Working in our individual studios, we meet three times throughout the day. Here are our individual reflections and thoughts from the day’s actions, thinking and events.
Louisa Chambers:
The sharing virtual group walk this morning set a productive day ahead. Visual observations from each participant’s own separate windows on my phone showing their outside worlds included- lines, pathways, roads, expanse, streets, unfamiliar, objects and details.
A coffee next. Then off to the studio.
Looking. Painting. Looking at the shapes on top of shadows. Pausing. Looking again at how I’ve applied brush strokes, colour and tonal arrangements. Trying not to think too much and just paint.
Lunch social. The subjects meandered in and out – art making, labyrinths / mazes, topiary, bonsai trees to letting going / about process and not knowing.
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I think the painting is finished.
Julia Wenz-Delaminsky:
It is not possible for me to dissect artistic work. All aspects are important. One can’t produce without thought or think only without ever doing a thing. The idea itself needs a realization. But there’s also the aspect of an audience. As a group of artists I realize there are a high-speed audience, because we are trained in looking, thinking and reflection. The actions and thoughts of all of us are working as a multiplicator. A mushroom of understandings starts to grow and it is covered with chocolate.
Tamara Dubnyckyj:
Group virtual walk to start the day, zoom split screening the streets of Stuttgart, London, and east Midlands; road lines, path lines, close ups of flowers, glimpses of blue sky and breath and voices. Fun!
Back to the studio, engaged in a pondering session, the wall arrangement work in progress, a starting point, but still not quite right.
…thinking about past series of work, how everything fits together, zigzagging in and out of times and places, all of the hours doing and thinking…
I read some of the book about pioneering sea divers: Stars beneath the sea – lovely watery imagery, chapters entitled ‘The cuddly cactus in the chamber of horrors’ ‘The delights of dangling’ ‘Thinkers and sinkers’, then remember the Poetics of Space (Gaston Bachelard), first encountered at art school. I can’t find my copy, maybe being a student I borrowed it from the library, so I postpone the reverie, and order a copy online.
Back to the BBC Sound Effects No. 3 and the ‘Background atmospheres’, more settings for the imagination to do its thing…maybe that is the key.
Traci Kelly:
Day Three: Clusters & Instability
Fixing a cluster. Introducing the colour I have, thinking about the colour I prefer…
Taking a fall/ Unwalking – ankle like a balloon, balloon unlike an ankle.
Mesmerised by a drift, an uplift and a ripple. Letting things settle, but they twitch. Nothing is fast, but the slowness is untame, wild and demanding. I know these materials a little more and a little less at the same time.
It’s been a rare and beautiful space, thinking new, sharing experiments, finding the practice of others.
Thank you to peers who feel their way.
(images from our joint morning walk)
Danica Maier:
A day being (rather than considering) fallow-ness.
“ ‘Fallow‘ periods were traditionally used by farmers to maintain the natural productivity of their land. The benefits of leaving land fallow for extended periods include rebalancing soil nutrients, re-establishing soil biota, breaking crop pest and disease cycles, and providing a haven for wildlife.”
How can one plow the field of one’s practice and then leave it to rest – not seed it. The importance of leaving one’s practice ready, open, accepting, but not seeded. Resting, re-establishing and breaking pest cycles. In consideration of this, I have to slightly fight my natural instinct to ‘consider’ fallow, to research it, read about it, think about it, do about it, etc. This would be counter to just being fallow – so, books remain closed, cerebral thinking was put on hold, I drew while listening to a narrative, resting happened, even a nap was called for today.
I now consider how to carry on resting, preparing the ground, being fallow – while in the corner of my eye – the wave of a new academic year is coming and will begin to break on land soon.
Clare Mitten:
An energising start to the day with a communal walk around our local areas, connected via our phones. It was as if taking multiple routes concurrently: snapshots of people, traffic, flowers viewed through Zoom rectangles, as we navigated our local streets in Stuttgart, London, Nottingham.
I switch my routine today, beginning with assembling a cardboard laptop shell.
After lunch (a lively conversation of coffees and bakeries, etymology, topiary and labyrinths), I begin with a layer of papier mâché over the cardboard model. The repetition and smoothing down of strips of newspaper allows digestion of lunchtime talk, and headspace to ponder next moves. Ideas and possibilities are beginning to mushroom now, and much like the maze with its multiple pathways, dead ends, doubling-backs, and routes through – I’d like to have multiple versions on the go, to allow different options to play out, to fail, to move forward.
It’s been an intense and nourishing three days, each with its own beginning, middle and end. Key take-aways: the power of listening, of community and thinking through while talking. Intentions for the work: little and often, enjoy the back and forth.
Thank you fellow Bee Eaters!
