PLAN FOR WORLD DOMINATION

Plan for World Domination is over.

Long live World Domination.

In between my squabbling children I have been trying to snatch the odd moment to do my work and I am questioning what it is I am making and why. In the barage of noise within my personal environment is my work trying to compete?

exhibit A – BLUES – sound like bagpipes.

exhibit B – FRUITFLOWERS – mongolian throat warbling

exhibit C – WORN – vacuum cleaner

In a house where it is impossible to hear your own thoughts I can only conclude that my work is a personal protest against my own life.

In the interests of research into this I thought I would share with you the wonderful juxtoposition of two art related presents for my recent birthday:

Pres. 1 – a book ‘The Creative Feminine and her Discontents’ by Juliet Miller (very good – please read it)

Pres. 2 – Two teatowels by Yayoi Kusama (very good at drying dishes – please do them for me)

I am a gemini.

So, Strained Fruit is happily singing away up at the country park. All that is left to do now is my ACE evaluation form. How I hate forms!

I am imagining that this will take nearly as long as the project itself. However I have grabbed the nettle in both hands and have tackled the nastiest bit first – the budget – big swot that I am, and thankfully all seems to be neatly balancing out – phew.

Now for the rest of it….

I am now going to go against the purpose of this blog – I am going to talk about something that you should never talk about – for WD you need to be forever sunny, forever successful – I am going to talk about rejection.

Despite my obviously BRILLIANT ideas, over this past weekend I have received no less than four proposal rejections.

In addition to this, I have a project that they just haven’t replied to so I must suppose, after all this time, I can add this one to the pile.

I am quite good at ‘water off a duck’s back’ but honestly. At what point does all this make you question what you are doing? I think I have good ideas but if no-one else does then am I wrong? and what about following your own path and doing what feels right?

I have come to the conclusion that the main problem I have is that my work does not fit into a neat little box and, generally speaking, people don’t like this.

Or maybe it’s just a load of old rubbish and I should go and get a ‘proper job’.

So, apologies for cross pollination, but here are a load of balls.

Finally got to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at Tate Modern today – having failed a couple of weeks ago due to massive Damien Hirst queue slowing ticket office down.

Brilliant – if you haven’t seen it GO!

The last room is the best – magical. But I also loved the phallic boat and shoes and sofa and clothes.

As someone who has made the odd proturberance in my time these were very compelling. Such a shame (of course I understand why) that you can’t touch them – I would love to know if they are squishy or not. So much art needs touch too but how do you get over the practical problems of this?

My children loved it all too, particularly the luminous sticker room. Confidently expecting a ‘sticker-fest’ in our house soon.