If anyone has been following this blog, they would notice a similarity in each day’s image. Most days there is a snap of my hand holding the day’s artwork encased in its envelope poised at the edge of a postbox’s aperture. I have a collection of many hundreds of such images (I take usually multiple shots in case I mess up in some way). I like the regularity of it. This regular, repetitive process, the same but with individual variables, is at the heart of most of the work I create. It is also at the heart of what Nature creates: my favourite being the ripples on beach sand. At this time of year we notice the leaves on the trees turning and falling. Millions of the same thing but everyone unique. Starlings murmurating. Wildebeest migrating. Crowds of human beings. The structure of crystals. So many things we find beautiful because of repetition given texture by individuality.
The postie was just collecting when I got to the box: not the last post (we are seeing a performance of that, a play performed in a mobile sorting office van by Kilter Theatre on Saturday at Bridport Arts Centre).
Today’s piece re-approaches some work I did a while back and I want to re-explore in that area again soon so it was worth doing something for #Letter365 in that vein.
It is really satisfying when things go well. I was unable to get to the studio until this evening because we had the BT engineer coming to connect our fibre broadband (woo!) this morning and had to take our poor, sick cat to the vet for her steroid jab (boo!) this afternoon. So I didn’t have long and I didn’t have a clue what I was going to do – and I think that is an important factor. I didn’t have a clue but was open to inspiration and confident that something would come. In a way it is not even confidence, well not in any bullish way. It is just a calm assumption that it will happen. Because time was limited I discarded the first couple of things that occurred to me on the basis they would take too long to dry. So still not having a clue what to do for #Letter365 I decided to work on a piece I had prepared a substrate for yesterday. It started well and then got twee and then I ballsed a bit up that looked ugly then tried to make a bad bit better and made it worse instead then altered the bit that went twee and it became one of the best bits and….and essentially it all went really well. When that piece needed drying time I did think I would do my #Letter365 but just thought I could play with something else while on a roll. In the end I just had to start from scratch and amazingly it all came together brilliantly for me. In a way it was even better than I hoped and has an element or aspect that I didn’t predict – a happy accident?
It’s not a big philosophical question that I allude to but today’s piece is a bit of an enigma for me. So I don’t mean what is the meaning of this artwork you can’t yet, or perhaps ever, see but what does it mean that I have created something that links work I was doing a year or more ago with work I am doing now! Does it mean that the ideas and issues that motivated me a year or so ago were unresolved; that there is more mileage in them? Are they bubbling under the surface wanting to get out again? As I wrote this I realise that is the case. The other option was that I was just a bit stuck and opted for a familiar path, but I see that was not the case. I see also that there is a continuum rather than separated ideas. I hope the reunion will be fecund.
As to the seal, well I used up the last little bit of that stick stuck on the end of a scalpel and heating it with a lighter. Of course it all melted and fell flaming onto the envelope. I was all for letting it burn a little but it went out of its own accord!
I successfully completed the tasks required by myself in this project today without fuss or bother and even got it in the post before the collection had gone so there is nothing much else to say really.
The repetitive and in a way boring nature of a daily task is in itself one of the key aspects of this art process, the sort of process that is endlessly fascinating to me whether it is found in nature or people or the processes of society or our entertainment. This conversation with Ersi Marina Samara @atticpapers on Twitter gives a hint.
Screen grab of Twitter stream
On the other had it could be just some kind of madness. This diagram posted on Twitter by @Omdenken could be how it is!
How to be an artist diagram from @OmdenkenBack of No124
The reference to damp inside is my fear that I had chosen the wrong media today as noted in the previous post. As for the stuff on the envelope I feel I need to explain a little.
You may have noticed a musical theme over the last few days. The Morning Glory reference two days ago just popped into my head and yesterday’s Emile Ford was a bit more “manufactured” following on. (I saw Emile Ford’s band the Checkmates on the same bill as the Rolling Stones and the Hollies – a long time ago!) I had forgotten that I was going to say hi to the postie and ask if he had had a good holiday. That was because I stumbled across this post on Twitter from Helen Atkin-Roach about a mystery item:
Helen’s mystery item is of course a trouser press
As a time-served Bonzo’s fan I had to enter into a dialogue about it and ended up posting this video of the Bonzo’s:
This led me to referring to the trouser press in the “Do Not Bend” area and alluding to the album title at the other side. Sad isn’t it? Or maybe it is art of the highest kind! Certainly the Bonzo Dog Band (or Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band as they were then) must have a right to be labelled art!
On the back, however, I have probably lost the plot and maybe the will to live:
First of all I should explain that I have changed the style of posting picture today because of the return of the shadow rabbit. I felt that Violet Lines and The Rabbit was a combination too much!
The piece I’ve produced today is superficially attractive and well composed but is designed to irritate the spatially astute among you. Part of what art should do is challenge us; ask questions; irritate us. I suspect that most people (who like my work) will just go “ooh, that’s nice”. If that is your reaction then you should look harder, more carefully, longer. Of course now there’s the rub, you cannot see the item in question, at least not until next March and even then only if it is sold!
No73 goes in the box making it 20% of my task completed already
Well I have got this far without too much trouble so while there may be adventures ahead I am very confident that I will complete the project .
I am very excited by the last few day’s pieces though, as I have said, I am concerned that some may not like or understand them. If you want pictures of fluffy things, portraits, realism, impressionism, boats on water and that kind of thing I’m generally not your man. That is not to say I may not slip in a little sketch of West Bay harbour one day or even do a series of landscapes during this project! But as I say i am very excited by quite a number of the recent pieces: they please my eye and there is a good balance between tension and ease. But what interests me most is the emotional content: I find them surprisingly moving. Of course it could be, like I have hinted, I’m off my trolley! On the other hand they may actually be quite good! Some seem a bit old-fashioned but in a way have a timeless quality. It’s like picking up a jazz album from the fifties or sixties with cool, jazzy graphics on the cover and when you start to play it it seems a bit dated, then interesting, then familiar, then exciting and finally sublime – the whole package is actually timeless. These pieces have got a little of that for me. Again, I may be deluded but the fact that I am excited by what I am doing a fifth of the way in bodes well for finishing the project.
What on earth is it in me and many other people who find joy and beauty in the most unexpected places. There is a group of us on Twitter that share picture of rusty, peeling, rotten things. Some of us tweet pictures of roads, tyremarks, paving stones and chewing gum spots. Part of the task of a visual artist is to look and see and notice on behalf of the rest of the people and make choices which things to say “hey, look at this” about. Yet sometimes I wonder if we are all just a bit demented to be so inordinately excited, awed and moved by the abstract patterns and colours of Nature’s decomposing? Which brings me to today’s #Letter365 piece. When I look at the photos I took of today’s piece I find it incredibly moving. It only took me a short while to make it and something comes up in me about its value and worth because of that. The components and idea had been sitting with me for a few days so with that time included the time it took might be trebled, but it’s still not much. Not like someone Tweeted recently, “you can’t create a piece of art in a day”. Does that mean this piece is not art? What about if I factor in 5 years at art school, years of personal study, a lifetime of considered looking, years of art practice, years of working in design, advertising and graphics? It could be said that this piece took over 60 years to make. Does that make it any the more art? Could it be that it is possible for an artwork, something that moves the guts and stirs the intellect, to be created in an instant and. On the other hand it could be that I’m delusional.
Hand-written address and a nice film stamp for No71
Today’s piece gave me cause for a lot of thought about being true to myself and having the courage to stick to the visual statement I am moved or minded to make. There was something in me wanting to make this piece more accessible to a wider audience even though it was not the right thing. I wonder if Barnet Newman ever thought of sticking a little flower in on of his vast expanses of colour? Did Malevich ever consider a smiling face to make his chilling severity more friendly? Did Mondrian explore the possibility of a cute dog in one of his grids? I doubt it very much. So how come I am worrying that people may find my work hard to grasp or shallow or whatever? So then I worry if it’s derivative or of its time or out of fashion! I worry should I create things in the hope that people like them? It is certainly pleasant and reassuring when people like my work but I don’t always understand why.
Drawing from my sketchbook 3 May 2014
This piece to the right has been favourited and retweeted on Twitter much more than I could imagine. I have no idea what it is about. Moreover I have no idea what it is that people like about it. There are elements in it that I incorporate into my work generally but broadly it is not really my style – but maybe these sketchbook doodles are what I should be doing more of? Should I make work like this and see if people approve? I have remembered that I have created a large piece which has some of the feel of this one. I must photograph it and post it to see what reaction it elicits!
An unfolding artwork created a piece each day for a year
