I was in a workshop this week

 

I was in a workshop this week and one of the participants who has met me through a few projects that I have led asked me how my work was going.  And I realised that I had nothing coming up to talk about.

Does that sound familiar?  Because yep this is deja-vu week.  Its also half term this week and I’m really busy, which is wonderful and the drill is that I end up running from gallery to space to gallery.  And I’m relentlessly upbeat cos I’m working with some of my favourite people and its a good mixture this week of families, adults and post-grad students. 

And in the midst of all this familiarity I realised that I haven’t got a meaningful story to tell.  Particularly nothing that may or may not shine some piercing light on the nature of my art practice so I thought I’d tell you instead about several little things.

It is really cold in my studio now.  Inhospitably cold and I shiver and I can’t get excited.  It’s the sort of time that I can only do anything if I have a very pressing deadline and I just work through the nerve dulling pain, but if not most days I’m out by 4pm.  Its a shame because I also have three beautiful large doors that I salvaged off an old and rather ugly wardrobe from the flat.  I would start working on them if I could get my hand to stop shaking.

I have rubbish in my bag all the time.  It’s a result of my practice of eating sweets, crisps and chocolate on route between jobs and also the lingering cold which is leaving a lot of not clean tissues in my bag.  I mainly use only the front side pocket on my bag which makes me think about that old 80 / 20 rule – the 20% of a bag that I use 80% of the time.  But in this case I’m still carrying the other 80%.

When I read books I tend to make notes on them in my sketchbook if they strike a cord at the time.  Often I’ll refer to it for something completely different than I first expected as I did on Tuesday walking across Leicester sq thinking about a talk I was giving on Claude.

“People sometimes talk about language as ‘palimpest’ simply meaning by this that past activities leave their signatures upon the land.  But this suggests that elements of the past are simply left ‘in place.’  In reality things are more complicated: people invest these elements with new meaning, they re-use them literally and figuratively” 

Straight after I wrote:

“When am I going to Bristol? Call Marion”