Routine seems to be get up and dressed, breakfast at 8 with peter in time for him to go out at 8.20am, wash up, into studio, check fb-emails etc, a coffee break, then lunch at 1pm. I need to prepare a meal for 5or 7pm but all the other time i can be creating. I'm finding this project is causing me to notice my time/routines/habits and feelings about what i am doing etc..... i suppose it's living more mindfully and in the present. (i thought i was doing this before ..... but i don't think i was, not really)
Because i'm using found materials, i'm collecting our waste packaging and drying out teabags on radiator etc.... think peters visitors if they go in kitchen think we saving money by reusing ..i mentioned this to some one on sunday, and yes they had noticed and had assumed teabags must be for art, but then folded up laughing when i said yes, they were!
I'm also wondering how necessary is it for me to spend time like this, meandering around the edges of things/reading etc before i start to make work??
Today i think i am probably going to make something larger, as up till now everything has been A4. .... i have cardboard, glue, a canvas, paint etc????..... It's 10am and i still feel not quite ready to start, so will grab a coffee and read a few pages about ben nicholson, before starting...
Today i need to unlock blog as cohort can't see it, but tutors can .... this may be cos i have only put in oca13, rather than individual names? .......
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| my studio before i start making. |
14.00 pattern ... what pattern of working .... what work?!
An interesting morning in that oca13 fb page has been intersting in discussion about our course blogs/ vulnerability etc...... was i making this a diversion from getting on with making... yes and no.
Jane has a really super blog and at first i just thought about how much catching up i need to do. I then thought that i am probably too slow with technology to possibly put all my research onto blog. I've done lots of reading/research/watching videos and kept notes (some of which i find difficult to read) in a notebook not at all legible to others.... but this would be impossible for me to get into my blog. I therefore need to be selective/discerning in what i include as documentation which i feel is taking me ages.... and i think the process is more important for me to record,so i get to know myself, than all the info i've collected? I also keep an MA folder on dropbox with tutrial sheets, research articles etc .... so what to include?? - making days, with notes like these; gallery visits?; bibliography. I am not sure what to put on general blog now i am using pages for projects.... perhaps my thoughts ouside of non making days?
Is there such a thing?? i try not to be involved with my art on days off, which tends to be Friday, when i usually go out exploring with peter, which is great as he is also interested in art, galleries and landscape. Saturday and sunday usually abou community involvement .. pub, town/market, church etc., which leaves mon-fri to fit everything else into ... artmaking/recording (shopping, cooking, cleaning and any socialising).
Feeling aaaaaagh at moment! Think i did allow fb to distract me this morning,as i haven't made anything, but i wouln't be thinking this through if i hadn't checked fb (only our page) .. and it's part of belonging to a group and getting to know, encourage and learn from each other ... about building community.
Meal for 5pm is in slow cooker and early meal gives me this evening to work if i want to. Will settle down to continue reading about nicholson, which i'm enjoying.... perhaps today is about gathering energy after not being too well?? or am i just making excuses because i don't want to give energy to making??
Totally fascinated by how this video below reflects my thinking and struggle with boundaries/routines and it was posted as i finished writing my last sentence... it's the kind of stuff i was thinking about in my proposal for the project, but then started to let go of as angela said not to be too hard on myself! today has been about struggling with not keeping to a routine in order to allow me freedom, but i think it works the other way around and freedom comes from boundaries and limitations....will now start making by 10am!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7MoytF2V_g&feature=youtu.be
Reading on nicholson has been interesting, especially quote below from p48.
Nicholson belie(ved) that a painting could be a real object and convey a spiritual feeling. Nicholson particularly admired Wallis's successful combination of memory and experience in the making of an image, using direct and simple means. He later claimed: ' About Alfred Wallis: the essential part of his idea was that he worked naturally like the first man will have worked, using the materials to hand (a cave or a cardboard) in order to make an experience. To Wallis his paintings were never 'paintings' but actual events. I like to think that.... my reliefs are, when they succeed, not a 'picture' but a mental experience.' Underpinning the white reliefs, and all of Nicholson's endeavour, was a belief that art should be more real than life itself, that it should attempt to embody a spiritual reality that lies behind the world of appearances. Such reality was to be found in memories and experience, rather (than) in a literal translation of the world as visually perceived .... 'If your idea becomes evenfractionally separated from your material it becomes decorative and loses its reality'.
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| Ben Nicholson 1934 (relief) 8x8cms. |
Gosh this work is small ... thought it would be much larger.
Chose this image as it shows layers, texture and has a natural handmade quality in circles not being exactly round.
.. struggling to know whether i prefer to use circles or pebble shapes in my work!
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| (white relief - Vasilios 2) May 1965. 680x540 |
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| 980 x 870 |
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| 236 x 173 |
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| 185 x 178 |
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| nicholson. porthmeor window 1930. 634 x 491 |
I really like this painting ... the composition, the colour .... the layered distressed look....
reflection
Ended today by flicking through images of nicholson, lanyon, frost, heron,wallis,calder and miro..... a mixed group of artists, five of which spent time in cornwall. I
think i am probably drawn to them, along with many scottish artists after living onthe Isle of Man, with it's similar landscape and light....then updated wk2day1 page.
Today didn't go as planned.... but i'm ok about that now .. it's been a fruitful day with a different kind of research and i will make art tomorrow :)
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