ARTISTS TALKING

# 196 [5 June 2010]

Hi there.

It's been a while again hasn't it? All my energy has been going into getting through everything at the moment. There's still a lot on, but I can see the end in sight a bit more now (july 19th!!).

My copy of Vision Magazine arrived in the post this morning, which was nice to see. It's a fashion/lifestyle magazine published in China. I have a teeny section in the discovery part showing Inhabitant. The editor emailed me in March saying

I would like to report your work "Inhabitant " in our VISION DISCOVERY Section, which is a special section telling of fresh and good ideas in all fields.
I feel "inhibitant" is very good and want to show it in VISION DISCOVERY. 

I liked my cardboard adventures being described as very good. The magazine is a pretty beautiful thing too, lots of matt paper and photography/art content. So, very pleased to be in it basically.

http://www.youthvision.cn/

The Liverpool Art Prize opened on Thursday night. Apart from nearly falling through a banner while having my photo taken (thought it was solid), I managed to be pretty respectable all night. I loved working in there, making new things, so when people asked me if I was pleased with the work, I was. That's not the same as thinking it's great though, and there is (as usual) many things I would change/develop. Anyway, it's up, no one kicked anything or got killed by the tower, so a success all round.

http://www.liverpoolartprize.com/

Been thinking about the set-up of LAP though and must send some feedback or suggestions or something. It has cost about £200 to make the work I did, with no money available to help with that. I wonder if the prize money might be better spent with some new-work budget i.e. all the artists get a small participation fee rather then two people winning prizes. It came at an okay time for me, so I could find that money, but ask me in 6 months and it will probably be a completely different story! Strange position to be in really, when you're getting judged in such a wonky playing field. But I have no doubts that being in it is beneficial - apart from showing alongside some really interesting artists, having a great space and a huge audience, the LAP is sending quite a lot of traffic to my website and probably introducing a lot of people in Liverpool to my work.

Some images of the prize exhibition by sponsors Mycoy-Wynne

http://www.mccoywynne.co.uk/lap_2010/

I am now working on a printed work of Nathan Jones' poem 'Slow Magic' for his opening to celebrate the end of his year as Poet-in-residence. It's on 16th June at the Lost Soul and Stranger Service Station at the Bluecoat and it seems he has partnered up with lots of people for it. I like that approach and he is certainly spreading his funding around Liverpool! I am making a screenprinted and digitally printed thing that is a turkish-map folded paper bound in greyboard cover. I am enjoying myself immensly. Dan and I were having a look at the poem last night again and saying how much it is like art - difficult, dense but ultimately very rewarding when you spend some time and thought on it.

Details of the exhibition here: http://nathanatthebluecoat.wordpress.com/

Poem can be read here: http://mercyonline.co.uk/flatline/flatline05.pdf

My book for end of bursary at YSP is currently being proofed, so I shall get that back on Thursday and then the real book-panic begins! Pretty much shitting myself about completing such a big task when I am also working in schools solidly for the next 5 weeks. But it will be done, must just make sure I'm not mean to Dan for the duration; he usually bears the brunt of my stress and it's just not fair! It's also been a nice task to do though, so I'm looking forward to it, just DAUNTED! It shall be great practice for compiling a catalogue for my show there next year though (I won't be so hands on with that one though).

Right back to the poem, and some schlepping around in my pyjamas.

# 195 [22 May 2010]

Been a bit awol haven't I? This last couple of weeks has been fairly manic! Several things have happened that I should have written about, but because there is some time lost, they have lost their immediacy. It's hard to write when it's not fresh. 

Things I will no doubt come back to -

Making a Living's open letter to Tate and Tate's 'No Soul for Sale' weekend.

The new government and the state of the arts.

The difficulties of trying to make ambitious new work for an exhibition where there is no budget available for anything. Currently £123.81 down. More to go...

So, the sun is a blessing as I am working on a 14ft high tower in the garden. I love making things like this, although I am not the best at it and can get very frustrated when things don't go to plan. A family friend has been incredible with his van and local wood yard discount. He is taking the work to Liverpool on Monday, so that means I have to finish the thing tomorrow - good deadline; a week in advance. There is no projector, so one piece of the work cannot be shown. It changes it all completely of course, but I just refuse to pay to hire one myself, and I'm certainly not buying one. So, sculpture and drawing it is, there is a slide projector, so maybe that will do.

Anyway, enough whining, apologies! Spreading the drawing paper in London was a joy and prompted lots of great conversations. If you asked me for one and haven't had it yet, please remind me, I got confused with my mailing list!

I also saw this when I was catching up with the papers: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/may/22/fine-a...

What to do with a fine art degree. Hmm, sorry Guardian, but this is pretty useless as far as the title goes. It is essentially saying that fine art graduates don't so very well as far as employment goes. Yep, we know that. No mention of how crappy the data might be given the difficulty of collecting statistics in this area.

It also goes on to say what skills you may have gained, but the focus is on practical skills and creative flair. No mention of any other transferrable skills or of the kind of roles that a lot of artist make money from.It's also too simple to say artists might be good in jobs that will use creative flair, because altough this may be true, employers will generally have difficulty making the imaginary leap when looking at a CV with no industry experience. This also misses the vital point that people would need certain skills like using photoshop to a professional level for this kind of role; a different matter to being self-taught and using it to edit images of your work and make the odd flyer.

The graphs at the bottom mean little to me. Data here, collected by the  Higher Education Careers Services Unit and Graduate Prospects

This shows the kind of work people are doing - retail, catering etc, gender breakdown, what happens after uni and lastly, a sector breakdown using descriptions like commercial artist, fine artist and photographer. Trouble is, it just doesn't mean anything. It's all too generalised and doesn't account for people saying they are a fine artist, but not receiving any money from that and so on. I remember putting that on a questionnaire for ECA one year. There was no way I was calling myself a waitress, although that is how I payed my rent. It seemed very important to hold onto the fact that I was an artist, however dishonest.

Looking at these statistics doesn't give much idea of what actually goes on in the art world and how graduates operate. Also, it would be hard to look at this kind of thing and use it to improve things, which is surely what an overview should do; make obvious the big gaps/problems. The only thing that seems obvious is that there are too many fine art graduates per fine art related work opportunities.

Thanks for putting it in though, better than nothing I guess.

# 194 [10 May 2010]

I have sent out a batch of Drawing Papers this morning, another one tomorrow or Wednesday when I find more envelopes (there must be hundreds in the house somewhere...).

I reached my limit yesterday for sending out, so if you would like two free copies, please send me an A4 SAE with 81p paid on it. Email me for my address:

emilyspeed@hotmail.com

Cheers +

# 193 [10 May 2010]

Heard from a magazine in China this morning that my copy of their May issue is on the way:

http://www.youthvision.cn/

They have featured me on their discovery page, with Inhabitant. Not sure what it will be like exactly, but looking forward to seeing it.

Conversation with Dan last night about the fact that everything is so manic at the moment and we are both a) exhausted and b) ratty and that c) the house is a hell-hole. He seemed to be realising that things might not ever change and that was a bit hard to fathom for him. No matter what I think about the old stereotype of the artist working all hours for the love of it, I do work an insane amount of hours. Things are especially mental at the moment though and my incredibly tight schedule for April/May got messed up by a death, a car blip and a birth, so it's worse than I thought. I didn't allow for life in my bad-timetabling.

His worst fear, I think, was that life is going to be a perpetual battle for time and non-stressed wife. But I have learned my lesson (a bit) this time, it has been too much to manage over the last two months and all for things that weren't necessarily awesome uses of my time. I'm sure I'll keep making dodgy decisions - but hopefully less all at once.

At the Taxed Skillmarket last month, Susan Jones advised me to keep track of hours worked. I have been doing that and it is working out between 10 - 14 hours a day, including weekends! I'm not sure that's very efficient working mind, there is a lot of anxiety getting in the way of that. She also advised that this could be used to budget time for future jobs, but that you always need to add 25%. ADD 25%. Got it. 25%. I might just make it 30%.

In other real-life news! My twin sister Ruth had her baby last week. Millicent Rose, who is a divine little creature. She smells delicious and I have been quite greedy about going round and holding her all the time (when I can get past the neighbours and grandma's - honestly!). Far more important than all the other worries. Dan is broody.

Right, back to that YSP book and student loan deferments....

# 192 [9 May 2010]

It suddenly feels like everyone is waking up.. there are lots of exciting things afoot in Liverpool and the weather is nice enough and it is light enough to want to leave the house.

Last night there was the pre-launch of the Drawing Paper, a new, free paper concentrating on drawing (see images for an idea). The first issue had 20 artists in, me included and we all put £40 in the pot and Mike Carney designed and printed 3,000 copies. If you would like a copy, email me your address and I will send one. If I get a million replies I may ask for an SAE though!

emilyspeed@hotmail.com

Some images and a bit more information here:

http://drawing-paper.tumblr.com/

Next weekend, although it is light night and there are an insane amount of things I will miss in Liverpool, I am going to London. I want an art-saturated couple of days, to catch up with old friends, and to buy lettpress ink. My studio group is in 'No Soul for Sale, a festival of independents' at Tate Modern from Friday - Sunday for the 10th birthday celebrations. I have put some things in, so would like to see the chaos in person. 

Next exhibition up at Royal Standard 'This Matter' looks incredible, as much for the music at the opening night (the Grubby Mitts) and the programme of talks and things running alongside it as the work. This is really interesting and ambitious stuff, and I can't wait!

http://www.the-royal-standard.com/events/

I am almost settled into my new, double sized space there too and it is awesome. I feel delieriously happy there and I had a dance around in it yesterday. It still needs a tidy and shelves assembling/filling, but it is a GOOD space. The Royal Standard just keeps getting better and better.

http://www.thismatterblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.myspace.com/thegrubbymitts

# 191 [6 May 2010]

PROPOSALING

On the subject of applying for things (money) - see last post, I came across this while cataloguing for Intute today and thought it might be interesting.

http://www.viavaudeville.com/proposal/proposalpubl...

It is a publication (downloadable as a free PDF), which contains proposals, both successful and insuccessful from a number of artists. It's interesting to see how other people go about it...

Have you voted yet? Well go on then....

# 190 [5 May 2010]

FUNDRAISING WORKSHOP

with Anthony Bennett and Mark Waugh of A Foundation.

[These are some nuggets of wisdom received during the above session. More helpful, personally, was the one-to-one session I had with Anthony, but that's very specific to me, so I'm not going to relay all of that here. The points below are paraphrasing, not quotations and may not make perfect sense - I was there, I know what I'm talking about and in what context. Any questions, expansions needed, just ask.]

It is small kindnesses that make the art world go round, but be careful that giving these does not turn into an exploitation, i.e. it is good to be generous, but capitulating too readily doesn’t do you any good.

Make sure the expectations of both parties (funder/commissioner and you) are laid out and understood, then bad feeling is less likely to arise.

Funding is like a business contract – read the small print, know what’s expected.

If you are business-like, know your budget, timescale, materials, transport etc and what the project will demand, people will be more likely to believe in your ability to deliver.

There is the potential to use funding to fit your project e.g. if you are doing something with new technology and NASA have grants, but don’t get into the situation where grants and opportunities shape your work. You need to retain a core truth about your work for others to want to invest in and understand what you do.

You can recycle some parts of applications, but each one is different and must be considered carefully, Think about the foreground/background of each one, put information about what is the most important in the foreground.

CLARITY in applications. What you are offering, what your interests are, what the outcome will be, what you will gain from it. Make these things clear.

COMMUNICATION - If you do receive funding/support in kind, keep your people happy be keeping in touch with press, developments, images etc. Provide a bit of return of their investment and follow this up – how you have developed since for example.

Public engagement can take many forms, so think creatively about how people will best engage with the work rather than trying to fulfil ACE guidelines anywhichway.

Be honest with yourself. Make sure the project is genuinely useful to you before investing your (and others) time in funding applications.

Funding and assembling projects requires a holistic approach. It’s not a case of making your work and sticking the event or public interaction on afterwards, it can all be important and useful.

# 189 [5 May 2010]

I realised yesterday that I am shattered. This week is for writing the YSP book (only about 2,500 words - so not as horrendous as it sounds!) and cataloguing. I am glad to be able to work with tea and kitty and in pyjamas.

Going in tomorrow to photograph the installation I made for the A Foundation show, the image here is one piece of it, without its friends. The opening gave me a lot to think about, especially as it was clear my work needed explaining to some people. I don't know if I care about that, I don't think it's that important in some ways - I think that might be a product of being constantly given lots of explanation and expecting that. The work has a narrative, but a gray one - it's not entirely clear yet even to me, as it is all work in progress. I still hope to do the performance I was building up to, which is actually a drawing (just with the aid of a costume and my body). I think I have to do that in private, it was all a bit much thinking about doing that at the opening last week. Same goes for the Liverpool Art Prize exhibition... not sure I am up to it yet?

Anyway, I'm sure it will become a bit clearer in hindsight, in the meantime I have a big structure to plan for the LAP show. Might need to use village contacts for a bit of advice there - pub later then! Last weekend I managed to burst a tyre and twist the metal underneath the car on something on the road... so that has been an expensive lesson (and a shock). It means I am village-bound for a while anyway, not a bad thing. Financially a bit of a disaster, but these things always happen as you think you're getting sorted don't they?

Better news - my twin sister is currently in hospital and a baby is imminent! So, most likely all these worries will seem silly when I go and visit later :D One very small, soft, comedy bear suit at the ready.....

# 188 [1 May 2010]

Morning (croak). Still a bit boozy after the opening and dinner last night - my lovely husband came to pick me up so I could finally have a few drinks with everyone, which was nice!

I enjoyed the opening and chatted to lots of people (probably a bit manically!). Mainly I really really enjoyed making my work, putting things together and really thinking about it all. The residency has been incredibly valuable for that and the main outcome for me has been research and development time rather than producing lots. The work I showed was a sketch really, things in progress. I don't think it went down that well generally, maybe a bit too cryptic.. but anyway, it doesn't really matter - at least I know where I'm going with it!!

Today we're having a walk round the show. with a couple of curators I think, so that will be a good end to it.

We had a good fundraising workshop on Wednesday, so I shall get my notes at some point and add the best pointers here...

# 187 [26 April 2010]

Working at home today casting washing powder. Nice to be making something.

I just wanted to mention that I have been noticing during this residency how much thought all our visitors have put in to looking at and talking about our work. No one took anything on face value or assumed to tell anyone what they have or haven't done, it's been much more questioning.

This in turn has made me hyper aware of just how quick people can be to judge, label or make decisions about things, myself included. This seems to come in the form of dismissal. It would probably sound something like 'oh that artist, yeah they just make community art' or perform naked, or paint black things... you get the idea. It comes from seeing one thing, or having a little knowledge and then applying that to everything else that follows. I don't like it; it's lazy, a bit arrogant and just simplifies everything to the lowest common denominator. I am guilty of it myself I know, so I will resolve to take this with me after the residency finishes.

I wonder if this is some of the problem in a small art scene such as Liverpool. Lots of people have met and might feel like they know what people are doing and what they're making... but people change, develop and so does their work, so things always need to be reviewed. It suppose it happens to institutions/organisations too and, for example, with Wolstenholme Creative Space, I am curious to see if they are given a chance to relaunch, or whether people have already made their mind up about what it will be (based on its previous life).