New Year, new people and places

As I get ready to go on holiday I am hoping it will provide me with time to step back, relax and be completely refreshed. The Cape Verde Islands should be somewhere so different from my every day experience that I can come back with energy and insight to create significant work

Look out for dates when 'Slow Making' conversations are going to happen and please get in touch if you are reading this blog, I would like to have feedback

Wishing you a Happy and Creative 2008

A new project

Selected for Salthouse 08 'SEAhouse, LIGHThouse, SPIRIThouse' means that I have the opportunity to work on a series of structures, to go on the beach, across the marshes to the churchyard. This means being outside, balancing work again, willow and wetland stuff. Direct interaction with people will happen after this, in a series of workshops and conversations.

This opportunity, going back to Salthouse to do this work seems another occasion of good timing. The combination of adventure, physical and spiritual as well the contemplative aspect of this work is what I hope to show in the final pieces.

I want to invite a diverse group of participants, church groups, artists, environmentalists to take part in the workshops and conversations. So please contact me if you are interested. I am also looking for commissioners and funders for this work. If you think you would be interested in owning the finished work and want to be informed of progress, look out for more postings - or get in touch for further information.

Sketches and plans

I have been sketching a series of forms related to lanterns, 'Weaving a Walk' linked to beacon churches and lighthouses. Trying out various willow forms - which means I have used it much more than in the previous three or four years. I find there are shocks about the lack of control and skill, as well as finding I have memories of making and adapting previous structures. The greatest challenge is going to be making a structure in willow as large as it needs to be, while still being an elegant form.
I will be modelling the form many times before I am satisfied with it.


The largest lantern forms will be places to hold about six people at one time to share stories and experiences of their physical and spiritual adventures. To discuss awareness of the environment and the non-human inhabitants who share it, their influence or otherwise over the lives and decisions

Staging at Late Shift

Staging at the Late Shift was more interactive this time, and more successful.
Surrounded by works collected by the Sainsbury family together with exchanges and conversations, the work made much more sense.
The online quilt has been updated and currently has more then a hundred contributions, there are still more to add and it gains strength as it grows.

Slow Making is always in the back of my mind while I am working on Fair Trade - Material Matters, does this make a difference to the end result? I am not sure, but it does mean I am not in a rush to declare it finished

Fair Trade - Material Matters for Black History month

This month's Late Night Shift at the Sainsbury Centre is linked to Black History Month, which gave the opportunity for Fair Trade - Material Matters to consider sense of identity and belonging, as well as the issues of nomadic, travelling and displaced people.

There will be opportunity for people to contribute their self portraits. I look forward to having this occasion to interact with artists again, will it affect the way they choose to depict themselves in this situation?

MA Show

Exhibition preparation at Norwich, it seems a strange place to be. I have selected some things to show but as always they may not express what I had intended. Showing Fair Trade - Material Matters as a static exhibition and without the interactive process gives the work a significance I am not sure I can relate to. Stitching the new drawings has taught me so much more - I even find the rhythm and technique of the artists comes into the way I stitch each time - so each one has a real charecter. The hanging process lends a status and separation which it has not had before.

Bringing work from the allotment to a public space, together with chairs and tools which are very personal, makes me feel vulnerable and very uncertain. It has an attraction to viewers I can see that, it is very elemental and maybe non-gallery.

Tim Drakes animations are currently the most successful part for me - I had intended to show only those, with earth and charcoal on the floor....maybe another time!
Images to follow...

My 'Slow Making' article is available for audience to read, a few take advantage of this and find it interesting to read. It has been published this week in No 42 of Landscape and Arts Network Journal

Dancing forward again

The positive outcomes of going to Moscow are starting to happen (see entry for 29th March) I have been invited to go and draw in rehearsals, classes and performances of the Bolshoi ballet while they are in London. I will do this for one of the three weeks they perfom at the Colisseum, starting 12th August.
As the MA show at Norwich goes up two weeks later this may not be ideal - but this opportunity is not to be missed.
Having made work about 'Dancing with your shadow for the last 10 years, this feels right to do in conjunction with writing about Slow Making.
The unplanned and unimaginable happens when you allow time and space.

My work was brought back from Moscow by Joseph Backstein, I collected it from his house in London to find that I have about 65 fantastic new self portraits to stitch into the blankets. A lot of work, it will take time...

This will now be part of my MA show at Norwich.

Slow Making expressions

Thinking about slow making I have spent more time looking, feeling, sitting and finding ways of expressing the relationship I have with materials, not trying to make any 'thing' in particular

Writing about 'Slow making' has been hard, it really doesn't come naturally to express my thoughts in words but to both define and share a philisophy of making effectively and seems to help the physical making process.

Speaking to others about the idea has been encouraging, 'Slow Making' is obviously an approach to life and being ready to happen, complementary to the speed of emails and blogs. It is a conversation to have, a live, slow event including a meal and possibly making in community.

Using the charcoal made there on old brown wrapping paper, I have this hanging in the allotment studio.

Allotment Studio Space

Every time I think about Slow Making now I breath differently, listen to my breathing and heartbeat. The allotment studio provides space to do that away from all the mechanical and technology, how much does the individual's body rhythm affect what they make and do in life? I expect more than we are aware of.

Using the Allotment studio for a workshop was challenging, both for me and participants. It is a space I use for isolation, quiet work and as often as I can without power tools. The contrast of having five or six others, making noise alien to the site was sometimes very disturbing.

I lay down very few guidelines, to see whether the sense of place manifests in the behaviour of visitors to the place/site.
I am not sure this worked, but it did give me information to work with and for the next one. What I observed was that it is easier to demonstrate displacement visually than express the sense of place or belonging. This was shown by setting up photo-shoots and wearing of clothes never seen here before!

The conversation about Slow Making will be published as part of my MA, I am currently drafting a definition, this is what has emerged so far.

'Slow Making is done with reflection, care and consideration of the
environmental effects of the source, process and use of materials. Slow Making is always a collaborative process, either environmentally or socially.'

There is a Blog with a manifesto for Slow Making

Slow Making - Sense of Place

Working more on Slow Making I have been spending time in the allotment 'shed' which is more studio now than ever. I am really enjoying the new atmosphere there, using it early in the morning and late in the evening when the light is more dramatic.
What is Sense of Place and how to convey it visually? Not by a landscape painting or a sculpture, or by film, there are not enough senses involved in receiving those.

Poppies have self seeded in Fred's disused allotment - all I have done is take away the other 'weeds' as they have grown, this has produced a riot of rich colour. The sight of them has brought out stories about older allotment holders growing poppies to treat ague and make a solution that was put on the babies dummy to help everyone sleep. One or two people have been invited to the allotment to see the sight, I like that - a piece of work made instinctively and exhibited without any planning or advertising! I feel like this is a real expression of both Slow Making and Sense of Place.

The next phase of my exploration into Slow Making is inviting artists and writers to express Sense of Place with Slow making in mind, I think I know what I mean but will they? Are the two separable, I think they are two parts of the same thing.