Resolved

I started writing earlier but it was a confused rant about not feeling able to verbalise something. It was not published.

I’ve stepped back, had a word with myself and a blether with others and now I’m back.

Im feeling pulled in an artistic direction which I thought was alien to begin with. But I’ve taken a breathe. I’ve allowed myself to be interrupted and now I realise that I’m being navigated back to real process and action. Backwards is not regression, instead it is a positive. I’m re-working ideas which have held their strength and their value.

In MY day if I wanted to work through an idea or something I’d need to leave the studio, walk to the library, cross reference, photocopy it, if I had credit on my photocopy card, cut it to fit my sketchbook, stick it in my sketchbook, wait fir the glue to dry, close the sketchbook, put it in my bag, walk back to the studio, open the sketchbook and then start drawing out my thoughts.. I’m pretty sure that the walking to and from were a positive contributor to the work, the thought process and my well being. Now?? All done in front of a single computer and in a glazed automatonic state.

Hmm. I know what I’m doing tomorrow.

Words of significance

After having enjoyed verbally venting for almost a week continuously, words were suddenly interrupted. My focus shifted back to the visuals and the theory of current situations.  I regressed and took shelter within my own mind, crowded as it is.

It felt almost trivial to consider creativity. It was not, I suppose, the correct approach and almost felt frivolous.

Until Friday.

Two things happened. I stopped holding my breath. And I took myself on a trip to the GFT. We need not enter into a dialogue surrounding my breath. But the Glasgow Film Theatre I will happily discuss. A place of layers and emotions. Of memories and debates. Of tentative dates and goodbyes.

Goodbye Christopher Robin in Screen 2, unexpectedly ripped the plaster off my heart and countless tears poured down my face. I will never tire of the capacity cinema has to hold our dreams whilst replaying our sorrows and joys. As a mother and as an artist, this film wove its way into my brain and sparks of memory flickered in time to the narrative, right to the last beat. Crying may not be everyone’s comfortable chair but sometimes we have to sink into it, making sure we don’t spill tea down ourselves. Tears can release such volumes of worry whilst simultaneously nurturing hope!

I am not here to tell you about the film, not today.

I’m here to talk about artists. Our limits don’t exist , others may try to curtail or fit us into a box, or understand us. They may google us but they’ll never get close to seeing our whole being.  There may even be people who ‘get us’, of whom we are humbly glad to meet. But we will never stop evolving, and will push beyond, sometimes over our own dirt lines. We, the artists and our ideas, are discarded, laughed at and often these days passed over for virtual worlds. But what seems to be lost too often, is that within the artist lies hope, passion and progress. In the artist lies all of us! When a society rises, there will be artists in every corner.

In this week of disbelief and a community striving to simply stand up, I am reminded that my cloudy, rain-smirred home town has always stood up. Many times. And often for a community far away, but whose hearts need holding. The history of Glasgow’s ability to hold hearts  with those who need supported is a story that is one of many towns across the world. But my pride for mine will never falter.

Where there is hope there is strength. Where there is unity there is a future. Where there is an artist, there is infinity for us all. And sometimes, even when the artist is obliterated and the work silenced, there is still a trace! We will never stop stepping forward. We will never stop watching your  backs. We WILL not allow this world to lose its colour and its beauty. As long as there is art, there is life.

Please take a moment to read the link below, it’ll tell you how today’s words came about

http://www.glasgowsculpture.com/pg_images.php?sub=lapasionaria

 

Out the box

Having written about my time served on the mac computers at Glasgow School of Art, I found myself standing in front of the blue box in the photograph. It holds decades of thoughts , feelings, opinions and even some confessions. It holds the scribbling of an artist in waiting, navigating student life with an open heart and sometimes a worried mind.

It can true that in our darkest times, we replay our finest moments. Could that be beneficial? Can we, when faced with harsh realities, fall back into the comfort of past achievements? Were those achievements a savings bank, from which we can withdraw when current funds of clarity are waning?

That was what I experienced today. Opening the blue box, I was faced with the story of a mind not yet broken, from a time of pure naivety and relentless ambition. Surely it cannot be true that these things are gone, but perhaps that they’ve been stored for another time. For now?

Were my 10,000 words a down payment? Am I now positioned such that they can head in a new direction and become the book I’d never really admitted they were?

I think the answer is yes.

Slated

In 1990 the lending library at Glasgow School of Art was coated with a velvet silence, as all libraries should be. The gradual introduction of macs into a wee corner to the right, heralded a huge learning curve for this artist. And it saw a clumpy, awkward progression of my writing into the virtual world.

I have a real love of the visual imprints of text on paper. Mark making goes hand in hand with the artists heart. Producing my naive first year essays on an electronic typeriter was a noisy event. Whirrs and swearies as I misspelt. Buggars and huffs as the inbuilt correction system grew to hate my speedy touch typing. If I could just point out at this stage, THE most useful thing I EVER did at secondary schooI l was to take Secretarial Studies. I shit you not.

When the day of writing the full version of my 10,000 word dissertation dawned, I silently thanked the temperamental teacher who’d gritted her teeth through my complaints.. My pinkie finger was too wee to make an impact on the keys in the beginning. When the modern machines arrived, my tiniest of digits breathed the biggest of sighs.

As I was saying, the lending library entered the modern era and hours of Pagemaker lessons by Robert the Tech began. How he ever endured our creatively obtuse brains I will never know. But I thank him all the same. I tell a wee white lie sometimes that I am not computer savvy. Really, I know what I am doing, it just doesn’t fit with the affected silent air which this artist likes to portray on occasion. Typing on computers is my guilty pleasure.

Skip to now, and the whole bloody bus is tapping away. Difference is (and this is crucial to the creation of AN ARtist Interrupted) I DON’T want to just post a paragraph, a snippet, a smart arse retort. I MISS extensive writing. I crave the rewrite. I hanker for the face to face dissertation meetings with a certain Historical and Critical tutor, who more often that not, loved my writing and ergo pushed me onto produce a creative almost sculptural piece of work.

So consider myself slated. I’m writing again and not for anyone but me. An Artist Interrupted.