GOING PUBLIC

JUST SOME PAST SNIPPETS:

The college work will get done, but you know how it is, you go zapping about on adrenaline then when it’s all done you slump!

I love the idea that this time for thinking has led us into ways to include our relationship in work we are already doing, the way we already work, so it’s new, but intermingled somehow.

I have been also thinking about keeping words secret, embroidering, then unpicking so you leave traces, but not so legible.

For me everything has changed since we’ve been emailing and it’s become about the distance between us being stripped away because of the internet usually but also about it being so evident when I just want to talk to someone face to face, go for a coffee etc.

I have been keeping snatches of our e-mail conversations in a file. I think it’s the concept of sharing and support that interests me …. the fact that our back stories are unfolding so slowly………..

I have no real concepts for a work yet.
I think I said before that in my head our conversations are linear and when I try to think of them as an art work they become tapes – like the kids school name tapes.

To obscure the text because I don’t really want others to share our secrets…

Hmm…..maybe I will blog about that. When I have done some work!

Can’t find the matching paper I put aside now.

Aren’t we lucky to have each other?

Then I think I’m going to embroider tantalising bits of confessional text all over it… maybe…

Thinking of you… both of you…
Things are plodding on quite happily here for me at the moment, but as they do, even as the eternal optimist, I am aware that things can turn around in a second, for better and worse.

That’s the problem but often the excitement too with being artists isn’t it, you just don’t know what’s around the next corner and when you’ll have to put things on hold… I can wait.

So instead of lurking about on facebook, I thought I’d make you two suffer instead – because that’s the kind of good friend I am!

I have just come back from walking the dog and we have a huge and beautiful moon outside. Have a look. It might cheer you up.

I need to win the lottery…
how much do you think I’d need in order to give up work, be a full time artist with all the expense that entails, and be able to afford to hop up north or down south whenever I felt like it? I’m itching to see your work in the flesh!

I did wonder about sending songs, but it is quite a big part of my practice, so here goes….

hope you like it.

Something in his songs always follows me like mist even after I have walked away.

I’m rubbish with music, I loved it when I was a teenager and would spend hours listening to various things, but once kids came along and jobs and then art that was it.

Ooh !
A parcel of delights! Thank you so much, this is just the sort of cast off I like….

This inevitably led to me talking about us 3, and he was really interested in the fact that we didn’t know each other and that we’ve still not met, and yet have suggested working together in some way …

Added by Franny.

Julie, I love all those strands of not quite ideas… real thinking as we go along… it has given me a bit of a flash of inspiration… but if you think it’s stupid just shoot it down and we’ll move on….

So… Franny and Julie….How about a road trip? We’ve never met, how about we commit to a journey? from Franny’s to Julie’s, through Mine? (or other way round). So the first time we meet is also not just a cup of coffee or lunch, but an adventure, a piece of work, or the research? If we go by train we can talk, and take photos and draw and talk to other people too.

I’ve spent a couple of hours going through old emails trying to decide what to share and what not to. For me it’s interesting looking back at what we where thinking at the beginning but the more I’ve cut and pasted snippets into a word document the more I’ve thought about how boring it would be for others to read. So I’m not doing that now…

So what do I want to say? I don’t know, I think I want to tell you how I feel about what we are doing/not doing now rather than then so maybe I should start with what I emailed Franny and Elena not long before we started this collaborative blog:

‘I don’t know how much of this I’ve told you both because I don’t know what is new in my mind and what I’ve just developed now but this is where I’m up to with the thinking of for my part of our projects.

For me everything has changed since we’ve been emailing and it’s become about the distance between us being stripped away because of the internet usually but also about it being so evident when I just want to talk to someone face to face, go for a coffee etc. So I’m thinking of doing something with our online conversations and am thinking of gluing them together somehow (similar to the projects I’ve been doing recently but on a much larger scale), some sort of landscape which shows the distance between us, maybe even exaggerating the distance (in a topography sort of way) between us that seems so, so far sometimes and (sanding down the landscape to obscure the text because I don’t really want others to share our secrets.)’

I did a short book project a few years ago on a trip to Utah where my fellow students and I went on a camping trip whilst visiting Utah, I mixed the topography of the landscape with our conversation.

I knew I wasn’t finished with it and wanted to explore it further but have never found the right conversation. I often collect other peoples conversation, jotting them down when I’m travelling around but it means nothing to me most of the time. I needed a trip or adventure with other companions and I think I’ve found it…

This idea has been floating around my head as something I want to do with ‘our’ conversations for quite a while but I couldn’t get away from the idea of digitally producing it in a similar way to my ‘talking landscapes’ book and this just wouldn’t do. I don’t want to share everything between us with the world! I thought about over typing the conversation to obscure it or layering it up somehow. Weaving it was another idea…

But I didn’t even try any of them out because really I knew they wouldn’t work, they didn’t even look right in my head.

I realised this was the way to go somehow sometime after making my ‘Paper Eggs’ but it wasn’t really until I started experimenting with the stones that I realised I might really be getting somewhere. Because the top surface area is larger than the eggs you can read more of the text.

I don’t know how it will work yet. I think it’s going to be a huge project if I take it on and I’m not sure it’ll work really. The size I want it to be would be a huge problem with the size I can print being much smaller and I’m not sure gluing side by side and overlapping slightly would not effect the over all appearance. Size would also be a problem in the making as I don’t have a studio and how to glue a huge surface area quickly and effectively may be an issue too.

Now when I think about the project (putting these problems to one side) I visualise large broken landscape with hills and valleys but it’s made up in a very similar way to the stones in that there is colour and images as well as text… ummmm, but all we have is dialogue…

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So, we three are still discussing our format, and would really like any readers to join in to help…

So what lies below is pasted straight from our email discussion, but with a couple of private/secret bits removed…

I’m sure at some point we’ll sort ourselves out…

On 15 Apr 2012, at 13:28, Franny Swann wrote:

Helloo!

lovely to have you back in my inbox…………………

[bit removed]

Could part of this go on our blog? or not?

or should it be on yours??

Our voices sound ‘real’ here…………..I am concerned about the blog.

Am I the only one not sure what to put on it/ what tone to adopt/ think it sounds stilted?

Maybe we should just e-mail as before and then precis bits of our conversations back onto the blog?

It would be an original format and might work better…………….

[I forgot to sign my blog bit today – sorry]

love to both

Fx

I think there’s room for both types of communication. There will always be some things that I will want to tell you two before telling the world… [ here a bit was removed]

I’m sure Going Public will be fine… it maybe seems stilted or edited to us because we see the rest of what isn’t posted. I would like some more comments from other people, that’ll be better then. I think if we for a start look at the things we have sent each other, and post them, or revisit bits of conversations we thought were interesting that’s ok too.

I do want to start talking about the geography at some point… maybe my next post… also, things like the patterns of coincidence. Our similarities and difference too maybe?

I think there’s loads of material… don’t panic, early days.

actually…. maybe this conversation should go up there? I don’t think readers would mind if our private conversation gets edited into highlights and then “goes public” do you?

I almost feel all of the above could just be pasted in? what do you two think?

your blog spoke about wasps… who else was it going to be? hahaha!

e

X

Sounds good, but I don’t mind what we do. I’m hopefully going to blog today or tomorrow, just got a few things to sort out first.

Julie x

Only just had time to look through the Wellcome images Elena posted. There is an extrodinary photograh of a ruby tailed wasp. Its the one I got all over excited about when given a specimen to draw for my ‘Memorial’ piece last year.

Quite the most beautiful and un English thing. Its the Kingfisher of the wasp world…but parasitic and quite horrible.

I am just finishing off my side panels for that work……no longer sure where discussion of my work fits. Here or on my blog?

Talking about our work in the e–mails came naturally alongside the chat didn’t it? Now I am aware I am talking to the whole world and not just to you two I find I myself automatically slipping into my ‘blog’ voice….much more guarded and self aware.

How to square the circle?

Where are you both? I miss you.