Threads

I’m experiencing a natural slowing down at the moment. 

Remember the slowing down that happened during that first covid lockdown? When we all stayed home and had time to appreciate what we had (those who did have a home, and those who were safe at home).

I know that this has been cause by my impending surgery and my need to prepare my home and garden, and my mental and physical state. I have not been spending much time in the studio (not least because the stairs are tricky some days). I don’t have a large project on the go at the moment, so there is a natural pause. I have cleared the decks for Alice (my daughter in law) to use the space while I am incapacitated for a few weeks. 

So I am doing gentle housework, garden pottering, and curating my home for gentle sitting when I get home. I’m deciding which books to take to hospital with me, as I will be in for two or three days… something easy and fluffy, and something to make me think a bit. I am actually looking forward to a period of enforced calm. 

The lack of the large looming project, and the winding down process has given me some time to consider what is next. I’m hoping there will be funding for a group project later in the year when I am up and about again, and I’m hoping to be able to take part virtually in the Juxtapose online events as I will have work there in June (but sadly will not be ready to fly there)

So I have things to read, to feed my thoughts during this furlough period… which could be a few months over the late spring and summer. Perfect timing!

I’ve picked up Dandelions again (by Thea Lenarduzzi). And have just finished off Object Lessons by Eavan Boland. Both books talk of childhood, family, and a sense of place that roots us… from very different angles, but they are both speaking to me. I’m always reading several books at once and these two, alongside The Disappearance of Rituals by Byung-Chul Han are providing much food for thought. My idea is that I will finish all three, then pick out a few passages to concentrate on in order to consolidate my own thoughts.

When that’s done I have a few more books to get to grips with, that I have, of course, already started reading/dipping into:

The Patterning Instinct by Jeremy Lent

Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

And I’m constantly dipping in and out of Lines and Correspondences by Tim Ingold.

I have a love of language and how it forms thought. And also a love of thought and how it forms language…

It’s been a while since I posted, a bigger gap than usual, so I felt the need to go back a few posts to see what I said, and where I was up to…

Weirdly, or maybe not so weirdly, I seem to be looking backwards, in order to move forwards.

I had a few hours out with Bill Laybourne, back to the village of my childhood, and we traipsed about in the woods on a beautiful sunny spring day. I took a few photos, hummed a bit, got the low branches snagged in my hair. I took two walking sticks, a fancy collapsible one I use all the time, and my Dad’s old wooden one, and I did manage to go a little bit off the path here and there. I remembered dens I had built and trees I had climbed. Bill recorded the sounds we encountered and the sounds we made, and the tunes I hummed to work with back in the studio.

There was something poignant and potent about going back to these particular woods in my current state, when the last time I was there, the only time I was ever conscious of my knees was if I fell and scraped them on the bark of trees and the forest floor. I was so conscious of my body this time. It was impossible to have an out-of-body experience. I felt super-conscious of all of my joints and the mental effort required to move efficiently and safely. (I must go back when I have had a new knee)

I picked just a few twigs from the floor while there, and back in the studio I tied them into a linen bound bundle to keep them separate from the rest.

I have also had an exhibition of my work at the RBSA. This time in the ground floor shop gallery. I was a bit unsure of it when I put it up, but when I took it down I was more sure that this was not the right place for it all. I didn’t really have any conversations with people that I wouldn’t have had in my own studio, or in my own circle. I don’t think it brought anything new to me. I sold two very small pieces, and once the VAT and commission have been taken, the income will not quite cover my parking fees.

I have been participating in Camilla Nelson’s online course Towards an Experimental Ecology of Line… this I didn’t expect to effect the work much, but I thought it would keep me thinking/making/writing over the period of my knee op and recovery. I’m not sure I have followed completely what I am supposed to, but it has so far kept me ticking along. It has been good to have conversations about the work in this environment, with strangers who are artists but did not previously know me or my work. Very fresh eyes. 

So although I am thinking there’s not much going on, when I come to write here, I realise there is, so I can stop worrying! I have sent off the rooty twigs to Stuart for the Juxtapose Art Fair in June, and Bill is working on the sound piece that goes with it. The Lines train of thought is chugging along and has generated new work that I think will be worth pursuing later on. 

Inspired in part by the twigs, the walk in the woods and the work by Helen Garbett and Bill Laybourne (Limpets Alive!) I find myself in need of a den… I think I will at some point build a real one in the woods, but I also want to draw one… I will need big paper again…

My operation for a total knee replacement is provisionally set for the end of April. I am on a wind down/up in preparation. I am trying to sort things in the garden that I won’t be able to do for a while after. I am batch cooking meals and freezing them for afterwards when I won’t want to or be able to stand and cook. And I have tidied up the studio and cleared the table and a couple of walls. I have said my daughter-in-law can use the space for a few weeks, but even if she doesn’t, I can go back into it with a clear head, to start that new big drawing.