What is the importance of history ?

I was reading in someones blog that they wanted to record how the process of making the work affected their body. Their fingers were becoming sore from a repetetive task and that was included in the art works dialogue.

So after yesterdays Tour de France I thought that seemed a good theme to carry on with.

As it happens I have counted 9 calouses on my right hand aquired from this repetetive task. I thought they were just calouses, but after reading the knitting blog I see my own calouses in a new light. I have noticed you can still get blisters underneath the calouses. Sometimes the calous reaches an optimum thickness and it kind of starts to break up, bits drop off it and you have peel the whole thing off, it takes less than a week for a new one to form.

That is a piece of information I never thought I would ever share, but how relevant to art is it? Well I do get a sense of satisfaction at the end of a job, a feeling of achievement and that I have made something. There are alot physical and mental hurdles to clear on a job like this. The physical and mental investment make you feel it has definatley taken you the full 12 rounds.

The mosaic is moving on again. I am finding it harder to start work on it in the mornings though. Once I get going it is generally OK. Its longer than the Tour de France.

I often compare jobs with the tour de france and if I were to describe it now I would be in the pyraneese mountains and really feeling the steepness of the climbs. I am well ahead of the main peleton, suffering but hanging onto a small group of riders who are putting the hammer down, I am coping, but that is all. My mind is beginning to shut down and I am constantly asking myself to stop, let them go. From experience I now this is a mistake as when you let go you dont slow down you stop totally. I will have to stop anyway soon as I have to start another mosaic next week. That is a the real killer as I have yet to tackle the alps they are nearer the finish and I need to conserve my strength. So I guess the approaching mosaics for Newcastle are the real hard climbs including the 'Tormoulet' the race could be won or lost there.

I have to keep going as time is short. The more I can do before Newcastle starts the better. I need a time bonus….there may be one at the top for the first over the line?

Dig deeper, hang on whatever comes and focus.

I think one of the most influencial moments of my artistic life that has really shaped me, happened while working from art depicting and documenting history. Also for me it was rather an embarressing one!

I was still a student, and we had to go out on these drawing trips once a week! This one was to the British Museum and I was looking at those Assyrian wall friezes depicting lion hunts, chariot battles' all sorts of exiciting stuff. These stone friezes would have been on the outside of the city walls.

Now, I liked these scenes and sat down to draw. After about 10 – 15 minutes the Tutor woman whose name I forget came up to me and said, 'Are you taking the piss'?

surprised I replied 'er……..no'.

She said, ' Of all the amazing things from the whole museum collection, displaying art from the whole world, over a period of 1000's of years, the only interesting thing you can find to draw is a piece of POLYFILER'!

I looked down at what I had drawn, looked up at the section of frieze I was working from and realised she was absolutley right!

Now, I was not drawing polyfiler, I was in some kind of landscape thing, the outline of a horses back were the hills, this was a bit absract I'll give her that. An unknown landscape, and I was very happily drawing there.

But I had drawn the polyfilla, the bit that was missing and filled in with a stained badley repaired nondescript bit. How did I not see this when I was drawing it. Was I inventing something for the obvious flaw in the composition. The bit with no story?

She did make me feel silly, and I had to go off a bit bewildered and find something more meaningfull to draw?……..like a statue with only a bit of its head left, or a leather belt.

I am unable to exactly say what that taught me. There is a wide gulf between interpretations of the same thing, something about this is very relevant to working in the Public Realm.

In one of the earlier posts on this blog I remarked that the developer wanted the specification data about the tiles I was going to use. I knew this document was half in English and half in French as it has been requested before for other projects?

They have come back to me saying it is next to useless…. understandably. So they have asked me to produce a document detailing all I know about the repair histories to all my previous floor mosaics. This is to find out how durable they really are, and what kind of maintenance/repair contract should be agreed upon.

This is actually asking me to highlight all the bad things that have happened to me put them in a document so they know all the mishaps I have encountered over a 15 year history of making them.

Fair enough, I have told them. I also put forward theories as to why the failures happened and tried to be really objective about the whole thing. It is actually quite useful information, rather specialist and of annorac type leanings, they have not said anything, so no news is good news.

They were very complimentary about how 'its coming along'. Which is nice.

'Its Coming along' is a euphomism in my world for stopped completely. Which is exactly what has happened on this job. I have to focus on other things now and I am so bored of making mosaics.