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It can be hard to judge progress can’t it?

But there is indeed progress.

Every now and then, as well as keeping an eye on the project budget, I also take a look at the original time plan. Now of course, this year, that has had to be flexible. There are things, such as being in a small room with another person for a whole day, that have been impossible… so the plan has had to be nudged. But even allowing for these nudges, things have been done. I’ve been able to tick down the chart. Some of the proposed activity for May have been done, while some of the things for February and March cannot yet. But all in all, a satisfying move forward. Of course, just because I’ve been in the studio doing things, it doesn’t mean that I’m getting anywhere!

Some days have felt like a bit of a slog. Some days I’ve felt like a bit of a slug.

I’m not at the top of the hill exactly, but I have found a place at which to stop slogging, turn around and check out the view.

That bundle of sounds and half baked ideas have now started to resemble a body… it might be a flabby amorphous body, but a body nonetheless! I can cast an eye and an ear over what I (we) have produced and can see it’s shape. I can also see a few outliers, which I am happy to let fall by the wayside. I’m grateful to them, they got me here, but now I can see that some of the drawing ideas, and some of the sound ideas, are now surplus to requirements and can be put away (in a safe place, because you never know, right?)

I have a series of drawings ready for a final decision to be dry-mounted… My April exhibition has been put back to July, so I’m not getting them mounted yet, because I might change my mind about which to show… three months is a long time.

I also have three songs within a couple of tweaks of being able to venture out in a small way to a few trusted listeners for a sort of peer review.

I think this is good timing, because then, by the time MC and I can get into the recording studio together, the weather will be better, the days longer, and that body of songs will be a bit leaner… through that process of feedback, review, and parking for a while to then come back with fresh ears.

I have a small shiver of excitement about releasing Elena Thomas songs into the world…

As part of my Drawing Songs project (funded by Arts Council England), I’d like to set up a Listening Party for interested people to hear and see what I’ve been making so far…

Two questions:
1. Has anyone else done this sort of thing? if so, do you have any hints and tips or cautionary tales about how to go about it?
2. Want to join in?

It occurs to me that I have been in favour of The Backstop Position for quite some time now. Possibly 40 years? Probably since I became responsible for more than just myself. A proper job, a home to pay rent on, bills to pay etc. In my youth this might appeared in the guise of “What is the very least I can get away with?”/laziness… but I have come to realise it’s more complicated than that.

“What is the very least I can get away with?” is actually just a different angle on “What are my responsibilities?” And “Can I do what I have promised?” So what happens is, I make the promise, I take on the responsibility, knowing that it can be fulfilled probably fairly easily. This is the Backstop Position. Not being able to fulfil a promise, meet a deadline, meet a responsibility actually fills me with dread. I find it stressful. I also find it stressful when other people miss.

I used to find it stressful when my sons pushed deadlines for homework.

“Something dreadful might happen and you won’t have anything to hand in!”

I used to even teach to the backstop position, getting my students to just do SOMETHING so they at least had a bare minimum to hand in if some disaster befell them. As if, while under a bus, they’d plead with the paramedics “please… hand in my essay notes…..”

So wind forward a few decades and I’ve just noticed I am doing the same with my Arts Council project. I have promised to deliver the achievable… and now, at the half way point, I am feeling that if the disaster befell me, I could deliver what I promised. I can relax in that knowledge. If they asked for the results tomorrow I could hand in my essay notes, some drawings, some sounds and it would be good. I am a professional… I can hold my head high… self esteem… not letting anyone down… earning respect of my peers… blah blah blah… (for this you can also read in “Don’t get fired!”)

And now this is where the interesting bit happens…

I can do ANYTHING now. This is where the real interesting stuff happens. I have fulfilled the promise, so now my time is my own and I can be the pirate, the revolutionary, the hijacker, the maverick.

NOW I can make it better, and certainly more interesting!

So in some ways THIS is the beginning of the true project that will take things further forward into uncharted territory. THIS is where the fun starts. THIS is where the hard work starts in earnest… so let’s start ripping things up a bit…

The Edit

So much of what I present to the public relies upon the edit. The judicious pruning. I’m not sure what percentage of my time is spent doing this – either consciously or subconsciously. But each piece of work, be it writing (even here if you can believe it!), songwriting, sound work, music, and drawing, all rely on a series of decisions while making, naturally, but the subsequent conscious editing is also crucial.

I have a couple of exhibitions coming up. I’m feeling the pressure a little, because I believe both of them are important to my artistic development and yes, dammit, my career. (The Art Career may be the subject of another post, but not here).

So there’s a lot going on in the studio and in my head and in the business end. I have a large pile of large drawings to review. For this I have enlisted the help of friend and fellow drawer Sarah Goudie. She is wise and knowledgeable about the practice of drawing, and is good at prompting the right sort of thinking to get me on the edit track. For one of the exhibitions I need six pieces of work… I have decided five drawings and one sound piece/song. 

I’ve said here before that although I draw on large pieces of paper, I’m not always convinced that going large is a thing in itself. But there is something about endurance here. A large piece of paper covering the entirety of the table requires commitment, tenacity, stamina. The work I do on those large pieces are different to those I do in a sketchbook or even on a piece cut to A1 or A2. However, it doesn’t mean that everything on that tablecloth of paper is worth letting loose on the world. The judgement and edit, ultimately, is mine to make. The part of the brain used to make that decision is I think, different to the part that makes it. I recruit the help to nudge my brain into that different mode and function.

So last week the large sheets were laid out on the gallery floor and we talked about what I liked, what worked (and didn’t) and why. There’s a physicality to be engaged with, a scale that can’t exist on Instagram. One of the exhibitions is purely online – the other hopefully both real and online. There’s a dance isn’t there? We walk into a space and we are drawn to an image… we get closer… then we get right in there so we can see the quality of line/material and try to figure out what it is. This is before we try to guess or ascribe any meaning (the artist’s or our own).

So how much of this drawing holds the quality I am looking for, as the artist? Which bits then detract from that? Where do I make the cuts?

I had originally thought that the same work would exist in both exhibitions, but as the edit goes forward I realise that I have a different opportunity within the edit to push the work forward, to focus slightly differently for each. The online work is not about scale, so the hugeness of the paper (6’x4’?) Isn’t an issue. But I can get in really close to that quality of line here. 

For the first instance then, I will concentrate on the works for the gallery, and get them mounted, sliced accurately, and carefully, professionally scanned. These scanned images can then be used not just as details, but digital images in their own right that could be projected, or printed if required. And as such they become something different. Once I have the high resolution scanned image I can play again and edit again. From these original works I shall then select the pieces to feature in the online exhibition. This feels much more satisfactory than just pictures from a gallery, in a second choice venue. These will be designed for purpose.

………

Meanwhile… in the music end of the studio I have started singing. Again it will all be in the cut. But I am starting to see and accept (and maybe I will eventually actually relish) the difference. I cannot yet be in the same room as my producer, in a professional music studio, but I do have the means to record. And he has the means to edit what I record. They are not “clean” recordings. But they are of interest. The background noises can be edited out to a certain extent, but they can also be exploited as a different quality of line.

Both exhibitions will include a song… at least one sound piece… and this edit has its own process. Decisions are being made according to the cloth we have to cut.

It may be that eventually I do re-record my vocal in Michael’s studio. In the meantime, as a point of pause and assessment this is good. I have audio and visual that have been made at the same time, they have influenced each other.

And that, in a nutshell, is the whole point.

Yes, I’ve been reading…

This might seem like a strange statement. It seems strange to me. I was the child (and the adult) who would carry on reading if the house was on fire. 

When I undertook, in 2010, a Masters in Art Practice and Education, I decided that I had to put on hold that sort of reading because I had a different sort of reading to do. So for two years I read art and philosophy, badly, grudgingly, and with only the end-result essay in mind as I read. I lost all the pleasure of it. I wasn’t getting engrossed, I was merely scanning for something I could use. Occasionally I would come across something that held me, but not often. And when I did, it seemed to be the “wrong sort” of reading. So, after all that, I gave up. I got the MA but never regained that sense of joy in reading. I feel bereaved really. Here I am 11 years later and I still haven’t got it back… but I can see glimmers of hope. 

I seem to be able to read non-fiction, of the episodic, biographical type. I’ve read a Sandi Toksvig book, and I’m coming to the end of Caitlin Moran’s More Than A Woman. I know. Hardly taxing, but it’s like stretching muscles that haven’t been used.

I’ve also read little bits of poetry, and I’ve read song lyrics as if poetry. 

I’ve tried fiction. People have suggested the “un-put-down-able” to me, and after a chapter and a half at best, I have indeed, put them down. I can’t be bothered. This really saddens me, because I do remember the feeling of total immersion. Maybe I’m getting there slowly.

I also wonder if my eyes are part of the problem too. I am on my second set of varifocals and I don’t have the field of vision required for prolonged reading I don’t think. Even with these really expensive ones. Or maybe I’ve worn out my eyes with drawing and they need a break?

Audio books perhaps?

Anyway… there is good news… I bought “Drawing Water” by Tania Kovats (I don’t seem to have given up buying books it seems!) and it has been a revelation. If anyone knows Tania, thank her from me. I am able to open this book at random, sink into the words, for a few pages at a time, and come up for air feeling refreshed and inspired. Since the book arrived I have written about ten song lyrics inspired by its pages. “Some Of My Favourite Lines Do Not Exist” kept me going for days. And even when I read other pages, I often skip back to those.

So, in hope, I have this pile by my studio table. I’m just about to have a big Tidy-Up in order that they are more accessible. You’ll notice most of them have bits of ribbon/paper/post its as markers of where I’ve got to, or points of interest, but maybe only two of them are “finished”.