A fascinating new blog has entered the fray at number five in the Artists talking top ten. Definitely not your standard residency by Jo Lathwood is about her new temporary home and work space at Hestercombe house, Taunton, Somerset: ‘a grand 90-something room building with an odd and intriguing past.’
Introducing the blog, Lathwood writes: ‘The first known residents were the Warres family in 1391 and over years the house has gone though many changes and adaptions. The last person to live in the house was Lady Portman in the 1950s. The house is now transforming into a contemporary art gallery and I am the artist in residence for 2014.’
The residency, programmed over the course of the next year, will see Lathwood reside in the space for a few days at a time. In her first post, she relays her feelings of settling into the site: ‘Overwhelmed by new thoughts, my sketchbook quickly changed into of a list of things I should research further, and instant ideas that take five minutes to form but several days to make. I promised myself to use this residency as a space to really play with materials and develop ideas and not worry about finalising pieces until later in the year.
‘After scribbling… thoughts, I decide I just need to start making. I find a small sample of Lebanese Cedar and start to make an herbarium chart for Hestercombe’s fallen giant. The drawing will continue a series that I started three years ago, which documents trees and their surroundings in a pseudo-scientific manner… I often find that giving yourself a practical task like this can be the catalyst for finding new ideas.’
Elsewhere in the ranking, Marion Michell‘s blog Sleep Drunk I Dance spends its sixth month at number one. The Artists talking top ten is compiled every month and is calculated by multiplying the number of page views by the time in seconds spent on the page.
To view the full list of top ten Artists talking blogs, visit a-n.co.uk/artists_talking
