landspirit gardening: raised bed, raised awarenesses

Exciting times in the garden!

and now:

– which made my day yesterday and will be such a joy over the summer!

There were a lot of stages – Spade and Sparrow did the heavy clearing

and left it to overwinter and settle. All I’ve managed to organise since has been replacing the cardboard mulch and a little pruning back. I had a couple of ‘seeing’ sessions where I took time to sit and think about what I wanted, but also what the land wants – this is why I call my approach landspirit rather than permaculture, though I use permaculture techniques. Being still and seeing what happens in a space is really important if you want

to work with the existing patterns and bring out the best in a situation.

The new bed is very central, at a crossroads between different kinds of leisure, growing food, growing flowers, badminton, with paths on two sides used by us and the posties, a slabbed area for the bbq and container garden, access to the carpark, access to the drying yard…

Something I feel the whole garden lacks is a good place to sit and chat. This is a lot to do with being in a city, people stealing garden furniture and not wanting to encourage the sex workers already using our garden and yard…Lots of houses on our street have electronic gates and I get why, but the truth is the more we use the garden, the less others will.

The constant difficulties and obstacles to getting the raised bed in motion had made me question if it should happen at all (the phrase ‘pushing the river’ came to mind 🙂 ) but every time I am in the   garden and feel the joy of its return to colour and

bounty (wildlife and harvest and enjoyment) I feel sure it wants more human presence, not less.. more domestic everydayness anyway!

This is the kind of thing that you either get or you don’t!  And the truth is, you can be a great steward of the land without feeling this. But some extra layer of ‘happening’ tends to occur when listening to the spirit of place, some bonuses come in as though on rails when I engage this process. I feel very convinced by it, because after a lot of work turning round my derelict and poisoned allotment, I saw the results, bushels of healthy fruit and veg, herbs for tea and scent or strewing, bees galore, the pollination rates of the allotmenteers near me shot up… Even the old guys had to concede my ‘messy’ ways worked 😉

Coming back to the garden here, there needs to be an acknowledgement of the transition from kitchen garden to purely ornamental/badminton lawn. The rockery is huge, as long as a tennis court and a couple of metres wide at the narrow end. It has beautiful mature trees and lovely rocks with fossils in and interesting marbled chunks and then a lovely array in July of foxgloves, feverfew, spirea, liquorice agastaches and flowering stonecrops, with alkanet and lush foliages… So looking from my rollator along the curving length of the bed towards the drive, seeing only logs on the raised bed edges would jar.

Instead we went on an expedition rounding up materials from all corners to make a bed that can be a heart centre. Ben suggested pulling some of the rocks lost under ivy from the super dry shady bank that is the front boundary, David found a huuuge sandstone boulder on the edge of the drive and I found big chunky pieces of tree trunk in the wood pile.

David then worked really hard, digging postholes and a channel to support yorkstone slabs on their sides, wedging and shuffling rocks, logs and slabs until it all looked really harmonious. I had suggested that the biggest log, which gets used as a seat on bbq nights became the edge of the bed nearest the slabbed area, and that the boulder made the corner between the rockery and the badminton lawn, and the upright slabs next to it echoed the path, but David had lots of fun choosing where to mingle rocks and tree trunks and big branches 😉 Yes, he ached all over when he stopped!

Called back to view progress I was so touched: a big seawashed chunk of chalk we had used as the top of a miniature quoit in the garden in Hucknall has been put at one corner and the copper, steel and stone mobile that hung near it were fitted in to the corner! So lovely of David to think of this! I put an amethyst and some hyacinths (Andy’s favourites) there too. They had emptied compost from the bin round the corner and the empty container garden over the cardboard and horse manure, so with a bit more topping up, I’ll be all ready to plant 🙂

There will be rose bushes and hyssop for the bees in the centre and then beans, squash and tomatoes roundabout, though I might sneak beetroot and lettuce in to catch crop 🙂

Being able to dream gardens again is so satisfying! And with all that sorted I feel more connected and committed to tending the rockery, which has been possible but not an attractive option when it meant walking past all the  looming ‘beyond my strength’ reminders. It has been a gap, a lost friend even…I feel gardening to be an integral part of my life, my healing, my politics, my art, being at home in the world, a place where the balance finds itself and energy flows… paying attention to my changed capabilities means I have to listen even harder now. Working  with neighbours who have never worked this way before was a challenge! This garden that is a woodland edge in a city needs to be a place where we can play to all our strengths, and yesterday, we did 🙂

a time for community action

A very ugly truth is that the British Government thinks it can continue to deny FOI Freedom of Information requests on the deaths of disabled people dying within 6 weeks of being refused benefits (to which they have contributed through national Insurance, remember) or moved from the support group to the work-seeking  group. This guy wrote a great post:

DWP refuses to provide information on ESA/IB deaths. What is it hiding?

Meanwhile pigs in troughs are continuing to thrive…

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/coalition-leaders-rack-up-55million-3200685

that’s 5 POINT 5 million, not 55 btw, but plenty bad! who are the scroungers sucking the country’s resources?

I’m too angry to write a proper post, but you can see where I’m heading…

We need to honour the dead

We need to say NO!

We need to help the people thrown into despair and hunger and homelessness…

What if everyone in the country wrote to Nick Clegg asking him to do the honourable thing and stand down and break the coalition? Is he so far sunk in selfishness that he would ignore it? EDITED TO ADD: someone else had the same idea!

http://aworkingclassman.com/petition-calling-libdems-immediately-end-coalition-tories/

It’s getting very hard to imagine how any of them look themselves in the mirror…I put that on Facebook and someone pointed out they have no reflections (ie they’re vampires) and it’s hard not to agree…

Meanwhile, my necessary YES! to cope with all this is:

i) working on a piece about water waste, mmm, blues and browns and now pearl blue-grey Opium yarn with Katia ruffle yarn cascading off it…this is pure indulgence as the next in line should have been Wool Against Weapons, but with all the bad news, I can’t be knitting pink, I need something to make me smile!

ii) teaching my friend in Flat 1 catering and sending protein bars and soups and stews to the new free cafe (first event is tonight, at Crocus Cafe in Nottingham, we think it’s fortnightly 😉 I’ve managed to lose the original info, eek!)

iii) helping People’s Assembly against Austerity with a post Budget speech protest rally. I hate making assumptions, but it seems pretty likely that the cuts to necessary services will continue and the rich will be let off more tax…if not we can turn it into a celebration 😉

https://www.facebook.com/events/1421949128052584/

I’m upcycling leftover placards and the body politic silhouettes from the ATOS protest and also felt tips and crayons…need to buy some more bubbles though 😉

Ok people, I’m back in relentless optimist mode now, bubbles and sequins and knowing people will be eating tonight and tomorrow thanks to the protein bars they can take away, and the two big boxes that went to the cafe only made a little dent in the Approved Foods mountain, plenty more where they came from! So, yes, we can bring the heart back to our communities, yes, this tide will turn…there ARE simple things we can do that will make all the difference 🙂

fibromyalgia, the mirror

I am making the kind of art that makes me the most happy at the moment, making beauty from discards and gifting it as street art…this is so lucky, as I have just finished my first 6 monthly review for ATOS assessment form. 6 months goes really fast, it felt like forever when I won my appeal to be put in the non-work group for ESA, but it has flown. Having the recognition of the organisers of an exhibition in London, being invited to show more than I originally submitted is very validating, and when I have also been listing my increasing health problems on a form for someone paid a bonus to discount that and ignore my distressing history and try and force me to let go of my right to welfare support after paying into a National Insurance scheme… it has been a life saver.

I have felt angry and annoyed and stressed and belittled, but I have not felt suicidal. When I had to fight for a year to get my Disability Living Allowance re-instated in 2005, I felt suicidal almost weekly, I felt sick with fear every time another letter dropped through the box, it was a very heavy burden to carry through the first year of my marriage. Without Andy’s support I would never have made it. How do people manage with no partner, no family of choice or origin, no outlet for their skills and energy? No validation of their worth to those around them?

And this is why I am so angry about the refusal of the mainstream media to carry the news of just how many people commit suicide within 6 weeks of being refused their benefits. (yes “theirs”, if a doctor signed them on the sick and they paid N.I, a private insurance company would be in court for refusing to pay the promised benefits, why isn’t the Government?)

We know it’s over a thousand in 9 months, but the Government then instructed the records to be closed, even to Freedom of Information requests. How scared are they? How big is this dirty secret? How will people feel when they realize this was the boiled-frog syndrome moment for those not using the benefit system? How did ordinary Germans go along so willingly with Nazi atrocities? By believing propaganda, by letting themselves be divided to rule…

We must stand together.

We must look in the mirror and like what we see.

Fibromyalgia is a mirror for me: I see what is truly necessary to me more clearly than ever before in my life, because when I mess up, the cost is very high. Equally, because life is increasingly limited, I can tell very easily what makes a satisfying life, what generates stress, what makes me sick to my stomach… and the thought of the MPs in Parliament getting £400 for lunch, saying working families must queue for support at a food bank truly does. As people are pointing out, how much housing benefit goes to benefit claimants and how much goes to landlords? 100% goes to private landlords getting super rich off people terrified to complain when there is mould growing on the walls, getting sick from damp, while their landlords build another heated stable for their horses… (interesting conversation with my landlord the other day –  I am his only tenant on benefits, I am the ‘deserving disabled’ mascot and to be fair, even he was genuinely horrified when I explained that using a rollator, paying for a homehelp, being on tablets galore with a therapist specializing in trauma recovery and a GP who understands fibromyalgia, in no way guarantees any support from the benefits system…I just hope I didn’t give him any ideas about evicting me…)

However hard daily tasks are for me, I must still try and make art or risk losing my ability to cope with the stress levels of my situation. I am very lucky – I have skills and talents and interests and many lovely and diverse friends who help me in many ways, including keeping me amused 😉 Humour is a life saver too! If I made art on a tablet though, perhaps given to me by caring relatives or bought by a charity, I would be under suspicion, how have I come by such an expensive item? Welfare News Service reports some people are being investigated for just such a thing…but at the same time people on benefits have to have internet to access services and apply for jobs… we are moving into a world of double think and distrust and it all needs to be wiped away.

Look in the mirror: you see a human

Every human deserves support to stay alive in a caring and compassionate society

Every human deserves to express themselves and make a contribution to the greater community and be respected for that and not be made to feel suicidal for having become ill, disabled, and in need of support

When you hear the ignorant spouting rubbish about scroungers, ask them if they pay NI (National Insurance contributions) and ask what would happen if they were in a car accident and needed a wheelchair and time off work and how if it turned out they had irreparable spine damage would they like to still be considered human and be paid the benefits of the insurance scheme and use the services of the fantastic National Health Service? or would they like to be treated as human waste and spat at and have their windows stoned and be shouted at in the street as greedy, feckless scroungers? Hmm?

Dr Seuss: Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

Be a human, respect other humans’ needs, protect and support other humans’ right to dignity in life and death.

Working at making it work

TRIGGER WARNINGS: ABUSE AND GOVERNMENT POLITICS

The Real Work

 by Wendell Berry

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

(found on the super excellent http://calmthings.blogspot.co.uk/ a feast for eyes and mind!)

Sometimes making has huge momentum and everything runs like it’s on rails. Other times I have 6 projects out and feel out of sorts and grumpy and like I’m wasting time, but keep playing computer puzzles because I can’t see what comes next. I’ve just had to tidy up for the homehelp coming to clean, and it is sooo lovely to have a tidy space again. I have visitors tomorrow, so it will stay this way for 24 hours. 😉 And it will be interesting to see which project comes out!

The choices are:

Fixers banner: ‘Bring it’ section

Zero Waste: hula hoop rug

Quaker stitching: pulling fabric for social justice applique tablecloths and designing/tracing motifs

complex cloth: next sample, all hand sewing

cradle for stones: playing with raffia and bundles in ‘geodes’

whispering wall: continuing the freeform crochet/knitting lines and loops I’ve been working on

homemaking: making curtains for the small windows from the big chunks left after I extended the main curtains

dressmaking: finish the winter kaftan top I started ages ago

All of these are worth doing 😉 and some are exciting, but none totally grab me, though I was enjoying knitting as adventure and all the pretties gathered for whispering wall

I suspect the indecision is partly because we are due galeforce winds, and I hate high winds with a passion, I get like a spooked cat, all jittery and restless; but also because I am needing to process the new levels of friction in my life. I think the austerity in Britain is really getting people down and the blame-the-benefit scroungers propaganda has been really getting horrible. (0.2% lost spending as opposed to tax evaders 10- 14% lost revenue for the Government, but never let the truth get in the your way, Mr Duncan Smith.) I notice that the bus drivers always have to be asked to ‘drop’ the bus for my rollator now, at first I didn’t mind if sometimes they didn’t, but now I know the level of pain and damage to my shoulders and collarbone lifting the rollator up 3-12 inches (8- 30cm) and sometimes as much away from the curb/kerb does to me, I’m trying to be friendly but firm. And even when you ask they are making a big deal of it, like anyone with mobility issues is asking too much.

Yesterday I had to stand because an ablebodied, non-pregnant (as far as I could tell) young woman wouldn’t move OUT of the wheelchair bay to seats at the middle or back of the bus. In the end someone got off, so I sat opposite her and stared really hard at her, I felt sooo angry at her sense of entitlement, sitting with 5 large bags of fashion shopping ( judgement call, read FRIVOLOUS!) and using her brand new iPhone…and then I thought, well, she isn’t happy…and I don’t know whether she is in fact on her way home before chemotherapy starts and in fact, I should just get over myself, and be aware glowering at her is neither appropriate nor effective 😉

What is going on? I think everyone is feeling short-changed, people on benefits are committing suicide like never before (ATOS deaths are over 1300 I read somewhere, check Welfare News for stats); people at work but badly paid are relying on food banks; middle rate earners are worried about keeping their jobs and paying off their negative house equity; high rate earners can see that the Conservatives have lost the plot and when Labour get in there will be a reckoning for the tax evaders, meanwhile they try and stash as much as they can overseas etc., No one is happy at how the austerity is being handled, whether they think the markets are recovering or not. The bankers must know they missed being properly penalised and some day that will catch up with them, whether by reversion of assets or society descending further into misery and them all being obvious targets for crime…but whatever the position someone is in, no one gets to be really happy, because if you have a conscience, then so much upsetting stuff is happening and if you don’t, everyone else is so negative…

And this brings me back to what motivates me as an artist/maker: art is non-verbal philosophy advocating (in my case) positive change, a return to harmonious coexistence, to the acceptance of a shared planet and responsibilities. The two pieces I am working on are very much about surviving violence and emotional and sexual abuse. Thinking this through now, when I see so much financial abuse wrecking people’s experience of life, I feel I am making this too narrow. All abuse is really bad. To be honest, my parents’ choice to crush my determination to be an artist was just as damaging as being thrown down the stairs. I still get scared on stairs, I still get crushing fears to do with being an artist, but depriving me of my lodestone made me a lost person for years. Once I had art as my true north, nothing was ever as bad again. I am still in recovery from a lot of the abuse because that stuff is in your core self and damaged body parts become more troublesome as you get older. Against this, I have the strength of making, of knowing I am making my life work my way, with my skills in place, and at my service. I have a lot to share with all survivors, on the possibility of coming back and thriving. (Yes, I have it hard, I have fibromyalgia with a ton of pain and limited mobility and I have memories most people can’t survive, but I am here, I am making, I still find joy in the world around me, I share that joy and THAT is thriving when you come from my starting point.) So, when the biggest problem I see is that divide and rule is working so well for stopping people uniting against the awful mess the bankers and pigs-at-the-trough politicians have us in, perhaps I want to become a shade more abstract again and be clear I mean any and all survivors of abuse who are standing for a better world for all of us, and who really mean “we’re all in it together”. (Tory slogan used with withering irony, for friends across the sea!)

Because we are, the Tories just don’t realize that making the under classes so desperate is going to backfire, and it’s going to be a hard enough world with climate change and peak oil without social breakdown and the loss of the National Health Service etc. The current Government are going to be written down as such short sighted fools. We all need to WORK at MAKING IT WORK. So, the American Government can just start itself up and enact its duly passed laws (will the GOP just get over themselves please, they are NOT above the law) and the Brits can just dig down and remember this will pass and it will pass quicker and easier if the bootboys stop kicking people when they’re down.

Now how do I put that in an installation? And can I make it sing?

beauty as a manifesto, calming as a practice

“It is [the] spiritual and evolutionary function of beauty—the power to generate life-affirming change—that is so vital to the visual arts and culture in general, and it is what is intentionally absent in much postmodern art…. Restoring the centrality of beauty in art may signal more than visual relief from the tawdriness of today’s art. It would also be a confident assertion that the future we seek is connected to our desire for beauty and to an appreciation of how beauty can help lead us to a more perfect tomorrow.”                     Carol Raphael       “The Beauty We Create” – See more at: http://ulaeinstein.com/category/art-blog/page/2/#sthash.nlrKMWNQ.dpuf

I have been very lucky with finding some new artblogs recently – particularly as 3 of my regular ‘go to’ blogs are slowing down on posting, having slices of life I presume.

Ines Seidel http://ines-seidel.de/2013/09/wunderstockchen/?lang=en

and Ula Einstein  http://ulaeinstein.com/kosmos/

both make work I find inspiring and motivating, and make me the tiniest bit panicky 😉 I can see we have similar concerns and each have ideas they are working on that mean our work would really make a dialogue in a gallery (drags self back from delicious fantasy 😉 ) but if I don’t make more of the work in my head soon, it will look like I am bouncing off them at best and copying them at worst, when really these are ideas I have been growing for  months and years…

Fibromyalgia means I have to work much more slowly on production than I like, and anxiety is really bad for that, as it increases adrenalin, which increases cortisone, which heightens the pain, which reduces my ability to make…nasty vicious circle, that.

Taking time out to meditate, to skywatch and flow watch (Daoist practices) will be key, and silliness like lifting big tubs of plants or bricks to weight mulch because I am so frustrated that the other flats won’t come out and help in the garden has to stop. The chiropractor put my collarbone back in again on Thursday and said I would feel much better afterwards, and I do, but I’m so annoyed I let myself down again…

I have done a little knitting of cradles and crocheting of the connectors, and already the pain is worse. So I have had a hot shower and a painkiller and an icepack and a nectarine and orange smoothie with organic ginger tea and now I am ready to plan rotations of activity to alternate muscle usage, brain usage and rest.

Thinking/reflecting/musing/’seeing’ work all help me feel creatively active, and, as importantly, help me with planning artist statements at the different levels they are expected. One of my resolutions to come out of the courses at Nottingham Contemporary was that I would modify my statements to reflect my permaculture beliefs and not spout high flown art-speak. I make good work, that to a large extent, speaks for itself. Thanks to altermodernism, it is less necessary to enfold the art in conceptual smokescreens, and simply to say:

I make art to inspire others to think outside the norms of capitalist consumerism.

I make art to call people to beauty, who may have lost hope in this sick system that it could be possible to live more harmoniously.

I make art to present something so real and so compelling, that previous disbelief is replaced by hope and trust in healing and beauty:

a beauty with wounds that are being treated, issues that are accepted and worked through, but a beauty of balance and sharing and richness of texture, colour and line, that makes you want to reach out and touch, to take home with you, and to live with, a little more each day.

taking a yarn trip

So, I was supposed to take a trip into my overdraft at a fancy yarn supplier, but life had other plans…instead I have been upcycling more factory yarn into hand work friendly balls… some yummy landscape mixes are coming through, very Cornish heath and autumn woodland, the holiday I want to have is happening in the winding 😉 Nonie gets mesmerised by not just watching me wind, but the long dreadlocks of freeform crochet as they accumulate on the floor. The next mix is sand, blues and browns, driftwood on the beach and white horses on the North Sea colours…mmmm….

But first a trip down memory of yarn used  lane 😉

diversity at Pride

First: a big thank you to the friendly strangers who helped me when the taxi driver jammed the brake on my rollator again! They pushed the rollator lifted on to its front wheels and carried a big bag of diversity (!) down from Addison St to the community stage so all I had to do was walk slowly, and only once! I was panicking about how to manage two trips with nothing going missing or wrecking myself 😦 And they weren’t even going to Pride, so it was particularly nice of them to help me 🙂

So, a lovely sunny day, with lots of entertainment, people dancing barefoot on the grass, lots of stalls to look at and good causes fundraising – including Pride itself, as it all costs money to sort out. I was at the community stage at the beginning and saw the march coming in as Single Bass sang, then went home for a rest and came back to take down the installation about an hour before the rain was forecast, which meant I got to see an excellent singer, Emily Franklin, wow, what a voice! And it was lovely to hear Single Bass sing again, she is such a thoughtful writer, ‘Aseity’ (empowered groundedness) is one of my favourite songs, and as ever I got tears in my eyes when she sang ‘Weather the Storm’. I missed her second set, which matters less now this is available online 😉

http://single-bass.bandcamp.com/track/heavy-woman

– Keith helped me hang ‘Diversity is our Strength’ and then took some photos, so here is your eyecandy 😉

And now I am resting and very slowly pottering round tidying up the yarn explosion…where did all the feathers come from???

summer solstice garden

so, ok, I cheated, these were taken yesterday, as I couldn’t hold a camera steady with frozen shoulder/dead arm on the actual solstice, but these pictures are about the very green lushness of the garden at this point. We have had a wretchedly long winter, but at last some blue skies and warm summer sun are bringing out the flowers. A fortnight ago the foxgloves were nowhere, now they’ve catapulted themselves up in places I don’t remember planting them:

these are taken from the back of the rockery, which is now becoming an island bed between Ben’s new raised beds and his badminton lawn. He has uncovered some more lovely rocks and done some more heavy pruning, but has left this holly arch for me to play with 🙂

– with holly and ornamental thistle, this is a very prickly bed 😉

I love the contrast of the rocks and the lush vegetation though this is very non traditional for a garden, ornamental rockeries traditionally have alpines, and small tidy succulents, but I like the feel of being on the edge of a shaded woodland glade – as there are giant copper beeches at the drive gateway, with hollies as tall beside them, and then the badminton lawn, this makes for a very natural feel AND a lovely surprise for an inner city garden, all at the same time. 🙂

I thought the foxgloves I grew on the allotment were huge, but the super rich ‘forest floor’ of the reclaimed rockery is making giants, this is the biggest basal of a foxglove I’ve ever grown, it’s at least 12″/30cm across, more like 20″/50cm…

The liquorice blue agastache looks lovely against the dilapidated creosoted shed, and the bees are in heaven, we saw at least 3 kinds, with about 3 dozen in total, one bumble bee was wobbling around very drunk between two of the biggest flowering foxgloves 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve never seen this grass before, and wonder if the pollen is what is making me sneeze every morning…it grows from strap rosettes, a bit like bluebells….Yes that sycamore needs chopping back again already…

my potatoes are doing well:

and right next to them, I saw a Monet in ivy…Monet is famous among painters for the variety of his brushstrokes, 28 different styles of mark in a small square is average for him. Look at all the different ivy leaf shapes in this square foot:

and finally, my sweet peas are out! Jen came round and said how lovely it was to smell them as she waited (I am very slow to the door) and I really like how welcoming the pot is. That’s the spring one, daffs, violets and sweet peas, now I need to think about an autumn one 🙂 I have some heritage peas, a salmon flowered short ‘umbrella’ kind and gave Jen some for her allotment, but may use the rest in the next tub, with some autumn bulbs and cyclamen…

agoraphobia and exhibitions

– a short film made by the Nottingham Contemporary crew about the course and how it affected some members, at 3 minutes they did well to fit in the WEA assessor, Chris, Daphne and Stephen, though you can see more of us in the backgrounds, of course. It’s interesting how huge an experience it’s been for some of the group… I think I felt that way about the Art Access course I took 97-99 with Charlotte Finlay-Broadbelt and Chris Lewis-Jones (yes, the same!) and then the City & Guilds Machine Embroidery with Chris Standen, that my art making skills expanded exponentially. This should feel as transforming to me, it has been my ability to take my art into the world that has grown…and I realise I am not remembering to celebrate it enough!

I’m finally walking through the wall I identified in therapy in 2000…the agoraphobic barrier that stopped me or punished me for even trying to broach it is now a pile of rubble I am picking my way through. I watched my fibromyalgia spoons soooo carefully during the installation, trying to rest as much as I could (my new homehelp had a baptism by fire today 😉 ) but agoraphobia-wise I have been really struggling when I am out this week, with high anxiety and tearfulness and reluctance to go out… a bit of oversharing too 😦  Luckily my new doctor is an absolute sweetie and handled it! The rubble is pretty big, and I am getting very tired and wobbly, but…I’ve just walked through the Berlin Wall of internal barriers! Wow!

 

The work we did on presence and presentation:

nottingham contemporary: definition for recognition

was hard for me, but has really paid off. By comparing myself to Banksy I set myself free from the agoraphobic/ fibromyalgia issues of maintaining  presence in spite of rising adrenalin/anxiety because, bingo! I used a variation on his anonymity, I extended the singingbird avatar from yarntagging to my facebook profile and promotion. It made things a lot easier, and though I had to still be very pushy, sorry, I had to be an efficient promoter of my own work 😉 I didn’t have to see my name over and over again. I don’t know how well this would work for other agoraphobics, but I’m talking about this just in case it helps anyone else. Cold calling is my worst nightmare,  to the amazement of lots of people who have seen me being very confident! Aren’t we all interesting mixtures 😉

Lovely Suella prodded me to approach Nottingham Castle about linking up with the lace tagging… and in my new expanded space, I did. Being able to assemble images so quickly and email them for free (sending slides used to be so expensive and time/effort consuming, the internet really is great for this) and with the extra freedom/non-attachment to results that gave me I already had a big win, but to my delight she liked the images and is keeping me in mind to link up with fibre/thread artwork in the future! Which means I can send her updates as new pieces complete in their slow and meandering ways, without triggering the huge anxiety of cold calling. I was nearly crying as I told the doctor about it…

SEE MORE @ Nottingham Contemporary

Soooooo…the Contemporary class curve balled me, and extended by a week, meaning I will have an interesting challenge on managing spoons of energy…On Friday 10th May, we are having a 3hour performative art share, SEE MORE, 11 – 2, when I will promptly hustle into a phone booth and twizzle 3 times, emerging as Wonderwoman (sshhh! my secret identity, tell no one 😉 ) and whisk away to Queen’s Walk Rec to sit and instruct the installation team on how to hang all the components of SEA CHANGE. I really need to get my head round this because I hang in a happy process daze of flow, and having to choose and explain every little decision is super tiring and induces fibro fog. And I need to stay fresh for the picnic the next day 😉

Ermmmm…

Well, obviously, it will be a day of taxis and ready meals/sandwiches. Then I have already done myself a big favour by choosing to make a handmade book, to be shown on a plinth. I think the class is supportive enough to accept that I have no spoons to herd cats and help curate the space by class consensus, instead I will volunteer to sort out flyers and a couple of posters to attract visitors from upstairs at the Contemporary to The Space, where we will be showing. As I am doing all my flyers and posters at the same time, this is minimal extra energy, while saving the others a deal of stress. I can drop the flyers in to Contemporary by friend delivery (looking at you Robyn 😉 ) on Monday/Tuesday and then arrive about 10.30 on the Friday, with SEA CHANGE carried by bearer (tbc!! but hopefully Cherise) and plonk SEE MORE on plinth, sit and smile and enjoy the art. Mary is using some sword form in her piece, ages since I’ve seen good tai chi ch’uan, so that will be a highlight for me and very centering/calming…

It’s interesting how different people interpret the same theme, I think Mary may be the most holistic of us, she is very elegant and moves beautifully and her piece may encapsulate somatics, performance and aesthetics, while exploring the class experience…we will have to see! I have chosen seeing more through internal adjustments, the quotes from creatives and the bringing in of non-traditional elements, embroidery and embellishment bundles, metallic and neon marks, not your average material for an international gallery 😉  A daoist chuckle at resolving the chip on my shoulder about this by quietly bringing in what I believe should be more acknowledged in the age of altermodernism, that art is non verbal philosophy and can be “decorative” [read: visually interesting in a harmonious way] without losing its edge…may even be more powerful for it… (heresy!!! pass the smelling salts!!!) There will be inter-active elements as well, so altogether, an interesting event, if you happen to be in Nottingham that day, come on by 😉 and I will take photos on the day too.

I’m trying to think out a way to prepare some of SEA CHANGE so it can be easier to install on the day. I went to Poundworld (like a dollar store) yesterday and lucked into some green gardening mesh, so am beginning to see a way to lay out some of the chains and stitch them down (it’s a VERY windy site) so that section can be unrolled like a carpet and then tent pegged in. I got some glow-in-the-dark tent pegs to edge it!!! I’m not totally convinced the batteries will work still, but it could be great…

Lovely Eleanor set up a Facebook page for the event, in particular for the bring and share craft and  picnic event that’s standing in for a private view, and as she has an enthusiastic following, the invites (it’s open to all, it’s just a way of letting people know about it) are creating a buzz already 😉 This inspired me to set up a page for the week, and bring it to the attention of non-fibre artists, and already some accepts are trickling in. Fingers crossed the weather plays nice, a good forecast will do wonders for my stress levels 😉

https://www.facebook.com/events/339029339553244/?fref=ts

https://www.facebook.com/events/129778170550504/?fref=ts

Feel free to check out the links and send good wishes across the sea! I hope they work, my, my, the learning curve I’ve been on in the last couple of weeks…