Half the air with added hair...

Great exhibition at the Tate St Ives.. pity the balloons have so much static they attract hair.. so that when I entered the installation there was other peoples hair stuck on the balloons that smacked me in the face. Yuk. Hair-face!
It was an amazing experience. Ok it did elicit the old "a three year old could do this" response from my (non-artist) husband, but I didn't care that we didn't see eye-to-eye on it (I could've so easily lost him in 8ft of aerated latex but I needed the lift back and the the keys to the cottage!). We nearly came to blows. I tried to explain that the theory behind such a supposedly simple idea was very complex and interesting and involved regarding the human condition and all the senses, but he was still remembering the Vorticists theories that were so loud and furious and ringing that he probably still had those petulant voices ringing round his head from when I dragged him round Tate Britain.
The balloon installation could scarcely be in a more appropriate place. Bounded on one side by seaside sunlight and the other by an "audience" looking down from the corridors above, the crescent shaped trench seemed at once open and enclosed, private and watched, free and kept in, authoritarian and childlike.
There may be those who criticise Martin Creed (I will go into that another day), but in this particular exercise he really suceeded in making me think of myself as a lone individual, hemmed in by all sides, listening to the laughter of others but not being part of it and being seperated from it by so much airy bulk. The balloons were like all those things that prevent you from progress, and I realised I was anxious once the novelty had worn off. I was lost, I had lost my husband, and I couldn't find a way out. I envied those who where whooping and throwing their arms in the air with childish glee, scooping the balloons out and throwing them as hard as they could. There was a brief moment when I allowed myself this joy.. and then I became a scared adult again. I wish the joy of being alone within the cells of my "womb", able to think and play with innocence and ignorance, unemcumbered by behavioural or psychological restraints even in a physically trapping environment, had stayed with me.

The Bronze Sea may be Blue after all...

Cool bronze oxidation, a photo by steve renaker on Flickr.

Is this what the Greeks meant by the "bronze" sky? In all the literature I have read its assumed that either the Greeks didn't have a word for blue, were colourblind, were using poetic license, or the sky looked different in Ancient times. Not once (in my looking, anyway) has it been hypothesised that they actually meant oxidised bronze when they talked about the bronze sea. It would make sense, seeing as oxidised bronze is in fact a turquoise blue colour.

Be Careful What You Wish For...

Well girls.. you wanted equality.. look what you got:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12606610

Higher car insurance premiums!

I've never believed in the feminist agenda. I dont want to feel I have to go to work because of all the rights my "sisters" have fought for. I dont want to have to battle against men. I dont want to be classed as a gender, but as an individual. I also dont believe men and women are the same. Our bodies and our brain chemistry are totally different for Pete (or Petals) sake!

Wake up and smell the banknotes girls!!

An Exploding Rash!

No folks, its not something I've caught from a seedy Soho venue.
Rathermore its to describe the sudden and copious output from my studio. (No, that sound horrible too!! I'be been reading too many blogs with British humour in.)
Anyway, after finishing the MA and trying for months to summon up some sort of creative urge from the ashes of my inspiration (I haven't given up on the coloured transparent work but it got such a poor mark as my final project I felt pretty useless), I decided January was about the best time to make a new start, New Years Resolutions and all that.
So after a surprisingly sober and boring NYE, even an early night, I was looking at a long day of work ahead.
I started in earnest, not realising quite how much paint I would be using up! I based it on a one off painting that I did last summer. I showed it at a crit at uni and they were overcome with indifference, however mere mortals like my family and people on the net liked it so I thought it had legs.
Here is some of the output for January:







There's about 1/2 dozen more since them, and its only the end of Feburary!

I'm planning to hawk them on the saatchi website but after I realised they need 1500px pics on the shortest side I found I had to photograph them all better.. dammit!!

The Real Digital

Sad news this week, some first hand, some second hand. This regards the steady decline of the commercial craft industry, particularly pottery, that started some decades ago in Stoke and now extends to small private enterprises and even worse - education.

Why have I titled this blog entry "The Real Digital"? I will explain.

Apparently, and I have it on good authority not just from students and their friends but also from tutors who have long feared this day, courses in ceramics in colleges and universities are closing down (with the excuse that it saves money, probably), and the departments being stripped of kilns, wheels, shelves and equipment and filled up with yet more Macs. The microchip is replacing all other art media, it seems. Certainly as far as attracting students there is nothing that is going to get bums on seats and fees in the bursary than computer courses that give youngsters and mature students (false?) hope of a job at the end of 3 years accumulating debts. But at what cost to society? Soon the only "digits" we'll be able to use will be 0's and 1's and not our own fabulously evolved five fingers. In an age when young adults cant even wire a plug, surely there is a need to maintain and improve manual dexterity and imagination that enables the human being to form something in real four dimensions (3D and time), consideratley, patiently and skilfully.
I will be sad to see Camberwell's renowned Ceramics department wound down, and my local ceramic painting shop closed down.
One day we will realise the folly of being stuck behind keyboards in sterile air-conditioned offices, and how demeaning and damaging it is. I hope the day of realisation dawns before we completely lose track of what it is to be intelligent self-sufficient beings...

If You Cant Be Good, Be Good At Being Bad

(or.. how I learned to stop worrying and love painting)

I am now, officially, a Bad Artist.

This is the story...

For a laugh, and because I wanted to know what the definition of "bad art", I entered some work for inclusion in the Bad Art Salon at the Vintage at Goodwood Festival this year.

I dont often enter competitions or make submissions, but I saw what examples they had and I knew in my attic I had similar works that were truly breathtakingly awful and deserved recognition as such.

I have to admit I am not the world's greatest painter, I might do the odd poetic composition but really I dont have the patience for all the techinal minutae and really like to be frenetic and colourful. This technique does not lend itself well to life drawing unless you are a really good expressionist painter, rendering the figure usually means taking one's time and using subtltey..!

(This is why my recent work has been more in the arena of the found object)

So, in a marked moment of insight, I selected my ugliest work,and sent my application and JPEG. Imagine my surprise when I was selected as a finalist and rewarded a pass for Vintage for the weekend as a "prize" (more about that later).

This appeals to me in the sense of the ironic. Having waded through my MA and having to be very serious and "good" it was lovely to be "bad" for a change. Its great that an artist can have this freedom and I embrace the whole idea of a Bad Art Salon! The irony is perfect for someone trying to cultivate a Postmodern persona.. I dont know if this is what I'm trying to do but the way I see it, any publicity is good publicity!

The Poetic Phenomena Of Light

“ The solid is for the dead, but the transparent is for the living ”
— I.M. Pei


For the last few years, I have been exploring the importance of humans being a participating element in an artwork instead of just a watcher or reader. This statement by the architect I.M Pei, about his creation The Louvre Pyramid, sums up the concepts I have been recently been dealing with neatly and concisely.

The transparent certainly does allow light to filter to the viewer, but the viewers are more than just passive – they are also a part of the effect of the structure, as the incoming light negotiates the physical presence of the human figure, casting shadows and creating ever changing effects. The life of the work is in the fact that it lives itself, it is not “dead” – in fact it moves and exists in a time frame that is as long as the structure stands or the person inside stays. In that instant it creates an exquisite collection of phenomena – an experienced moment that can never be repeated in its minute detail.