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
Something I’m particularly drawn to, is the possibility for objects to be inspiration for other art work, not just responding to their aesthetic or formal qualities, but the emotional response. I’d love to see more poetry written about pots, paintings inspired by blown glass, photography exploring jewellery. Mostly I’d love to see more people who work with or create objects talk about them in a sensory and emotive way. I’d like to hear beyond the usual materials and techniques, beyond processes and finishes. Beyond, even, the conceptual underpinnings of the work. I’d love to hear how looking at an object makes people feel. How handling it or using it alters them slightly. I’d love to hear about the myriad thoughts that spin off from that object like dominoes out into space. These personal experiences of objects are things no archaeologist can uncover, they are often unvoiced, even now. Ever curious, I would like to know more.
What is my creative practice?
I am not sure that the work I do with makers and other creatives, in supporting their creative practices, counts as my own ‘creative practice’. There are many things I do which stretch me creatively, and there are certainly things which I consider I have created, which would not exist otherwise. But is it the same as a creative practice where I make things – objects or ideas? Over the past couple of years I have struggled to reclaim my making practice (I’ve blogged about that here and here), and there’s still a long way to go on that front. But I also have a writing practice and that sometimes feels overlooked, undervalued.
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
A barrier of corrugated iron separates the blue harbour water from a standing pond-like volume. Its surface is slick and still, there is a layer of something floating on the surface which diffracts the light like the halo around the moon, rainbowy and pale. Behind the iron zipper teeth is a line of wooden posts, topped with slabs of white, they look like extra strong mints that have been squared. More iron, but a paler brown, conduits for lines of wires – palest blues and a wobbly line of aqua green. The bank of the river holds back two metal wire fence panels, which have fallen towards the water, but don’t quite touch. Their regular grills silhouetted on the beigey muck below. The whole scene is one of contrast of colour, texture and materials.
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.