Ode to Joy

One of the things I most often write or say when someone comments on a piece of my work is how much fun it was to create. It's true, I love to paint, sew, knit, collage, make books and it is fun, a lot of fun! It's often also difficult and frustrating work if I'm honest, but I rarely if ever mention that, maybe because the two things seem on the face of it pretty contradictory and therefore hard to believe. The reality of work for a great many of us is that it's something we do 'out there' whilst dreaming of the weekend, summer holidays, retirement. We are very fortunate - I am very fortunate - when we can do something we love as our work because that can change everything! 

It can also, however, be a source of conflicts too; ones which lead us to feel awkward and needing to justify or dismiss our creativity in a time-equals-money obsessed world. Whether you work full time as an artist/artisan or squeeze your precious creative space from the remains of the day it may be hard to keep the faith that what you have to offer is valuable and unique. So, the other day I came across an article by Quinn McDonald which touches on this very subject. What she wrote struck an extremely strong chord with me, so much so that I wanted to share it here with you.

'We don't think our work has value in the "real world". We don't allow ourselves to think that art is "real work". When someone congratulates us, we are quick to point to the fact that we were having fun, as if that diminished our effort or talent. Interestingly enough, when history judges a culture, it doesn't do it on how fast business turned around jobs, but on art, music, inventions and other creative work.' *

I need to be reminded of this occasionally. It won't stop me telling people how much I enjoy what I do but it might help me remember that joy is a vital part of life and that far from diminishing my work it is a condition to be welcomed and cherished for us all.

* What Makes You a Professional Artist? by Quinn McDonald, published in Somerset Studio March/April 2008

Forty Years On

A new mixed media piece which was inspired by my memories of the first moon landing, the 40th anniversary of which was this July. How time has flown.

I was watching the very wonderful Alan Bennett the other night on TV. He was talking about the writing process and 'being a writer' and how one is only a writer when one is actually writing. Research, all the hours spent in contemplation and creation, are just postponing the actual act of writing. Having published a book merely shows that you were a writer, once, not that you are one now.

He was, of course, being ironic but also touching on something that most creative people either feel themselves at some time or other or have foisted upon them by those who would like them to get a 'proper' job and stop mucking about. My own feeling is that people who choose not to develop a creative path as a writer or artist which, by its very nature is most usually a solitary affair, do not understand - maybe do not care to - that not everything is achieved by being outwardly busy amongst lots of other busy people. And if you are engaged in creative endeavours it's also not uncommon to feel that the muse might, at a moment's notice, pack his or her bags and leave, never to be heard from again.

It's hardly a  new notion but one which, from time to time, bears restating I think.

In Search Of Lost Type

I am the happiest of campers today, having just taken delivery of these beauties. If you've never seen such things before, they are type cases for storing the lead fonts used in typesetting. Of course nowadays most 'typesetting' is done on the computer making the print shop and its equipment obsolete. But way back in the day I learned how to do it the old fashioned way with a pair of tweezers, painstakingly picking out the individual letters and the spaces between the words and arranging them in a galley, back to front, so that when run through the press there would magically appear a page of (hopefully) coherent text.

Unpacking these drawers was a real blast from the past and brought memories of the college printshop flooding back. Each drawer traditionally held a single font with all the extra characters necessary for compositing. They were stored in great racks with the drawers of capital letters above and the drawers of small ones below - the origin of the terms lower and upper case - and when filled with lead type were incredibly heavy, hence their sturdy construction.

Well I don't have ambitions to set up my own printworks but I did think these would make wonderful bases for some assemblage art so that's what I plan to do, although first they need a thorough clean as there's many years of accumulated dust inside them. I'll post more updates as the project progresses!