Flesh on the Bones of the Belfast Child

How to write the worst blog ever. This is a technique my husband employs to ‘blue sky’ – a corporate term which replaced brainstorming and is now no doubt been superseded by some other fresh new buzzword, (come to think of it buzzword’s properly gone too). Blue skies are a rarity if you come from Belfast and a rarity in my head too I fear. At the moment my thinking is less blue and more somewhat cloudy. Artwork has been squeezed out by endless time spent e-mailing and on the phone wrestling with the task of agreeing dates between a number of paid projects and matching them up with childcare. As everyone’s lives are so busy no one can agree on dates and as such I seem to be spending 10 times as much time trying to organise projects as work on them. (Alas this brings in very little in the way of pay).

Actually this isn’t entirely true, there have been a couple of glimpses of the sun between the clouds. On Sunday I had the most fascinating afternoon. While everyone was enjoying Easter Sunday lunch, I was sitting drinking tea with the CSI officer in Salisbury police station, going through the painstaking process of investigating and documenting a murder. An odd day to do it admittedly but the CSI officer could only fit me in on that day as sadly they have been swamped with work from a major incident in Swindon recently. I must say actually that this is research and although I haven’t kept my blog up recently, nothing sinister has occurred. The officer, through a mutual friend, kindly agreed to contribute to my research detailing how evidence is documented and presented at a domestic crime scene. All this will hopefully emerge in a body of work, ideally for the proposed show in Salisbury, but if not for elsewhere. The CSI officer couldn’t have been kinder and I left with a wealth of information that could happily feed my work for some time to come. I can’t thank them enough and it was an afternoon I’ll never forget. The other break in the clouds was the completion of the video installation for the Salisbury Festival. Yeh I did I did it, – that sucker took me to technical hell and back, the burner has incidentally packed up and died but finally, with the help of a portable DVD player borrowed from a friend the DVDs are burnt and ready for exhibition. The hours I have spent editing that piece I don’t even want to guess at. As it involves an interaction between two screens, it obviously can’t be uploaded to Vimeo or simply posted on a DVD to galleries so has anyone any bright ideas about presenting an for application?

Oh yeah, the first sentence of this blog, the idea is that to create the best of something you design how to make the very worst of it and then do the opposite. The reason this phrase came to mind is because my blog is beginning to tick everything that you are advised not to do in blogs. You know what though – that’s the great thing about blogs- stuff the rules!

I listened to a man this week. He told me a story of stories. He said, if he had a book, an autobiography and he asked the writer the story of that book, they would tell him a story of a life, of ups and downs, of successes and failures, of hopes and dreams. But if he asked the printer, he or she would tell him a different story, a story of trees and of paper and of ink and printing presses. And if he asked the publisher, he or she would have another story. All stories are the truth, but each can only tell you something of the truth. Science has a story, but art can tell us another story.

I thought about my story. My website tells a story, of exhibitions, of grants, successful projects, awards and residencies, but it is only one story. I could tell you a story of unfinished pieces, of sketchbooks of unmade ideas, of small successes in the studio no-one will see, of opportunities left unapplied for.

For others who know me it will be a story of children, school gates, dog walks and community events – they will know nothing of the above.

I am not in London, not even in a city as such, I am not guided and challenged by the talented staff of a respected institution, I have no reading list other than the snatched and mismatched paragraphs of writers, critics and philosophers I happen to grasp at through the disjointed busyness of each day. I apply for a select few opportunities, at times I am successful and my work whispers amongst the many voices in group exhibitions, at times curators seek me out, other periods are quieter.

It’s not the story I had planned when I first graduated, and with a large family to bring up my days of residencies in exciting places are purely a memory, but in the studio with materials and tools scattered around me, slowly and quietly, I continue to write.

Fish pie on a hot sunny day, – nobody likes it and I sure don’t like making it, mothering is a thankless task at times. Still, term over and time to celebrate, G&T always makes washing the dishes better. At this point everything seems in disarray. We’re about to go away on a break and the house is knee deep in readily washed clothes. I’ve had a constant barrage of paid work opportunities this week ( schools etc) and have spent the week phoning back and forward and trying to juggle child care in order to fit them all in. As no one has definite dates yet, let alone absolute confirmation that it will go ahead my head is spinning trying to make some sense of it all. Still, paid work is wonderful in this climate.

The video I’m making for the Salisbury Festival is giving me a major headache. Time is running out and I have spent so long editing it I can no longer stand back and look at it objectively. I am so immersed I have no idea if it’s really doing what I wanted it to do. Having to leave it unfinished for a week is making me seriously nervous.

Meetings and more meetings about the project in Salisbury. At this point it could still get kicked out when presented to the council – yet another loose end. And so, about to set off, I’m leaving an unfinished film with a deadline looming, a proposal hanging in the air to Salisbury city council and five projects which will or will not take place and will or will not align with childcare next month. hey ho, one things for sure – as soon as I get out that door, I’m forgetting the lot of them!

The axe has finally fallen this week as the arts Council announced which RFO’s were lucky enough to be kept in the fold and which were to be left out in the cold. Gradually e-mails popped up in my inbox from those breathing a sigh of relief and others who’s news was less than good. Reading through the list in the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/mar/3… I recognised names I’ve been priviledged enough to work with over the years, groups who’ve delivered projects to the highest standard, Strange Cargo in Kent, a gallery and celebratory arts organisation who produce the most dynamic and exciting participatory large-scale events, Artsway in the New Forest with a dedicated support programme for artists and a wonderful record of exhibitions, currently featuring an installation by Hew Locke, Forkbeard Fantasy whose ‘Colour of Nonsense’ my son and I had a hilarious time watching just last year http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqkLaywXFi0.

And then of course there were those to celebrate with, both the Salisbury Arts Centre who have made huge strides recently to overhaul their visual arts programme with growing success and Axis directory of artists, both of which have a direct effect on my own sustainability. But I’m afraid any celebrations feel a little hollow.

On the plus side this week I had the pleasure of meeting up with Jon Bowen, writer of the debate in February’s a-n, author of a previous blog ‘Rites of passage’ and co-member of the APT site http://artistparents.ning.com/, set up by Rachel Howfield, another fellow blogger. It is fantastic how these blogs have brought people together and hopefully, funding fingers crossed, Jon will be contributing to an event for artists during the Salisbury project we’re planning next year.

Approaching the cafe where we were meeting I realised I didn’t know what Jon looked like other than a faint memory of a beard from a blog photo. A man emerged with a beard, I caught his eye and looked purposefully at him, longer than is acceptable for a stranger, until it was clear I was barking up the wrong tree and the poor man made a quick exit. After a text exchanging colour details of shoes, scarves etc we finally found each other and together with Laurence, had a really productive and chatty lunch until I realised I was late for school pickup and happened to have an enormous fish in the car which had to be offloaded somewhere before the children could get in. The rest of the week was peppered with manic attempts to sort out paid projects and childcare and editing a video which went from complete technical disaster to more or less back on track, and me nearly suffering a nervous breakdown in the process. I’m beginning to think editing videos is distinctly bad for my health.