Threads

I’ve noticed on these blogs it’s not just me that lurches from the aesthetic, to the theoretical, philosophical, then over to the practical, material problem, then back to the aesthetic and round we go again. It’s like spinning plates.

Over the last few days I’ve been trying to resolve a physical problem, a practical glitch that has been annoying me for ages, without compromising the aesthetics, or the philosophical.

That old chestnut: How do I display these items of clothing?

Folded in a drawer? X

Hanging from a coathanger? X

Making my own abstracted coathanger… NNNOOOOOO! XX

Hanging from nylon line? X

Tied to the wall with cotton tape…. Erm…. Closer, but X

On a plinth? X

On a doll? Definitely not XXX

On a shop mannequin? XXXXX

All the above add things to the clothes that I don’t want to be there.

All I want is a means of looking at the whole garment 360º, but I don’t want to add a person, or something that can be read as a person. Or for that matter the lack of a person, such as you get with a hanger, or the drawers.

Tying the things slightly away from the wall was almost there, but I need to see the back. Also, using cotton tape was nearly, but not quite. I liked the way it echoed the materials, but didn’t interfere… too much…

I’ve made a prototype. I don’t know if this is a resolution, but it feels closer than I’ve been before. If I’m to submit any of these items for my final show, I need it to be what I want it to be.

It feels nice, it fits. It has the same materiality as the items of clothing, I’m reading it as a blank. But is that wishful thinking, because I’ve been here before. It feels right to me, but what do I know eh?

So if you read this and you have an opinion, please let me know, I need a group crit!

• 
• 
• 
• 

For the last 25 years or more I have had 2 drawings hung on my sitting room wall. When we decorate they might get moved about a bit, but they always go back up. They are so familiar I forget to regard them. I did them when I was about 17 years old. Pretty much copied from photos of my mother as a child. I’ll try to take some decent photos of them to post here if I can.

All those years ago, when I was almost the same age as my son is now, when my mother was the same age that I am now, I took the only two photos of her as a child and painstakingly copied them from the 2”x3” prints to drawings about 6”x9”. I have no recollection of why. I have a vague memory of my foundation course tutor liking them, but can’t recall why.

All these years later, I am embroidering shadows onto clothes that have a similar vintage to those worn by Mum in the drawings. For the last two years I’ve been doing work about parents and children, and only now have noticed these drawings and considered they may have a significance.

Probably not, a “red herring” perhaps?

When discussing it in emails with another artist she said:

“In those drawings somewhere is the kernel of what you do and why. You just need to find it…

They appear to be about childhood memories; processed as a child, from a child’s perspective…

They are also vintage, retro, nostalgic, safe in that they are at one remove from today. They have happened….”

Someone else said (it was Bo, he’s complaining I didn’t credit him)(excellent use of the pun, thank you): “it’s just a stitch in time”

Am I looking back or forward? As a parent or child? Some of my work seems to do both. I need to think about whether this is ok, or if I need a clearer standpoint.

I can’t believe I haven’t seen these drawings before now. Turns out I’m really UNobservant.

I’ve got no one to blame but myself, I’ve made my own brain hurt.

• 
• 

I’m not sure to what extent one should use ones art or ones blog as personal therapy. I have used my work as a way of exploring the relationship between me and my mother, and me and my children. It snuck up on me, but it’s there. Certain behaviours, reactions, opinions become clear. The reasons for decisions made have become obvious. I find I look upon certain things with a kinder eye. This may not be in the work I show (or maybe it is) but it is definitely in the thought processes. If I’ve come to any conclusion along the way it’s that parents do their best (sweeping, generalism I know). Also, awareness is good. I react to my children in this way because… My parents did this because… I work like this because… I teach like this because…

However… sometimes things pop up in my work that I haven’t seen. Unbidden. Exposing things that I might have preferred to be left hidden if I had been aware.

As part of the show ‘n’ tell Wednesday I played my new bit of song. I chose to play just me singing, because I hadn’t yet edited all the other sounds around me.

This is the first piece of work I have shown anyone that is just me. I hadn’t noticed, it snuck past me, but not past eagle-eyed Bo. Everything I have done so far is a collaboration: with someone else, someone else’s clothing, someone else’s words, sounds from another place, something with a history.

This 2 minute recording was me. My words. My voice. My incompetence. I was fine until he told me, but now that’s a bit scary. I’m not ready for it. I shall chop it up, mix it up, in the hope no one else notices that I’ve exposed myself. Not a pretty sight.

The inevitable has occurred. All that knowledge about ox-bow lakes will have to move out of my head to make space for everything else that’s going on. I need to wipe all extraneous files from my hard drive and find extra working memory. My processing speed is abysmal.

We didn’t have any seminars today, so we sat around, drinking tea and yacking. We had a small, impromptu show n tell session. Two hours later I’m in danger of over-heating and feel I should sit with my head between my knees.

I’ll not discuss my fellow student’s work-in-development here, that’s up to him, But when I went in on the train this morning, I was under the impression I was in a bit of a lull, rut, or similar (ox-bow lake? Damn it, I’ll have to put that bit back in).

I have recorded a bit of singing. It’s patchy, the levels are all over the place as it’s been recorded in bits then chopped about and put back together in a different order. It’s come about over a fortnight. The reason I did it was I wanted a bit of a song in another sound piece… the one I crashed together after seeing Bhimji’s “Yellow Patch”. So bits of a song turned into a whole song.

So I’m back in that place again. Intention has changed the work, then the work has changed the intention. I have a 2 minute raw song, just my voice… no sound… no music. So now I have to ponder its use again. Shall I turn it into a proper song, then chop it up to use in the other sound piece as my original intention? Shall I turn it into a proper song and have it stand as such? Shall I just re-record my voice so it is a bit more polished, but still just my voice? Shall I leave it as it is, a patchwork of time differentiated construction, where all the joins show?

Or shall I forget all about it safe in the knowledge that I know how ox-bow lakes are formed?

This is my 100th blog post. I feel it should be more momentous than this self-serving twaddle.

Kate (see comment on last entry)has just asked about the combination of working on the art, and writing in the blog. There is a curious relationship and balance between the two that I wouldn’t have thought about before actually experiencing it. If you aren’t doing much art, there’s nothing to write about. If you are doing lots of art, there isn’t the time. I am currently appreciating the fact I can do both, and the attached photo shows how it is physically possible in the same small space, while ignoring gardening and housework. I didn’t tidy the table, or arrange it artistically, I left my grubby tissues and makeup bag.

Jo Farnell – /p/1708896/

also uses the writing of the blog to explore her work in similar way to me I think. When I read her blog, and see her work, although not like mine, I can follow the thought patterns that get her where she is. This is the fascination of blogging. I either read it because it is like a foreign climate, strange and incomprehensible

David Riley

(www.a-n.co.uk/p/1101656)

and Anthony Boswell

(www.a-n.co.uk/p/1800346 )

make my brain hurt, but I go back again and again. Or sometimes it’s like being at home, there are echoes of my life, that reassure me:

Kate Murdoch,
(www.a-n.co.uk/p/1689794)

Julie Dodd,
(www.a-n.co.uk/p/648002

Franny Swann,
(www.a-n.co.uk/p/564556

Sophie Cullinan
(www.a-n.co.uk/p/1147789)

The process of writing helps the process of thinking. And although I also write in my sketchbook, the knowledge that this has an audience makes the process of choosing the words different. I think more carefully about what i write here, so that makes it different. I also get responses, though not necessarily to that which i feel I need a response to. That also is informative. If I’m not making a strong enough connection to prompt a comment, perhaps it needs further thought… or I’m just talking garbage and people are politely ignoring me.

Whatever this blogging thing started out as, it isn’t that now. It has become part of the way that I work, so the thought that I might not have time to blog doesn’t come into the equation. If I’m working, I’m thinking, and if I’m thinking, I’m blogging.

So that means you’re stuck with me. But feel free to carry on ignoring me. It does me good!