ARTISTS TALKING

# 19 [9 December 2011]

Sculpture - Sculptor

I have been in Dr Seuss' waiting place it seems. Putting feelers out in all directions getting myself lost and confused; trying to fill out a tax return and having big impulses to do some making, setting aside time for making that becomes tax return/chores time. Tripping myself up, swinging from inactivity to compulsive multi-tasking.

But waiting can be constructive. Last night someone said to me that out of directionless time - the waiting place - comes something new, a change, a transformation.

Another conversation - a talk about sculpture and my urges towards it. Throughout motherhood I have been printmaking and collaging in and around the day to day. Where's the sculpture? Why the sculpture? Because it is physical and tangeable. Because it communicates with the space it exists in. Because it exists AND alludes. Because it is reflective AND constructed.

I realised I'd even stopped noticing sculpture that's being made now. I looked at the Turner prize (not my usual source of inspiration) and found synchronicity; Hilary Lloyd talking about film in sculptural terms, ways of seeing as well as what is seen.(This was also my preoccupation during my degree)

Martin Boyce - Autumn leaves and telephone booth. I liked his process; how one thing evolved from another, the work referred to the urban and natural environment, human intervention, the evolution of objects. Using fragments; alluding to nonlinear memory.

Karla Black talking about art in general as a space for behaviour. ' Art is a boxed off bit of society where permission is given to behave as the animals we are'.

The Waiting Place

“You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…

…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.”

# 18 [7 December 2011]

Spinning plates - This feels like a good metaphor for where I'm at. My heads busy but I feel like I'm actually stopping myself from moving forward. Where am I going? How do I get there?

1) Projects for schools; using my skill set to create opportunities for children through art

2) Professional development - networking with other arts professionals to gain peer support and critique; fuel and imputus for making

3) Making room for making; putting this actively on the agenda - time and physical space and resources

4) Keeping an eye open for opportunities  - exhibitions, residencies, commissions - for focus; deadlines help!

5) Making time for research; galleries, photography, art libraries - and recording this research

# 17 [8 November 2011]

This summer I developed a proposal for Room for Imagination to create work at    Wilderness Festival; which aimed to compliment and highlight the environment that Wilderness was set in. (Cornbury Deer Park Estate, Oxfordshire)

Due to time constraints my original proposal had to be simplified, so I went with creating a flock of birds that could be hung in trees around the site in various configurations.

The pink birds were made from sheet plastic acrylic and the rest were made from recycled estate agent boards and painted, wallpapered/covered using sticky backed plastic.

Some birds were hung in pairs in trees edging the swimming lake, the rest were hung en mass in a beautiful old oak tree at the entrance to the site from the camping field.

# 16 [8 November 2011]

Projects and Preoccupations is an updated title. I started this blog as an experiment: an alternative to a studio, a gathering space for ideas and images to help with consistency and fluidity in my work. Three years on..I'm still finding this useful as its proving to be a record of my projects and preoccupations in making.

studioless but still collecting started in 2008

Original blog description:

I recently gave up my studio but this is a beginning for me. I realised that despite adversity I still manage to find creativity. The ideas still trickle in and in fact a little adversity makes the creativity richer in my opinion. So here is my experiment - to use this blog as a collecting space, a virtual studio to gather ideas and develop my practice.

# 15 [8 November 2011]

Some images of the Bike Wheel Dome I made for Small World Festival 2010 and the Bike Wheel Shelter I made to permanently stay at WoWo campsite (Sussex) 2011.

Making these shelters coincided with the launch of Room for Imagination; an artists collective I established to be able to collaborate, take on commissions and make outdoor installations for festivals and events.

The bike wheel shelter became a literal 'room for imagination'... I would like to investigate creating different rooms for imagination, that confound expectations when a person enters them.

# 14 [3 November 2011]

Projects and preoccupations:

Bike wheel structures

Birds

Divers

# 13 [24 February 2010]

Things have shifted. My contract has finished at the college and I have just registered myself as a Self Employed artist.

I have been trying to draw today and have been sifting through old photos - about ten years all jumbled - to find a starting point. Everything feels a bit daunting - wouldn't it be easier to just get a job?!

I have seen one today that may have my name on it - but I don't know whether this is a very practical idea or whether its me wriggling out of having to make things!

The Artists Way has been on my mind - I think I need to get collecting images and ideas and filling up the old inspiration well again.

# 12 [26 July 2009]

I have come back to this blog after a long gap. Its July, I'm making again, in a rather different direction. Venice is where my minds eye is looking.

I went there in March and I have a rather large urge to return to experience the Biennale. There was some talk of being able to go through work but unfortunately its not been given the goahead. And my financial situation isn't any better (but the guardian did say you could do it for £150 if you camped) so I'm ever the optimist.

The images I'm working with currently are from my March trip and i'm trying to do some prints at home as well as arrange some time to do some screenprinting at work. I have been experimenting with collage and using chalk pastels over the top of press prints.

I have an exhibition booked for October and this has given me a little jolt into action!

# 11 [16 January 2009]

I have been working to create a little more space in my life and today has been my first friday off. I have been talking to a friend that I did my degree with and discussing the mother/artist/work balancing act. Just a little space and I'm back to thinking about whirring wheels. Could I make it in my garden? I think I'm going to put some images up at home to make my desk a workspace. My house feels like a home but not a making space. Not yet. This blog is so helpful, I was just looking at my last few trains of thought. Its good to remind myself where I got to before I pressed pause.

 The news continues to provide interesting material, potentially for screen prints.(This sounds callus, I'm just interested when the obsurd or the strange becomes entagled with the everyday)

The plane that emergency landed in the river.

The professors dying of pancreatic cancer years after nuclear experiments at the university.

 And one from the summer that caught my attention:

 The priest that went missing after flying off with hellium balloons. 

# 10 [14 November 2008]

I have been neglecting my blog and I miss it. Alas I have pressed pause on my whirring sculpture; I have however still managed to keep printing. Printmaking really does seem to be my fallback option as a creativite outlet. (Its nice to recognise this.)