ARTISTS TALKING

# 83 [23 May 2012]

Yesterday spent wandering Hastings looking around the town with an eye to a venue for a metal Q Code - part of our guerilla campaign to raise awareness of our September 'Telling Stories: Hastings' show.

Found what I thought was a great place, but with some obvious 'Can I put it here?' problems and then felt the need to discuss it with the Arts Officer. What a nice guy - I just turned up at the Council Offices and he was really helpful.

That, and the sun and a fresh crab sandwich, Life felt good. Now I have to ask all sorts of permissions - but what will be will be.

A Telling Stories committee meeting in the evening - in a great new place; Franks Room [opposite Hastings station] - the Snug is a perfect place to hold an art meeting. Recommended.

Always amazing how much hard work goes into a show - the more people involved the more work........seems it should be the inverse but it never is.

The issue of my not having a smart phone is coming to the fore again .........happy to be involved and learn but have no great yearning to embrace yet more time consuming technology. May yet have to give in! No app to read a QCode on my phone....and off to Brighton tomorrow wanting to see the new Fabrica telescopes - needing a Q Code reader....

Hmm.....

....and I joined Twitter today. More precious  time....worth it? We will see.

# 82 [16 May 2012]

...........needed a day to get over the Bluewater experience. After 12 hours standing on a hard marble floor talking all day we were shattered. Next day we both ached ....

A fun day though. Such a lovely project because it always makes people smile and engage. Here however with everyone on the same mission they all wanted to buy them!

can we buy them?                           made us smile.......
a lot of thought has gone into this..................
thank you, that was really, really nice
it was brilliant - every village should have one.
we spend so much time on the computer nowadays that its a treat to see something like this...........
so unusual........that was an inspiration!
how amazing that one village made all this. I didn't know places like that still existed.
Can we buy them? 
 
So - all 140 horses back in my partner Ros's spare bathroom and I must turn back to this solo show lark..........before its too late.

# 81 [11 May 2012]

busy here...and fun..

...our Farningham Hobby Horse project was featured when the Lone Twin Olympic boat project launched and was on all the news bulletins. One of the wooden donations from which the boat was fashioned was ours. Centre starboard= our horse head.

Then a corporate meeting with Bluewater shopping center to ascertain if we could show the Farningham Hobby Horses there.

Agreement - amazing...due to a lot of hard work on our behalf by someone else we have been awarded the most pretigious venue - outside Marks and Spencers. 10am - 9pm . Will be a very long day.

The project is in its last days now. Horses will go back to their makers in June. I will be glad. A year is a long time to travel a project and for Ros Barker and I it is time to focus on new things.

# 80 [1 May 2012]

Visit to the gallery today to measure up and to stand and mull over what goes where - I do like it. The gallery was once the chapel of a disused church now converted into a Theatre and Arts Centre.

Large monchrome prints are showing in there at the moment. The architecture and stone mullions round the windows give such a sense of peace and silence after the cafe just outside.....lovely.

The orange pipette tubes I got from Hastings now contain wasps. I am not sure where I am going here but I will see if there are any more tubes to be had next time I am down there. It feels like the work should be not just repetitive but big.

Even though I had plenty else to be getting on with I just had to get the wasps in and see what they looked like before I did anything else. Most interesting thing about them seems to be the way they have gone from being obviously dead to looking for all the world like a tube full of angry wasps trying to get out..........resurrection.

# 79 [28 April 2012]

Well...a lot of work going on in the back room here, but I have got to the point that I no longer know if things are hanging together well or quite where to go next. I think I need to go back to the gallery that my show will be in. Look again at the space now that I have almost got to the point of framing up most of the work.

Framing is so expensive that I don't want to go ahead and then decide against putting things in.In fact framing is terrifying. Cost. Getting it wrong.

I haven't worked in a way that required framing for a while and it is definitely worrying me.

Today was spent drawing a distorted dragonfly - part of a series I am calling Conundrum- mostly as a way of keeping all the work together. Its together as a series in my head but I feel the need to allow the viewer to feel the same.

Yesterday I went to the new Jerwood Gallery in Hastings. An architectural gem of a building - inside and out -that sits seamlesly within its timeless beach setting between tall black net huts. Hopefully the local opposition will fade now its in situ.

Inagural show is Rose Wylie. Very strange. I had no feeling for it at all. None. Not irritation or repugnance or anger or amusement. No engagment. I have just never felt like that before. I was informed by the wall labels that it was witty and insightful and referenced contemporary culture. I just felt dead to this huge room of paintings that should have been shouting at me but weren't.

The upstairs part of the gallery shows part of the Jerwood collection - the odd delicious thing but mostly not the best of artists from the 1950's onwards.

If this part of the gallery is to be partially changed every six months and the entry fee for the one room main show remains at £7.00 then it will take something very special to draw me there again from Kent. One hour + £15.00 petrol makes for an expensive outing ...

Still, my charity shop finds of the afternoon were five orange glass laboratory tubes..........something tells me that tomorrow will be spent with them and a collection of dead wasps.....my

# 78 [7 April 2012]

Today was the day that Going Public went public..........Elena Thomas, Julie Dodd and I attempting to move our private e-mail conversations to the public arena of the a-n blog.

www.a-n.co.uk/artists_talking/projects/single/2133404

Why?

Because its our home I suppose.We met through it, we comment on it and blog on it and feel linked through it.

Maybe a part of us also hopes that doing so will focus us a little more on our end goal of a joint project and exhibition although we all have shows and courses and work that stands between now and then.

Meandering on has been the bit I have loved - the slow unfolding of back stories, likes and dislikes, sharing of artists found and images we think the other would enjoy. Support and crits and a bit of a giggle.

I do wonder if we will lose that. And if we do will we e-mail behind the blog again to regain it?

# 77 [3 April 2012]

Day 2 of the great eight week countdown.

Last summer I collected two squashed and sundried fledglings that I found by the side of the road.

It was the first one with its mouth open in a silent scream that hooked me. I did a charcoal and rubber drawing of it and thought I would begin a series on dictators...........

The second bird I found has been sitting wrapped in tissue waiting for my attentions.

Today was the day - I worked on it to make a pair to be framed up together.

Always difficult when you try to re-visit something.

Its not as strong a work as the first, but together they are a stronger work than just the one.

Framing will be expensive - quite a big work. I am begining to be concerned about framing costs now..........

# 76 [2 April 2012]

Ok. I am getting the plot back.

Spent the first part of the morning choosing a moth to hang by its feet to draw; as you do. Something that had been brewing for a while.

Really fast work. Pleased with it.

Always amazes me when that happens..almost like being on automatic. Such a great feeling.

Then to new studio to collect more paper. Odd not being in my old one, but the smallness of it feels kinder, as though less is expected of me maybe.

I shall have to watch that.

Had an e-mail conversation today in which the subject of including ones domestic circumstances in our blogs was discussed.

I realise that I am unusual in this, but they seem intertwined to me..........surely if you or your partner are ill, or you are snowed in or the car breaks down and you can't get to the studio that is all part of the trials and tribulations.

I don't see my blog as a twirl for a curator but write thinking I am talking to other artists while focussing my thoughts for me. Nor do I care if I reveal my age group or the fact I don't have work in the Tate.

What does worry me about blogs is that they are of necessity self censored.

No disagreements with collaborators, difficulties with funders or councils, misunderstandings or reporting of drama queen behaviour that leaves everyone else in the group seething.....happens to us all.

But not on these pages?

# 75 [1 April 2012]

Studio swopped.

My space was 19.25 sq metres - now 8.75 sq meteres..........pots and pints spring to mind.

I was meant to be sorting today but ended up in Brixton drinking Ethiopian ginger and cardoman tea with my son........so much better for the soul.

I have pushed the door shut on the chaos. I shall return to it mid June.

From tomorrow it is head down; eight weeks to my solo show and I am really so behind.

Works to finish, works to do, framing and finishing, invites, signage, costings, private view.......my head spins and I can feel more than a mild case of panic descend. How did I get myself so far behind?

My diary is empty. I have promised myself only dog walks, artists meetings and the occasional gym.

Already going belly up. Elderly mother off to hospital tomorrow for intravenous antibiotics. Rubbish timing Mum.

# 74 [29 March 2012]

Day two of the big clear out.

Scary moment this morning when the council representative informed me that I would have to start paying business rates as I had changed studios. All sorted.

The studio block is on the side of a park so as I trotted in and out covered in dust and carrying dustbins and boxes and sacks and plinths all around me were browning nicely in the sun.

 A young black cat whose owners leave him out all day has been overseeing operations. His charming companionship was very nearly permanent; he shot out of the car boot just as I was about to leave for the final tip run.

I just hope I haven't maxed out on his black cat luck. Haven't seen him since; I fear he may have gone off me.

So - I still have no idea if things will fit in. Especially as I have decided that there is no way I can live without my bookcase.

We will find out tomorrow.