I see now that I forgot to put a date stamp on the front of the envelope. I don’t usually take my stamp with me if I am creating away from home, but I did today. I stamped the back of the artwork but not this. Chaos rules.
Because we were out most of the day and then when I got home I had to remove yesterday’s image and explain that, it is now late. So I may not get the chance to write all my thoughts about Bath. I wanted to check out the art galleries in Bath (and also use up some petrol in the car as we are selling it on Friday!) but sadly got to thinking about how Bath was built for the obscenely rich to play. It was a place of inequality, a place of smelly people who bathed in other people’s bathwater; people who ran after the latest craze and allowed themselves to be led by the nose by celebrity party organisers. So nothing has changed in the higher echelons of society then!
But I created my piece there in Bath. I had planned what I wanted to do and prepared the envelope in the morning before we left. It was nice to do and I may do more things in this vein. I’m bit frustrated that I hadn’t the time to do more then and there or, indeed, any other art today. I really want to get stuck into some visual creative work, having lost quite a lot of time deciding on a new car!
Note there are no annotations on the back of the envelope and i used a tape and pen seal:
I have removed the photograph I had posted yesterday at the request of the Postmaster. Apparently he was upset that I had taken pictures of his staff at work. I am told it is “a data protection issue for them as an organisation”. I did ask permission of the person concerned, but of course I do not wish to needlessly upset people, especially local people who are doing their best to provide services to the community, so I have complied with the request.
However it does open up questions about the whole nature of our society and how our attitudes have changed over the years towards the people who work within our communities. My guess is that this request has come from the “arse-covering” rules and regulations that have almost become a necessity because we are, as a society, becoming increasingly litigious. I don’t really have any issue with the local manager but this is a great shame as it stops us all celebrating the people we share our communities with in a free and honest way. If we can only take pictures of people at work in our community under conditions controlled by a marketing department or a legal department then sincerity soon flies out the window. When I say how attitudes have changed, I used to work in a local newspaper advertising and managed the account of The Post Office at a regional level. This was a very long time ago when BT was still a division of the Post Office! In those days the marketing and advertising people were begging us to photograph their happy and industrious employees at work. Plus ça change!
Well here is the envelope that I had hand stamped yesterday:
The reference to Seamus Heaney is because I am reading Beowulf and you can hear him and his cadence in the text. I think I would know what he sounds like even if I hadn’t heard him.
The summer music thing has just got to have its way and my brain will spew out ideas and I will run with the first that makes a bit of sense (?)
I really like their backdrop and may make a piece based on it!
I’m spent and we spent a lot of money today. I thought I had got my idea for today’s first thing but this is much better even if I did have to sweat a bit to get it done in time.
Of course you all want to see and hear Eddie Cochrane:
It never really cooled down enough to make a visit to one of our apiaries bearable – especially since the strimmer needs some spares on the head and you have to wedge a piece of wood behind the accelerator cable to get it to rev high enough. It was hot and sweaty work and the bees don’t like the vibration and were disoriented by the change in aspect. So I got stung by bees and nettles.
Of course all this has nothing to do with today’s #Letter365 artwork. In fact it is pretty much the antithesis in action and object. This piece is clean, cool and was no sweat. It was principally cerebral in the making with a small amount of skilled physical work, whereas the strimming required little brainpower and more physical effort (the sort of effort my chiropractor warns me to only do small amounts of at any one time). The art is quiet and contemplative in comparison to strimming. The artwork has a lower environmental impact than the strimming only because of its size: if scaled up I think the chemicals and materials of the artwork and it’s production and delivery, might outweigh the damage caused by the small amount of fuel used, especially since I use Aspen environmentally-friendly fuel made from trees that doesn’t smoke and is free of many of the chemicals in petroleum-based fuels.
Back of No139
Oh and the summertime heatwave music is slipping on to the envelope. Here’s one that is mentioned
Well for the second day running I have been out all day and unable to engage in making art until late in the day. I was beginning to get a little tense about it (partly for other reasons than just being late in the day) but took some time out to reconnect with my art before cooking dinner (plaice fillet, with new potatoes from the garden and cavallo nero). That meant that when I returned to the studio I was able to come up with the goods and get some other things done too.
And, as I remark on the back of the envelope, there is hardly a mark on the leading and trailing edges and Violet Lines is absent, though the colour still is not accurate:
No137 gets posted without spontaneously combusting
I have not been involved with art at all today, we have been out looking for a new car and by the time we got back and had some food and a discussion and fed our neighbours’ cats it was late. Being totally devoid of any idea what I might do for today’s piece and refusing to panic with ony a few hours to sort it all out I cheated. Well nobody said i couldn’t cheat! It wasn’t really cheating. It’s not as if I did a Blue Peter and whipped out one I did earlier, but I did raid my sketchbooks and notebooks. O the sanity of jotting down ideas! Day saved without worry and stress and I didn’t spontaneously combust! And still time left to stress about the other things I haven’t done today!
Because I tend to write a bit about the weather on the envelope I wrote the word “heatwave” and immediately my brain offered up “Whenever I’m with him…” which was Martha and the Vandellas “burning” up with passion. They really had something special, though as a lad I guess I liked the Who’s cover more (now it seems tame in comparison)
That spread to Marilyn Monroe “We’re having a heatwave, a tropical heatwave” and from there to all sorts of summertime songs. So beware!
I have been struggling with this post as I did with today’s piece. It’s a muggy old day and there is still that unsettling electricity in the air that last night’s thunderstorms didn’t clear. It makes the bees irritable and over-defensive and me too really. I thought it would be a good idea to force some kind of resolution on some elements that I have been playing with for a few days or more. I thought I could use that idea up and get it out of the way, but of course things have their time and today wasn’t it! After a few other false starts it was time to take a step back and stop struggling. Now I don’t mean that in the way of giving up or giving in, rather I mean that sometimes battling with something head on does not bring results and oblique strategies and sideways thinking may prove more effective. As soon as I started to work on some other things not related to #Letter365 an elegant solution started to form and opposition crumbled away. Struggle was only interested when it thought I was up for a fight
That strategy didn’t work so well for the envelope or this writing or indeed the other work I was doing but, hey, you can’t win ’em all!
Back of No135
An unfolding artwork created a piece each day for a year
