ROCK 1 and 2 – Roz Cran: Artist in Residence

A lot of thinking. I put my thinking cap on. You are what you think. I think therefore I am. More round and round and round.

Space is what the Residency has given me. Space to think. Space in my head. Simple space. The circle. Made with a pair of compasses. Pale colour, watercolour. Sudden release from meaning.

Relief: room, space, silence.

When I go into Rock House today, I stare at the wall chart. And I think: ‘try again, fail better, try again, fail better, TRY AGAIN, FAIL BETTER’ after Samuel Beckett.

Three hours yesterday making the projector connect with my laptop. Twenty minutes today testing it out. It works. Blackouts are needed.

I try again on the wall sketchbook. I try not to think. To let it happen. To draw and write what I need to draw and write. It’s not working.

The sound piece is ready. All wired up. Will test it in the space next week. Earth:mother. The beat, the pulse, all seeing, all hearing, all ways there, all ways, all. It’s a loop.

ROUND AND ROUND WE GO. Enormous circle on the wall.

I have made one thinking cap. Thinking of making a few. You are what you think. Or not. Or.

ROCK postcards go up on a pillar. Still surprised at how many there are from my random collection of cards sent to me over the years. Rocks feature strongly. How much we attach to rocks. How attached we are to rocks.

“The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” Picasso.

Stapled large paper to the wall. Started with a circle. Symbol of the earth. Spidergram. Mindmap of all the directions in which I am spinning. An attempt to ground it, or wall it in this case. Helps me to see the links, and ones I had not noticed before. Many more. More connected than expected.

Need time to consider.

Interview with Kate for the Hastings Independent Newspaper.

Laid out my collection of ROCK postcards, all these from my bag of cards kept over the years. So many rocks. Rocks are weighty. Hold memories, serve as boundaries, speak of solidity and past times, awe.

Play with the bag of hay I brought in. The smell of the fields.

I am seeking direction, in many directions.
I take photos of mosaics on shop entrances on the America Ground nearby, surprising how many remain.

I think about thinking, and start designing a thinking cap.

Sound: The earth. An old Greenham song echoes in my mind. I spend an afternoon with sound engineer son-in-law to make a looped cd. Be good to see how this works, very experimental (read: first try).

Smell: I buy a bag of sweet smelling hay. A smell of the good earth.

I draw some more insects. Co-habitants of the earth. Coincidentally I am reading Clarice Lispector: The Passion of G H. This centres on the narrator coming face to face with a cockroach. I must draw some more.

Enough. I have another morning in Rock House today.

Stuck in the mud yesterday. Immobile. No way out of the mud. My legs would not move. Nor my head.

Struggle is creative. Forced to focus in this tight spot, I went in circles, searching for my inner earth, my inner spider, my inner beetle.

I found my huge roll of paper. On this can go the spidergram, my mother spider, mother beetle.

Stop creeping about, creep all over, stretch, stride.

MUD. Remember the mud pies of childhood. I need a door to the earth, the centre of the earth. Look up Jules Verne. Great balls of fire. Great balls hanging.