Different Forms of Art

   I was talking with the philosopher of the Collective, about different artforms, and different mediums and skills within those artforms when he argued that terms such as multimedia art, integrated arts (as in mxing two or more artforms), cross art and suchlike were limited terms. He said for instance, that the things that appeared to concern me as an artist were light, colour, and thread. Thread? I asked. What do you mean? He went through the artforms which I am most drawn to or end up using - photography and gels, and light and colour made sense. As did words. But thread? 'You follow through - whether with mazes, wool, wire...' Perhaps 'the line' then, the line that one can make when writing a single word, or the line on which words are written or typed? That would make sense. And liken it to form (which I would argue was also a driving force). And movement as well, although my artworks/craftworks do tend to be static. 

    'It makes no sense,' he said 'to define artists in the way of skills, but rather it should be by what the inspiration is'. I thought about this, and it made a deal of sense, because when I thought about the incredibly broad brush (no pun intended!) used to describe such massively different kinds of artists by calling them 'visual artists' or even those who paint, 'painters', it did seem nonsensical. To call one who paints exclusively in abstract colours with pages of torn books set into paint the same title as the artist who mashes up rocks into paint and then exhibits geological colour charts of linear pictures to the artist who paints war scenes from nightmare childhood memories? 'Yes...' I replied, musing on the idea.

   So what does that make what I do? 'A light, colour and line artist.' was the reply. I think I rather like that...An interesting idea to play with... 

A Lesson in Art

Part 1

   Lately I have had some amazing conversations about Art. With the new fine artist of the atelier, I have been taken through the mystery of how artists create the view in front of them. He himself paints like a photograph, but of course, the painting of the scene adds some strange gloss of magic to it, the colours, whilst accurate to the scene in question, have a super-enhanced quality, as if seen with the emotions as well as the clarity of the camera eye... As all really excellent paintings of landscapes do. And as I have longed to do. But, in a mixture of diffidence and naivity, left myself imagining that painters just went out into the landscape, and, moved by the beauty or drama or quirkiness of the scene, sat down and captured what they saw out of sheer inspiration, as if merging themselves with the visual world alone gave them the capacity to suddenly reproduce it with a heightened accuracy like a photograph or not, but always catching up what was most special about the light, colour or shapes of whatever it was. As if, in fact, it was a state of higher consciousness or meditative spirituality that brought about the effect.

   How could I have been so lazy? to quote the ever-brilliant-with-words Bjork. The artist the other evening was kind enough to give me a short lecture on painting, and which revolutionized my understanding of the matter. He showed me how artists measure - they don't sit down with some wonderful intuition about how to reproduce distance on canvas or other surfaces, they sit down and measure it, obeying rules of perspective, observing in a mathematical way, the dimensions of the scene before them. If ever I knew the technical aspects to which he drew my attention, I had long forgotten, allowing the glamour of art to throw the dust of impossibility into my eyes, and so make sure that not having the confidence to pursue fine art had a fine lazy excuse for it also. Once he had taken the crippling mystery from distances, he then proceeded to mix up a colour to match that of the floor. 

   Again, my stupidity was made plain. How often had I merely thought that to darken or lighten a colour was to add black or white, putting in too much, or when mixing up a colour, ending up with brown sludge? Before only using primary poster paints unmixed and then giving up altogether? And how come - when he made pretty plain that most people came unstuck by using red for red, instead of adding blue to it, that they made shadows grey not noticing when they were blue, and other similar mistakes - how come I, who had not made those common mistakes, who see the 'purple light under the trees' one only gets in January, could have made such an error when mixing paint? 

   Because of course, with the colour and writing workshops, it's a thing I never do. Always alive to bluey purples, reddy oranges, yellowy greens and the like as I am during these workshops, in order to stop people using such terms and introduce them to violets, blood oranges and olives, and aware of what happens when you mix the colour gels which we use for the workshops, how could I have been so wooden when it came to transferring that knowledge to painting? 

   He facsimiled the colour of the floor, using yellow, red, even blue...in a way that I envied. But made it clear, that while inspiration was the motivator to get things right and keep on going at a canvas that took months to do, there was a real science here to fine art. Love of mountains is certainly not - or at least only extremely rarely! - enough to ensure and secure a good painting of them. Technical ability, patience, meticulousness, and more, all were required to achieve the skill and accomplishment which I had - idiotically - dreamt only came from inspiration, and to which I had so long yearned towards. 

Part 2

   It clarified things wonderfully. I now saw that it was a matter of time and effort - and if I put in those things, then I might achieve the thing I had wanted joint-most (along with appearing in Noel Coward and Dario Fo plays! doing site spec performance installation, making arty films and garden design). But when I thought about it, along with a feeling of relief and exhilaration, came a realization. In many ways the things I wanted to achieve with light and colour were better suited to mediums like photography, video, acetate...and words. The mediums I use now. When I thought about the only palettes which I do use, the palettes of the hundreds of words for colour which there are in English...the colours of the stage lights and the acetates, I didn't feel so bad. Or felt - perhaps for the first time, that (now I had a choice! or felt I had) that I was doing 'the right thing', that maybe I am engaging with visual art in the way that I ought to be, and not to chase after skills which would take so much time to learn, in which I could possibly say little that was 'new'...or to know that if I carved the time and will, it could be so, and so love the things which I already do, better, value them more and make more time or space for them. 

   Just as storytelling means that I don't have to be ordered about by a director whose vision for the production I might not share, and have, along with the characters I do love, to do characters in which I can't believe or enjoy, because I don't want to let go in the way that gives you the conviction to play characters you hate or are bored by.

   Yes. It opened a door in the mind that had been shut too long. Grateful thanks to the artist for opening it. Now...where are those gels?   

   

Never Alone with a Clone...

Part 1

   And least time of all for doing the things on which one's heart hangs - making new textworks, a bookwork, new chapbook of non-serial poetry, a short story booklet, fashioning a small cabinet of curiosities, wire, leather and acetate craftworks, visual art and craft related pathways, poem-in-a-boxes, making moondials...getting to a philosophy conference to finish a collection of geometric poetry, and finishing 'Porlock and the Monad Machine'. And doing them all to stave off the inner voices 'well - you're not much of a garden designer! or a fine artist, still not professional at photography and your films - minutes of them, such as they are! are hardly worth putting on YouTube! Pah! call yourself an artist??? I thought THAT'S what you said you wanted to do!' To fend them off saying, 'we must do what we are good at, and what's at hand, branch out from what we know, try new things, but never just launch out blindly into something that's clearly a dream, with no knowledge or forethought - it is good to make anything, and I must make what I can and have the materials for - go away! with your impossible targets. Why are you bothering me? Is is not hard enough to sell books and get gigs and funding to support the newsletter, make a living?' 

Part 2

Some people want to do everything. Others want to do nearly everything. A clone or several would suit many folk, especially creative ones. Sometimes I get hypnotised by all the things which I want to do, which include; video maker, actor, visual artist, sculptor, multimedia artist, crafts including jeweller, glass maker, blacksmith, too many skills to list, architect, garden designer, interior designer, lighting designer, set designer, photographer, contemporary dancer, choreographer,  musician / composer, pianist, harpist, opera singer, maze designer, folly builder, shell artist, live art / theatre maker, site specific artist and performer, and lastly novelist, poet, performance poet, text artist... Why lastly? It sounds stupid, but the things that are hardest to ditch or to value are things which people have told you you're good at. Words. Since school people have said as much (though 'recognition' is something else again). But of course things we most value are the things in which we have least confidence that we have striven hardest towards trying to become - visual art in this case. 

   How can one possibly do them all? How can one pull off the Jean Cocteau stunt of making films, making art, doing all kinds of stuff and still writing books so good that other people would be proud to be known for just the one - whether the poetry of 'Tempest of Stars' or the novel 'Les Enfants Terribles'? Some would say that it's all contacts, opportunity and money. Once you're well connected and loaded, it's easy, just to have an idea is to have the power to follow it up...given talent, true enough up to a point. (However that is not to denigrate in any way whatsoever Cocteau's genius. He is undoubtedly one of my own major influences and completely gifted). And everyone else? Well, in order not to suffer endlessly - and uselessly - from a restless soul, I try and combine arts and make little corners and spaces of time to follow up things so that they don't spill over into work, but also so that I don't end up hating work - Spoken/Written for instance - for not allowing me the time to do what I wish I was doing instead. I may not be an actor in a theatre company say, despite my drama training, but I bring all my acting instincts and accents to being a storyteller. When I do get a show on an indoor stage, I can bring my lighting and set up the visuals, thereby pacifying the inner set and lighting designer struggling to get out. I may not be paid for my photographs, but I can put them into slideshows, use the skills to set up shots for the shows, the Collective website, the works of the other artists. The charm of that never wears off. With visual art, I have now collected so much stuff it would be a crime NOT to make stuff! so decals, braids, all kinds of small things are happening in odd moments, encouraged and enthused by the rest of the Collective - one of whom taught me just last weekend how to make willow rattles! With all kinds of things brought together because of the Collective, I find myself surrounded with new materials - leather, wire, fabrics, card, and it would seem churlish not to make things. So, it happens. And the visual textworks, the nearest to 'artworks' that I did during a writing MA at Plymouth U., well they too are more likely to get new friends made to stand beside them. Dance / movement can be brought into storytelling or performance poetry given the right context. Every digital camera pretty much has some sort of video setting - what's wrong with a film three minutes long? or five? It's just getting the shots organized. A matter of making some time. If you felt the need, even a YouTube to share them on! I'm also trying to carve some headspace to finish the Cabinet of Curiosities - using historic design quirks as inspiration... Anyone can sing (well almost anyone!) and everyone gets better with practice. So practice! There's a new keyboard player/artist living in the atelier, and the Collective has a garden designer, an architect, a jeweller, a fire dancer, a textile artist...And what we each have, we all share! Do you know, I think things aren't so bad...? 

   

Meanwhile back in the real world...

And of course just after the unpacking's done and you've got your breath back, next up are important e-mails to put off (as so many self-employed folk do), so you handwash some fabric used as a performance floor covering, only remembering once it's soaked in soapy water that actually it DID survive the last time it was put in a washing machine by mistake...not to waste the effort, you throw in a clothe overdue for a wash, thinking it to be a handwash only...then notice that a small hole has got huge and, while wringing it out, that the label in fact says 'dry clean only'...and already that morning you opened the fridge breaking someone else's glass and spilling someone else's food...And once everything's hung out to dry of course it starts to rain...What else is there to do but laugh at yourself? You start the important e-mails.

The post arrives. You open a bank statement - not only do you, regardless of usually being pretty organized, not remember what all this money that's been going out was or to whom, but you notice how little has been coming in. Some close friends have just split up and someone else comes round to moan their head off having had hassle with a troublesome relation. Oh well! Welcome back...

Serendipity of the Val de Loire

I was seriously busy - had had an important call that morning, which meant the way was cleared for some serious work - including the next edition, but...the next day I was meant to be going away - abroad in fact. I couldn't believe I'd been talked into going away at the beginning of the new term, with so much work to do, so much vital stuff to sort out about the Bulletin's future, and rehearsals for the Autumn Festival show...How could it have happened? And anyway, can't one get enough amusement out of a beautiful region like the South West? I began to look hunted when people asked me if I was looking forward to it - what, seasickness followed by travelling miles in the heat?? And spending more money when the Bulletin had just lost its funding? Were they mad? What, I asked myself, could possibly be worth that? and a huge chunk out of my work schedule to boot! 

   I soon found out. The ferry from Portsmouth set off in glittering water. I joked about telling people I'd always wanted to visit Portsmouth! and the sea was rough mid way. Enough for seasickness which I hadn't seriously expected...then the remembering to be on the other side of the road, the unfamiliar signs and road numbering system to get the hang of - going the wrong way in Le Havre...was this the stress I'd expected? The first place to stop and actually look around on the way was Chartres. The countryside had flown by in a flat huge-fielded uncertainty, like a dry fen without the hedgerows. The Cathedral seemed to be the main feature in a barren landscape. And it was beautiful - not only for the famous electric blue windows, but for the unexpected height of the vaulting, the intricate stonework both inside and out, and the darkness punctuated by the fluting at the top of each pillar being lit up, with some vision. The deep colours of the windows glowed vivid against the unfamiliar gloom of a cathedral designed to keep the heat of the sun out. The famous maze on the stones of the floor, a sensational stained glass studio shop nearby...

   And a day after arriving in the Loire itself, came Chateau de Blois, a marvellous palimpsest of a building, with four distinct styles of grand architecture set around a courtyard. Inside, each room more breathtaking than the last, with vast fireplaces of splendid decoration, and walls beyond description. They were papered - if papered is the right word, with stuffs that the word 'wallpaper' just doesn't seem fit for - like jacquard wrapping paper or huge fleur de lys stencils, or thin velvet, large and beautiful motifs in dark and vivid colours, like old gold fleur de lys on royal blue, covering every wall, every beam of the high ceilings, and every part of the ceiling between the beams. How did it not look like Laura Ashley on acid? But it didn't. It was all restored and finished to be the platonic ideal of regal splendour mixed with fairytale enchantment and timeless elegance. Strangely homely and intimate despite the lavish fourposter beds and epic stone crests, the chateau was quite unlike anything in the UK. The rest of Blois seemed to be trying hard to live up to surrounding such a jewel, and as well as stylish open carriage rides leaving from the front gates, the dazzling church of St. Nicholas just opposite with its fine modern art windows in rich crimsons, the imaginatively lit city walls and staircases at night, it also boasted a son et lumiere at the chateau. And very kindly, on Wednesday nights, even in English! It was entirely in keeping with the chateau itself, as the walls changed from blood red, to blue fleur de lys, to black and white, to rain, to starlit, historic scenes marched past intermixing with special effects - the castle looking like it was draped in velvet with giant gilded tassels hanging down, or a blaze of religious stained glass, or some Venetian palace in neon shades. An extraordinary spectacle. I only wondered that the programme didn't name the designer.    

   The days that followed brought Chenonceau and other chateaux - very wonderful, some like the National Trust with turrets and not so characteristic as Blois. A charming town called St. Aignan, with remarkably engaging vistas of the private chateau's public courtyard, tower and staircase with another excellent view over the town and surrounding greenery, a fine church with its crypt open and full of original wall paintings, no less. Houses, barns and cellars built into caves by the side of the roads, and at last on the way back, Rouen and the misty Seine. A large sign outside the Cathedral said 'This is my studio' in French. It was what Monet had said of the area, and looking up at the filigree of the cathedral and recalling his many paintings of it, and having crossed the Seine with that characteristic morning light, I could see exactly what he had meant. And Rouen was too full of good things and architectural wonders, chocolatiers where they sold coffee pots made of chocolate and had a chocolate fountain! to be done in a hurry, but there was a ferry to be caught back nonethless...

   I thought it would just be a week taken from the all important work schedule. And now all I can focus on is a succession of unexpected images of light on eighteenth century conceits, of chapels hidden in hollows of high churches, and quirky pavement cafes. Speaking broken school French in memory of a special week...Enchante. 

   

Re-throwing the Dice

Things were moving for someone I've known a long time - he was deciding to ditch the arts as no way to earn a living and do something else he could believe in - re-throwing the dice if you like, to give himself the best chance to earn some freedom.         

   Thinking about it, I thought that's just what our in house philosopher did - when conventional universities were too narrow and frankly bigoted about dyslexia, when lecturers who disliked lecturing came to dislike any postgrad who cared enough about the teaching to become without trying the most popular tutor with the students, when admin dominated over genuine research, and departmental politics ruled over common sense and the naturally gifted, that was the time to make the break. It was a hard decision to make, and he talked of 'giving up philosophy', as if any real artist could give up their art. But on making everything from masks to gauntlets, historical breads and sweetmeats to amazing takes on ancient and traditional tales, he has found something that helps pay the bills and that have audiences, workshop participants, customers, promoters and best of all, other artists from the Collective, appreciating the other things he's talented at. And as for 'giving up philosophy'...well, true philosophy runs through everything, naturally. He picks up new skills and runs with them, twisting each medium to make his own remarkable creations from storytelling bodymasks to Hermann Hesse's fairytales in performance, from startling wire and leather mobiles to wax sculptures, all the time turning each new skill into a Spinoza-ist 'common notion', expanding and extrapolating it into all directions. 

   As for not sitting about waiting for publishers - it's publish and be damned! because 'YOU must be the change you want to see in the world'! And not dwelling on some academics' attitudes to non-institutionalized thought? Well 'virtue is the reward' - which is one of the hardest things to understand. You don't not cry for some reward in heaven - you don't give way for the sake of others, and before you know it, you'll feel better in yourself that you didn't - virtue IS the reward. You yourself will feel better for the self-discipline and positivity you show - as I've found. 

   And lastly - 'all things excellent are difficult as they are rare' - from the poetry of Geoffrey Hill to the finest Deleuzian thought on the Philosophy pages of the Collective's website...

   And it's also what I'm starting to do - re-throwing the dice, by throwing myself into workshops for instance, instead of notching up a painfully slow list of publication credits which don't pay a penny or instead of performing at showcases for no or little money. I rashly thought this week - it gives me so little back - perhaps I should give up poetry? By which I meant not ceasing to write or perform the stuff, of course, but not bothering to send it anywhere, not bothering with open mikes or gigs that don't pay except the special ones, and things. As our in-house philosopher said, giving up philosophy was the best move he could have made - book length work has followed book length work ever since, each outdoing the last in scintillating critique and original thought (the studies of his on Dickens' novels alone would make him a household name in any culture worth its salt - I'm not joking!). So perhaps, halted as I am with the next chapbook, and wondering why on earth I should finish the two remaining pieces and collate the images...perhaps it will be after all, the best thing yet. Who knows? 

   Meanwhile I have many other roles other than poet, - workshop host, Collective administrator, event management, show promoter, performer, bookseller...and words run like a shaft of light through them all.  

   And as for the person first mentioned doing a course in a vocational skill and going for a new job? Expect a new album out soon...

Second Strings to the Bow

When Democritus was banished from Athens, he turned and replied that it was Athens that was banished from his company and wisdom - not he who was banished from the city.

   I have to say this is not only how the independent scholar feels but also the poet who carefully chooses magazines to submit to, cautiously reading the guidelines and back issues...only to be told they nearly made it, that the writing was unusual but unsuitable, that it got lost in the inbox, that the zine has just folded, that they'll take it next time (the next edition of course never comes out), that they like your style but have you anything else like it (answer; no, because you've already sent them one thy didn't like, and this was the 'else', that was the point), that they would have paid you for it a couple of years ago when money was less tight, that they'd love to take it but can only take those with s bigger profile right now, that they would liked to have had your work but ran out of space/time/money and...

   So the best advice is to have another option. If you happen to be a great philosopher in an age without an attention span, or write/perform fiction or poetry without a brief or ready genre, and haven't yet found a niche for x, y or z type of writing in a cripplingly overcrowded market, then you can do nothing better than find something else to be good at that people will appreciate you for. And if that involves being a storyteller and slipping philosophy in that way, or using the power of words to write copy to promote arts workshops to festivals, well, it's a lot better than nothing and pays better than thought or art for their own sakes. 

   What's more - think about it this way - it's their loss! Two fingers to Athens then...