What do I say? I have been working at all the things I have to do to make the installation a success and to present other relevant work to put it all in context (and grab the opportunity to present pieces to a wider audience with the hope that people might buy it!) I have selected some pieces to mount for display in browsers and started to put them together. I am aiming to have about 20 pieces, but I won’t stress if I can’t get it all together for the opening night, I can always add some as the show progresses – after all it is continually unfolding! I have also picked up the pieces I am submitting to Drawn the drawing open at RWA.
So I have created a piece of work and, annoyingly, I didn’t have the time to play around with some ideas that arose from it. Now I feel I have to write something but I don’t have the time or energy. I will perhaps use ideas from today as a start for tomorrow but enough words for now.
It’s not that I have booked for the Grim Reaper to pop round at the end of next week, but I am now on my home run. At the time of writing this in a week’s time I will have finished the Preview Evening and the world will be able to judge where on the line between genius and nutcase to put this project.
I had another look at some of the photographic record of the work I have done and feel happy that I have produced good work. It is a shame that less has been sold so far than I had hoped and I cannot see a sudden surge this week or much more than trickle over the weeks. But I will have a story to tell and I will have made a mark with the largest piece I have ever made. It would have been different in a city but little old Bridport in lovely old Dorset isn’t a bad place to do it.
Sometimes things just need a time to build and evolve and then you just have to sit with it until you know it’s right. This one turned out almost exactly as I had planned it but along the way I kept wanting to change it, doubting that original vision. Yes there was some fine tuning but when I finished I saw that the tinkering would not have worked. It also has given me some ideas I want to work on and I can see ways where I may take it into media I am less practiced with.
Quick as a flash and it’s gone: No356 goes in the bag
Just as I was taking the photo of No356 being posted along comes the postie and whips the envelope from me and into the bag in a flash, but as you can see a flash is what I didn’t have turned on.
No356 about to be posted with a postie’s hand behind
So we are down to the last 10. Of course my brain said “And we are down to the dozens and this is why…”
It is likely that we will see out the rest of the project with some annotations on the envelopes related to the #Collage365 piece 045 – a crab or a stone. As the plans for the installation itself get clarified it is becoming increasingly obvious to me that this whole project and most of my other work during this last year or two have been firmly rooted in my favourite theme: the interplay between chaos and control, emotion and the intellect. I took the collage to the framer’s today and have decided to include it in the #Letter365 show as it is pivotal to the whole affair.
#Collage365 – 045 a crab or a stone Paper, printed elements and watercolour 229mm x 152mm
So much I want to do and so little time, but that is all part of it. What gets done gets done and the rest can be for another time. I have been quite busy and reasonably effective today (at least until tonight) and I reckon that I am still a couple of days behind schedule. Having said that I had some successes in the studio with other things that will allow me to move forward following this project.
I was kicking myself when I got to the studio as the idea I had for today involved something that I had to prepare at home. Fortunately I am not short of creative ideas and one just jumped on me when I got to the studio. In hindsight it may not have been the best idea as it took much longer than I thought, and I had other things I needed to get on with there so I was out far longer than planned. All worth it in the end I hope.
I, yesterday, may or may not have done something based on the day before and today I intended to do something based on the day before that (or not). Now, as I was starting I realised that it was not what interested me or excited me just then. I discarded that idea and played around with some other ideas and gradually got into the territory and started to get interested and it all came together. I thought it was quite different to yesterday’s (or not) but now I come to process the images I see that it has some similar traits and themes to yesterday (or is completely different to yesterday’s and sharing no similarities in colour, shape, form, structure, etc.) Now isn’t that interesting (or not at all interesting)?
Here is what David Hutchinson, former guide at Tate Modern, has written about my work:
I’m really looking forward to David Smith’s #LETTER365 installation. I was blown away by his earlier #Collage365 show. The discipline of making an artwork a day was a huge commitment, but what shone through on the walls was rich artistry unfolding before your eyes. Fragments of found objects, images, colours, and lines were put together with invention, emotion and wit. You could pick out your own themes and variations, surprises, puzzles and delights.
The #LETTER365 installation in the Allsop Gallery at Bridport Arts Centre will continue this I’m sure – plus the challenging conceptual twists of buying sight unseen, with the installation only revealing what’s been bought.
I can’t wait to see the randomly selected piece I’ve bought, how the installation changes, and – most challenging of all? – the final bonfire of the vanities.
An unfolding artwork created a piece each day for a year
