Oh dear! Again, such a long time between posts. I’ve been busy since the New Year with a number of things, two of them significant:
– Developing, proposing and planning my first-ever community-engagement project as “lead artist”. It’s an idea that combines my love of print culture with ideas around social sculpture & intangible outcomes (the focus on the process, with the product recast as ephemera or evidence), hopefully in an accessible and non-rarefied and fun sort of way. I’m so excited to get started – and it’s paid, too, which is lovely. I’m sure I’ll post more about it once it gets started, so watch this space.
– Deciding to apply to various art schools to actually get my BA. I realised that my confidence was lacking, that I felt unable to compete in a professionalised “arts market” (yuck!), and that the only plausible antidote to this was, as my brother would put it, to man up and go back to artschool. The process of applying, compiling work and being interviewed has been a learning experience in itself – criticism being something that most peer-to-peer discourse seems to lack (understandably, for fear of offending). I can reveal that I am now in the peculiar position of being a “working artist” with works held in collections etc. etc. who has also been rejected by Central St Martin’s for BA(Hons) Fine Art! (Though I’ve had no feedback, at interview they seemed to think I didn’t need the course, which is a little frustrating as I think that everybody has something to learn. Perhaps even them, as when I mentioned Allan Kaprow the interviewer said, “oh, pfff, happenings and all that,” and when I mentioned artists’ books he said, “desktop publishing” – perhaps not the school for me!) This rejection has knocked my confidence still further, so much so that I am beginning to re-evaluate my choice to try and pursue a career in the arts. Is it really for me? I’m less and less sure that what I do is strictly art in the way that the World At Large would interpret the word (though it certainly feels like art to me!), or particularly saleable, or indeed something that’s especially easy for others to understand or “get”. I have a couple more interviews to attend, but I’ve started to formulate a Plan B which would take me down a wildly different, far more academic route – though of course I plan to continue in my art and thought practice whatever happens. This would be quite an interesting acid test for all my theorising around the intersection/blurring of art with daily life. As well, I am wondering if the broadening of influence and knowledge resulting from intensive study in another field might not be beneficial to my practice. I don’t want to become one of those artists whose work only addresses other artists. (I treasure those moments at book fairs when a “civilian” picks up & falls in love with one of my bookworks – such a sparking sort of joy!) It’s telling, to me, that the two BA arts courses about which I’m most excited are the most interdisciplinary; though I’m by no means certain that I will be offered a place on either. I know that my art has more to do with philosophy than it does with painting, and I am happy with that. I just wonder if it fits into the artschool definition of what art should be – of what it means to be an artist.
Interesting times.
