Anyway, I was in my studio the other day, tidying things up and trying to make more space for all of the lovely "treasures" I've been collecting, when I pulled out this old chest; I opened the lid to remind myself of it contents and the lid suddenly fell off into my hands. It was only then that I realized what a fantastic shell for assemblage art I held in my possession. 

I immediately started to work, leaning it out (just a little - not too  much!)  and layed out the tools it once held inside and pulled out some of my  "treasures" and started playing around with some ideas for composition.   Amongst  my treasures are these wooden blocks with letters on them; I put a bunch in my  hand, shook them up and rolled them onto the floor to see what sort of ideas it might spark (or what fortunes they had to tell!  Like reading leaves in a cup of tea) and suddenly the phrase "find me" sprang to mind.  I thought about this a bit and decided "come find me" was more interesting - it had more of the feeling of a story to it.  Before I had anything else in place, I knew the title.  And I'm allowing the composition to form from there; I see it as a page in a story - something ambiguous that one can add to for themselves.  Kind of like the shell of a ruined, abandoned building which allows you to fantasize about its original purpose and those who used to occupy it.

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I want to add lights to it.  Having recently looked at the work of David Lynch I can tell you without shame that he very much  inspired me and my incorporation of lights would serve as an homage to an artist that I respect and admire.  But we will see - afterall, I don't want it to be a rip-off of someone else's work and I also don't want to lose its integrity by adding a (forgive the pun) flashy element.  But then again, maybe a piece like this should embrace a certain gaudiness - like Blackpool or Coney Island.

Music is to art what wine is to cheese.  And vice versa.  They just go well together.  And tonight as I revel in the creepy and wonderful world of David Lynch I got to thinking what music would compliment his art?  There are so many fantastic artists to choose from - artists I don't even know.  So I can't say with any definitive certainty that I can pick the best musician for the job.  That being said, I just can't shake Tom Waits from my mind.  His rough voice - the way he breathes his words as if they're being dragged over gravel - is like an antonym to the innocent, child-like pitch of David Lynch's voice.  And of course they're both Jacks of many trades - David with his films and art (and music, too); Tom with is music and acting.  If I were going to make a snack representative of this pairing, it surely would have to be with a bottle of fine, red Syrah and rich, smoked Gouda with a bit of chorizo on the side. 

This just gave me an awesome idea: a restaurant featuring dishes inspired by artistic pairings: Lynch and Waits; Rauschenberg and Nina Simone; Erin Singleton and Billie Holiday.  I would defitely eat there...but only if there was great art clinging to the walls and music pouring from the ceiling...

Last week I started my new job.  I've been hired on a the curator for a small village gallery - it really couldn't be in a more quaint setting.  The gallery is a deceptively big, and I like that about the place.  See it's housed in a Parish Council building - a really old, stone building.  And when you look at it from the outside it looks a bit daunting, as if you were to enter through the door you might get lost in some sort of maze of creeping hallways and dark stairwell passages.  But it's not like that at all (which is only slightly disappointing to someone like me who really enjoys ghost trails and former dungeons of terror).  When you first walk through the big outside door you are contronted with a very wide, clear stairwell which leads pretty immediately to the gallery.  The first thing you notice is the tall ceiling and the great wall space.  Ledges pretty much hug the wall throughout the gallery, but this is good because it acts as a table or shelf for holding more artwork or promotional materials.  I'm excited to really get started.  First, though, I need to overcome my slight feelings of trepidation, which I suppose come with any job.  The main reason for this anxiety is that I've taken over the position of curator in sort of mid-stream...which basically means I have to complete projects started by someone else.  And you know what that can be like!  But I'm sure once I get over that hump, it'll feel a lot more comfortable in my new role.  That's what I most look forward to!

As curator, I will be required to visit artists' studios and generally go on hunting missions for new artists to exhibit.  Which means that I need access to a car.  Which in turn means I need a UK license.  Argh.  So one of the things I've been dreading the most has been placed in front of me as yet one more challenge to overcome.  Now you might think "what's the big deal?"  I mean, it's not like I'm a new driver.  I've been driving in America for (gulp) nearly 20 years!  But there are different rules here.  And they drive on a different side of the road and from a different side of the car.  And most of the cars here are manual.  And it's not like in the States where you just get your license and then you can drive a stick or automatic.  Nope.  In this country you can only drive a manual if you've passed a manual driving test.  So not only am I having to learn the rules of the road (fyi: most of the time there's no "right of way" system here, unless it's signposted...sooooo, if you and another car pull up at a crossroads who goes first?  yea, good question.  i'm still not sure), learn a new sense of spatial awareness (cuz it's all out of whack when the driver's seat changes), and getting used to driving on a different side of the road (which goes against everything you've ever known about driving...if you come from a country that drives on the right, that is...and is like trying to stop a natural force like, I don't know, a tsunami!); no, it's not just getting used to all of that.  It's also learning how to drive a manual on top of it all - a car that will just STOP on you if you don't give it enough fuel or forget about the clutch.  And - panic! - what if that happens right in the middle of an intersection?!  Well, not to worry about that really because all they have are flippin' roundabouts in this country.  

But you won't find me complaining.

So I've got my provisional license, which is not unlike a driver's permit.  And you know the drill - I can only drive with another adult in the vehicle and can't drive on the motorway (dumb rule).  And I'm practicing a lot, like I used to do when I was 14 & 15, working my way up to golden 16.  And I have to take a theory test.  In preparation I had to read a book that is about 2" thick, with close to 1,000 practice test questions.  And then I have to take a practical test, which is 45 minutes long and during that test I have to prove that I have safe control of the vehicle at all times and will include such things as: hill starts, downhill starts, driving through bends, driving in town, driving in the country, reverse turns...and, well you get the picture.  

The good news is this: I used to be terrified of driving (imagine shifting with your left hand when you're used to using your right...feels strange).  And now I'm actually excited about it.  I still hate driving in town - you should see the size of the roads here!  I still have a hard time guaging whether or not I have room to clear a car passing me and kind of want to shut my eyes and just let them go past and assess the damage later!  But I'm sure, just like with my new job, it'll feel like second nature in no time at all.   

This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.

Throughout my life, I've often been accused of being overly sensitive.  From the time I was a young girl, my family often made fun of me for it.  For years I had a poster tacked to my bedroom door that read: "Be careful what you say to me, I'm a highly sensitive human being."  So it should come as little surprise when I acknowledge that I have a way of identifying full-heartedly with characters in books and films.  And I'm not talking simple empathy with a character's thoughts and actions; I feel like I am the character. 

In the most recent novel I read, The World According to Garp, the main character had a way of describing his life as a writer that so similarly to the way I feel about being an artist that it was almost creepy.  It was as if John Irving somehow had found a door into my head - the head of person he doesn't even know exists - walked in, and started rooting around until *bing* he uncovered my anxieties with painful accuracy.  This is the cringe-worthy excerpt that could be a description of my life (if you substitute the word "artist" for "writer" and "she/her" for "he/him"):

"I should get out more, Garp thought.  If I had a job, he thought - a thought he had every day, and rethought every day, since he wasn't writing. 

There was almost no job in the world he was qualified for; he was qualified, he knew, for very little.  He could write; when he was writing, he believed he wrote very well.  But one reason he thought about getting a job was that he felt he needed to know more about other people; he wanted to get over his distrust of them.   A job would at least force him to come into contact - and if he weren't forced to be with other people, Garp would stay home. 

It was for his writing, in the beginning, that he had never taken the idea of a job seriously.  Now it was for his writing that he was thinking he needed a job." 

About juggling the burden of working from home and the challenges associated with it, the novel continues:

"...ironing was the only task of conventional housewifery that Garp rejected.  The cooking...the basic laundry, the cleaning up - he did them.  The cooking expertly; ... the cleaning up, a little compulsively.  He swore at errant clothes, dishes...but he let nothing lie; he was a maniac for picking things up.  Some mornings, before he sat down to write, he raced over the house with a vacuum cleaner, or he cleaned the oven.  The house never looked untidy, was never dirty, but there was always a certain haste to the neatness of it.  Garp threw a lot of things away and he would allow most of the light bulbs to burn out, unreplaced, until Helen would realize that they were living in almost total darkness, huddled around the two lamps that worked.  Or when he remembered the lights, he forgot the soap and the toothpaste."

Today I'm revisiting the Suburban Housewife series.  I've been scouring the web for images of women from the 50s and 60s posed in the middle of mundane chores.  I've been looking for very specific poses - ones that are (of course) interesting and offer obvious tasks, but that are ambiguous enough that they could be suggestive of something less ordinary.  Once I have an image that interests me, I turn the woman into a silhouette, the act of which is in itself very intriguing to me: casting her into shadow, removing all detail so that she becomes a shell.  This afternoon I'll place these silhouetted women into new environments and will become the basis for new paintings and vintage transfers.

I often listen to music or the news while I work.  Today it's music and I put together a random playlist which includes a Tom Waits album which lays often neglected in my collection titled Real Gone.  I'm so glad I played it today.  On it is a song called Trampled Rose.  It sounded incredibly familiar and I quickly realized that's because that same song is on the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss album Raising Sand.  Both songs are great, but I'm easily pulled into the gravel-grit quality of Waits voice.  I also made the connection between Wait's Circus and Ani DiFranco's Parameters.  She is definitely borrowing some of his style in that song. 

During my breaks from the studio I'm reading one of my favorite authors: John Irving.  I'm not sure what it is about his books but for some reason I always discover them in charity shops, which is where I picked up the novel I'm currently reading: The World According to Garp.  I first discovered this particular novel in a book of disregarded junk in my parent's house when I was a teenager.  And from my first read I fell in love.  And since then - I find his books in the most unexpected (to me) of places.  And that makes me smile.  I'm nearly at the end of Garp - so I've been reading it more slowly, savoring it like a piece of sharp, dark chocolate. 

I can't believe how long it's been since my last post!  It's been a busy time for me in the studio in the last few weeks as I prepared for a Vintage Fair at the Cedar Farm in Ormskirk, Lancashire.  It was a great day and I met a lot of lovely people and saw sooo many cool things I wanted!  I demonstrated phenomenal restraint and ended the day without making a single purchase, which was VERY difficult, as you can imagine.

I've also had a bit of good news: I have accepted a position as Curator at the West Ox Arts Gallery in Bampton!  I start on March 1st and already my head is full of ideas for exhibitions and events - I can't wait to get settled in! 

And, while I have yet to start working on it, I have an idea rattling around in my head for a new piece of artwork which will incorporate stuff that I've picked up on my walks with the dog. It's going to be another assemblage piece. More details to follow soon!

Speaking of walking the dog: Butler is by my side as I sit here typing this, begging me with his gorgeous amber-coloured eyes to take him out for a walk. So I'd better get going. I'll keep you posted on the artwork!