ARTISTS TALKING

# 71 [24 August 2008]

Plenty has happened since my last post. Mainly, I keep buying cupboards. Three, to be precise, or even four if you count the bedside cabinet I noticed in the secondhand furniture shop while searching for cupboards and realised it would be perfect for our spare bedroom.

But THE cupboard still eludes me. I'm looking for something wooden, with double doors, that I can fill with surreptitious photographs. So first, I found a glass-doored bookcase for only a tenner that might be adaptable if I can't find anything better. Thought I'd better snap it up. Saw the bedside cabinet. Didn't have enough cash so asked shop to hold it for a couple of days. Went back to Norwich and happened to spot a small wooden single door cupboard. Thought it might do if I can't find anything better. Bought it for £4. While in charity shop, spotted white melamine kitchen/bathroom cupboard. Thought nothing of it at the time. Once home, hankered after it: might work conceptually if I can't find anything better.  Went back to Norwich and bought it for £5. Have now spent £19 on cupboards and they are filling up the garage and none of them are quite right for this piece of work. Oh well. Back to Norwich after the bank holiday I guess.

Meanwhile, I'm transferring photographs onto white tee shirts of differing sizes. Lots of them. The transfer process makes the living room smell funny, but I think I've finished now.

 And I've had AO-sized blueprints made of four of the most phallic poppyheads you can imagine. They are pretty shocking. The young man in the copy department stepped backwards, wincing, when the first one came out of the printer. Yay!

Lots more printing to do at home, too - it's costing a fortune in ink, let alone cupboards. But now I've sent out email notification to over 200 people, there had better be something for them to see if they venture up to North Norfolk in a month's time. 

# 72 [28 August 2008]

Still working, albeit slightly haphazardly, on producing stuff for the show. The pressure is definitely mounting, as I'll only have a couple more free days before starting my residency at Gresham's school next week. Today I made the mistake of digging out my timetable, and noticed with horror that the department is actually open seven days a week. I don't think it's obligatory for me to attend on Sundays, but I hadn't realised that Saturdays were an all-day thing. Not sure how things will work out domestically, let alone getting all that last-minute exhibition preparation done.

Meanwhile, I've printed out lots of A3 video stills of my jumping-over-the midsummer-bonfire performance last year.  Sometimes it feels like a bonus to have a hopelessly outdated video camera: I really like the surreal focus and colours you get with it. As usual I made too many prints, but it's quite a long wall space so I'll have to see how many of them will fit in a line along the length of it. With the tee shirts on the other side, that's quite a sizeable bit of gallery accounted for. Yippee!

Another piece of work I've been playing around with will use prints on acetate, so I've sorted out the images for that, too. The idea is that they look a bit like X rays or other personal information records. And/or an inventory of relics. Hopefully. Anyway, they are new and I quite like some of them.

Tomorrow, though, it's back to the charity shops of Norwich in search of the perfect cupboard. God, am I becoming obsessed by any chance?

# 73 [2 September 2008]

I'm going to attempt to add to this blog each day of the Gresham's residency, even if it's a very short entry. I start tomorrow at 8.50am, and it's one of the late nights so I won't finish until 7.45pm. I hope I'm still standing by the end of the day!

This afternoon I went along for a last-minute briefing and Charley showed me the printmaking equipment. There's a lovely chaotic stock cupboard, and I'm allowed to just help myself to anything I like. Wow ... I just hope I get some ideas going so I'm able to make the most of this opportunity.

Although I did quite a lot of printmaking while at art school, it was under the watchful eye of the technician, who was always on hand to sort you out - whether you actually wanted to be sorted out or not! This is different. It's a busy department and I'll have to work things out for myself. Since leaving college I've found different ways of making work, generally based on photography and video, as I haven't had a studio space or access to printmaking/painting facilities. Now I'm being let loose to make as much mess as I like - and it's a bit scary.

# 74 [3 September 2008]

My first full day at Gresham's. As a school for the seriously privileged, I had wondered how I would handle my ambivalence towards private education, but I soon settled and, if I'm honest, even revelled in the luxury of the first-rate facilities and impeccable behaviour of the students. And the teachers, Charley, Emma and Tara, were very friendly. And just don't get me started on the subject of the magnificence of the school dinners!

Having watched some groups of students doing monoprints and etchings, I realised that I just needed to jump in and have a go. Before my arrival, I had imagined mostly continuing with the work I'm already engaged in for the show - digital imaging, video and so on. But it's clear that I'm expected to participate in the messy, hands-on stuff that the department specialises in, and it seems a waste of an opportunity if I just do what I would have otherwise been doing at home. 

Trouble is, there's still a lot left to do, and the residency finishes on the show's hanging day. So I'll have to work out some kind of a balance. Also, the resident artist usually shows work produced during the residency, and I really don't think I'd want to show my tentative experiments in printmaking and painting.

Meanwhile, Life Drawing this evening was fun, once I'd cast off my 'I'm useless at drawing' inhibitions.

www.world-tree.co.uk/festial

# 75 [4 September 2008]

Thursdays are 'mornings only' - welcome in many ways - but the morning whizzed past as I worked on four more poppyhead monoprints. I'll have a look at them when I get in tomorrow, but first impressions are that none of them quite cut it, despite (or perhaps because of) my determined working and reworking of the plate.

I just don't draw in my practice!

So why am I drawing on plates?

Is it all right to have a go at something just for the challenge - even fun - of it when you have a solo exhibition to put up, three weeks today?

Is my ineptitude endearing? Is something being expressed in the hand made image that is not apparent in a photograph? Is it significant that I put so much concentration into the work; so much of myself? 

Maybe the value of the exercise has been in kicking me out of my comfort zone. On the other hand, surely it's OK to know where your strengths lie and work to them, rather than insisting on humiliation because you, as an artist, should be able to turn your hand to anything? 

I can't decide. 

# 76 [5 September 2008]

I was a bit nervous this morning, as it was my first teaching session with a Fourth Year group. The subject was - as it will be for the entire seven sessions with the group - POPPYHEADS! Well, what else? 

I talked a little about Festial, and showed the class several examples of the different ways I've used the poppyheads in the pages of Kalender. I gave each of the students a photograph of one of the poppyheads in front view and profile, and they'll be using that image as their source to develop in various ways. It seemed to go OK, and some of the pupils even said 'thank you' as they left the room. I'm still getting used to the politeness I encounter at the school!

During the day, Emma showed me how to make press-moulds for plaster casting, and my workspace is now full of drying plaster relics. Can't wait to see the results tomorrow! 

# 77 [6 September 2008]

Yes, I know it's Saturday, but Gresham's is a boarding school and the art department is open every day of the week. Well, actually I'm being let off Sundays, and I'm taking up that offer, as there is still so much to do here. 

It's very much like two separate worlds that I'm existing in at the moment. The art department offers so many opportunities to paint, draw, print, sculpt, cast ... and if I think of any extra materials I'd like to use, I just have to ask Charley and he will happily get them in for me. I have to pinch myself!

But that world is far removed from the world of my computer and printer - not forgetting, of course, a fine selection of cupboards -  that I've already invested a great deal of time - and money - in working with. While I'm at school I try to think about the stuff at home and work out how everything might fit together in the exhibition, but it's only at home that I can get more of a perspective on the necessity of being true to my own practice when push comes to shove.

Meanwhile, I unmoulded my plaster relics this morning. Some of them have potential, while others needed to be remade slightly differently. So it was out with the squidgy clay and gooey plaster again. Fun! And in the way that these things often happen, when I peeled the clingfilm off the moulds I suddenly found I had the makings of another piece of work ...

This afternoon Dan was running an adults' etching workshop in the department. Like everyone else I encounter at Gresham's, he was incredibly friendly, and I felt able to ask him for a few printmaking tips. I'm thinking of working with candle wick on a soft ground, using my own body measurements.

But not tomorrow. That's a day off. Sort of. 

# 78 [9 September 2008]

I wish there was money in art. Then I could do it every day, forever. It was a lovely day today. I just immersed myself in art for the whole day. Eleven hours. Those public school students have long days ... but I wasn't complaining.

Once Emma had shown me how to make two-part moulds from modrock I was away - feverishly making moulds of my beloved relics. I was desperately smoothing the last few strips when Charley came round to switch off the lights and lock up at 7.45 pm.

In an earlier interlude, I took a small group of Year 13 students to Cley church - a fantastic medieval church nearby. The students' brief was to gather information - sketchbook, rubbings, photographs and especially video - to work with over the next two Monday sessions. It made me want to start a new project based on Cley church: what a place! And they even had apples in the porch to help yourself to.

# 79 [9 September 2008]

My last post was dated misleadingly, as it was yesterday's but I wrote it after midnight!

So, today. I knew it would be a short day as the department only opens for the morning on Tuesdays, but even so the time whizzed past alarmingly. I spent much of the time preparing scraperboards for the fourth year class I'll be teaching tomorrow, using indian ink on mountboard. They've bowed quite a bit, but hopefully nothing that a pile of books won't sort out.

I spent the rest of the time messily: pouring plaster into yesterday's ten moulds through inplausibly tiny holes (plaster all over Emma's hand - sorry Emma!) and making a very fiddly three-part mould that I don't have an awful lot of confidence in.

Still, Zach in the space behind me was playing Bob Dylan, and it was all good. 

# 80 [10 September 2008]

Short day Tuesday, long day Wednesday. I have to be in the department early so I'm ready to teach the first lesson of the day, but it's also Life Drawing for the Lower and Upper Sixth from 6.15 pm to 7.45 pm. 

My Fourth Year lesson was ok - poppyheads gauged out of scraperboards by the easiest students you can imagine. I hope they're not sick of poppyheads yet: we have five more sessions together.

Then I had the rest of the day to wash the clay off my first lot of cast relics, open the two-part moulds, discover that six of the ten casts hadn't worked properly, reseal and pour plaster into those six plus a couple of others, and clear up the increasingly chaotic workspace! Which I am ashamed to say has spread onto a table that's officially earmarked for Lower Sixth students... Luckily, they are being very understanding about it. Well, to my face, anyway.

Later in the afternoon I drew 15 relics on an etching plate. That was fun and I tell myself that my wobbly drawing 'style' adds to the effect. But you can't get away with that sort of excuse in a Life Drawing class. This time, the class was being led by a visiting tutor who assumed that I was an expert Life Drawer and started asking my opinion on how to teach the subject. The whole experience was very embarrassing and I threw my two drawings in the bin afterwards. But I'll still have a go next time.