ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [8 August 2008]

What is the role of the artist described in the intro of this blog?

These places to someone one who does not live there are maybe a bit like a film set from a domestic version of Blade Runner or some future sci-fi....no, no a Mike Leigh play describes them perfectly. I could be acting out one of his plays as any one of these three commisions unfolds.

Today after 3 whole day workshop sessions of showing a girl aged about 8 how to cut a 2cm x 2cm mosaic tile with a pair of purpose made tile nippers we succeeded and had a motorskills, concentration and focus breakthrough. About 3 tiles were divided into 6 pieces. Tommorrow we might be able to use them and stick them in place. Perhaps the best journeys are the slow ones.

Also today, I had an even bigger breakthrough.....the boy who I guess is about 10 who has been the most disruptive, descructive and influencial indivdual on the project to date sat next to me and worked for well over an hour with total focus and commitment. Previously his longest period of sustained work may have been 3 minutes tops. Then he would start chucking stuff around and pretend to cut his ear lobe off with the tools I provided.

The reason for this unbelivable turn around was the simple fact I worked with him 1 to 1 and went very very slowly showed him how, let him do it, showed him how to modify what he had done and make it better, let him do it and after 20 minutes of this I told him how well he had done to get this far. He belived me and continued working assisted by 100% of my own attention for about an hour. Intense but supersonic compared to the progress with my other student.

Now, I am one of a team of artists making a comunal garden on a housing development over the summer holiday period. And of course no one can afford to pay for progress that slow. So things have to move on swifty, but team work is the key to this and todays observations and occurances have inspired me to start this blog!