Colin of Alaska

I have a solo show coming up in November and I have been thinking about what I want to show. Sooner or later I think I will want to take Colin out of the ether and make the project manifest in some sort of physical form. Maybe not yet.

Colin of Alaska was born, indirectly, to satisfy the desperate need to create something whilst I am away from my studio. I’m certainly not bored and I have plenty to occupy me, but that need became all consuming. Weird. It did diminish the longing to an extent, but maybe like an addict I was already thinking where the next fix might come from. I am happy with the project as it stands, as an ongoing thing, as an experiment, and for the other things I set out. I am also thoroughly enjoying writing this blog: it really is working as a catalyst for me.

Some people would say that as an artist I could always pick up a pencil and paper and draw. That is true, except that I don’t work like that. Drawing is fundamental to my practice, and figures heavily in my work, plus I always have my notebook at hand. I tried going out with a sketchbook to draw what I saw – a very, very long time ago – and it just seemed largely pointless.

So, another development for me is using some of the things I have found around me here, things which have inspired me. For example, over the course of several days I unearthed some sheep bones which had been buried under the stone kitchen floor. I will be using those.

Colin of Alaska’s blog is at http://colinofalaska.blogspot.com

Quite a few of the other blogs have caught my eye, and it surprised me that at least three of us have marine forts in common! One of the blogs that I frequently read is Emily Speed’s (if there is anything that was going to grab my attention it is the subject of Getting Paid!). I think I enjoy it because I find it pertinent, pragmatic and emotional – indicators of a good blog, perhaps? A good rant is healthy too (at least I hope so, especially since my entries are little more than rambling rants).

I have pulled out a couple of things from other blogs that strike a personal chord, probably also for most of us at some time or another:

…. even if it is unsuccessful one has to keep doing it. (Ruth Scott)

…. the constant churning of ideas in my mind during periods when it’s not possible to zoom in on any of them and start work. (Judith Alder)

(on blogging) …I feel like I’m in a room with a bunch of people I haven’t met before …. There is the murmur of conversations around me. (Catherine Cartwright)

…ultimately my work is not to fulfil anyone else’s expectation. (Christina Bryant)

Suzi Tibbetts’ blog is very evocative, particularly when she writes about being alone in a place which is normally bustling. I also enjoyed the description of walking along a country lane in the black of night, having had that experience myself many times in the past, not to mention the occasional unexpected meeting with a ditch….

continued……

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There is one other here on AN: Susan Francis touches on racism and sexism in her blog (#35 – you need to read it to get the context), then, in the next, how she had googled her name and noted the differences between her namesakes. I couldn’t help but make a connection. One of the great joys of art is that a work stands on its own merits, irrespective of the sex, race, background, physical condition, age, or anything else of the artist. It is once the identity of the artist is revealed that that can be affected by others.

I have no fixed ideas about characterisations in my blog project, but at one point it crossed my mind to make Colin non-white. I had nothing other than the potential of an idea, and I had no thoughts at that stage where I might take it. Sadly, I realised I had already blown the opportunity because I had previously shown white hands. However, what dawned on me whilst reading Susan’s blog is this: without signifiers to the contrary, how many of us, whatever our gender, race or social background, will automatically assume that Colin is white?

I am citing Colin as one example – it’s not just him, of course, but every instance where it isn’t obvious. Is it the case that our view of the world must be relative to ourselves? In other words, if we read Colin’s blog from Beijing, say, we would most likely see Colin as Chinese. However, we live in a socially and ethnically diverse culture, and I think we are the richer for it. If social conditioning were the basis of our assumptions it should, by now, be more inclusive. I hope it is, but is it? I am not suggesting that we are inherently prejudiced; on the contrary, I believe that prejudice is something we are taught.

Really, these things (gender, race, disability, etc.,) shouldn’t matter, (that is to say, in a better world they wouldn’t be an issue) but when we are talking about making false assumptions, these things certainly do matter.

Sort of in a similar vein, from about a year ago I remember noticing that a man had joined an online Women Artists Only group ‘in protest’. He had two arguments: one, that there should not be such non-inclusive groups; two, that as a white, middle-class male he was precluded from so many opportunities that he felt disadvantaged….

I haven’t seen an English newspaper for two months, since the 7th of June in fact. I don’t expect to see another until mid-September. I get the gist of what’s going on in the world through the BBC news page on the web, which just about satisfies my urge to know. I had bought the Sunday Times on the ferry to pass the time during the crossing, and kept the magazines to read later. Ordinarily I read only a small number of articles thoroughly, flicking through, or past, or ‘speed-reading’ the rest. Why I imagined anything should be different later I don’t know. Perhaps subconsciously I thought that they might provide a link back to my other life.

I picked up ‘Culture’ last night – the section about the arts which is mostly the TV guide. Let me quickly run through some of the items which caught my eye: Britney (cover story); AA Gill on television; Richard Long’s Tate retrospective; A review of a book on Grace Kelly; ENO’s Così Fan Tutti; Tuesday’s TV Pick Of The Day: Sarah Beeny’s ‘Property Snakes and Ladders’; and for Wednesday: ‘Celebrity Masterchef’.

AA Gill reviews ‘Katie Price: The Jordan Years’, in which a surgeon reverentially produces Jordan’s first breasts from a drawer (the implants, that is), and the camera asks “can I touch them?”

It strikes me that we have ‘Culture’, ‘Popular Culture’, and ‘Culchah’. The last one is also the first one, and the one which the man or women on the street refers to as being for posh people. Yes, that is a sweeping generalisation, no, I’m not being patronising (you know exactly what I mean). What I am driving at is this: a straw poll in the High Street will undoubtedly show that everyone has heard of Jordan and no-one has heard of Richard Long. I will also wager this: a straw poll among the art community will show that everyone has heard of Jordan but not everyone knows who Richard Long is; and, a straw poll amongst certain sections of the art community will show that no-one will admit to knowing who Jordan is, but everyone knows who Richard Long is (however, strap these same people up to a lie detector and you may not get identical results).

Art is not democratic: there are sections of the art world that prefer it that way – exclusivity (as in relation to exclude) is good for prices. Even the more socially aware tend to refer to popular culture with a kind of knowing irony. We are obliged to use language to describe our work which is the syntactical equivalent of a secret handshake. The sad thing is, there are homes all over this country that do not have anything on the wall, just as there are households that do not possess a single book.

Colin of Alaska’s blog is at http://colinofalaska.blogspot.com

So far about half of the handful of people I invited to join the Colin of Alaska Facebook group have done so. Not bad, now I have to wait and see. I was particularly excited this weekend to see a new member, who, unless it is a great coincidence, must have found the group through this blog, and happier still that it is one of the people whose blog I regularly read. I won’t embarrass you by naming names, but thank you! It shows that the viral thing is working, it tells any doubting Thomas that people do read these blogs, and I don’t feel quite so deluded about the project any more.

Colin’s blog is at http://colinofalaska.blogspot.com