Reading the room and other problems with zoom…
This morning I took part in a zoom discussion with makers about sustainable and responsible making practices. I think in my mind it was going to be more of a discussion, but it mostly felt like I was giving a talk. Perhaps that’s just the way it needed to go to start this process off. […]
Reconnect with your purpose
In last week’s blog post I recommended Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, a short book of advice from one established artist to another at the beginning of his journey. There are many threads within his letters, but Rilke, in particular, seems to advocate cultivating inner strength and a sense of purpose that can only come from yourself, not from others:
Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then assume this fate and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking after the rewards that may come from outside. For he who creates must be a world of his own and find everything within himself and in the natural world that he has elected to follow.
I have been thinking about this notion, of gaining inner strength and through that reconnecting with the purpose to your creativity. I don’t think I know any creative person who does not have doubts about what they do. Sometimes it is only in small ways, when a particular piece of work isn’t working, other times it can be far-reaching when a crossroads is reached and the inevitable ‘what am I doing with my life?’ question appears. These doubts are natural. So, if we accept that, what can be done when we feel them? How do we find a way through the worries and out of the other side, to a place where we can continue?
A poetic response to objects
Almost all of my adult life has been engaged with thinking about objects: as an archaeologist, museum education officer, maker and now creative consultant working with craft practitioners. Wondering who made them and why, how they were used, what they say about people or the society they lived in. Contemplating how the materials used tell us about where people lived, the environments they found themselves in, how certain materials hold added value or show status. Objects are fascinating receptacles of thoughts and ideas, hopes and aspirations, they can show our true selves to the world. More recently, as my focus shifted from historical objects to contemporary ones, I revelled in the fact that you can ask the maker all the questions you like. Things which we may have to guess at for old objects we can learn easily now. The object is knowable in so many new ways and that is hugely exciting. I love to hear about how objects are made, where the inspiration comes from, how they came into being. These two approaches, historical and contemporary, are two sides of the same coin.
What is my creative practice?
Like many people, I’m using this quiet space at the beginning of the year to consider the state of things, to reflect on what went on in 2017 and to start putting together a very loose plan for 2018. I’ve been steadily working through guides and documents sent to me by people who advise and support creatives for a living, and having put together my own Creative Practice MOT course (which twenty lovely people are currently using) my head is filled with questions. Questions like ‘how do you feel about your creative practice?’ or ‘which of your services were most profitable in 2017?’ questions which may have definite answers or may lead to a vast place of unknowing…
Guest blog post: Katy Gillam-Hull
This month there is a bonus Wednesday so I thought it might be nice to invite a maker to write a guest post and hear a different voice for a bit. I met Katy Gillam-Hull fairly recently, at New Designers One Year On, and due to the nature of her work (with found, historical objects) I felt like I was talking to a kindred spirit. I’ve been interested to hear her talk, recently, of a change in her practice, or the need to think about a change, so I asked her if she wouldn’t mind putting her thoughts down into words, to elucidate the current state of her making practice. Enjoy!
Thinking through making: wondering about tools
Not so long ago I made a couple of objects one after another. Of the two things, one gave me more satisfaction during the making, and the other brings me more joy as a finished object. The piece of twisted metal, that I spied on the pavement and pocketed, was quickly filed and made into a wearable object. The other thing – a tool – was a serendipitous moment where I realised that a brass ‘ring’ (a strip of brass folded into a geometric shape) that I made in first year of my BA and which, every time I wore it caught on my clothes and was too sharp on my skin, would finally have a home, wedged into the crack in an old wooden handle.
Notes on my creative practice: overcoming an inflexible mindset
I suspect I have an inflexible mindset. It troubles me, especially since I have learnt, via TED, that flexible and adaptive mindsets are the key to success for our youth and for people in general. How worrisome that my brain interprets things the same way and really doesn’t like to budge when it thinks it knows best. A growth mindset, is what it is called when your brain allows possibilities to happen. Why is it that my growth mindset is fair-weather, and only chooses to appear in certain situations? Why does it not grab hold of me, each and every day, when I am groggy in the morning or unable to muster the energy for simple tasks, and shout at me ‘see this differently’, ‘leave the house’ and ‘do something you don’t much fancy, trust me on this, you’ll feel so much better’. I sometimes wonder if leaving the governance of me up to me is the best plan…
Notes on my creative practice: my photographic shorthand
A day of hot sunshine. In this recessed garage entrance, shielded from the sun, the air is thick and static. Residues of hot car tyres and tarmac, exhaust fumes and paint. The building itself is a calamine lotion pink, painted all over, even in these places that people don’t really go or see very often. I captured an intersection of wall and cupboard, painted chevron floor slanting off into the distance. Bright turquoise, vivid against the chalky pink, the traffic yellow floor paint seems dull and yet jarring next to them. Fire-engine red obligatory safety panels hover in the corner – they draw the eye down the line of the planes’ interaction.
Notes on my creative practice: seeing & recording
As August is a good time for reflecting on your creative practice, when you have the time and energy to stop for a bit and examine how things are going, I thought I’d continue looking at my own creative practice here on the blog. I regularly write about what I’m up to, creatively, I find it helps me when I get stuck or it allows me to consider things that usually happen spontaneously that I don’t necessarily pay much attention to. I genuinely believe it benefits makers to really consider why they make things, as well as how. I recommend that people try to write about what they are doing with their making, regularly, unguardedly, as a way to understand what is happening. These thoughts are not necessarily meant to be essays in the formal, academic sense, but they are essays in the etymological sense – they are trials and testings, an attempt at figuring things out.
Notes on my creative practice: when is making not making?
Yesterday I made two things. One may stretch the definition of ‘to make’ and the other possibly falls under ‘re-purposing’ more than making. As I made them I wondered about this, whether the verb to make has enough elasticity to hold all the things we makers do as part of our practice. Even if, maybe especially if, we do not create things out of raw materials. You know where you stand with a maker who takes the raw material and creates something that didn’t exist before. It is magic, it is astonishing. It takes vision and skill combined. It takes patience and commitment. But what of the people who take something as it already is and adds to it, incorporates it into something bigger, adapts it or alters it? What then? It seems to me that there are still all the elements as before – the vision, the skill, the patience and commitment – however we might interpret the work as slightly different.