Keeping It Going

In a conversation about our respective creative work with a couple of other artists on Tuesday night, I announced that I was going to take a break from writing this blog. I surprised myself a bit by saying it, but then it’s often said that the most meaningful conversations take place in the pub.

And anyway, it didn’t come completely out of the blue, it’s something that’s been on my mind – especially since that Monday, a couple of weeks ago when I took a long, hard look at my studio space – essentially, looking at how workable it is – or not, as the case may be. Such thoughts arose from a long nine hour stint of sorting, a nine hour stint of unpacking a whole load of things from boxes.

Unpacking the boxes is always exciting for me – I’ve held onto all this stuff for some reason or other, after all. And however many times I’ve seen them, most of the items unpacked from the boxes never fail to delight me. It’s through rediscovering them, that new ideas for making work often come up.

But it also creates mayhem and chaos and with just a few unpacked, the studio floor quickly becomes full, littered with books, objects, photos and clothing taken from the boxes. It’s always the way – by the time I’ve emptied just a fraction of them, there’s no spare floor space, no room to manoeuvre and making work of any sort is made completely impossible.

I’ve been in this situation a few times now; the only solution after sorting seems to be to repack things and re-stack the boxes in order to re-establish a space for making. There are times of course, when the sorting becomes a positive part of the whole creative process – when new ideas are formed.

At other times, though it’s felt like I’m quite literally shifting things from one place to another, without any clear sense of purpose. It’s what I call the hamster wheel scenario – going round and round in circles and crucially, not getting anywhere. This unpacking and repacking routine has started to feel increasingly pointless and dissatisfying.

Time at the studio is limited and precious enough as it is; I feel the need to find ways to make use of that time as effectively and as constructively as possible. My studio space needs to be made more workable and I need to have easier access to the stuff in storage. A studio visit from an artist on Thursday confirmed this; I couldn’t immediately put my hand to the glassware I wanted to show her and I felt frustrated about being disorganised in this way and even slightly unprofessional as a result. I was also included in a fun twitter exchange with some other artists at the end of this week just gone and felt equally as frustrated about not knowing where my handkerchief collection was so that I could get involved with some photo sharing.

continued …

Leaving a piece of work I made for the recent ‘Discernible’ show in the hands of the curators was, as I said, a new and interesting experience. Allowing ‘Other’ (see image) to stand alone, without any explanation about the narrative behind the work, was unusual for me. It feels ironic, retrospectively, that I asked for it be suspended, hanging in the air – just as I’d left the whole concept that lay behind it; hanging, unsaid & unspoken.

I also let go of ‘It’s The Little Things’ when it was installed in the Kaleidoscope gallery in Sevenoaks last Friday, on the third leg of the This ‘Me’ of Mine touring exhibition.

In Deptford and in Folkestone, I’ve been there to install my work for the exhibition. I didn’t even question whether I should be there; it felt like a given. This time round, however, I made a decision – to be practical about the implications of being at every installation set-up and to try and let go of controlling the installation of my work. It wasn’t easy, but I decided to hand it over to the capable hands of the curator, Jane Boyer – alongside a photograph for guidance of where the various bits and pieces should go.

‘It’s The Little Things’ is composed of a number of small things rescued from my Nana’s home, placed onto shelves and a mirror frame set on a plinth. The objects are pretty precariously balanced and it takes a while to set them up and get the things looking the way I want them to. I’ve managed to spend a good hour or so building and then just generally tinkering with the various objects during installation in the last two venues – making sure they’re ‘just so.’

Apart from a couple of text queries from Jane and then, very thoughtfully, a photo of the installation completed by her, I haven’t seen my work in its finished state. I’ve missed being involved in installing it this time round, if truth be told. The process of placing the individual objects is the part that I love – it’s what feels crucial to me in terms of how the final piece of art work is realised. I enjoy it probably more than anything else I do in my creative practise.

But if one of the driving forces behind my work is to continue to be about letting go, then handing over the responsibility for installing it is a necessary part of that. Someone once told me that he felt I lost something quite crucial in my work when I started ‘sticking things.’ It’s an observation that has stayed with me. But in practical terms, I think I may need to reconsider how I present the assemblage pieces I create in the future. If they’re not fixed in place, they may be fine as they are in the studio but not so fine if they need to be transported and installed by someone else. It’s all been a bit of a learning curve.

I hadn’t intended to go to the Kaleidoscope gallery in advance of tomorrow evening’s launch night, but as the time approaches, I’ve realised there’s a part of me that’s keen to be there to make sure the work is exactly how I’d like it to be. This is not a reflection on the curator – but as I said, the placing of the objects is everything to me. If I don’t do it, am I really the artist?

Letting go, it seems, has its limits!

The space for comments on these blogs is where the real conversations between artists take place and is for me, one the most useful parts of maintaining a blog here. I really appreciate other artists taking the time to interact, all adding to the overall feeling of being connected and not alone in experiencing the many highs and lows often associated with being a practising artist.

Stuart Mayes left a comment on a recent post I wrote. His comments are always upbeat and positive and I’ve been an admirer of Stuart’s work ever since I first encountered it here, via his ‘Project Me’ blog on Artists Talking. Consequently, I’m always pleased to read Stuart’s take on any of the issues I raise.

He left this comment on my blog last week:

‘Your question about how much, and what, to reveal is interesting. For me it is often a question in relation to a fear of being judged – if I say something personal will it change how someone looks at my work, could I come across as frivolous or silly, or equally as someone trying too hard to seem intellectual …’

I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the past few weeks – about how honest – I mean, really honest – we’re prepared to be, ‘for fear of how it might impact on the way our work is perceived,’ as Stuart says. Much as I’d like to think that being aware of a readership didn’t affect things, I know that the reality is that I have become more conscious of what I reveal.

For some weeks now, there’s been a strong parallel running between the recent prolific sorting out and de-cluttering I’ve been doing and my feelings about maintaining this blog; a correlation between the actual physical act of sorting, running alongside the sorting of my emotions. If each object taken from storage means (at least) something to me on an emotional level, then that’s an awful lot of feelings to deal with. So many questions have been raised in the process – what do I want to keep – quite literally, of the objects from mycollection – versus what do I want to give or throw away? Like-wise, how much do I wish to keep to myself, versus how much am I happy to reveal? The private versus the public. How much do I share? How much do I keep to myself? It’s back to that question again, one that keeps cropping up.

I closed the last post on the subject of letting go – leaving behind, relinquishing. It’s a theme that’s deeply immersed in my work and I’ve written already about how it felt hard to let go of the second piece of work I submitted for the ‘Discernible’ show. It’s called ‘Other’ and is composed of three bubble-gum pink plastic people sitting high up on a perch in a cage. All three of them are closely seated together – but, while two of the figures, the man and woman, have their arms wrapped around each other, there’s an air of isolation about the third figure – a man alone, shoulders hunched, isolated, in spite of his close proximity to the other two.

There is a narrative in the piece, but I’ve chosen not to reveal it. I’m letting go of a piece of work and allowing it to stand alone – no stories attached, and no request for any participation other than to observe. In this respect, it’s an interesting and very different experience for me.

See Stuart Maye’s blog here:

www.a-n.co.uk/p/377860

Continuing on from my last post around the theme of identity, I want to share my thoughts about my latest piece of work, ‘Mirror Mirror’ which was inspired by my sons. I dropped it off this morning, as part of two pieces I’m submitting for an exhibition in the gallery attached to my studio in New Cross.

My sons are identical twins and it felt particularly apt to me for them to be at the pv of This ‘Me’ of Mine last week in Folkestone, an exhibition whose main premise is around identity – and particularly around the changing face of identity through the impact of social networking. It’s a theme close to the heart of the curator, Jane Boyer and a symposium on the effects of social networking on identity has been organised for later on in the year when This ‘Me’ of Mine travels to Ipswich. I’m already looking forward to hearing what the ‘experts’ have to say – my sons are teenagers and spend a lot of time on social networks – and, there’s no denying, I do, too.

To write about what self and identity means for identical twins (and for me as the Mother of them), would be another whole post – and some! But in relation to the ‘Mirror Mirror’ piece I’ve just completed, I was reminded of something significant a worker at a day care nursery told me some years ago. The boys were around three years old and playing in a specially adapted sensory room, with mirrors, coloured lights, music and so on. One of my sons was asked who it was he saw reflected back to him in a mirror, at which point he said his brother’s name. Apparently, when pushed, he was determined – the reflection in the mirror was emphatically not him, it was his brother. I remember feeling quite perturbed by that. How must it feel to not truly perceive yourself as a single entity?

I’ve called the piece ‘Mirror Mirror’ which of course, also relates to the one on the wall into which the wicked Queen asked the question: ‘Who’s the fairest of them all?’ That’s a question in itself for identical twins, given that most peoples’ response to them is that they look ‘exactly the same.’ For the record, they don’t!

‘Mirror Mirror’ has been made especially for Zeitgeist Art Project’s (ZAP) annual exhibition and the title and concept is my response to this year’s title, ‘Discernible.’ A dictionary defines ‘discernible’ as:

clear, obvious, apparent, plain, visible, distinct, noticeable, recognisable, detectable, observable, perceptible, distinguishable, appreciable, discoverable

Are the two male figures in this piece identical? Are there any distinct marks that differentiate them from each other? Are they discernible? When they look in the mirror, what do they see?

The questions go beyond the visual, of course. It’s obvious but true – because they look the same, doesn’t mean they are the same. They are individual people with their own unique personalities and thought processes. And yet, ‘Are they different in personality?’ is one of the leading questions I’m frequently asked whenever I introduce my sons.

The second piece of work I’ve submitted for ‘Discernible’ is fittingly called ‘Other.’ I have more to say about this piece in terms of how difficult it felt to let it go, what price to put on it and so on. More of that another time, however …

So much of my commitment to writing this blog is also given over to responding to and leaving comments on other artist/blogger’s posts. It’s formed an ongoing, reciprocal exchange and it’s the interactions with others that have contributed to the strong sense of community I’ve felt here, on Artists Talking. Leaving long written responses on Jean McEwan’s blog the other day and more recently on Marion Michell’s, it struck me how much like real-life, two way conversations it felt – the sort I might have over a drink in the local pub. Twitter has sometimes had the same impact.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about the effect social networking has had on my own creative practice. Eighteen months or so ago, I first made the decision to start a blog, to continue to post images of my art on Facebook and to get involved in Twitter. It’s undoubtedly time consuming and I frequently wonder whether my time might be put to better use. But it’s led me to some amazing, far reaching connections with other artists and more recently, it’s led to being involved as one of fifteen participating artists in an exhibition, This ‘Me’ of Mine, of which identity is the main focus.

The This ‘Me’ of Mine exhibition is a long-running project initiated by artist and curator Jane Boyer. Jane writes about the importance of on-line communication in relation to the curatorial process: ‘I live in a remote area of south west France, so nearly all my communications are done digitally – it is necessary for my daily functioning! However, it also became the structure of the whole project.’

Being a part of the show has meant thinking still deeper about the impact of social networking – the overall premise of this blog after all, is looking at how much maintaining it might affect my creative output.

Yesterday evening I was at the second launch night for the exhibition, This ‘Me’ of Mine in Folkestone. I was struck by how many people I ‘knew’ solely through the Artists Talking blogs and via Twitter. The same applied to the pv night at the APT Gallery in Deptford when This ‘Me’ of Mine was launched for the very first time.

Despite Jane having created a solid, online group identity for us over the past year, it’s the first time that some of the fifteen participating artists had met face to face and had any direct interaction with each other. This in itself fascinated me because, despite Twitter photographs and Facebook images giving some hint of who we are, the majority of us had never properly met. This of course is all relevant and highly pertinent to the main emphasis and focus of This ‘Me’ of Mine – who we are as individuals, how we define ourselves; how we present ourselves on social media, how we present ourselves as artists; how our artwork defines us and so on. How different are we in real life from our on-line personae? How does the on-line ‘Me’ compare with the actual ‘Me?’

And how much of ‘Me’ is affected by those who surround us – by what other people bring to us?

I had a fascinating conversation with an artist recently, the conversation starting with her apologising for perhaps, appearing too forward and ‘over familiar’ with me whenever we met.

‘It’s just that I feel I really know you from your blog and feel like we’re good friends – but then I realise I hardly know you at all!’

I’ve thought about this conversation a lot ever since. Being open and honest and wearing your heart on your sleeve inevitably leaves you more open to the possibility of feeling vulnerable and exposed.

It’s a little late probably, for such ruminating as over the past year of writing about my experience of being an artist, I’ve already shared some quite personal information about myself. Not consciously – it’s just that I’ve used the blog primarily as a space for self-reflection about what it really feels like to be a practising contemporary artist – a relatively new one at that, self- taught and somewhat naïve. My feelings consequently, have often been very much on the surface, leading to some quite frank and personal revelations. I’m not sure yet where all this thinking is leading me but I do know when I’m beginning to tire of my own voice …

Yet again then, I find myself feeling the need to get on with creating some new work.