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.
‘I am a sort of citizen of Lala-Land..’
Despite not having much time to write up my blog recently I have kept an interested eye on others and this post in Take me to Mongolia by Birgit Deubner was written with such brutal honesty I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I have watched to see if comments appear as I would love to know what impression it had on others but I wanted to address it here on my own blog. The work ‘Dungbeetle and Sisyphus’ http://www.axisweb.org/atSelection.aspx?SELECTIONI… that Birgit did appeared online in 2008 I think, just as I was returning to exhibiting after a long break to raise four children ( by the way, they’re not quite done yet, but I couldn’t wait any longer) and I was absolutely drawn in by it.
‘What does success look like?’ to quote a hideous marketing phrase that pops up when my husband is in work mode. What does success look like – for an artist?’ It looks – I think – like nothing else. It cannot be measured, I suspect, by the same yardstick as any other business. Perhaps what is important is how we cope with that. At times we all share Birgit’s thoughts despite the many levels of success we experience. And it is the nature of what we do to be consumed by it. I heard a talk once where someone used the phrase ‘hold the things that are dear to you lightly’. The dog doesn’t give a monkeys about art, he just wants to play. I, for periods, live and breathe it. When I turned down the opportunity for an after opening night dinner with Gavin Turk and his family, to take my children home for pyjamas and Strictly Come Dancing, I reminded myself – hold it lightly. When I turned down the private pre Turner prize lunch to take the family to stay with friends in Kent as promised I knew I could be missing a pivotal moment and it did grate, believe me.* But in a way I took the decision to remind myself – hold it lightly. This is not to say I’m not hugely driven in my practice, I am, but I have to work hard at not losing myself, at recognising others in the family don’t share those feelings.
Lala land’s not all bad and it’s great as artists to have an open-ended ticket there, as long as we don’t forget there’s a big world out there to be experienced as well.
* by the way, these are by no means regular occurances I assure you
I am a worrier. I worry about the table lamp in the hallway. I worry if I have it on during the day I will destroy the world with my reckless use of energy. I worry that without it, on a grey day, I may degenerate into such a state of SADness that all conviction to recycle responsibly will evapourate along with all other good intentions, – like dusting the computer table.
Do woman worry more? At the risk of making a huge, bludgeoning, generalisation I wonder does the drive to protect the offspring we have borne make us feel, more keenly the responsibility of the environment’s future on our shoulders. Probably not. Last weekend I potentially burned up an entire forest’s worth of energy* driving twice to Cardiff to install work at Wunderland, tactile Bosch, the exhibition to celebrate International Women’s Day. Actually, to be precise, on the second day we had six people in the car so I guess, shared out it was only a couple of trees each.
In order to make our weighty, carbon footprint worthwhile we combined the show with a visit to the Doctor Who exhibition. No forests were burnt up, but £36 was in about five minutes flat as that was all the time it took to walk from one end of the exhibition to the other. Wunderland left no hole in the pocket and certainly freaked the children out in a way the Doctor Who exhibition could only vainly hope for. With blamanges of breastmilk and pasty, naked goddesses clutching freshly extracted entrails my son’s Facebook comment on returning was simply ‘I’m scarred for life’ but hey – I’m not worried, he’ll get over it. I was hugely pleased to be exhibiting alongside artists whose work has really made a strong impression on me over the last year or so, Gemma Copp and Ione Rucquoi amongst many others. Only on until the 18th, it’s a show with an awful lot to see and experience.
*Please do not investigate the science behind my wildly inaccurate comments – you will be disappointed.
The lasts are laughing at me. My son wants them out of the house – ‘like dead men’s feet’ he said. I have been given the lasts ( along with a number of other artists) from the curator of ‘Made to last’, (the exhibition to be cited in the Cathedral during the Salisbury Festival), to be returned having undergone a spot of clever artistic alchemy. Unfortunately, I am in receipt of my lasts somewhat late in the day (due to e-mail muddles) so I fear other artists have had a head start. In a state of naive optimism concerning my technical skills, I have conjured up the basis of the video piece which, having submitted and confirmed the proposal my husband turned to me and said, ‘you’ve set yourself quite a challenge’. Coming from a techno-God ( in comparison to myself), his comment has rocked me slightly. Still ‘no one will die if it all goes tits up’ he would say comfortingly. I may, in the end, have the ‘last’ laugh is it were – time will tell.
Another thorn in my side at the start of the week has been removed to much relief after a series of e-mails back and forth with tactileBosch in Cardiff, where I’m soon to exhibit with. Crossed wires as to which work was available to exhibit got me a little shaky at first but soon came the e-mail everyone wants to hear, ‘Go for it, we have plenty of space and you have free rein to use it as you like.’ Why can’t all galleries react like this.
And so, with all this work ahead, (not to mention two community-based project plans I need to nail down and the proposal and budget for the Salisbury exhibition to pull together), why am I writing this blog when I have one morning where all the children are busy elsewhere and should be in the studio. Because when you’re overwhelmed and don’t quite know where to start, blogging is quite the very best form of artistic procrastination anyone has ever invented – (better than the pre-Internet days of mindnumbing morning TV that’s for sure).
It was necessary to start another blog. This sister blog if you like, charts the progress of the project I’m pushing forward in Salisbury. In short I am juggling two blogs. Try as I might, my juggling skills are seriously limited both in the area of balls and in the area of blogs. My recent entry in ‘Lighting the Touch Paper’ refers to a day-long meeting at my home with curator and artist etc. held Monday past. It contains the facts and little else. It does not contain the added details such as the fact that sitting in one chair for five hours is a surefire way to get excruciating backache and that a dog who eats a camembert will inevitably throw it up at the most inconvenient moment, under the study table. This meeting was sandwiched between a village event on Sunday where I was tasked to build the biggest globe in Wiltshire with the local scouts in about 40minutes flat (this was a bit of flannel really as we don’t actually know if Wiltshire has any giant or even rather large globes to compare it with) and another task on Wednesday to set up a schools exhibition in Salisbury, part of which required producing yet another giant sculpture, in this case a pair of spotty wellies. During the week I have also been milling around the dilema of how to deal with child care when I take my latest piece of work to Cardiff for the Wunderland exhibition at tactileBOSCH. On Wednesday evening, after a diet of a diabetic pill taken too late washed down with a heavy red wine, I crashed exhausted into bed only to wake up feeling ill a short time later and in a state of blind panic with all these events whizzing around my brain in some horrific giant sculpture workshop nightmare. Morning arrived and with it a bit of sanity – with half term on the horizon, let’s hope it lasts.
