Butterflies

Not so much butterflies as caterpillars. Whilst it wasn't too good a year for veg - tomatoes failed dismally, pak choi bolted,  mange tout came and went in a week, it was a brilliant year for the cabbage white. Wet weather ensuring not much time in the garden when I was on the Fell it was open season on the winter veg. Kill one and hundreds came to the funeral so in the end i just let them gorge themselves.

 

Black Rocks on the Fell

After a brief trip cycle touring in Orkney, which by the way is awesome, we returned to the fell ready to pick up the next new arrivals. 3 Black Rock chicks. This meant in the wet summer we had to build a coop and a pen, bearing in mind that several of next doors Rhode Island crosses had been snaffled by the rogue fox. We wont be due eggs till mid november. However, without personalising them too much, they have each developed a personality and they provide many hours of joy. A welcome distraction when the muse wont visit and inspiration is low.

FOAL

It seems ages ago but up here on the Fell one of natures miracles happened. This foal was born to mum ( Blossom). It was all leg. Now of course a few months on its filled out, been weaned on to solids and hangs out in the fields with the others - still under the watchful gaze of mum of course. It was truely amazing watching it take its first doddering unsteady steps, finding out what her legs are for.

DE-INSTALLING

So all too soon it was time to take it down. It was thankfully a lot quicker to pack up and move than to put in. Hopefully Drift will have a life beyond this and be recycled into another artwork. However this is what it ingloriously looked like before being tidied and stored.

Now I guess its the big post-show anti-climax before moving on to the next project. Currently that is to be a residency at a department of psychiatry at a local hospital.

So after 6 months of work - The Opening.

 

Thursday 8th May. Thanks to Tony and Jo everything got installed on time and looked how i wanted it. Even a couple of last minute on the fly interventions worked, such as the Drift piece in dust of the parquet. Moving the parquet is no mean feat in itself. It doesn't look like a lot but believe me a thousand pieces, and it is dense, is not easy to move or re-assemble.

 

 

Openings are daunting and it's that 

culmination of time concentrated in the big hurrah, this is it, 6 months of my life. Also the chatting on, not seeing everyone, anxiety, chatting too long, nerves, excitement, making sure it's all ok for everyone - even yourself. It's al so much, too much. That big mix of STUFF. But i think it was good, i was pleased with the work, i was pleased that i had progressed  my practice. The development process was just that.

 

Now, it's the hiatus. The it's all over. The what happens next. 

The Run In

 Aint it so. Feast and famine the lot of the jobbing artist. Things have recently become overwhelming. Having been ill with a serious bout of something more serious than 'man-flu' and a trip to casualty and a bizarre skin thing going on the list of things to do growing ever longer and the deadlines fast approaching the last thing i needed to do was a trip to Budapest.

So now i find myself two weeks from the opening. Angstville. Because before i can even concentrate on that i need to finish several other things. However once this is complete it's back to the famine again. Sourcing out that next project. Some of my thought processes have been around the quality of finish of work. Mostly i like the exquisite. However i am erring towards the raw.

 

                                                                                                                                                                               Not that i shall be including the above which is just roughly cut foam letters. By the way the photo of the ladybird is from the American Bar in the basement of the town hall in Prague. Along with some parquet i also acquired some slates.

Collecting Memories

                                      Collecting Memories 2008

This is made with more of that Shields Road paint. The shineyness comes through on this one though;

                                Collecting Memories 2008

 The paint doesn't want to stay on the canvas. I quite like it though. It looks like the red which was full on red, bright and vibrant has lost all of its qualities.

I know it's blurred - it's supposed to be like that!

                                   Angst 2008

Finishes. Struggling with the Exquisite.

Exquisite. It's a word I am using, probably over using, a lot at the moment. The work I am producing at the moment is very instant. Quick. Raw. Unmetered. Tony and Jo were in a couple of weeks ago. Where I had had a canvas was just the space with the gaffer tape remaining. Everything was again on the floor when i re-entered the studio. I have become accustomed to this and now quite like it. It gives everything an air of temporariness, transcience, like its almost gone already before its even really there. The crux here is that most of my previous work has been quite exact in its finish. What i am having suggested to me now is do i leave everything in its current state. As it was made. Unrefined. Totally lacking in some elements of exquisiteness. Do I have the courage? Can i leave the text scribbled with a blunt crayon or do i re-do it in some nice font on steel or glass or in resin or somesuch. I just don't know.

CHEAP PAINT-SHIELDS ROAD

When i lived in Bristol they used to say you could get anything on the Gloucester Road, and in my experience that was pretty much true. It used to be a similar story for Shields Road when i lived in Newcastle as a kid. I wondered if it still held true. I went to explore and returned disappointed but for a tin of cheap paint from wilko's. I guess Chilli Road or Heaton Park Road are the places these days. Progress ay! So this paint is heinous. 

work in progress destined never to be finished 2007

                                                                                                                                                                         It is just so shiny it's unbelivable and so unbreathable too. But i will persevere with it cos now it has my curiosity. I want to discover it's properties and potential. Watch this space.

REVIEW

The good thing, or one of them is that i get feedback and reviews on what i am doing, my process, my current work, possibilities, ideas etc etc. Vici from Arcadea was in just before spain. A guided  tour of all of the above. Whilst its great it's also exhausting. It's that tsunami again. But it challenges me to keep abreast of what and why i am doing things, to reflect on things, to try and do all that without becoming totally introspective and self referential and disappear into my own naval in a trance. I am fortunate to have everyones input, insight and professional provocation. 

FITTING IT ALL IN

It's that old thing. You either have the time or the money, rarely both. When this residency was first mooted the year was looking like a desert road - long and empty. Now, in the midst of it things are leaping out, rearing up out of nowhere. For a start you can wipe 2 weeks out the calendar for xmas and new year. A couple of weeks after that i was in Cromarty helping my partner installing some work and the opening of her exhibition. Then i have just returned from a mercy mission to Spain. In amongst all this I am trying to complete the compilation of the book i took on when the waygood got delayed. So where does this fit in. Well, thankfully now it moves closer to the top of the list. Whilst not at the studio it is pretty much on my mind. Which is good. However it is also frustrating. Just before spain i had intended to go into the studio. However, I was unbelievably snowed in again. The second time this winter. How often does that happen in these days of global warming. Oh yeah and in amongst it all you have all the mundane life maintenance stuff to do. Sounding like a whinging pom its time to stop.

PARQUET

                                      Parquet in Progress

Floored

I tend to make things on the fly or in a spontaneous manner. I don't dwell on what it is i am going to make - it just comes into my head and i make it. I am not a perfectionist. I make do with what i have to hand or what is easily available. Hopefully that is cheaply too. So i have this friend who is looking to off load a whole load of parquet. It's already been an artwork. So i quite like that recycling thing. That lack of preciousness. And Parquet. Well, there's a word. It just sounds pretentious, up itself - at the end of the day it's just a floor.

This parquet is blocks. Old recycled blocks - even prior to being an artwork by Susan T Grant - not tongue and groove. I like the blocks. They are solid. Small and solid. Coloured and discoloured by time. Like a little piece of history. Each block with its' own memory. It's own story. And now it has one more. At the moment i only have one small box. It's not just a straight forward transaction. I get to buy a share in half of it. Get access to it all and then have to store the half which isn't mine. It also fits into the accumulation of stuff, clutter - that ocd-esque satisfaction thing going on. Lots of bits that get put together to make a bigger bit.

Snow Bound

Battling tentatively through the snow with a boot load of exciting booty to mess around with when i got to the studio i was a bit ahead of myself. Unlike those days when you wake up slightly late and things get gradually later as you go through day - a bit like one of those motorway tail backs which is just a rippling echo of someone breaking too hard further on up the road. I won't rant on about how no matter how much advance warning we have of snow it always surprises the UK and brings it to a standstill. 

Meeting and talking with Tony is intense(unfortunately Jo couldn't make it today). Like the mentoring sessions should be longer but after an hour or so it's like having gorged yourself on a smorgasbord of fine food and wine. A heady cocktail indeed. It has brought into focus things I have been unaware of in my practice which is great. For instance in narrative confessionals does the narrative have to be factu

ally based, honest or is invention and faction ok? Does it matter?

Tony keeps referencing other artists I have either neither heard of or seen their work. Not coming from a traditional art degree background but one which has encompassed organic farming, dysfunctional adolescents and therapy i have to hold my hand up to a certain degree of ignorance of such matters. However i have been told that sooner or later you need to check out other peoples work in a more broad and in depth manner. I better renew my library card for 2008. A fear of doing this is how do you stop yourself from being influenced or incorporating others work into yours. Collective unconcious versus deliberate plagiarism. But how else do you push yourself/knowledge and improve without being challenged?

On a more mundane level i am slowly cluttering up my studio with stuff. Starting with the table and spilling out from there