ARTISTS TALKING

# 15 [12 April 2008]

Listening to the theme tune of my teenage years: Tom Petty's "Learning to Fly"..

The progress today: I have been to several DIY shops, sellers of technological gadgetry and a bed-supplier. And all are enthusiastically promising to save all their corrugated cardboard for me to collect weekly until I have enough to build all 7 large forester's houses on stilts.. I struggle to explain them in English.

You will see soon..

The exhibition for St Luke's has now been confirmed for the 30th of May, I am trying to negotiate a starting date of 3-4 days earlier than that. But there is some time yet. But for now the dates will be 30th of May to 13th of June. Just 2 weeks, not 3 as I originally hoped. So much work and then just 2 weeks.. In future I will have to make sure to negotiate a certain effort to exhibition period ratio!!! But this is good. A solo show in the centre of Liverpool in a venue that is busy and accessible to all types and shapes and sizes of people.

Bingo!

# 14 [7 April 2008]

I am inching my way closer to a clear view..

This weekend I attended Markus Sokoup's Binary Jam at the Static Gallery, which I arrived at really quite late, but still I think I deserve points for crawling out of the comforts of my warm home. It was good to see some locals (Sam from the View Two Gallery, Virgil Shakira who has made much experimental/abstract soundworks although he may hit me for probably mis-describing what exactly he does... Jay Yung who just closed her Paradise Stories at Riba, and a few others... Good to see them.

I went to hear Steve Boyland and Magie Nichols perform their improvised voice work at the Bluecoat on sunday. It was inspirational to see them work and encouraging to see such a strong audience. 

As about my own progress: I have had a meeting with a friend who is practical and we worked out how I will construct my '7 Giants' in time for the exhibition in St.Luke's in Liverpool. I am looking forward to it now and am actually just about to to and get a few of the necessary materials and some advice from the DIY centre. (I am constructing all 7 "giants" out of corrugated cardboard, which I will laminate until I can make 2inch batons out of it for the legs of the giants and 1inch or so sheets for the sides... I promise a drawing soon to clear any confusion I am causing you...)

Hopefully tomorrow I will have a meeting with Ambrose from Urban Strawberry Lunch about dates and then the show will finally be 'in the bag'..  

Which leads straight to the project that I propose for Cologne: I have been invited to do a performance and I am planning a project on idioms and how people say what they don't mean in order to say what they do mean and how this can be confusing at the best of times but how it becomes potentially humorously confusing and tangled up when I bring other country's idioms into the mix...

How exactly this will become a performance I can't tell you, I am having a little stage fright when I think about it. The original concept was for a photography and film piece, not a performance. But I spoke to Steve Boyland about it today and we are considering to work on this project in collaboration. With his voice work potentially being the exact perfect link to tie together my ideas for the project.

Now I need to appease the man who invited me by sending him a better project description, he is cross with me for having responded with such delay..

Rightly so. I deserve a slap and half an hour in the corner for that.

I will go now and clean my toilet while I repent.

# 13 [3 April 2008]

I posted my proposal to 'Fred' in Cumbria and am quite pleased with myself...

A light anticlimax took grip of me around 4pm but I beat it down with a swift panini followed by New York cheesecake..  

Tonight I will sleep and know that it is well earned and tomorrow I am sure is another arm-long list of things to do and follow up.

More inspirational stuff when I rise from, what I predict will be a 14 hour long, sleep... 

# 12 [2 April 2008]

Finally here is a partial project description, it is for FRED the exhibition in Cumbria to which I am sending a proposal tomorrow.:

# 11 [2 April 2008]

Project:

Drawing room intervention with Rick Creed at the Tate Liverpool next week. 

9.30am-12 and 1pm-4.30 

come along...

contrast between life model, long poses and the resulting marks with short, sometimes flowing movement between postures you (VERY) rarely get a chance to draw.

Contrast the mark-making between  the static model and intervening artist who offers reversed/contracted/acrobatic body shapes that can at times lead to an abstract, at times be in fluid dialogue with the model.

Come, explore, come, think about your approach to drawing. A fresh lively class, with Rick Creed one of the most inspiring and positive teachers I have met, and with myself offering headstands, splits and unusual backbends, twists and more... 

# 10 [2 April 2008]

It has been quite a week of sitting bowed over applications. I do wonder why the anticipation of forms is always so completely different to the actual experience of them.

I tend to quite enjoy myself once I get going. Opportunities to define my practice, my ideas, opportunities to refine ideas, catalysts for coming up with ideas. And I always end up finding myself stuck somewhere deep between internet pages describing the geological, social, historical facts and fictions of the various places to which I enter applications for projects, exhibitions, residencies..

So my application last year to Art Gene may not have been successful, but  now I know that it's town hall stand's on the site of a former clay pit.

I find out about the Kendall - Lancaster canal, about the only active pottery in Cumbria, about Cumbria's pottery history, the move from bread kneading bowls andbutter churning dishes to plant pots..

Rivetting it may not be for everyone, but you know what it is like, suddenly something catches your eye and your inspiration comes on in leaps and bounds and behaves like yeast and warm water with sugar... expansive..

I tell you what made me see so many clay related  topics: I am interested in Sisyphus, and in dungbeetles. they both roll large boulders, one of clay and one of rock. One's act is eternally fuile and devoid of hope and resolution the other's action fertilizes every field on the planet and bourishes his off-spring and also makes his wife happy. (That is if beetles have wifes, maybe they just co-habit without vows.. not that it really matters...)

One story goes: that the dungbeetle was asked by god to roll enough dung and make a man out of it..  

Some people feel that their life-s actions are an endless droning, futile drum. That their labour is sisyphean.

(on this note: I discovered the existence of a fish called: drum-fish...)

Other people are more optimistic, more like the dungbeetle...

Eloquence fails me. I will return once I had coffee. 

# 9 [28 March 2008]

..life's sections..

... yesterday I read a photographer's interview in which he pointed out that only 20% of his time is spent taking photographs, the rest on administration and research... Well. it is much the same with making art work. At the moment I am in one of those uncomfortable transition periods where projects are coming along, but where there is no sign of their realization yet. So at the moment satisfaction levels are very low, but inspiration is beginning to ferment, a little more sugar and ideas should rise ready to become solid and tangible..

One problem is that I have produced so little in the past 6 months that now the internal need to leap and explode into action has grown disproportionate to time, finances and energy available.

I will make one more list and throw the coals into the fires and get some of these projects going. The urgency is only increasing daily.

The hunger for making art.
Relationships should nourish one's energy resources not deplete them, should they not? Well, I am in the final throes of making my way back up from the depths of life's muddles, this week sees 2 more deadlines for projects that I really want to be involved in and then I can begin to make direct plans for "A Dungbeetle and Sisyphus". And get my camera out for "Idioms" and advertise for Artist Assistants for May's preparations for my St Luke's project, and plan my performance for Cologne.

... 

In the meantime I recommend that you take a look at: http://cressidakocienski.blogspot.com/'
That will give you inspiration and things to think about.

(for some reason there is a tiny problem: you need to manually delete this '  yes that little thing '  this one' ' ' '  at the end of the blog address, the same goes for my personal blog address with blogspot, too. For some reason a tiny:  '    adds itself to the link and become indelible for me. So.. delete the ' at the end... Then the links will work flawlessly.)

# 8 [23 March 2008]

Easter

My most immediate creative output today will be the baking of bread (sweet white yeast bread)  in the shape of Easter Rabbits...

I have just received an invitation to take myself and my art to Cologne and perform in May. Perform...

Well when I described myself as artist who works with performance I hadn't really imagined someone would ask me to come and perform in a gallery.  ... me on stage being an artist... I hadn't really thought about it very much... 

The sensation is equal to the one the rabbit experiences when it sees the car .... That was my first response.

Here is the second response:

Great opportunity !!! I am looking forward to coming up with a plan.

For now I am going back to baking Easter Rabbits; and meeting Tomas Harold, the 'Up and Coming Curator', in a couple of hours.. 

# 7 [19 March 2008]

Now this was a roller coaster of a fortnight! 

Interviews for postgraduate programs at both the Royal College and at Goldsmiths, art worries, stage fright in relation to  the invitation to make work for St. Luke's / Bombed out church in Liverpool.

Thinking, thinking, and rethinking, finally being met with an epiphany whilst in the bath last night. "If the mountain isn't coming to me then I will just go to the mountain" Or something like that...

So I shall let you in, into my cryptic thinking in the next days. In the meantime I will try and formulate it all and edit it into a manageable size. 

Enjoy your Easter Holidays, with or without beautifully hand colored eggs. Unfortunately boiled eggs make me nauseous.. What a shame. 

The bad news: the RCA sent me a rejection letter on deceptively hight quality stationery.

The enormous, massive relief: Golsmiths invited me unconditionally to come and study on their Masters Program from this autumn. 

Unconditionally has to be my favorite word, if I would be offered same terms in romance then life would be complete. 

Unconditionally is just such a character and life affirming attitude. And most gratefully received. 

Good Day and Good Easter. Aim high...

(Perhaps I need to curtail my life-coaching advices.. Before I turn into Eckhart Toll, or some other such similar lifestyle Guru. But I can't help myself: Don't be lazy!)

# 6 [14 March 2008]

It's been a dung-beetle type of day...

 I spare you the details; tomorrow I am with Mersey Film and Video figuring out Dvd Studio Pro to re-emerge the most knowledgeable Jack-Of-All-Trades around.

This evening I saw Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company, skilled, but why do I feel that I have a but to utter... They didn't capture me fully, something wasn't there. 

Ideas are breeding, I feel like an oversized petri dish... It's brimming in here, just add some more sugar solution and it will just burst the lid right off, off this culture breeding machine that I am...