ARTISTS TALKING

# 16 [21 September 2009]

Images of my work, Absent Masses, produced for, and displayed as part of, Thoroughly Modern Dora.

Images of the final onlline exhibition can be seen at http://www.jaynelloyd.com/absentmasses/

# 15 [21 September 2009]

Slightly belated posting of images from the private view of Throughly Modern Dora curated by Jolanta Jagiello continued.

# 14 [21 September 2009]

Slightly belated posting of images from the private view of Throughly Modern Dora curated by Jolanta Jagiello.

# 13 [24 June 2009]

Photo Deadline in Three Weeks

Thanks, to Sean and Emma for a great wedding and the pictures for my project.

If anyone would still like to send me pictures that would be really great. I've set a deadline of the 17th July, in three weeks time, to collect them all by. This will give me four weeks to put the website, book, posters and postcards together for the exhibition opening on the 18th August.

# 12 [18 May 2009]

Time to Sleep  

Working on a new set of images I was sent of people asleep reminded me of a poem by Poet in Residence at Dorich House, Claire Crowther. Rereading it brought back to me a lot of the ideas that had originally inspired the project. 

Lullaby

Time to sleep. The torsos,

the armless, the footless,

the headless are locked away.

Sleep, sleep. We will not stop

real bodies waking

to their ends while galleries

re:issue flesh differently.

Sleep. Bronze parts exhale

ghosts that take steps beyond

plinths. Go to sleep, leave

fragments to fashion, dead

sculptors to pace above,

artless, sleepless. 

by Claire Crowther

Dorich House Poet in Residence 2008 

# 11 [9 May 2009]

The Joy of Sound and other distraction. 

After a reasonably prolific beginning I've become quite slack at up dating this blog lately and not had much head space for the project as a whole. My excuses include completing commissions and helping out with a really exciting launch event for the Joy of Sound www.joyofsound.net, an inclusive arts project that provides workshops and equipment to enable everybody, regardless of their abilities and dexterity, to take part and enjoy participating in music making and other arts activities, and an invigorating camping trip to Cornwall, where I braved the still extremely chilly sea and enjoyed being out of the city.

Despite my lack of input recently people have continued to send me some great pictures and I'm now up to 37, which are all up on the Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home and will put some on the blog soon. For now here's some pictures of my commissions for the Joy of Sound.

# 10 [23 April 2009]

Good manners cost nothing but what are the rules of online etiquette?

The importance of good manners was drummed into me from an early age so having just made my first online faux pas (that I am aware of) I’m feeling very ashamed of myself.

I set this blog up to collect photos for my artwork, Absent Masses. To do that I need to let people know about it by linking in with other sites. Being new to this my postings are sometimes a bit random and clumsy.

I just checked a link that I posted recently to find that it had been ‘frozen’ due, I am interpreting, to me doing the online equivalent of gate crashing a strangers party and demanding someone bring me a drink despite having turned up empty handed, uninvited and not knowing the host’s name, never mind the other guests. For this I got a telling off and a little animated devil symbol.

A fair enough response as I used their site to promote my project without having any other particular interest in it so I do take their point. I did feel, however, like I had been lumped in with the Viagra pushing, breast enhancing, money scamming, pill popping professional spammers that clog up my email.

On the up side I now have nearly 30 people following me on Twitter……maybe it’s not so bad after all.

Any advice on online etiquette much appreciated.

# 9 [21 April 2009]

When I started collecting photos for this project I contacted friends that I knew quite well to send me images so the first batch of images I received were from them but now images have started coming in from people I don’t know that have heard about the project, I presume, through one of the calls for photos that I posted on my blog, Facebook, Freecycle, Gumtree or Twitter. It started me thinking about where artists find their models or, I hesitate to say, muses and what their connection to them is.  

Artists, including Dora Gordine, often work to commission or from paid life models that they don’t have a personal connection to. Most artists do, however, tend to also have friends, relatives, lovers or people they admire who they work with regularly over a period of time. Even the models Gordine didn’t know still sat for her in the flesh and, I would presume, some kind of relationship developed between them through this time spent together. 

Part of this project was always intended to be an experiment to see how I could collect images over the internet and how this would affect the resulting work. It is great to reach a wider audience and it’s always exciting to check my email or Facebook account and find that a new member has joined my group or uploaded an image. Some of the networking sites, if that’s the right word for them, are brilliant. I love Freecycle. There seems to be a lot of good will and a sense of being part of a local community supporting each other even though it’s over the internet. Twitter, however, I am struggling to get in to. Posting on it seems very self obsessed, indulgent, pointless and to signify what’s wrong with these kind of networking site. Would love to be convinced otherwise though, if anyone has a more positive opinion….

# 8 [15 April 2009]

One of Gordine's models. 

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/whereilive/sout...

# 7 [14 April 2009]

I have started working on some of the images. I am trying to keep up to date with them so they don't all pile up at the end and to have some examples up so that people thinking about uploading images can see how the project works.