Maturity. I started this blog as part of a re-engagement with my practice, now I feel that my practice and I are on the brink of a significant shift. It’s exciting and a little frightening. I know I’m resisting it a little – I don’t want to give up the security of knowing what I’m doing and who I am but I know that it’s inevitable. I’ve out grown the idea that I need to try to be an artist, now I just need to get on with being the artist I am. (It’s a bit like wanting to be an adult when I was a teenager – how desperate and un-adultlike I was in my attempts to be seen as one.) Not only am I coming out as a sculptor I’m going through some kind of artistic puberty too.
I often think of the comment by that young art historian at the Hoffman Collection in Berlin – something along the lines of:
No artist makes meaningful art before 40
Perhaps it is a little crude, however it’s only now that I’m starting to feel adequately equipped to let art ‘happen’ rather trying to ‘make it’ (to paraphrase Donald Judd).
DO IT!
PUT AWAY FOOLISH THIINGS
Business Rates: Council have decided that the bill will be sent to the Landlord. We have calculated what % of the total floor area we’re each responsible for and have sent those figures to the Landlord. Hope that we are eligible for small business reduction.
Had water running down the wall in the storm on Monday. It’s not a good sign. The water appears to be coming in between a concrete lintel and the brickwork above it. It wasn’t just my studio but along the lintel in the corridor and fire exit too. We’re used to the roof leaking, now it’s the walls too!
It was rather beautiful to watch, that's the paradox – beautiful and wrong
I’m a sculptor
I’ve been in denial.
Once again I’m the last to realise something that everyone else seems to have known for years.
It almost feels like coming out all over again.
This afternoon I allowed myself to play with materials and it was GREAT.
Making and doing – seeing what happens when I put things together.
Perhaps I’ve got to a point where I’m sufficiently confident with my preferred range of materials to play again, to make things that I don’t already know, to make things that are beyond me.
Black glitter on the steps of a ladder.
I can speak of some of the things it brings to mind, but I can’t sum it up in one clear concise phrase – brilliant.
I want a bigger cleaner lighter warmer studio.
I need a bigger …..
Things are going to be alright.
Afternoon at the studio – really wanted to be there after so long away, but didn't know quite what to do with myself.
matters arising:
1) What to do with things/studio projects that aren't finished?
2) What to do with things that are finished and un-shown?
3) What to do with materials that I've collected but not yet used?
I decided, as I walked around Frieze, that by the end of the year I want to be in a position to show my work to some galleries. Ideally I'd like some curators, gallerists and dealers to come to the studio.
I notice that there are quite a few unfinished studio projects around the place (studio, not Frieze). I think I want to work out which ones to continue with and which to shelve for the time being. It would be good to have a show to work towards – perhaps I could imagine that I have, and see if that focuses me on producing a coherent body of work …
Next time I'm at the studio I might see what happens when I start putting some of the unfinished projects alongside some of the finished (but un-shown) ones …
Weird sense of excitement and relief.
I’ve started work covering a fellow artist’s research sabbatical. I’m just waiting for Human Resources to make me a formal offer for the fixed term contract, other than that it’s all going well. Well, it will be once IT come and update the computer I’m working on, connect it to the network and the printer! I think I’ll really enjoy it.
I’ll still keep on with one of my current part-time jobs, though I’ll be working more weekends. This is great – Perhaps it’s due to my Protestant(?) work ethic but I know I’m much more likely to go the studio on a weekday than on a Sunday. So working alternate Sundays rather than Mondays means I’m likely to spend Mondays in the studio. The more Monday to Friday days I spend in the studio the more I feel like an artist.
So this is the last of my six-day working weeks. I’ve only done it for three weeks but I’m exhausted. Perhaps starting Swedish lessons at the same time has been a bit much (that and the fact that I do three jobs over those six days – not counting trying to keep an eye on my practice).
The other evening I realised that one of things I really enjoy about my Swedish class is that it has nothing to do with art. It’s not visual at all. After all these years it’s refreshing to do something that obviously uses a different part of my brain. Until I started these classes going to the gym was about the only thing I did that wasn’t directly visual or visual related. After art school it’s so hard to go to a gallery, museum, film, theatre show, shop(!) without it somehow being part of my work or research. It’s great doing something that uses different skills – where how I sound and what I remember are more important than how something looks and how it makes me feel. Right now Swedish is beautifully abstract to me.
Brusand: Day 5
Åpening av "Brief Encounter" billedkunst utstilling: Spend the morning making final adjustments and getting great pleasure out of washing the gallery windows! The landscape suddenly looks considerably more vibrant.
The bad news is that there are engineering works on the train line and a portion of the service from Stravanger is replaced with a bus. It’s just one of those unforeseeable things.
At 14.00 on the dot Jens and Karen arrive, followed by another ceramicist – one who they used to share a studio with. Along with other artists and families out enjoying the great weather, two members of train staff come to see the show. The man is very intrigued and seems to enjoy it, the woman admits to having more traditional tastes.
The children who come really engage with the trains and are happy to sit watching and waiting for when the trains nearly meet. The technology is very simple and the controller unit is not terribly sophisticated, this means that it’s virtually impossible to get the trains to run at the same speed. There’s something unexpectedly pleasing about the trains not running at identical speeds – it makes their occasional ‘brief encounters’ seem more significant. Visitors watch and wait for the trains to pass side by side – some made predictions about when this would happen, there were even a few cheers of “hurrah” when they did!
The afternoon was very enjoyable, it was good to meet other artists and makers. I had long and interesting conversations with two English men who had moved to Norway (one 25 years ago, the twelve).
I want to finish by saying thank you to Liz Croft and Jan Kjetil Bjorheim at Nordisk Kunst Plattform. It was a real pleasure to work with them, and I wish them every success with the project – I look forward to seeing how it develops (they have so many ideas!).
Brief Encounter is both site specific and personal – for me it feels like an important work. Something has shifted. I want to develop work that while embodying personal and social content manages to catch me out and operate as an art work – something that I can’t simple explain, or possibly even fully understand ….
