Keeping It Going

‘Objects in other boxes, however can conjure up memories of people and places I once cherished and loved and there is a deep sadness attached to some of them, with all the emotions associated with loss and grief – of love and remembrance …’

Getting close to the finishing line now with the sorting of some 100 30 litre boxes – trying to go with the flow and learning to accept that there will be interruptions and pauses, as the need to process things arises – ‘things’ being the deep rooted emotions often associated with particular objects. I’m starting to appreciate even more the importance of taking time to reflect and step back – to digest and process, taking my time to absorb the emotional impact of some of the things I find. And, of course, as well as the objects themselves, there are all the feelings associated with them – the passing of time, paths taken and the outcome of life choices, ageing, etc – all such thoughts around, while sifting through the paraphernalia of the past.

So, last week I took some time out to do other things – and though ‘recover’ sounds a bit melodramatic, it did feel like I needed to regain my strength before getting back into sorting again – I wanted to protect myself from becoming overwhelmed in the process. It’s not all difficult, of course – and depends a lot on what I find. Some of the boxes are full of things to which I have no emotional attachment whatsoever and the sorting’s consequently, straightforward and painless. Objects in other boxes, however can conjure up memories of people and places I once cherished and loved and there is a deep sadness attached to some of them, with all the emotions associated with loss and grief – of love and remembrance. Many of the objects have become potent vehicles for exploring such feelings – hardly surprising, then that I’ve found myself not able to face the sorting on some days, needing to take a break from becoming too immersed in the past.

I’ve also been reminded in conversations with friends, family and fellow artists recently that this entire process is part of the work and really, there is no rush – much better not to feel stressed by it and to enjoy the journey as much as I can. Having been involved in this scenario many times before however, it’s clear that it’s not always going to be enjoyable – in fact, the process can be quite upsetting at times – there is so much more involved in sifting & sorting through the boxes than the physical act.

Pressing on with it, though is crucial to my long term plan of working from home. It’s all about shuffling around and making space wherever I can. Once the boxes are fully sorted and their contents recorded, I can then start to focus on getting my working space sorted. It’s going to be quite a while but it all feels do-able – just so long as I manage it well and pace myself, both physically and emotionally, in the process.

Another good, constructive day in terms of sorting and cataloguing objects. Eight more sorted and repacked boxes are now ready to go back into the garden shed, the plan being that in the long run, I can put my hand to just about every single item I own. Today’s task has freed up three 35 litre boxes – mainly paperwork – notebooks & exhibition catalogues, plus newspaper cuttings. It’s a good feeling to have spare boxes – space is precious, as I’ve yet to sort out the stuff I dumped in the outside garden room when I moved out of my studio – the ongoing, juggling continues!

Up until the recent leak, I’ve never worried about leaving stuff in an outside shed in my garden and as it happened, the water damage turned out okay as far as the objects were concerned, adding another kind of dimension to the needlework basket lids, for example. But irreparable damage was done to the contents of one box – numerous pieces of paper I’d gathered and collected together over many years. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I wept when I found them, sodden & saturated and totally unusable. I’m not taking that risk again and am keeping papers, books, etc that are important to me indoors for safekeeping. The pamphlet about The Cherrypickers Football Club of Glenbuck, a small mining village just three miles from Muirkirk, my Dad’s birthplace, is an example – an irreplaceable pamphlet, outling the incredible story of the Cherrypickers who had fifty players make it to senior level in football. Many of them played for famous clubs and seven of them gained international honours. It’s a record unequalled by any other place of similar size in the whole of Scotland, a record of which Glenbuck is justifiably proud. Bill Shankly was born and raised there too, though The Cherrypickers FC apparently folded before he was old enough to play for them.

I have a couple of other things to fit into tomorrow but my plan is to be back at the sorting at some points throughout the day. I need to be disciplined if I’m going to be able to create more space for the stuff I brought back from my studio. I thought about that space today, wondering how it’s looking and what’s happening there …

Twelve days into a new year – a good, constructive start so far, keeping busy with sorting stuff in boxes and adapting to no longer having a studio space to go to. I spent a couple of hours in a beautifully sunny Deptford yesterday, keen to keep up my connection to a place I’ve loved for years and still love – the week day and weekend markets, especially. The sun was out, people were warm and friendly and a live band played in the centre of it all. Maintaining my ties to the area feels important, especially after a day like yesterday – I came away feeling happy and uplifted – and of course, with the inevitable treasure or two in my bag.

I’ve no idea how things will work out in the long run with regards to working from a space at home but having my stuff/my raw material in the same place, for the first time ever, is very comforting and at last, I’m able to truly assess what I have.

So far, so good, in terms of that assessment. I started back at work last Monday after a relaxing Christmas and New Year break. I’ve managed to get fourteen or so boxes sorted and fully catalogued and am now up to box 55, with long lists recorded on my laptop, every object itemised in each box. It’s a process I started last summer and it feels good to return to it, knowing that it’s all part of a necessary process for getting back into making work in the future. It’s great to be reunited with things I’d totally forgotten about, a lot of which I know will stimulate ideas for new work. I have a lifetime of raw material, I reckon, in spite of having already let a lot of stuff go.

Here’s a couple of sample lists to give an idea of the weird and wonderful things I’ve gathered together over the years:

Box 1

x5 royal mugs

Small pin dishes of vintage cars

Female figurines (one musical)

China animals + one golden & one black labrador

China & wooden cat figurines

x2 male & female figurines

Soldier figurine

1950s poodle with broken head

Mother cup/mug

x2 china birds

Blackbird pie funnel (vintage)

Staffordshire figurines (cracked)

Shy cat/shy bear

Aberfan cup

Ceramic yellow wool lidded pot

Small head of Punch (chipped)

Dad/Father cups (one with pheasant, one with pink rose – cracked)

Japanese female figurine/Geisha style

Small piece of copper piping, shaped like a pipe

Wade Little Bo Peep figurine & lamb

Small girl figurine on knees, praying

Crazy ceramic goat

50s china poodle

Box 12

Female girl/young women figurines (with poodles on lead)

Welsh woman playing a harp (made from coal)

Black stand (for Russian doll)

Inuit doll, dressed in fur

Bo Peep (miniature Wade) with lost sheep + Wade Old Woman in a Shoe + blue plastic Bo Peep & cute ceramic sheep

Very strange looking clown doll!

Boy/girl ceramic figurines – kissing

Love objects – silk red heart

Footballer’s Wives piece

Gold sprayed pieces from ‘Going for Gold’ – cheap objects made to look expensive

Leaving my studio was all part of a larger plan, part of a re-evaluation of my life and the way I live it, now that I’m growing older. Giving up the 10×10 cabinet was about practicality as well as anything else, as I envisaged it becoming more and more physically challenging to schlepp around in a transit van, positioning it in various venues around the country, as I once did. The main exhibition area allocated for the cabinet at Herne Bay museum when I took it there was on the first floor, with no lift, I recall. This was in 2010 – 15 years ago this year – I have grown older!

10×10 has been very much on my mind this past week, as I’ve continued with the process of sorting – marvelling at the variation of the stuff I’ve gathered together. I’ve been thinking about how easy it would be to gather another 100 objects together, should the (unlikely) need ever arise.

The above lists demonstrate the variety and diversity of the things I have in storage and I’ve been thinking again about the timing, the point in my life at which my collecting habit first started – and continued to grow. Thoughts around that would consist of a whole other new post here and so, for now, it’s back to the boxes for the second week, starting from tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s just one example of the sort of object I’ve been drawn towards over the years – the daft facial expression of this cat, rediscovered again this week, brought a smile to my face. More about that in another post …

In January last year, I wrote this post about an impending studio move:

‘There’s no doubt that the ongoing uncertainty has been disruptive and affected my work output. But my resolution for 2024, though very hard to do, is to be more accepting of what’s on the cards. That said, this will be the third time that I’ve been forced to make a studio move because of property developers taking over prime locations in the Deptford/New Cross area in SE London. It’s an absolute travesty that the current building, a beautiful Art Deco building housing some 70+ artists, is to be reduced to rubble to make way for yet another block of soulless, high priced flats. But there we have it – there’s little any of us can do to prevent this happening. For now, it’s a waiting game – hoping that the promise of alternative accommodation will come through for us and we can regroup as a community of artists.’

Things have moved on since I wrote this and the promise of alternative accommodation did actually materialise for those artists who chose to carry on renting. It took longer than anticipated and it’s only in the past four weeks or so that the move across to an alternative space in New Cross has taken place.

I took advantage of the delays to take a long hard look at what I needed for my future and decided that I’d give up my studio space and give working from home a go. I also wrote this last January:

‘Another regular fantasy of mine is to imagine having a studio space on a permanent/for life basis. Imagine just how brilliant that would be!’

So the will to move on is there – as is the opportunity, with sufficient space at home to set up a good, solid working area. I don’t yet know if it will turn out to be ‘a studio space on a permanent/for life basis’ – nor whether having studio space at home will actually work for me in the long run. But I’ll never know unless I try it – and what I do know is that it will save me money, hopefully some of which can go towards creating future work. I’ve been yearning to do some work around my late father, Alec, for example and would love to be able to make this in his beloved Scotland. I’m already fantasising about the absence of studio rent freeing me up financially and enabling me to afford a week or two in a quaint cottage, somewhere in an area close to where my Dad was born.

Back to reality, in the meantime … my studio lease expired on the last day of 2024, a year that’s brought some unexpected life challenges and one I wasn’t too sad to say goodbye to. I’m not sure how many of the challenges will dissipate in the future but I’m already looking at ways to ring-fence sufficient time for my creative practice.

First things first, though: leaving and emptying the studio in between Christmas and New Year meant literally dumping the stuff in one place at home. Anyone reading this blog will be very familiar with the regular use of the word ‘sorting’ in my vocabulary. It’s a huge part of the process for me – a continuous, ongoing one which, so long as I continue to work with found, ready-made objects, will always be a part of what I do.

Along the way, I’m constantly having to review what I can and cannot keep, specifically in terms of space and storage. The large 10×10 cabinet was a case in point and if space wasn’t an issue, I may well have held onto it. As it was, it was too large to fit into my home and I put out a general call to see if anyone could rehouse it. My artist friend, Elena Thomas responded and I was able to come to a brilliant arrangement with her. Elena has taken care of the cabinet on what could be a long term care basis, but is actually, more likely, to be permanent. Whatever it turns out to be, I’m hugely grateful to her for offering to take on a substantial piece of furniture at a point when I was thinking it might have to be chopped up for firewood!

Since last exhibiting 10×10 in 2023 as part of the Deptford X festival, my overriding feeling has been that I’ve gone full circle with the project and that it reached its natural end, especially given that it ended up at ArtHub studios again last year, where it was first introduced in 2008. But never say never, as they say – who knows what might happen and if I ever finally get around to writing up the many stories associated with 10×10 and ever make a real, hard push to get it more in the public eye, then maybe (just maybe) someone with time and money to invest, might want to revive it. For now, it’s in safe hands and I’m so relieved not to have to think about it any more.

My focus over the next few weeks will be on how much of the stuff I brought back from the studio will fit into the house and leave me with sufficient space to work in. It’ll be a slow process but I’m already feeling buoyed up by the fact that this is the first time in over seventeen years that I’ve actually managed to have everything in one place. It feels like a major achievement after many years of having the raw materials I use, scattered in various spaces – my sister’s attic, my friend’s garage – never quite sure where things were. This has improved massively over the years and my aim over the next few months is to continue with the process I started at the beginning of 2024 – a final thorough sort through of 100+ boxes, stored in my garden shed. I got as far as box 33 before a busy family time interrupted the process – just another 70 or so to go …

 

 

 

Life v Art: a postscript to my last blog post …

Reconcilation: reuniting, reunion, bringing back together again, pacification, resolution, appeasement, placating

I’ve read Anne Truitt’s ‘Daybook’ a lot over the past few years – it’s very much a ‘go to’ book for me. It resonates a great deal and is particularly relevant to my last post here which I wrote just a day or two ago …

‘Experience tells me that it’s best to just give into things – give up on plans to make any work until the proverbial storm has passed. But that’s all much more easily said than done, as so many artists know – that perpetual nagging feeling about wanting to be making work, versus the feeling that you ought to be somewhere else – a tension around what we should be doing, as opposed to what we want to do.’

Anne Truitt speaks for many artists – women artists and mothers, particularly. It’s an easy to read, accessible book, Truitt telling it like it is in all things associated with life and art – and the effort required to find a balance between the two – to excel at both, even.

 

Anne Morrow Lindbergh describes Truitt’s ‘Daybook’ as ‘a remarkable record of a woman’s reconciliation of art, motherhood, memories of childhood, and present-day demands.’

The word ‘reconciliation’ mentioned in Morrow’s quote (on the book’s front cover) resonated more than ever in a week of trying to bring together so many different strands of life – wanting to make work, to keep being an artist, alongside being as supportive daughter as I can to a currently unwell, elderly parent. Generally, to find a balance – to try and maintain an artistic practice at the same time as keeping up with everyday demands.