ARTISTS TALKING

# 1 [22 August 2010]

Nesting before taking Flight

But unlike the birds, I’m taking my nest with me. And instead of the beak, I’m using a camera to pluck twigs, vines and other bits of undergrowth from my parish countryside to build up a collection of images that evoke home, a memory box of sorts to take with me when I move. I’m using an antiquated Vivitar XV-1 with a 50mm 1:2 prime lens. I found it hiding in an old biscuit box at a car boot sale last summer and satisfyingly struck a bargain at £5. Last year however, I was focused on building my own cameras, loading homemade pinholes with both 120mm and 35mm film, and the new…old Vivitar didn’t get taken out the biscuit box.

This week I have found that £5 was a little too good to be true. I’ve discovered the prime lens’s focus is unalterable, with the focal point sitting permanently about 2metres from the camera, and the body has a tendency to let in light; but in all honestly I kinda love it all the more. I love the magick that that unpredictability offers, and when I loaded the camera with some expired film, I was offered a range of colour shifts and light leaks as the image ebbed in and out of focus.

Yet despite these few quirks, this camera has offered me a more concrete way of image capture than any of my home made cameras, and without having to carry around a tripod and dark room bag, this, albeit slightly damaged, Vivitar might offer me the most practical way of creating images on film while on my residency.

But for now I will continue to fluff out my nest of photographic images, and perhaps weave in performance for good measure, pack my bags and prepare to say addio Inghilterra.

# 2 [28 August 2010]

I’ve finalised my flight, booked my bed in a hostel, and practiced my per favore and grazie and needless to say I am getting rather excited about this residency. With a couple of weeks left before I start my journey, it’s all about preparing to make the most of this. It’s as much about packing the right things, passport, e111, toothbrush, as it is about understanding what interests me about Tuscany.

As much as I can imagine being caught in a dizzy whirlwind of hyperkulturemia, inspiring an intense experience of prolific art making, I know it could also lead to a lot of confusion (and rapid heartbeat, panic attacks, falling to the floor, and even hallucinations according to Italian psychiatrist Magherini). While passing out of the floor of the Uffizi is not a major concern of mine, getting a bit lost and overwhelmed is. I need a guidebook, but I’m not usually one for following a Lonely Planet Guide, I want a book that’s a little more inspiring, artistically.

In my final year at GSA I became increasingly interested in the idea of ‘witches’ as a scapegoat for fears about female sexuality. I also wanted to explore the traditional rituals that the church condemned, the heady folklore tales of sex, drugs, metamorphosis and death. However when it comes to researching witchcraft and ritual in Florence, one journalist has beaten me to it, by 100 years or so: Charles Godfrey Leland. His influential book Aradia documents Tuscan folklore, rituals and the legends of Florence that he collected from the locals during his stay in the 1890s. Leland’s writing could offer me doorway to this substratum of Tuscan life, and be my own strange little guidebook. Unfortunately my local bookshop didn’t have a copy, but thanks to Amazon one is on it’s way to me now.

Thinking about local traditions and folklore got me inspired yesterday, and I did a little ritual myself.  In a performance preliminarily titled PARISH WITCH, I gathered, wore and then returned wheat, mud, bone and grasses to the earth. The piece was certainly more about the ritual of selecting and gathering the local flora to wear and the application of the natural detritus to my body- fingers as paintbrushes, thick globs of clayey mud as glue, than it was about creating any lasting image. Still this is the first time I’ve created, digitised, and published something the next day. The immediacy of the process is new to me; the idea of showing something without time to reflect is mildly unsettling. But I’ll have to put my worries about cringing over naïve work aside, because, and I hope you agree, this blog will be a lot more interesting as a raw unedited adventure in art making.

And how does my skin and hair feel after being coated with all that plants and mud? actually pretty good! I might make this ritual a regular thing...

# 3 [13 September 2010]

Sono arrivato!

I have made it safe and sound to Firenze.

I am tired though, so this won't be much of a blog, but I'll share a few brief observations from my notebook that I've been jotting down since I landed in Italia, however corny and fractured they might be.

locks are different - i wish you were here - ears still crackle - watch is still in British time - italian wedding in Torre del Lago A4 print outs line the whole street celebrating the union, many cars honking in celebration - shirne to the young man under the bridge - train shelter cracks contracting after expanding in the days heat - cicadas - scots pine, palm tree, buddleia - light rakes the land - can't walk on raked sand - many moggies, moggies seems more appropriate word than cat some how - men driving mopeds with cigarettes hanging from their lips - miss italia 2010 on Tv - autumn is here already, it's beautiful - i wish you were here - medieval Lucca - the sparrows have different voices

for now any artist endeavours must take a back seat as I catch up on sleep then search for accomodation, wish me luck!

# 4 [22 September 2010]

A disagreement

(part one)

I’m living in a hostel at the moment in Firenze while I search for more permanent accommodation. I thought it would be a somewhat claustrophobic experience but I am thoroughly enjoying the influx of globetrotters, all with a new tale to tell over breakfast.

I got into a particularly heated discussion about art yesterday with one young gentleman from Canada (early in the afternoon mind you, before the free Tuscan wine started flowing); at first he was gleeful that I was another artiste but upon my explanation that I considered myself a contemporary artist his disappointment quickly turned to fierce revulsion.

The young man considered himself a brilliant artist as he had studied Leonardo Di Vinci’s work for two years (he has no intention of attending an art school, they only ruin talented people, like myself). He taught himself to draw imitating the way Di Vinci learned to draw, because someone who cannot draw as well as Di Vinci has no right to teach art, I laughed and said so you must be a good artist then? Yes, I’m great came the blunt reply catching me off guard. He raged and seethed that contemporary artists are seeking to destroy Renaissance art. (I introduced him to some of Luigi Ontani’s work thinking him might be able to relate to the Renaissance inspired prints but alas Ontani is obviously mocking the old masters – despicable!). Contemporary art is a horrible business, people who think they are better than others purposely making work that the general public can’t understand. At which point I joked he must really hate Damien Hirst huh? Who?  What? Whose that? Surely…? Tracy Emin? Never heard of her.  All he knew what that contemporary art was out to destroy the work of the old masters; contemporary art and realism locked in a vicious battle to the end. (note, realism)

# 5 [22 September 2010]

A disagreement

(part two)

Now, I only speak for myself, and I might have a few feminist issues with a lot of the work that hangs in The National Gallery but I’m certainly not out to sabotage and suppress the work of the Old Masters. I think at worst, and correct me if I’m wrong, contemporary artists are generally disinterested in the work of Adolphe William Bouguereau and Michalangelo.

OK, so this young man and me have different favourite artists, it seemed to be a huge problem for him but for me… no. However, I found myself fiercely defending my corner against his statements that 1) How dare anyone who can’t draw like Leonardo teach art and 2) If you can’t draw correctly (correctly!!) how can you call yourself an artist? Well I certainly had something to say about that. Apart from being entirely ignorant to other forms of artistic expression, he seemed to be completely negating the fact that some people need to be artists.  I feel I need to be an artist – for my health!

My thoughts cast back to my tutor at San Francisco Art Institute, Keith Boadwee who explained on the first day of class he set up the Conceptual Drawing course for people who wanted to draw but ‘couldn’t’, those who didn’t meet, and did not want to meet the technical standards of drawing encouraged at ‘Drawing level 1’, (a class that ran parallel to Boadwee’s that I quickly un-enrolled myself in after arriving at SFAI). Boadwee’s class had a profound impact on the way I addressed a blank piece of paper, his mantra of ‘if a drawing isn’t working, just scribble on it, take a risk’ really opened up drawing for me, and soon turned it into an important part of my practice.

When I told the young man that I used to draw like him – his sketch book was filled with bits and bobs of anatomy, statuesque faces, all drawn as accurately as he could manage – but now I draw like this; (I showed him my recent mono prints) he stared at me in disbelief! How could I be so stupid?! A child could do it!

So?

I personally think it sickly self-indulgent to draw with mirror like accuracy, I used to do it, shh people away but secret adore their coo’s and adulations that I was ‘so talented’. And I can only speak for myself again here, but when I drew like that I wasn’t exploring anything, it was a simple superficial exercise of ability. Now if I was to create a representational image I use my camera, I reserve my drawings for notions, suggestion and whispers. Stupid stupid stupid.

Ah I wasn’t getting anywhere with this conversation, after a couple of hours I called it a day and went out for a bite to eat. But is this the kind of discussion I am going to find myself embroiled in again and again here in Firenze? Can the Renaissance art share its cradle with a little contemporary art?

# 6 [27 September 2010]

Firenze is now my home.

With the exhaustion of travel and the stress of finding an apartment behind me I have began to draw again. Perhaps influenced by all the Renaissance art that clutters Firenze’s streets ( you name it, they paste art on it and sell it) I have started with a few fruit still life’s. (How traditional! The young man from my previous post would be proud! Ha!)

Fig's are, disappointingly, out of season, so wine grapes here are the first fruity specimen to find their way into my sketchbook.

Today, suitcase unpacked and my mind and belly fed, I feel like now I can finally properly start this blogging journey. The intention of creating an online sketchbook of my ideas and art makings can be realised, so more soon friends. A presto!  

# 7 [28 September 2010]

My friend, and fellow award winning artist, Fiona Jarrett wants to do a spot of ghost hunting in Firenze; so I drew her a couple of maps to get her started.

I anticipate more from this collaboration.  

# 8 [2 October 2010]

DEM BONES GONNA RISE AGAIN!

observations of animal bones at Specola, Firenze, September 2010

# 9 [4 October 2010]

She was not breathing at all. She was dead. They lifted her up and looked for something poisonous. They undid her laces. They combed her hair. They washed her with water and wine. But nothing helped. The dear child was dead, and she remained dead. They laid her on a bier, and all seven sat next to her and mourned for her and cried for three days. They were going to bury her, but she still looked as fresh as a living person, and still had her beautiful red cheeks.

They said, "We cannot bury her in the black earth," and they had a transparent glass coffin made, so she could be seen from all sides. They laid her inside, and with golden letters wrote on it her name, and that she was a princess. Then they put the coffin outside on a mountain, and one of them always stayed with it and watched over her. The animals too came and mourned for Snow-white, first an owl, then a raven, and a dove.

# 10 [8 October 2010]

“If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?” Dr. Laurence J. Peter

In my final year the tutors would often remark that my studio space resembled something like a junk shop, as they gingerly stepped over drying ceramics, half finished collages and avoided the various hanging oddities; bones casts, horns, homemade musical instruments, light bulbs, drying prints... My desks pilled high with animal skins, skulls, bird’s nests, a multitude of plaster and latex test pieces, suitcases full of fabrics both exotic and tacky spilled out onto the floor mingling with the reclaimed wood I’d sourced off Glasgow’s streets.

It was often suggested that I bring the junkshop environment to my degree show installation, but for various reasons it never entirely came together that way.

This idea of exploring 'junk shop as installation' still rings true to me though, and I think it's a concept certainly worth exploring now I have to time and ability to think with a clearer, more rested mind. Beginning to inquire into this idea again I've have conducted a few 35mm studies of the junk shops at Piazza die Ciompi.

My time here in Firenze is being wonderful for getting some breathing space after the degree show. It’s not only giving me time to deal with things I locked in a mental box in 4^th year, time to morn, grieve, cry, laugh; it’s also giving me time to test out artistic endeavours without the pressure of a final grading.

And this is marvellous.