New Year resolutions …
- play! … play is like joyful experimenting
- wonder! … wonder is like joyful thinking
- bank! ’Bank’ ideas – deposit them somewhere safe and withdraw them when appropriate. Remember to pay them interest!
These resolutions are more about the attitude with which I approach things than the things themselves. I see that they are a combination of shifts and refinements – developments and evolutions rather than radical change. Over the past few months several things have happened that lead me to reconsider … re-new … my ways of being and doing: not least of course the move from Enköping to Uppsala. I knew that I needed to do it, that I needed to make a change in my environment, but I wasn’t aware of how great an impact it would make … how much energy and excitement it would generate. The residency with its specific peculiarities, challenges, and experiences – reminded me that ’simply’ being and doing are part of the process, that everything is already here … rather than lying elsewhere … and it is about letting it out … rather than searching after it. Friends have sent links to great videos and podcasts by artists and about artists that re-assure me that a certain not-knowingness is essential – is what an arts practice is – that knowing comes through doing. Chatting with other artists at the studio, especially those who are successful with project and funding applications, has given me ideas about how to value and nurture the seeds and tender young shoots of new works.
I have also resolved to apply for things – I would like to say to apply for everything but that’s not realistic and sets me up for failure. But I certainly want to apply for exhibitions, public commissions, residencies, and funding. Making a last minute application for the local council’s arts grant (which I don’t expect to receive) was a very useful exercise in itself: from wondering how I would use such an award – either £10,000 or £3,000 – to realising it’s time to update my website. Perhaps it is my renewed energy and excitement that enables me to see the positive sides of making applications – their requests for both reflection and projection: who am I and where have I been, who do I want to be and where do I want to be.
Yesterday at the studio I worked on a piece that I should have delivered a year ago. I hear myself telling friends that is it so embarrassing to be so late with a work … I think that I am telling people so that I hear myself repeating the confession – implicitly telling myself to make sure that it never happens again. At the same time making the confession … verbalising it and airing it … stops it festering in my mind. Admitting my wrong-doing and accepting the consequences is necessary and (I hope) will enable me to move on aware of, but not burdened by, what I have done. The piece in question requires labour and time, and a degree of technical skill that I strive to achieve but which often eludes me. The residency and listening to other artists makes me remember that art is its own thing – that it doesn’t have to be beautifully crafted though it can be, that it doesn’t have to be understood though it can be, that it doesn’t have to be anything other than what it is … though it can be!
