As I got off the train last night it struck me that if I am serious about wanting part-time teaching then I need to make myself more relevant. It was a somewhat sudden and unbidden thought and I am wondering now what I might exactly mean by it. Standing up after three hours sitting on the train it occurred to me how, in every industry, those who get employed are the ones with the most relevant skills. Simple, and obvious, as it sounds it was something of a revelation to me when I applied it to working at an art school.
I had just done two days teaching in Gothenburg and really enjoyed it. It is the kind of work that I would like to have regularly, even permanently. So taking my shockingly simple new insight (!) I need to ask myself what would make me a relevant member of a teaching department?
Writing now I wonder if this ‘relevance’ has a full and round form, at the moment I do not feel so full and round – well not artistically! The last year and a half has been full of new experiences and input, not least generated through my introduction to the field of artistic research, and my time in technical workshops at Mejan. And at the same time I have hardly been in my own studio and feel very distant from the work and materials that lie abandoned there. It is as though some kind of re-balancing needs to occur.
What I like about the term ‘relevant’ is it’s contingency (“contingentness”?). Perhaps it is not so very different from ‘best’. But if it helps me focus and order myself, and indicates areas where I need to brush up my competence(s), then it could be very useful and productive. On a very personal level I find the idea of being ‘The Best’ quite difficult, whereas being the ‘most relevant’ is much more appealing!
It is exactly four weeks to the opening of the show at Mejan. In the next week or so I want to decide what I will show and how. Tomorrow I will attempt another plaster cast as I am still not happy with how they are turning out. The problem now seems to be my mixing, the question is whether I have time to learn how to mix plaster well. Looking at the surface of the most recent cast – which thankfully hardly leaked at all – I think that the plaster was both too thick and not sufficiently blended. The sculpture tutor suggested that I trim down the plaster jacket of the mould, stop using bolts to hold it together and instead use cling wrap and tension belts, judging by the first attempt this seems to work.
I can hardly believe that eight months after starting I am still struggling to make a plaster cast – something that I imagined I would have achieved within weeks. Of course I have achieved a great many other things in the mean time, most of these however have not resulted in anything physical, any objects, any art. I have to trust that this year on the project programme will bear fruit in the future!
