Keeping It Going

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.

Life has truly got in the way of being able to make any work lately, both in terms of physically making it and having the headspace to even think about it. Hospital visits and helping in the organisation of subsequent care at home has taken up pretty much all of the past six weeks – a lot of time that would otherwise, have been spent in the studio. 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. I received a really encouraging text from an artist friend this week. She knows I’ve had a lot on my plate recently and reassured me: ‘The best work happens alongside your real life and is a part of it, not something that happens by following a template.’

And Paul Cezanne had this to say:

‘Life is art. Art is life. I never separate it.’

Which leads me to thinking about the run up to ‘Hidden,’ a group show in which I have my work, ‘Us Too’ included. The work is composed of a group of ready made ceramic figurines, representing older women. Their mouths have been covered with Elastoplast – ‘silencing them and their calls for help’ as I wrote in the description I sent to Amy Oliver, curator of The House of Smalls art gallery in Stockbridge, Edinburgh.

Packing up my work came in the very midst of regular daily visits to a hospital ward for elderly women and it felt very much a case of life reflecting art/art reflecting life; I saw many of the women on the ward reflected in the silenced, repressed figurines I’d parcelled up and sent to Amy. And though I can’t be certain of it, my impression was that those women on the ward with no advocacy, whether consciously or not, were more likely to be ignored and have their needs listened to. This is an observation, not a criticism (I have nothing but admiration for NHS staff working under such pressure), but my experiences on a geriatric ward for women over a two week period, meant I couldn’t help but think about older women in society at large and how they are so frequently ignored, marginalised and overlooked.

‘Hidden’ is a group show which includes the work of 60 women artists. Launched to coincide with White Ribbon Day (on November, 25), it features work responding to issues around domestic violence. If you happen to be in the Edinburgh area between now and December 22nd, do try and get along to see it.

For more information about ‘Hidden’ please click on the link below:

https://www.thehouseofsmalls.art/hidden

The power of objects …

‘Here today …’ was the title of a piece of work I made in memory of my late grandmother. It included a used powder compact and eyeshadow, alongside a 1930s hand mirror on a bedside cabinet. I wrote about it at the time (in 2016) and have included an extract from a blog post below:

‘It’s reminded me also that out of the dozens of items I’ve sorted through these past few days, some stand out as truly special. The hand mirror, the used make-up palettes, the vintage silk flower, which ‘Here Today…’’ is made up of, are classic examples of objects like this – they demonstrate perfectly for me the incredible power of objects, how deeply attached we can become to them and the extremely powerful emotions they can evoke.

‘Here Today’’ is composed of objects that belonged to and were actually handled by my late Nana; she left her mark on them, and while they are still here, my Nana no longer is. This small assemblage of objects conjures up for me something that I write a lot about here, a theme that is at the core of my practice – a fascination with the contrast between the permanence of objects and the fragility of life.’ (2016)

r

rip Maisy, our beloved pet cat for 17 years

Our pet cat Maisy’s water bowl has brought up similar feelings these past few weeks – a sharp realisation that although the bowl was still there, as a physical thing, Maisy no longer was. It’s been a sad time, saying farewell to a pet who brought so much pleasure to us all as a family over the years. The house was never empty, even when we were all away from it and I always found something quite comforting in that.

The link between material objects and grief is undeniable: Maisy left her mark on an otherwise, unexceptional object – a white ceramic water bowl with CAT imprinted on it. It was unmistakably hers and once she died, it became charged with the strength of our love for her. It didn’t have any use any more and accepting that, was a part of accepting that Maisy, after 17 years of being with us, no longer existed.

Last time I wrote here, I mentioned feeling pleased that I no longer had to pay for expensive storage space – I’d managed successfully, to fit everything that wasn’t needed in my studio into my garden shed. Money aside, commercial spaces clearly have their upside, however – ie. they’re watertight and don’t let the rain in! Cut to, what happened in the garden shed …

Prior to this recent heatwave, it’s been an exceptionally wet few months – the wettest May on record for decades, in fact. The shed roof hadn’t held up to not letting the rain in and one storage box in particular, was completely water logged.

I threw away everything that wasn’t salvageable – wads of paper, collected from vintage magazines over many years – newspaper cuttings, extracts from Mills & Boon books and so on, all drenched in rainwater, congealed and stuck together. Nothing could be rescued and until I found it in this state, I’d forgotten how precious the things in this particular box were. It was hard to come to terms with and for the first time ever, I shed tears over the loss of material things.

I’ve been quite philosophical about things getting broken/spoiled in the past but that’s probably because of the sheer amount of stuff I had – you can’t miss what you didn’t know you had, after all. But after years of sifting and sorting and shedding and reducing stuff, what I do have in my collections has become more precious. I know more now about what’s in the boxes and consequently, I’m more emotionally attached, more intimately connected to the objects and paraphernalia. Rather than a huge, random collection of things, I’m now looking at objects that have been carefully selected – the things I really like and more importantly, things that I see as having potential for creating new work. I was excited by a lot of the finds in a recent dive into the archive – the box containing the lamb related stuff, a case in point.

It’s hugely ironic that, in this particular case, the collections were based around the theme of ‘Poor Lamb.‘ There were some iconic images – kept for years and some going as far back as 1989 when I lived in the States. Women portrayed as ‘victims ‘ has always been a theme of interest to me and I’d drawn together many images of the various ways in which the subject could be represented. I find the word victim problematic, particularly used in the context of women, and I was looking forward to investigating it further via the assorted paraphernalia I’d collected. The presentation of women portrayed in 1950/60s magazines seemed to primarily focus on their vulnerability and powerlessness; their weakness and fragility – ‘poor lambs.’ But that’s a whole other blog post …

ruined: reduced to a state of decay, collapse, or disintegration

having been irreparably damaged or harmed

Items ‘ruined’ in another box included four sewing box lids which I’d collected for their beautiful colours and satin textures, all of them conjuring up memories of my late Nana’s wicker sewing box. I’d planned to use them as part of an ongoing body of work, ‘Nana’s Colours’ but – saturated with rain water, the original colours had totally changed and the mould that had grown, formed a film of grey over the original satin fabric. In spite of my initial disappointment at finding them in this state, something stopped me throwing them straight in the bin – there was ‘something’ about them and so, I put them to one side. And when the sun came out, I put them out in the garden to dry.

There was a defining moment when I caught a glimpse of them on the lawn and realised that things I’d thought were potentially ruined, were in fact, rather beautiful. The sewing box lids summed up the ‘beauty in decay’ principle perfectly and when I sent photos to a couple of close friends and artists who confirmed my gut feelings about them, I knew something special had come out of the leak in the shed – I’d held onto them for a reason and I’m so glad I did. I took them to my studio the next day and propped them up on a shelf in the gallery space. Giving them space transformed them and I knew for certain at that point that I’d hold onto them – the water damage had given them a new layer of preciousness.

But that’s luck – I know it won’t always turn out this way and I’m taking no chances. I took action almost immediately to retrieve stuff that isn’t waterproof from the shed and it’s already taken me several days, with more to do. The long term solution of course, is to get the current shed completely sealed and waterproofed. In the meantime, I’m enjoying the process of reacquainting myself with objects that have been packed away, out of sight for many months. I’m getting to a point where I have virtually every single object listed and while I’m proud of that achievement, I’d still love to have these things at hand. It’s a tight fit in the garden shed and a lot of physical work’s required to access things. I should probably give up on it, but I still fantasise about having a studio that would provide sufficient space to accommodate all 100+ 30 litre boxes as well as space to work in …