Those of you who know me well may not believe this, but I had a plan, I worked the plan and the plan worked! OK, the postie quite rightly gave me a little lecture on putting stamps on and postal security and stuff, but he did let me put a stamp on the postally-naked No38. I suspect that I came out of it OK. Polly Gifford at the Arts Centre would have mercilessly ribbed me about it at the very least and I saved us the £1 or so extra for unstamped mail and the walk to the sorting office. I even had a go at a flamingo shadow on the postie’s leg, but it didn’t come out that well as you can see. Nice shapes in the lower half of the photo though!
A sunny Sunday posting for No38 – with no bloody stamp!
I cannot believe I have done it again! I was so pleased that I have managed to spend the day in the studio despite my lost voice turning into a really bad sore throat tuning into a rotten cold. With the help of tissues and Strepsils I have soldiered on and had a really productive day. I did my #Letter365 piece first and am very pleased with it. Around lunchtime I did the envelope and photographs and popped it in the box. It is only now that I notice the lack of a stamp! (I didn’t notice that I thought it was Sunday yesterday as far as the message on the envelope went!)
So here is the plan:
Tomorrow morning enquire at the Bradpole Post Office as to the time of the first collection
Hang around about that time and see if the postie will let me rummage through the box and stick a stamp on the envelope
Failing that (if I miss them or they won’t let me) go cap-in-hand to the Arts Centre and offer to pick up and pay for the postage due
Suggest I leave a postage due fund to cover future cock ups
Repeat the opening words of Four Weddings and a Funeral under my breath from time to time
I seem to have got bound in to this thing of sealing my envelopes with sealing wax. It started because the only envelopes I had were old and the self-seal had lost its stick so I used Pritt stick and some sealing wax. I rather like the way that things like this develop. Quite often in the repetitive drawings I do, rules develop: perhaps if I make a “mistake” I will respond with an over-correction, which I then have to do each time that “mistake” happens. It all goes back to the thing I have about the wave-carved ripples on hard-sand beaches, where regular patterns develop and anomalies occur in turn spawning predictable reactions to the anomalies.
So anyway, I am now probably stuck with sealing up with sealing wax each day (except when I am away) and I started using the decorative gold wax I already had and then bought some more from the art shop in Dorchester. Neither of these had the satisfying sticky quality that the sealing wax my father used. There was always a long stick or two in the sideboard drawer (along with the little machine for cutting rug wool, the wooden darning mushroom and the little reedwork pen nib box my father brought back with him from Egypt during the war, amongst other mismatched sundries). This sealing wax had the manufacturer’s name or the brand embossed on one side. I can’t remember what is was called, though for some reason i think it may have been “Houses of Parliament”. Over the years the sticks got broken and gradually eroded at the breaks though still held together by the wick like a string of flattened red sausages. This was real “legal” sealing wax and was very different to the decorative stuff I used to date on the project. So the first one I found was this one pictured above is Waterson’s, supposedly made to a traditional recipe and unchanged for years. They are quite small sticks but they certainly have a much more satisfying stickiness to them. I am confusing myself with these sticky sticks that stick!
Pale No37 goes in the box to sit there till Monday
I posted No37 hours ago. I’ve had to renew the ink cartridges and tried to keep the same tone as before but the grey came out far too light really, a pale ghost of its former glory! The piece inside is worked up precisely from the idea I had this morning. It all went smoothly apart from a brief moment of doubt just before I completed it. It feels great when it goes like that – and it feels great when it gets a life of its own and finds its own resolution. It doesn’t feel great when it turns out to be rubbish and goes on the fire or recycle pile!
Polly tries the double rabbit but it comes out a bit goatish, while Christopher’s cock pheasant and calf’s foot get obliterated
Clearly inspired by my recent successes with shadows that look like a rabbit holding a credit card between its ear and its nose, Polly Gifford and Christopher Winter went for high-scoring but difficult counter responses as #Letter365 No36 is delivered at tonight’s PV of Christopher’s solo show. at Bridport Arts Centre. Polly’s attempt at the double rabbit unfortunately has ended up with goatish features, while Christopher’s quite radical rendition of the cock pheasant and calf’s foot – a combination rarely seen these days – has been obliterated by a square shape presumably conjured from the spirit worlds.
This was directly following Christopher giving a séance performance in which he channelled Picasso who did some drawings using Christopher’s hand to guide the pen.
Christopher Winter preparing to channel Picasso
Berlin-based Christopher has channelled the drawing talents of many dead artists, starting with Hans Holbein the Younger. The table at which he is seated takes its inspiration from the perspectivally-distorted, foreshortened skull in Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors. Winter’s work is one in which the seemingly mundane and day-to-day is disturbed and distorted by random, etherial oddities so it was only fitting that when he graciously agreed to deliver today’s #Letter365 piece he should aim for it to levitate into Polly’s hands.
Christopher Winter levitates #Letter365 No36 into Polly Gifford’s hands
Oh dear Bridport Arts Centre had to pay for the pleasure of collecting No33
It’s brilliant that Bridport Arts Centre has given me the opportunity to do this #Letter365 project, but I don’t suppose they thought they would have to wander round to the sorting office and cough up cash to take delivery of my daily offering!
I have had a rotten sore throat and have lost my voice for the past few days. I don’t feel particularly unwell in general, just weary and jaded, so I am trying not to allow my virus-enforced Trappist silence to affect me. I had a particularly fertile morning and have started to explore some slightly new directions in my work. Today’s #Letter365 piece is a small version of one of those new thoughts, modified to fit within what I am doing with #Letter365 specifically. Delighted with both this piece and the bigger picture.
The mad rabbit and a reminder on the envelope ensure a stamp goes on today
My name may be mud at the Arts Centre following yesterday’s forgotten-stamp debacle, but I am undaunted! I altered the writing on the envelope in the hope that its pale words would remind me to put on a stamp and as it was sunny the mad rabbit was about to threaten me with its credit card!
And the piece I created for #Letter365 today surprised me. I had started it this morning and left it in a volatile state as I had to be in the house to await delivery of a replacement credit card as I had cut up the other one by mistake and used it in a #Letter365 piece – no, not really, just joking! No, I had cut it up by mistake when my new debit card arrived! Anyway, when I returned to the studio it became immediately apparent what I needed to do and I really like the result.
Talking of things in a volatile state, the whole piece and its envelope nearly went up in smoke. A piece of burning wick from the sealing wax fell off and continued to burn on the back of the envelope. Initially I tried to pick it up with my steel rule or my scalpel, before being tempted to let it all burn a bit! In the end I just blew it out, but it has given me food for thought to digest at leisure.
The other volatile thing is me! Oh, you knew that. Well I’m a bit on the incandescent side because my special #Letter365 camera has managed to download device drivers which I never asked it to do and which make it harder for me to use the camera the way I want to use it. It’s odd how so many manufacturers decide for its customers that their way is the best or force you to use their crappy, buggy software. People accept these things from Sony, Apple, Samsung – thank god there is not much you can do to a pen or pencil or paintbrush!
With my son and his wife staying I hoped to get my #Letter365 piece finished and away early so we could spend the day together. Good idea but slightly scuppered by finding my camera – my special #Letter365 camera – with a flat battery. So there was a pause while that charged up and somehow…well stuff happens. Worse thing is we ended up coming into town and could have delivered it by hand. C’est la vie!
The yellow ink has just about run out as well as the magenta, but I guess there’s not much to be gained from any more as the cyan and black are pretty full!
The keen-eyed may spot that they have found the TUES day marker on the post box.
I am really fed up with the weather being so drear and dismal again. Yet the trees are coming in to leaf and the summer visiting birds are gradually arriving. A friend said they had seen the first swallow. Fingers crossed for some finer weather soon to go with my fine art!
Well the first month has been completed and I still have lots of things to sort out for the project from this website to sponsorship and printing to events. This week the From Page To Screen festival has eaten up a fair bit of time – 7 films in 5 days – and I have some basic stuff to put in place for Dorset Art Weeks and my son and daughter-in-law are visiting for a few days and there’s the garden to sort when/if it stops raining and then the bees will be swarming and…and…and…it’s good to be busy!
But whatever else may be happening, the work I am doing for this project is happening well – it’s mostly flowing easily and also teasing me into unfamiliar areas and causing me to experiment in my other work. So all is well.
An unfolding artwork created a piece each day for a year
