I reminded myself again that I don’t have to come up with something totally new each day. I can explore and play with themes and subjects and do series if I want. I don’t want to make duplicates but there is ample scope for exploring ideas and reusing elements exactly as I do in my other work. So this may or may not be associated with yesterday’s, or tomorrow’s or alternate Fridays’. It may or may not be part of series, but I think you will like it anyway.
I was late starting today as I have been trying to get some decent photos of my work done before things go off for framing. With Dorset Art Weeks only a few weeks away it’s all go.
I also popped into the Arts Centre to see the new box
The new #Letter365 post box is right next to the box office along with and project information
Polly and Dee at the Arts Centre have both decided the wish to purchase their respective birthdays so I best get on with making it possible for people to invest in #Letter365. Purchase options will open very soon.
Sometimes there just isn’t anything to report. I did the piece; signed and date-stamped it; photographed it; made the envelope text and printed it; stuck a stamp on the envelope; put the piece in the envelope and sealed it; put a sealing wax seal on the back of the envelope; date-stamped the envelope; photographed the envelope; walked to the post box and took pictures of the envelope in front of the post box; pushed the envelope and its contents into the post box ; walked home; downloaded the images to my PC; and wrote this.
It’s what I do without much variation every single day. That’s all ok and I usually enjoy doing most parts of it, but there is a limit to what I can write about. It’s part of my job at the moment that’s all.
No53 goes in the box with hints about its contents and a little slightly poetic message on the envelope
It’s only fair that people who will only see this on the internet will not be disadvantaged, should they be interested in buying it, compared to someone who might see it physically at the Arts Centre for example. This one is fatter than average! So fat that I was worried that it might not go through the little 5mm slot that says you can pay ordinary letter rate and so left off the sealing wax except for a tiny bit at the edges where it’s a little thinner.
No53 has only a small dab of sealing wax at each side
Of course it could be a very tiny and thin work that I have wrapped up with stiff, thick material to protect it. Whatever it is I like it very much and for anyone who likes my work this would be a good one to pitch for. I’m going to post a couple of other works that I completed today on my David Smith Artist blog – these will not be anything like this #Letter365 piece so that will help you guess what area this might be in!
Most of the afternoon it has been raining; sometimes so hard that I have found excuses not to make the walk up to the studio or back down to the house. It has been so dull that photography of my #Letter365 piece was not so easy. Almost the second I got back from the post box it stopped raining and the sky cleared. Isn’t British weather wonderful. Actually the day was relieved at times today with some wonderful skies that went a small way to compensate for yet more rain.
Take a look at the edge of the stamp sheet I have left attached. Royal Mail clearly doesn’t understand socio-economic groups: Buckingham Palace is definitely not the house of someone in group C1.
The box plate WED tells you I missed the post with No47
Following on from my last post, all was good with this in the end, but I think I am just having a poor art day. There was another piece hanging around in the studio – a reject from a previous #Letter365 attempt! – which I thought I could use to do an experiment on, rather than risk the piece I was working on (not #Letter365 related). It was looking amazingly good and I was really delighted with it then I added the final process and found that the ink I’d used was not waterproof and it went from looking interesting back to a mess like the one that got it rejected last time!
So I missed the post, but there would have been a backlog with the Easter holidays so it will even things out a bit!
I have been forced to go into extra time today. I suppose I have got a little casual and assumed that each day my #Letter365 piece would just flow, that the picture I had in my head would get transferred into physical form and be quite wonderful. Alas today’s just turned out to be a crock of proverbial! I have to say I was quite deflated to have produced something that missed the mark quite so badly and which had no discernible redeeming feature! It really was quite depressing. Made worse by a growing headache, the fact Radio 3 keeps playing warbling women and the realisation that I had run out of envelopes and had but a little time to dash in to town and get some. So I have had to take a deep breath and relax to the fact that there was no way I would get No47 would be in the post box before collection time! That’s OK as my deadline is midnight and I have turned things round in my mind and realised that I am working in an OK way on my other stuff and this was just a hiccough that caused an overreaction and loss of confidence. We will see if all is well when I return to the studio in a few minutes to look what I have done so far!
A bright spot of sunlight highlights the Queen’s head on the stamp on No40
I nearly forgot that I hadn’t posted today’s #Letter365 to this blog. I was keen to carry on in the studio and left this for later – much later as it happened! Everyone should be happy that I have put a stamp on it!
So today it’s No40 – 40 days and 40 nights. Is it a flood? Is it time spent in the wilderness? Up the mountain with God getting tablets of stone? I’m out of step with Lent and though there is a St Swithin’s church here in Bridport his forty days start in June don’t they? I suppose it’s a bit like the wilderness as it is all unseen – only there will be a further 325 days to come!
Those of you who know me well may not believe this, but I had a plan, I worked the plan and the plan worked! OK, the postie quite rightly gave me a little lecture on putting stamps on and postal security and stuff, but he did let me put a stamp on the postally-naked No38. I suspect that I came out of it OK. Polly Gifford at the Arts Centre would have mercilessly ribbed me about it at the very least and I saved us the £1 or so extra for unstamped mail and the walk to the sorting office. I even had a go at a flamingo shadow on the postie’s leg, but it didn’t come out that well as you can see. Nice shapes in the lower half of the photo though!
A sunny Sunday posting for No38 – with no bloody stamp!
I cannot believe I have done it again! I was so pleased that I have managed to spend the day in the studio despite my lost voice turning into a really bad sore throat tuning into a rotten cold. With the help of tissues and Strepsils I have soldiered on and had a really productive day. I did my #Letter365 piece first and am very pleased with it. Around lunchtime I did the envelope and photographs and popped it in the box. It is only now that I notice the lack of a stamp! (I didn’t notice that I thought it was Sunday yesterday as far as the message on the envelope went!)
So here is the plan:
Tomorrow morning enquire at the Bradpole Post Office as to the time of the first collection
Hang around about that time and see if the postie will let me rummage through the box and stick a stamp on the envelope
Failing that (if I miss them or they won’t let me) go cap-in-hand to the Arts Centre and offer to pick up and pay for the postage due
Suggest I leave a postage due fund to cover future cock ups
Repeat the opening words of Four Weddings and a Funeral under my breath from time to time
I seem to have got bound in to this thing of sealing my envelopes with sealing wax. It started because the only envelopes I had were old and the self-seal had lost its stick so I used Pritt stick and some sealing wax. I rather like the way that things like this develop. Quite often in the repetitive drawings I do, rules develop: perhaps if I make a “mistake” I will respond with an over-correction, which I then have to do each time that “mistake” happens. It all goes back to the thing I have about the wave-carved ripples on hard-sand beaches, where regular patterns develop and anomalies occur in turn spawning predictable reactions to the anomalies.
So anyway, I am now probably stuck with sealing up with sealing wax each day (except when I am away) and I started using the decorative gold wax I already had and then bought some more from the art shop in Dorchester. Neither of these had the satisfying sticky quality that the sealing wax my father used. There was always a long stick or two in the sideboard drawer (along with the little machine for cutting rug wool, the wooden darning mushroom and the little reedwork pen nib box my father brought back with him from Egypt during the war, amongst other mismatched sundries). This sealing wax had the manufacturer’s name or the brand embossed on one side. I can’t remember what is was called, though for some reason i think it may have been “Houses of Parliament”. Over the years the sticks got broken and gradually eroded at the breaks though still held together by the wick like a string of flattened red sausages. This was real “legal” sealing wax and was very different to the decorative stuff I used to date on the project. So the first one I found was this one pictured above is Waterson’s, supposedly made to a traditional recipe and unchanged for years. They are quite small sticks but they certainly have a much more satisfying stickiness to them. I am confusing myself with these sticky sticks that stick!
Pale No37 goes in the box to sit there till Monday
I posted No37 hours ago. I’ve had to renew the ink cartridges and tried to keep the same tone as before but the grey came out far too light really, a pale ghost of its former glory! The piece inside is worked up precisely from the idea I had this morning. It all went smoothly apart from a brief moment of doubt just before I completed it. It feels great when it goes like that – and it feels great when it gets a life of its own and finds its own resolution. It doesn’t feel great when it turns out to be rubbish and goes on the fire or recycle pile!
An unfolding artwork created a piece each day for a year
