ARTISTS TALKING

I have a carving knife and fork in my hands and I am trying to decide how to cook it because I have to eat it.
In the state in which I have come across the sloth creature, it looks more like a badly plucked chicken.
I suspect that it's going to make quite a dry dish.

(ii) Dream two
I get off the roof of a very tall building into a hammock in a tall tree, which is in a forest. Some sloths climb up to the branches above me. The first sloth lets go and falls into the hammock beside me. I begin to talk to it.
It sounds like: 'Mwwwofff, mwwwwllloov,
mllwooofv'.
I shout translations back up to the other people still on the roof.
One by one, the sloths slip down to commune with me.

(iii) Dream three
Not really a dream. I look across at my boyfriend, asleep in bed, and find myself with the distinct and ghastly impression that he is actually the sloth, sleeping.

(iv) How the whole sloth business got started
I was drawing a picture of my husband (not boyfriend), who at the time I had given the pet name Pootie. The image of Pootie 'came out' as a sloth.
For a long time this image of my husband remained on the wall of his friend's loft-style studio apartment. He did not like it there and mentioned his pleasure when the drawing's ink began to fade.
But just at that moment, I had begun working on a new Pootie, in the form of a large, long-limbed sloth creature.

(v) How the whole pootie business got started
After going to Japan and observing the Pokemon, I realised that my husband required a Pokemon name. In New Zealand, something 'pootie' is something smelly. I considered that my husband was rather smelly at the time, and so this was the name that he got.

(vi) What my husband thinks of the whole sloth/pootie business
My husband is disdainful and concerned about the whole sloth/Pootie business. At the same time, I know that he is amused and flattered by it, because he is a vain man.

(vii) What my boyfriend thinks about the whole sloth/pootie business.
He is under the impression that it is a girl, because it has rings on its fingers. This is, of course, incorrect.

Francis Upritchard is resident at Camden Arts Centre, London, 5 January – 29 February, 2004. For details, including open studio sessions, visit www.camdenartscentre.org
Upritchard is represented by Kate MacGarry
www.katemacgarry.com