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.
We are out at Bridport Arts Centre to se O’Hooley & Tidow tonight so I will take today’s piece along and see what happens
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!
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
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!
I am going to have to get used to seeking publicity. I hate having my picture in the paper and doing self promotion, but I know that it is a vital part of the business of being an artist. So I am pleased to get a half-page slash in our local paper the Bridport News and know I have to aim for plenty more pieces – locally and further afield – if I am to make a real success of the #Letter365 project.
I wrote the outline of the press release and the Arts Centre tidied it up and sent it out but I am not sure to which other publications it may have gone. I think I need to build my own list of helpful press release recipients. Please help and let me know the best people to send out to.
Well the sun went in but I had already printed the envelope – though I expected change so was hesitant!
I was a bit disappointed that the Post Office had run out of the Bridport News so I was unable to maximise my journey 30 yards down the road!
I spoke to Pete Bryan at Arts Development UK today (I set up their website) and he thinks I should apply for a grant from the Arts Council. Should I? I could make the application process part of the art process. Anyone got any thoughts?
Yesterday I was surprised that something other than the idea I had planned wanted to get made. Today it was me that doubted myself: I had a clear picture of what I wanted to create for today’s piece but as I was making it I began to doubt if it would work. I was beginning to thing I might bin it and start afresh and just made a final adjustment and bingo it suddenly became perfectly what I was aiming for. It’s magic all this!
“Wine and art – a perfect pairing” is what we called the preview evening for our group show “Five artists at the Chapel in the Garden” last August. Tonight’s delivery of #Letter365 No19 was a much quieter affair. Polly bought me a drink to celebrate successfully completing #Collage365 and the film was good so a fine result all round.
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.