with letter stamps manually.  I have recently been writing (blog like but it hasn’t been going online) on a typewriter regularly and have visions of a over-sized typewriter-like tape printing machine.  I would type as I usually would on the keyboard, but the output could be onto a strip of fabric tape.

I have found there is such a thing as a digital ribbon printer, a Phase II Digital Ribbon Printer – and trying to figure out why my immediate reaction is that it is too neat and cleanly printed!  The clean edges of the characters just grates on me – it creates too much distance between myself and the text.  With manual printing or handwriting the visible involvement of the hand means I feel a stronger connection to the words, as if they could have come direct from myself (along with errors in the process).

I am hunting online to try and find out first if anyone has made this kind of contraption I’m talking about. Printing machines need to be looked at again (these were involved in my dissertation 2 years ago, and print research has popped up many times since for various purposes).

Thinking about my material choice, I have been solely thinking of using fabric tape to print on. Why this and not pvc, elastic, rope, silicone?  Cotton tape would seem to work best for strength and for ease of rolling it back onto a spool.

More vital to all this now is my cribbing up on performance art as a medium with it being so new to me.  I have been watching how Cirque du Soleil use sets, props and costumes, and see I need to find performers who work in a way more linked in some way to my values and intentions for this piece.

I have just heard that I have got the part-time job that I need to keep head above water financially – starting in late January. So now I can forget about job hunting! Yes!  That is one less thing to distract my attention.  I am getting to a place of clarity in knowing that I am separating writing and action or physical and textual, doing this in life and art.  There’s a big possibility of sectioning off part of my front room to be a dedicated library – amazing!  (Bliss)  I am really aware of how highly I regard reading, text and books.  It is possibly to a fault, to the point I would rather read tonnes about something than actually do, but I think this is a habit rather than an actual preference.  I don’t want to do what I’ve always done, that won’t get me anywhere!  I am also hankering after doing an MA p/t as soon as I possibly can, but then I might be back to square one financially and have to earn more and therefore have no time for the MA! Hmmm.  Will have to research funding for part time MA’s more thoroughly.

There are so many things I want to do – there always are.  I have run up against a lack of money for canvas to currently carry on the 254 words painting – I shall be able to continue in February now, unless I am pleasantly surprised with a grant, in which case sooner.  (not holding breath!) I have a complicating tendency to continually separate and put things together (threads), it’s a collecting impulse maybe?  So – my various threads now (I keep going over them, to try and see it all clearly – clarifying is important to me right now):

• Library performance – spoke to a performance company recently who mentioned Commedia dell ‘arts from the 16th century –  and that what I am doing has something similar to that… improvisation, music and dance, touring nature.   Also that it may have come about as a result of the political and economic crisis of the 16th century…seems to have parallels to now.

I have had a mind map sent to me from the tutor who has 4 students interested in the project at Hereford college on the mobile library performance.  One of the points they have is why one mobile library? Hmmm.  Hadn’t considered more than one at all!   There’s lots more on the mind map for me to mull over, it is really exciting to be working in this way with other people, but also very nerve wracking because I have involved so many.  (I am one for getting buried in the details – so it probably feels more complicated than it actually is!)  I do want to have this performance develop and actually happen for the Eisteddfod, so keeping it all clear and simple at the core is vital (with many people involved.)

• #portrait:TACHBROOK performance in association with Rufus Stone is next Saturday – I am travelling up to Pimlico next Friday and the group (4 of us) will be sourcing materials locally to set up our market stall where we will be asking people to take a photo on a disposable camera within the market.  We’ll get these processed at a shop a few metres away and display the results.  To get the hang of it, and because I wanted to feel more of a connection to Abergavenny I took a whole disposable camera’s worth of photos a few weeks ago of myself in Abergavenny.  When we arrive in Tachbrook we wont have any of the display materials we need, we’ll arrive with nothing, and leave with nothing as we’ll offer people to come back at 3pm to collect their photos, and also offer them up for local shops (perhaps). If we have material left we’ll charity shop or bin it.   This activity is valuable to me in advance in the connecting with the environment and in working with a group, with the group developing clear boundaries for the performance.  Although the project seems apart from my practice I knew I had to take up the opportunity when I was invited to take part because the chance to work collaboratively is something I have not done much of and I admire the way Viv Barraclough and Ash Roberts collaborate.  Another artist – Becky Sumpter is also involved. Working with these diverse artists is exciting and stimulating for me – we all individually work in very different ways.  I am curious how I have seen this collaboration in its development ( over last few months, meeting up occasionally, but mostly through email and phone contact), now when about to perform and what will it be like afterwards?  We are not taking photos of the project, though Teresa Albor (Rufus Stone) is.  What will it have been, without our own documentation?
• Want to revisit words I collected from people on my typewriter at the print shed show.
• Wanting more of a connection with the physical world somehow in my work.  I have been going out near where I live drawing anything, sheep, foliage growing over a car, the market hall, the suburbs.   But I am wanting to paint as installation (could be inside or outside, but outside is more appealing to me) – writing backwards/wordfall / in and out and through growth forms. The words are like a hidden journaling, they are decipherable (just!) and I am often using a word from a song as a starting point, or something I have heard about in the news from others (don’t watch news currently) or something that is on my mind longer term.  I also sometimes make it actually impossible to read (I believe) by writing backward, up or downward direction and in my left hand.  But it is still recognizable as writing.  The growth forms are usually painted, often in green tones, these are improvised. (see image of works in Print Shed show, attached. And recent sketch book activity.)
• Wanting to get my art out there in order to let it grow / have its own life (or to die, if that is its fate).  Feeling melodramatic as I gave myself an ultimatum a few weeks ago –x, y and z by next year or else get a proper job!  One was to earn £x (this p/t job does that), another to get work in 6 exhibitions and the other was to figure what I think art is for and therefore what my role is!!  So 2 of them are really easy to see if I’ve achieved, the other not so easy, but I think that will be ongoing!!!   So the threat is massive and my motivation is very high.  Searching high and wide for places to exhibit and I have a master list of which annual exhibitions I’ll go for.  Exhibition could be fairly loosly applied to simply ‘getting work out there’, in installations as well as gallery exhibitions.  I reckon only 1 or 2 might be in a gallery space. One already in the pipeline for April in Hereford.  I would like to get my work further afield than than – into my region somewhere I haven’t shown before and perhaps one in another country.
• Easier to lie in words than in action (i.e. body language often gives the game away)
• Is there just too much text in my world? (doesn’t make clear thinking easy) perhaps I could give text its place and not let it spill over into action spaces. Why am I attracted to text sooo much?

Text into movement (with library as setting / props)

Mobile Library text response

The premise is to express text through movement, with the setting being a pull along mobile library.  The focus is text into expressive dance.  Potentially to perform at Eisteddfod in Abergavenny July 2016 on stage with mobile library.  So it involves lighting, sound (music to be developed potentially) and of course the dancers and chosen text. The local library are delighted on the prospect of taking the library to an audience elsewhere.  This fits with my motivations of wanting to raise the profile of libraries.

A project I have been trying to get off the starting blocks for months now – it’s now or never!  I have decided to focus on this alone for a couple of weeks because there is so much to get my head around.  And it takes a while to get into the flow of it.  I have (possibly a destructive tendency) to have too many things going at once.  Like the way I read books – often 7 on the go at once.  A personal thing of note on this subject is that I didn’t read voluntarily until age 12.

Finding suitable dance/performance company to work with is my current biggest challenge.

My options:

A performance company that works internationally, based in my town.

College dance/performance students.

Ballet company

Perform it myself with training (stage fright – don’t think I could!)

Find other performance / dance artist…

This project is captivating to me because it is bringing together aspects of my practice in a very new process to me.  The subjects and core is mine, but the result is very different – a much faster tempo and potential for change and development.  I am handling the textual and physical worlds (which I have separated to consider), libraries as a threatened cultural habitat and a container of texts. Using gesture in an ephemeral way in performance is new.  I have had an interest in dance for a long time (ballet in particular), but it has always been as a hobby, with friends and as a celebration – like many people, but I have not brought it into my own practice in any way.  Dance has that instant gratification of movement and spontaneity, which painting, drawing and making is slower to reveal.

This is much riskier than anything else I’ve shown.  Previously, (apart from the Little Museum of Ludlow) I have known what my work looks like before showing it at an exhibition.

Currently research areas :

Library:

Libraries as places of shared knowledge.

Research reasons for people visiting libraries (find existing research in the form of stats)

Articles on why people love libraries

Performances in libraries.

Text:

Text in physical form

Text into 4 dimensions

Text into gesture in dance.

Reading:

Transformational process of reading…

Reading print v’s digital (surveys looking at readers preferences)

Artists:

Artists changing words into visual form.

Artists who work with library theme.

Other artists working with library themes

A library as a medium

I am currently reading ‘Border Country’ by Raymond Williams as the Eisteddfod are promoting it and I may work with it for the performance and ‘Performance Art – from futurism to the present’ by RoseLee Goldberg (Thames and Hudson).

Have trimmed my obligations to make way for concentrating more on the essentials of making work and keeping afloat.   Have given myself a horrible ultimatum, which is If I haven’t done x, y and z by this time next year then I have to get a proper job (full-time paid work). X is the basic earn £x (it is a set figure) per month. Y is have my work in min of 6 group / solo exhibitions where I don’t do legwork for anyone else, i.e. likely paid group exhibitions.  Z is to work out the answer to life, the universe and everything, actually no – hold that, though it is just as demanding! – Figure what I think art is for and therefore clarify my own role as an artist.  Told you it was a biggie!

This is why I’ve been quiet.

Have just had a fabulous trip to London (last weekend) and discovered unexpected things along the way.  Wanted to go and see Ai Weiwei at the RA, but as the queue was an hour and a half we admired the bolted together trees and went to see the White exhibition – a project by Edmund de Waal in the Print Room and library at what seems like the top of the RA https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/white-a-project-by-edmund-de-waal .  I’d highly recommend going.  The library was a treat, seeing De Waal’s cups up close and many other white artworks to surprise and be curious about.  There was even an Ai Weiwei in there.

Saw work by students of The Drawing Year at Christies on the way to the ICA and Fig.2 – I am really taken by the course.  Since last Tuesday when I had a reality check and resounding crash to the floor– my spirits that is – my 254 word paintings have been on hiatus – I have got to number 33.  I am reviewing my working process and really looking at them to see what is going on.  I am now going to work on each painting until I get a jolt – if that means working over and over the same piece, that’s fine.  I feel my effort has been too little.  Part of my plans for the word series was to back it up with drawing from life – growth forms – which has slipped – but I am back on that now, except – as I’m also going through a need to draw and make a self-portrait – this comes of a need to reassess everything – which nicely, though unintentionally links to a collaborative project I am doing with HCA students Viv Barraclough, Ash Roberts and Becky Sumptor called portrait:TACHBROOK at Tachbrook market in December.  The drawing I am now focusing on is simply drawing where I am, so today I have been drawing in Abergavenny, first stop – along a leafy walkway, treading in old-fashioned paint, with a dog walker with a Scottie dog the only passer-by.  Then sheep on a hill field, with a passer by asking to see and asking did I draw many animals?  Then nearly back home for coffee and saw again a particular path to a cottage had gathered many chewing gum pieces – someone always empties their mouth at the same place each time they pass – charming – but sketched it anyway.

With the 254 word paintings I am frustrated that I’ve recently had to work on paper due to lack of art material funds, really want to be working on canvas.  I have a temporary job and an interview for a permanent p/t job next week, and am hopeful I get this one and have a steady income.  Be nice not to have money on my mind so much.  It isn’t helpful, however necessary the stuff is.

I have been doing a lot of getting costs together, meeting people, finding funding sources and writing funding applications for my Flash mob(ile) library and library text performance project– dancers responding to text through movement.  Attempting to get the majority of it together in the next few days.

The concept is to translate text into movement.  Working with texts within Abergavenny library, the dancers will be developing genuine, personal responses to it.  This involves a choreographer working with individuals to develop their own expressions of the text.  The text can be projected into the library so the audience can appreciate what the dancers are responding to.

Each dancer is an outlet for the words on the page, converting the text with their body, character and perception.

What might individuals find through the books they read?  Does reading transform the reader?  Slightly obvious questions, but still on my mind even so.  There are more layers to this and I’ve only touched the surface so far.  To express experiences gained through libraries physically.

My way of working is similar to how I read books – I have many on the go at once.   The scratch-cards are still being gathered, plus I am doing a little method acting to get more into the mind-set, though very controlled.  Any small change I find on walks go into a pot and once enough I buy a scratch card.  I have just begun to log scratch cards and pennies found and the results on a spreadsheet.

More stalking and drawing of the area coming up.