Threads

Over the last week, I’ve met four people who have said they follow me on Instagram, and I’ve been really busy!

I couldn’t for the life of me remember being really busy, so I thought I’d take a look. Since the new year I’ve had covid, read some bits of some books, and read two whole, but very short books. I’ve written three blog posts, sharpened some pencils, done some drawing, put up a poster about the sewing circle I’m trying to get going, done a two hour improv workshop, posted a memory about work I did three years ago, and stuck some words to bits of paper.  Hardly two months work is it? What is it about social media that skews your life view so much?

Having said that, I am at the moment feeling rather weary. My joints hurt and there won’t be any relief from that for a couple of years probably by the time I get on the waiting list, work my way up it, get a new knee and then recover. This has made me very grumpy. I’m snappish, angry, sad, and in pain. Not the ideal headspace for making art. Most of the time I do try to push through, and distraction is actually the only thing that does seem to work. If I am doing something, talking to people and so on, I’m not thinking about it, and can be quite productive. The effect that has on the work I think, can be seen. But maybe that’s because I know it is there.

I have a couple of deadlines ahead, that I MUST meet. But today, I just don’t have the bandwidth, as the youngsters say. I do not have the capacity to sort out six of my drawings for an exhibition, attach hangers to the back, and take decent photos of them to send in. Today, actually I want to nap, in between sleeps. Then wake up for a little rest. I want to bang out a bit of sitting.

Tomorrow of course, might be different. Tomorrow I might be rested enough, have the energy, and the renewed determination to do my hair, maybe make up, put on some nice clothes and just get on with it. I seem to spend a lot of my time telling myself to get on with it. My theory being that if I stopped every time I was in pain, or tired, I would get nothing done at all. I want to be productive, creative, and be seen to be so. But sometimes… just some days… today… that work is too fucking hard.

Stone thinking…

I am satisfied with how the twigs sit now. I know what they are, where they came from in terms of my evolving practice, and I know what they’re doing, what they stand for and what I’m doing with them.

I can’t yet say the same for these stones.

As with the sticks, I start to get to know the stones by handling them and drawing them. Stones are connected to the earth the twigs emerge from, the roots surrounded them but do not penetrate them. These particular stones though have holes in them, worn by the power of water and sand and smaller stones, or the burrowing of sea creatures into softer parts of the stone… (these holes could support a plant… I might make it happen… )

Semiotically speaking the place these particular stones came from is not the same environment as the sticks… perhaps my mother was a stone and my father was a stick? Brought together by circumstance from 2000 miles apart… I am already seeking extra layers of meaning for myself. Maybe I do this because of that feeling of rootlessness? A need to create order from chaos?

I will continue to draw them… to see if they start to tell me more…

I’ve started to draw them together, I like how that feels and looks, and threading a stick through a hole in a stone feels like the natural thing to do…

(more…)

I haven’t quite started the new year as hoped… after four years managing to avoid it, we both ended up with covid after the new year. Really annoying, and it halted my plans to get back to the studio as soon as possible. But actually… as often happens, the changed plans threw up a whole new way of working from home for the duration of the virus at least. After a week from the first test, I have now tested negative, and I do feel mostly ok… so ten days on, I’ve set up a little WFH nest at the dining table.

I am trying to wrestle with a new way of drawing, spurred on by the twig work for Five Six Pick up Sticks, and the observational drawing. I’m trying to find a mid point, a balance between the observed and the imagined abstract, so there’s an unease somehow. This is hard to capture. And also hard to express using words. I have been using the word metaphor a lot. This isn’t really the right word, so I find myself thinking about semiotics. I realised that if I was going to bandy that word about then I probably needed to know what I was talking about. So, tied to the dining table, I hit the internet (after consulting a couple of friends) and ordered myself some books. In amongst the semiotics books, I also have a Teach Yourself Swedish book, and Kae Tempest’s On Connection. This might seem like an odd combination, but I am finding all of them are feeding in to how I see the work. Kae Tempest’s book is about connecting to one’s own creativity, and making connections with others, and the world. I am always saying my work is about relationships, but maybe connections is a better, more appropriate word?

I’m looking at what I make as signifiers of connection… and I’m reading about how the connections are there to previous work, even if they are not recognised by the viewers/listeners to my work. Sometimes I don’t even recognise them myself. But that doesn’t mean they’re not there… also… people bring their own connections… and they look at my signifiers and find their own signified answers… that I know nothing about.  The permanence or stability of these connections strengthen over time, with each repeat. Which brings me to the Swedish: it had been my intention, for when I visit Stuart Mayes later this year, to have a little polite Swedish to trot out to show I’d made an effort: “My name is Elena, two beers please!” You know the thing? But after a couple of weeks repetition about “pingvinen är skrämmande” on Duolingo, I felt this wasn’t enough, and bought myself a book to supplement the learning, and I am loving it.

I am Assembling Utterances… according to the small book about semiotics, there is a store cupboard of signs and language open all hours, for the language user to select from, to Assemble Utterances. So here I am…

• I am assembling new Swedish utterances…
• I am cutting up words from other sources (the ever-open store cupboard?) and reassembling them into new utterances. I am picking the words that attach themselves to existing thoughts, but that then get expressed in a different way.
• I am taking observed drawings, from my own store cupboard, then using what I have learned, to reassemble into new, drawn, visual utterances

I have absolutely no idea whether this really works for people who really know a lot about semiotics, but at the moment it doesn’t matter. It’s helping me get where I want to get. It is making connections between all these superficially unconnected things I do. Seeing things from a different angle always helps. Looking back on the question I constructed with Helen’s help (see post on 20th December 2023), I can now see how I might tweak this a little, as she had predicted, in the light of these latest Assembled Utterances.

Serious business…

One of the hardest things about being an artist is taking it seriously. By this I don’t mean being a pompous ass. I mean taking the work seriously. Understanding that however you regard yourself, the work has something to say and the endeavour is important. You might not be able to convey meaning immediately. You may not fully understand your own meaning immediately. But that the making of things is a language for expressing. The making of things is a way of learning its own language. It is a serious undertaking to conceive an idea and try to express it in a way you haven’t before (sometimes you discover someone else has… how maddening is that?)
Sometimes there is a glimmer of success. Now this doesn’t necessarily include critical acclaim, although sometimes it does and that’s like the holy grail of an artist’s career, both at the same time!
No… success… for me… is hitting a sweet spot you didn’t know was there but had hope.

The work I’m in the middle of at the moment is looking for the sweet spot between reality and abstraction. This pivot point holds a meaning for me that I hope to convey to others. I get close and then I ruin it. I want to do a drawing that is neither or both observational and abstract. I’ve been doing one or the other, while believing I can find a place on one piece of paper where both exist. I’m looking for an uneasy balance. I’m not sure I’ll ever find it. It may not exist. But I have to remind myself that the looking and making is important in some way. And there it is. Pompous ass-ness. Tricky huh?
I don’t think that I’m important or clever. In fact I’m far from either of those things. But there is a sort of remove in play here. The pursuit of art in its truth is humanity at its best. Art is the very best thing we can do. Again, I’m not the best, but this line of enquiry, in a language I barely understand, is worth pursuing. By me, by anyone who is compelled to do it.
I truly believe art is the opposite of war. War is a complete and utter breakdown in any and every sort of useful communication. War has given up trying. Art is a permanent, lifelong, human effort to communicate something human, to other humans, where other sorts of language have proved insufficient.

Elena Thomas, Artist.
Merry Christmas