All posts by David Smith

#Letter365

I think we have the evidence…

It's shadow puppet time as #Letter365 No26 goes in the box
It’s shadow puppet time as No26 goes in the box

I don’t mean the evidence that shadow rabbits can hold credit cards between their ear and nose (see picture) but the evidence that the post box day plate for Tuesday has been “mislaid”. It hasn’t been there the last few weeks and MON is displayed on Tuesday. That’s why all the people in Bradpole look confused! Well, one of the reasons.

I got very frustrated creating the envelope for this one. For some reason the printer would not recognise the settings set up for this particular document – the ones it has used for the previous 25 days – and chose to use the settings for the other documents that were open!

#Letter365, Process

A bit of drizzle and a bit of drivel about a rock or a crab

It’s odd that there is a pressure in me to produce a completely new and unique work each day. While I intend each work that will be unique that doesn’t mean that I have to summon up a totally new idea each day. I have only just realised that I could work on developing a single idea over a period of time – I had already thought of doing special series, say at Christmas – and I had sort of forgotten that part of this process is the final installation, so perhaps I will do series of similar work for stretches at a time. It will perhaps be like the wave-carved ripples on the wide sand beaches, the same but totally different every day. And some days there will be a rock or a crab. But mostly it will just be the same but totally different. There again I may not do that!

#Letter365 No25 goes in the box
Drizzle and drivel – No25 goes in the box

I thought it would be sunny today but it turned out dull and drizzly. So today’s #Letter365 offering got everso vaguely damp in the 30 paces to the post box.

#Letter365

Sunny Sunday posting for No24

#Letter365 No24 gets posted at Bradpole
Posted in the sunshine, No24 gets on its way

Having spent a busy day making the most of the sunshine, painting the new solar wax extractor and digging and raking one of the vegetable beds, then spending some useful time in the studio I am exhausted! Losing an hour last night probably didn’t help either. So no energy for deep thought.

I will just mention that I watched Powaqqatsi this evening. Interesting to see it again after 30 years I guess. Still stunning even though not as powerful as it was in my memory, but now we have such a deluge of visual images available to us that it is hard to remember how remarkable this was when it came out. The Philip Glass score is of course a masterpiece in its own right and certainly not just a film soundtrack. Two sections might get plundered by me for some ideas!

#Letter365, Bridport Arts centre

A great delivery by O’Hooley & Tidow

Belinda & Heidi deliver #Letter365 No23 to Jill Beed
Belinda & Heidi deliver #Letter365 No23 to Jill Beed

After a blistering performance at Bridport Arts Centre acclaimed folk duo O’Hooley & Tidow did me the honour of handing over today’s #Letter365 to Jill Beed. It’s the third time we have seen Belinda and Heidi and they never fail to delight. Tonight their cascading harmonies were tighter and sweeter than ever. I just hope whoever buys No23 will be delighted as me.

#Letter365, Bridport Arts centre

The novelty hasn’t worn off yet

Jill Beed takes delivery #Letter365 of No22 at the box office window
Jill Beed takes delivery of No22 at the box office window

Jill and Dee at Bridport Arts Centre are still pleased to see me and seem delighted to receive another #Letter365 offering. We’ll see how they feel in 6 months time!

It’s interesting that Dee, who took this picture, suggested the picture should be taken from inside the office and that Jill should turn and smile into the camera (and an excellent smile it is too as always Jill). Yet when I took a photo of Dee taking delivery a few days back the most she would allow to seen on camera was her thumb!

#Letter365, Process

I read it somewhere

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It’s one of those things that when you read it you think, “yes that’s interesting, probably true” but when it comes down to it you don’t follow through. It was – and  don’t know who wrote it or where – something like, “Accept that all those things that you think of in the middle of the night that you know are brilliant ideas but that you can’t remember in the morning, accept that really they were rubbish.”

I saw this to be useful wisdom for those nights when the brain is overactive: excited by all the brilliant ideas for brilliant things that you will create or do or think next day. Telling yourself that they are all crap and if there are really any good ones you will remember them in the morning, can help you get back to sleep, the sleep you need to have a creative day next day.

Last night after just 40 minutes sleep I was disturbed by the cats, or my parter, or a putative burglar or a good/bad idea and found myself awake for the next two hours wondering if I should risk the disturbance of recording the creative maelström in Evernote or getting up and making a calming tea whilst jotting it all down in my notebook. I did write a couple of words in the dark on a small scrap of paper – one of which was a useful memory jog, the other was a superfluous reminder of something I really would not have forgotten anyway! I did manage to tell myself that “all these ideas are crap anyway” but ignored my advice and stayed awake desperately trying to imprint my brilliant ideas so firmly in my mind that I would be able to instantly access and use them this morning.

Well, what a success! I woke to find I had clearly remembered 3 or 4 of the dozens of good/bad ideas I had had in the night. These must be the worthwhile ones! So I was quite excited to get to the studio quite early and start working with them.

The first indication that something was wrong was my lack of confidence. Instead of just wading in and doing it I decided to try it out on a piece of paper the colour of which I was unlikely to use – no way I was going to risk wasting a piece of expensive hand-made paper… Hang on! What kind of idea was it that was so shaky I wouldn’t risk wasting a piece of paper on? This was an idea that I was so convinced was interesting that it kept me awake for two hours – yet I hadn’t the confidence to back it to the price of a piece of paper! In any case, I believe what my dear friend Jill Beagley once told me, “You are an artist and anything tha an artist does with a piece of paper can never be a waste.”

Well I fiddled with this idea for about 30 seconds more before I realised that it really was crap. I reviewed the other ideas that I had packaged up from the night and concluded they were not much better.

The good thing was that this left me totally clear to approach my #Letter365 piece open and fresh. Immediately I had discarded the rubbish I knew exactly what I wanted to do and as I worked it developed a purity and clarity that almost brought tears to my eyes.

I wonder if now I will be able to remember next time that thing I read somewhere about things that are crap in the night

#Letter365, Process

A nice thing

#Letter365 No21 gets posted in the sunshine
No21 catches some rays before a stretch in the dark

One nice thing for me about this project is that the content of each envelope can be completely different to what I am doing with my main flow of work, a relaxation of concentration that can let fresh, new ideas pop out. Or it can be a little detour and experiment within that flow where I can develop a different fluency and freedom with those ideas and processes. But I am not saying what is going on today!

It’s the end of three weeks of the project and I am starting to put other things in place: things like looking at this website and adding a sales facility to it; putting together the foundations of a work book that might be a saleable artwork in its own right; thinking about sponsorship and grants; PR; etc. It’s exhausting and exciting just thinking about it!

#Letter365, Bridport Arts centre

Gone all pale and subtle

#Letter365 No19 ready to be delivered
No19 is ready to go in all its pale glory

I was in time to get this in the post but as I am going to the Arts Centre tonight I’ll deliver it by hand. It’s the last night of the Film Society season and they are showing “Village at the End
of the World”, a Danish film about a village in Greenland that has a dwindling population of only 59 with a single teenager longing to escape. I bet it will be visually stunning in a bleak kind of way. A bit like the collected images of me posting #Letter365 I expect.

#Letter365, Process

I had a clear idea but something else had a better idea

I am always interested how I can go to the studio with a clear idea of what I want to do and something else will turn up and it all changes. Today’s #Letter365 piece (not quite finished so it could all change when I go back to the studio!) has turned out different in size, shape, colour, technique and textures to what was in my head. It was as if this other idea was hanging around waiting for me to sit at the table and plug my head into it. Until the moment I sat down I had no intention of deviating from the idea tha had been brewing all morning! So what goes on? Am I just easily distracted? Or is there some other process going on in me beneath the conscious that is alert to opportunity and is prepared to, has the freedom to, run with the new.

This piece came together with certainty, clarity and speed and is a much gentler and calmer piece than intended: perhaps my systems were telling me to slow down.