Today I felt I had to do something purposefully unconnected with what I have been playing around with this last few days. So the quote from early Monty Python as readily as quotes from Frank Zappa have done. The question now is can i prevent myself from playing around with these ideas now?
I’m not sure if there is any evidence that vegetables dream though there is some evidence that plants do respond to human actions and even human thought. I guess that Frank Zappa was probably not advocating any real interaction with vegetables but more likely making pointed comments about acceptance and discrimination:
Standing there shiny and proud by your side
Holding your hand while the neighbors decide
Why is a vegetable something to hide
Well this evening I watched the Imagine documentary about Anselm Kiefer. I’m not sure what to make of him and his work. There is such a vast array that I need more exposure to find my way through it. One thing is certain, I like the way he talks about the interplay of chaos and control. I was also caught by what he said about waiting. How waiting is an important thing that we are not used to doing these days. He talked of how when he has worked on a piece he needs to wait to see how it is and it can turn out to be rubbish when removed from the agitated process of working it and sometimes it’s the reverse and he comes back to a piece he thought was no good to find new connections and that it is good. That’s where this project and #Collage365 are different and difficult. I do not have that extended waiting period. I have to have faith that I get it pretty much right first time.
There had to be a time when Frank Zappa entered this process. So many little things from the Mothers got in to me and influenced my sense of irony, my sense of humour, my politics, my musical taste, my love of the bizarre and, with Cal Schenkel’s cover art, my sense of design.
I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard the words “The Mothers of Invention” – on the bus on the way to school as we went round Rookery Corner! By 1969 “Freak Out” and “Absolutely Free” were part of the soundtrack of my life and prunes and vegetables and “Caledonia mahogany’s elbows and green things in general” were spattered through my speech. A few years later I heard the last part of “Fillmore East – June 1971” and I was smitten again, a love consummated when a month or two later I happened across a whole mass of mint-condition LPs in a village jumble sale including all the Mothers albums up to “200 Motels”. My fate was sealed
And all this was spurred by my ironic thoughts about how exiting this repetitive act of art can be (Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby) and my indoctrinated brain spewed out “This is the exciting part. This is like the Supremes see the way it builds up? Feel it?” Thanks Frank!
I have been low and feeling a bit stretched, so when I finally got to the studio I wasn’t brimming with confidence! I aimlessly and half-heartedly poked around at this and that for a while. Nothing popped into my head to even start playing with and for a while I was concerned that this might be that time, that first time, when I couldn’t come up with the goods. I knew that I mustn’t start fretting and if I applied myself – went to work – all would be well. Sure enough things began to fall into place and gradually I found myself gathering elements and ideas and in the end I had a completed piece that I was happy with. I documented it, and the envelope, and popped it in the post box and that is when I started to fret! My lack of confidence swept over me and I went through a whole negative process that encompassed far more than just tonight’s piece. It is only now having finally seen the images on screen that I feel comfortable that I’ve kept to my contract.
I have been wanting to do some bigger pieces in the vein of today’s #Letter365 so when my first idea didn’t immediately work out I changed tack which worked out well.
What didn’t work out so well is I almost forgot to post the piece. I was trying to summon up something to say when I realised it had been sitting in my bag for some hours and not sitting in the post box.
My brain refuses to come up with anything to write about,
I put off doing my #Letter365 for a while to go to the artist’s talk with Jill Kennington at the Arts Centre. Her show of photographs is on in the Allsop Gallery above my #Collage365 show Oh and we also had a nice lunch at Spice & Rice the street curry stall in the market. So I didn’t get to deliver my letter till much later and Dee has had enough of me taking her photo!
I really don’t know if I can just restrict this one to #Letter365 I wasnt to develop it as a theme and I think it needs space to breathe rather than being locked up in an envelope. We will see! Well you won’t – that’s the whole idea of the project.
Even in my mind’s eye the remembrance of today’s piece sparked alive with a satisfied joy. I completed the piece before going off to Portland around lunchtime. I didn’t quite have the time to drop it in at the Arts Centre before going so it sat on the passenger seat. Even though I was in proximity to it I really didn’t give the contents a second thought. I went to the dentist, a gallery. explored some of the historic ruins looked at the view, drove back to Bridport, delivered the piece, went to the shop, made dinner and watched The Dark Knight without giving this specific artwork any thought. So when I came to write this, for a moment, I couldn’t remember what I had made! Even as I write this I have not yet looked at the photographs, I know exactly what I have created. I remember the point at which I had to decide how subtle or how obvious I needed to be with a particular element for it to be just slightly unsettling, to make the eye curious in a curious person and in an incurious person for their eyes to rest gently upon it.
Anyway, Megan was kind enough to take delivery of today’s piece. It was her exhibition I went to see in Fortune’s Well. I appreciate her wearing nail varnish and top that works well with the day’s envelope!
It’s not often I completely balls up a piece, but today I did. I remember Mrs Williams, my teacher when I was about seven years old telling me how to make a mistake in a picture into something else. I tried that kind of thing but it just made it even shittier! So admitting defeat and not having an alternative to try the original idea again it was start afresh. Which worked out just fine. Now, I keep coming back to this point, the fact of a continuum, this small-work-every-day process, means that I need not worry or fret over a small amount of lost time. Yes I experienced a short bout of mild irritation, because if it hadn’t been for a failure of materials/equipment pretty much out of my control it was a good idea and I will pursue it again at some point with appropriate adjustments. So I learnt something and then had the joy of creating another piece, a piece which I wasn’t afraid to just add a last element to finish it off. If I had ballsed that up it would have been a shame, but same goes, the next piece would be fine.
I wasn’t so careful with the message on the envelope either! There I go casting aspersions on Schrödinger and I couldn’t even proof read my own envelope! The message is only 17 words and I managed to repeat one! I also nearly lost the artwork! I was busy in the studio preparing some paper with acrylic-painted areas for some drawings I am working on and used up all the available flat surfaces with drying pieces including the place I had put today’s artwork! Found it in the end though and feel it is quite interesting.