ARTISTS TALKING

# 7 [31 March 2010]

It has been a very exciting and busy month and this qoes some way to explain the lack of updating on here, every time I have thought I had something to say on here, things have changed again and moved so fast that i have hardly had a chance to absorb any of it!

Some time ago I had the vague fantasy of holding an event in my barn during Oxfordshire Arts Festival Week and slowly but surely this vague idea has become a secure plan! Not only will the event occupy the barn next to my house but also the house itself! I have invited 10 london based artists to show new work, much of it site specific and the line up is: 

Alexis Soul-Gray (me), Lise Hoveson, Alex Carr, Caroline Underwood, Grant Foster, William Roper-Curzon, Louise Thomas, Hannah Duffin-Turner, Andrew Pellen and Caroline Shrew-Gower. New works will include Painting, Drawing, Printmaking, Installation, Sculpture and possibly Photography & Film. The show will run during North Oxfordshire Arts Festival Week (27th May-1st June) though we have decided to promote ourselves independently as the costs involved for a large group show were too high. More details to follow! We are in talks with Broughton Castle to run an event at the same time in the castle grounds...if we pull this off we will attract many more visitors!

The house that I have been living in during this residency has a planning permission application in process for its demolishment almost immediately upon me leaving during the third week in July this year. The 'ressurection' work I have been doing about the mysterious 'Hazelford Mill' seems to be linked to the bringing down of this long standing family home that is of historial significance to the village and local parish having once been the local post office, some of the older village residents consider it to be important because one of the longest resident village families lived there for over 50 years before I moved in. 

I had a brilliant meeting with the very lovely Margaret Taylor of Broughton Grounds Farm yesterday afternoon who shares my passion for Hazelford mill. The Mill/village site lies just a few minutes walk towards the Sor Brook from her farm and over the years she has done some extensive research into the site history. Sadly like me she has been unable to locate an image of the site, all we have are OS maps from 1851,1880 and 1900. She is convinced as am I that there must be images in private collections completely unbeknown most likely to the owner. 

we discussed our feelings about this mysterious place and I spoke extensively to her about my project and my hopes about trying to pay homage to it in my Solo Show. We had both had a similar experience at dusk with the sound of children laughing...more to follow.

# 6 [24 February 2010]

I have had a peculiar few days. The return to 'school' means my wonderful week of long walks and stream archeology has ended and a rather blunt blockade has been dumped in the way of my dreams of creating a rural resurrected visual idyl.

On top of the fact that my salary does not pay enough for me to live on, I am becoming increasingly troubled by the fact that my dark studio space is becoming less and less helpful in enthusing me on my creative journey..which I am determined to make. I have ambitious plans for my solo show and Im determined to do it! Im sorry for moaning this evening..but I wanted to do this blog not just as a useful way of synthesizing my thoughts but to give an honest portrayal of a full time residency in a school. This residency was advertised in 'an' but i can honestly say it is hugely problematic and cannot support me creatively. My studio space (as mentioned before) is a glorified sink area that sits slap bang in the middle of classrooms on all sides. The Art department is 'open plan' and the space is not fully enclosed on either side so you can imagine the noise etc.. it makes me feel quite sad when I think about that dark space and this is not how you should feel about your creative space. 

luckily I have rented a house that has lots of room and i have created a studio here..I just wish I could spend more time here working.. 

ok...rant over!! 

positivity only allowed now. On the upside this week I taught a very successful life drawing class last night, all my students have improved massively since i started it so that brings a great deal of satisfaction. It is an adult class but plenty of the sixth form students are regulars and last night we did large bleach and ink drawings working with withy sticks on the floor..fab. The drawn lines looked like pink neon light it was amazing!

Another bit of positivity is that today I processed my first film! getting a 36 film onto one of those plastic reels is quite an amusing task in a black bag but i managed it and the negatives have images on them! hoorah! some of them are of Hazelford Mill. 

More positivity! I contacted Broughton Castle estate that owns the land that the site sits on, they got back to me today saying that lord and lady Saye shall be in touch shortly..im hoping to view some images of the Hamlet prior to 1914 if they have any..im sure they must..

It would be amazing to see Hazelford Mill as it was..though I do hope to ressurect it in an entirely new way, not sure exactly how yet but its coming..I hope =)

I have to finish a painting for 5th March deadline for John Moores and its staring at me right now from the corner of the room..i might try to tackle it a little..not before some lady grey tea and a crumpet..or 2 xx 

# 5 [19 February 2010]

Well I have just been back home for about an hour or so and it has taken me that long to warm up having been out looking for treasure for four hours! I really am hopeless at all this field work..went out in my favourite vintage farmer style coat again and lost a precious gold button in the brook that I am carefully and probably pointlessly extracting broken pieces of ceramic from. Not all was lost though as I found the most wonderful piece with a fab cat on it! a fair exchange for my coats button. 

Every day I struggle to come to terms with what I have chosen as a career path as truly it is very stupid indeed..I have no money, no commercial gallery awaiting my new work (I do have a solo show at the end of this residency but Ill be perfectly honest with you It aint much cop and frankly with a name like 'The Michael Heseltine Gallery' I wonder if anyone will turn up anyway. I am going to refer to it as the 'MH Gallery' myself..and its anyones guess what it stands for. 

Ive got to laugh at myself really for finding old bits of china so fascinating, perhaps I am actually mad, who knows..certainly nobody should bother to care but me If I am.

Anyway, forgetting my self deprecating nonsense, onto the arty nonsense..this is what I wrote in my notebook sitting on a ruin mound in the village earler...

'What I find so fascinating about this place is how it seems to have so easily become part of the earth, it reminds me of the fields i was taken to at La Somme as a teenager..and i suppose they do have something in common apart from visual similarities as their histories are both inextricably linked by the first world war (Hazelford being abandoned in 1914 due to the onset of war).

The softness of its decline into the earth I find very moving and a great comfort, it seems to have willingly buried itself under a soft, dewy green blanket. 

There are fruit trees and planted roses still to be seen and I await the beginning of spring to see what if any remnants of a traditional English cottage garden grows and flowers. 

As I write this I am sitting on a large mossy mound and I do feel as if I am treading on the dead but of course this is not a graveyard, however, removing small pieces of china from the brook feels to me like grave robbing and i have started to wonder about the ethical implications of this removal, although this place is not protected by heritage status it is a memorial site and these things do not belong to me. I will most probably put it all back next week. 

I remember going to Herculaneum and Pompeii when I was about 13 and seeing people kicking up pieces of Roman mosaic tiles and putting them in their pockets as souvenirs (I hope this has changed now) and wondering how they could do it. I could never even bring myself to take those little green bits of glass off graves..not even one, even though I wanted them so much because they sparkled..'

# 4 [18 February 2010]

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall--the sap of spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perished thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

Christina Rossetti - A Better Resurrection

# 3 [18 February 2010]

Because I am doing a visual arts college residency this has been my half term..bliss. Most days I have been getting up early and walking for 2-3 sometimes 4 hours, this is when most of my thinking makes sense and I dont get dogged down with horrible life/money stuff that gets in the way demanding my attention. 

I was hoping to go out to Hazelford Mill this morning but there are snow blizzards at the moment so it will have to wait till the afternoon. I have made the walk to the old village so many times now that I have begun wondering what it might be like walking to it in the dark, alone, without a torch. i used to have similar thoughts about the walk to the old windmill in the village I grew up in in essex..often just before i nodded off to sleep in that peculiar blackness I would see myself in a ridiculously romantic edwardian- esque night gown floating along the country road towards the windmill. I dont see myself in the gown these days but the walk has become something of a mini pilgrimage and when term starts again on monday im hoping to walk there every morning before I leave to go to the studio, if sunrise is early enough to allow it. 

I am going to spend some time working at home today on some paintings that seem to be never ending and attempt to visit the village later on.

I will leave you with an introduction to Hazelford Mill, I hope you can read the info on the images... 

xx

# 2 [16 February 2010]

oh and i realise its very very boring without images but its taking too long to upload at the moment, must be rush hour, will do in the morning, night night x

# 1 [16 February 2010]

This is my first post, its going to be brief as Im absolutely exhausted after spending most of the day reaching with one outstretched arm with large stick attached into a fast flowing brook with other hand holding on for dear life to some worryingly crunchy long bits of grass. I ruined my best coat and new leggings, must remember next time I go out searching for the broken bits of ghosts teapots and plates to wear appropriate clothing. And get a longer stick..or in fact, a net and a shovel. more to follow.