catching thoughts

june has been a month of trusting. not knowing and trusting that not knowing will lead to knowing.

lead from the roof of a crumbling georgian town house built in the countyside - traded for hours of painting window frames. that lead has been scrubbed and hammered and persuaded into position around boards. these bound boards have been layered with chalky gesso and sanded in the heat of the midday sun in a garden. morning and evening sea swims. lots.

this collection of white boards stand like gravestones, unwritten and leaning at angles around the room. they surround me. they daunt me. i gather them together for a group photograph - a large family of differing shapes and sizes. i need to learn them, to get to know them for they are new to me.

thoughts flit and fly and some are caught, pinned down for closer inspection. examination. the river is walked at low tide. procrastination. bones of birds and ribs of boats are found. a rusty orange is dug from the bank and further down an assortment of verdigris nails lie exposed in the mud. two rusty keys and a mermaid's purse but no sign of the mermaid who left these behind. what was lost is found. that which was concealed is revealed.

a single heart urchin hangs on the wall. sunlight shifts and flickers on its bare white shell. symbolic of a love and loss. fragile and delicate it pulses persistently through my mind and paintings. the most beautiful thing. swimmers dive through graphite seas and the corroded disc of a can holds a handful of rust-stained cowries. that's all there is. that and music. a lot of music.

'the falling tide' - notes for my exhibition

-isles of scilly - heart urchins whole - heart urchins broken - rare whole heart urchin broken -  treasures to be found on a spring tide - revealing what's normally under the sea - what's hidden is brought to light - exposure - honesty - truth - peeling back layers of the self - discovery - the unknown - self-discovery - from unconscious to conscious

-looking - seeing - investigating new things for the first time - walking where i normally swim - exposure of the foreshore - land unowned by anyone - freedom

-the edge - where water meets land - physical boundaries - ever-changing - personal boundaries - fine tuning - adjustment - poor mental health most resistant to change - good mental health least resistant - liminal space (jane) - place of transition - not knowing

-the pull of the moon - full moon/spring tide - the changing landscape - reflection - solstice fire - stories -  'fiery skies of far away' - silver sea - night swimming - dreams

-clarity - space - the courage to be still - to listen to oneself - to reflect - the tide of life

"i'll call you, and we'll light a fire, and drink some wine and recognise each other in the place that is ours. don't wait. don't tell the story later.

life is so short. this stretch of sea and sand, this walk on the shore, before the tide covers everything we have done."

(jeanette winterson - lighthouse keeping)

the red scarf

i flick and swish the scarf as i do every time before i put it on. there is still a thin puff of dust that wafts gently into the air even after the vigorous shaking and swotting of the night before. i sweep back my hair and tie it tightly. 

a little while ago i was doing some painting and decorating work. when i started on the ceilings i got fed up with paint falling into my hair so i rushed into a charity shop one morning and grabbed a red scarf. it has white dots on it and is a bit piratey. 

last night as i lay in bed exhausted after pulling the last and most awkward section of the ceiling down,  it occurred to me that maybe i won't have to wear it anymore. i've got so used to it that i haven't really given it much thought. and then i had a little flashback to when i found it in the charity shop. i was in a hurry and  i had a split second thought that i couldn't buy it because it was exactly the same as the one my mum used to wear. there were few other choices. i decided it was the best. and i've been wearing it for building work ever since.

i used to come out of primary school and scan the rows of waiting mothers for the red scarf. i think my mum used to wear the scarf because the rain would make her curly hair frizzy. also we lived on a farm, there was a lot of dirt and she was outside much of the time. often she arrived at the school in wellies, a big muddy anorak with straw and baler twine-filled pockets. and sometimes in the old farm land rover with an open back. as children we loved this as you could lean out into the full force of the wind. one day, i kicked back a pile of fertiliser sacks and found a dead sheep. the downside to the land rover was that we could always get to school in the snow. thankfully most of the teachers couldn't.

but as i grew older i became self-conscious. i remember feeling so embarrassed by my mum's red scarf and i just wanted her to look like the other mums in the village. all these years later i've been wearing the same red scarf with as much carefree abandon, unconcerned by how it looks - just that it's a good practical solution to staying clean.

so after tying the red scarf i reach for the dust mask. my breathing sounds loud, laboured and heavy. i have mental associations of intensive care and diving. with the safety googles that instantly steam up, i feel that i'm about to go snorkelling. rather than waddling into the sea i climb up the ladder and squeeze through a gap into a tunnel of dust sheets. i'm above the alleyway and it's suddenly very silent. a thin film of dust obscures the outside of the googles and i feel that i'm swimming in deeper water. the sun shines through the orange sheet casting a strange burning glow. my head is pressed against a beam, an entire round tree trunk that looks incredibly old. it feels unnerving and unsafe to have so many of my senses obscured. i have partial vision through the right hand side of the goggles and as my hammer strikes the ceiling the dust thickens. i can't actually see the tools so i grope around feeling for them. the bits of dust covered lath look like the crowbar and when i think i've found it, i haven't. i wonder if this is what everyday life is like for a blind or partially sighted person. as the dust thickens i feel i am at the bottom of the ocean. i can only hear my breathing but i can't see a thing. 

later, when i come to shovel the dust into bags i make out a strange object amongst the debris. it's a bone. i've found lots of bits of bone in the fireplace but they've all been small. this one is much larger. i'm wondering what it has come from and why it was in the ceiling.

above the ceiling..... below the floor.....

a mummified rat fell down with the ceiling!

 

i found these little 2 inch tall pots when i was planting the crocuses

dust

"we come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust".   rumi

dust. i haven't got much to say about it other than there's been a lot. in my eyes. in my hair. in my clothes. and even in my ears. 

i've nearly finished pulling the ceiling down. heavy slabs of compacted earth and animal hair have been sailing past my head and exploding into fine clouds as they hit the floor. 

where little bits of ceiling have been hitting the rubble sacks i noticed tiny meteor showers and celestial lights bursting against a black night sky. 

  

   

little cosmic dust poem

by john haines

   out of the debris of dying stars,

   this rain of particles

   that waters the waste with brightness...

   the sea-wave of atoms hurrying home,

   collapse of the giant,

   unstable guest who cannot stay...

   the sun's heart reddens and expands,

   his mighty aspiration is lasting,

   as the shell of his substanace

   one day will be white with frost.

   In the radiant field of orion

   great hordes of stars are forming,

   just as we see every night,

   fiery and faithful to the end.

   out of the cold and fleeing dust

   that is never and always,

   the silence and waste to come...

   this arm, this hand,

   my voice, your face, this love.

slowly slowly a studio is emerging.....

a little like the waking tortoiseshells in my previous post things are slowly coming together with my new studio space. they had to get a lot worse before they could get better. in january water started to come up through the floor and having chipped up most of the lino tiles and stripped everything back to a bare shell i could begin to see the source of the problems - always a risk when you delve deep behind years of remedial bodging - that you will discover things you didn't want to find!

february has been a crash course in damp. i've spoken to lots of people about damp, read all about damp, picked my way through many conflicting opinions and sought out a couple of damp experts. my biggest hurdle has been knowing whose advice to follow. i now understand a lot about traditional building materials, techniques, breathability and ventilation. i also understand the basic principles of modern building. the problem is when the two collide and there is a bit of both. i have a traditional granite wall but a thin and badly cast floor of concrete laid on bare earth. under the window bays i dug out sack after sack of damp earth and on one side hit concrete. the other side i just continued to dig and realised there had once been floorboards laid onto bare earth! they crumbled to dust as i tried to pull them up. now i have an indoor garden!

i have also realised that i do not find most builders very helpful. i have an idea of what i want to achieve and run it by a builder and am hit by a wall of nos, 'oh no you can't do that..... NO..... this is what you want to do'. and when i ask why not i'm told that that's just not how it's done. full stop. but slowly i'm weeding out my type of builder. that is a builder/artist. someone who knows about materials and how they work. someone who can think beyond the bounds and conventions of the building trade. i've been fortunate enough to meet a brilliant guy who is a builder but studied fine art sculpture. he was apprenticed to a builder (his dad) at 16 and went on to cast full size people (mostly himself) using building materials - concrete, bricks and resin in his work. i ran lots of my ideas by him and he said YES..... of course you can do that if you want to. at last i had found someone i could trust to chop out and rebuild the bottom section of my wall where the timbers had also been laid onto bare earth. this was a job i didn't want to do as it involved acro-props and maintaining the structural integrity of the building. fortunately it transpired that the wall everyone had told me was load bearing (after i'd already sawn out a big section !!) actually wasn't taking much weight after all (phew!)

daylight under the wall!

a structural engineer's nightmare

i've also had great advice from a friend who is a timber framer. he favours traditional methods and natural materials and has a sculptor's approach to building. like me, he doesn't like plastic and chemicals  or thinks that it's necessary to use them. another friend is a lime plasterer and artist. he has introduced me to the cornish lime company who are passionate about reviving lime as a building material and dedicated to informing people about its benefits. they provide clear information on the different types and uses of lime, natural paint and finishes and much more.

i am committed to using sustainable, natural and recycled materials. i only want to give my money to companies who are not causing environmental damage. i do not want to fill my space with products that leach chemicals into the atmosphere. this mean putting a little more thought and research into things. and everything takes a little longer. but it's totally worth it.

so now with enthusiastic advice from the builder/sculptor i've started to take the ceiling down. this involves getting filthy - years of dust and soot and soil - MORE soil!! just how does that much soil get above a ceiling?! when i unblocked the fire place i ended up with a huge pile of granite and 55 sacks of sooty soil. i weighed one bag and estimated over a tonne of soil. the granite was claimed on free-cycle. the small and medium pieces went to a woman who is building a little wall around her pond. the large and extra large-too-heavy-for-me-to-lift-off-the-ground pieces have found a new home with an archeologist who is building a fire pit in his garden. it must be a big one!

so, onwards with the ceiling. the small joy of embarking upon this task is the knowledge that, within the main area, when this is done there really is nothing else i can possibly take out without demolishing the building itself! and amidst the dust and grime there are funny moments. balanced on the top rung of the ladder i levered a big piece of plasterboard off on three sides, closed my eyes as the layers of dust and soil slid past my head. i looked up thinking there was still more to come and was actually hit on the head by a porn magazine! that must have been stashed away beneath the floorboor boards for a few years. do i mention it to the neighbour i wonder?

a touch of sunshine amidst storms

i swim and jump and ride in on the waves. the sea does not feel so cold. i dry in the sun against the warmth of a granite wall. the couple next to us pull a large cafetiere filled with steaming coffee out of a wicker picnic basket. breakfast on the beach.

sun pours in through the studio window. a hare speeds past my feet. i try to see its eyes but so fast - it's gone.




two waking butterflies have found my indoor garden. they unfurl stiff wings. opening and closing and shaking over and over. one flies to the window. i rest a finger beneath it and it perches there, wings outstretched. i stand in the doorway and hold my hand to the sky. an ascending spiral of orange against an intense blue.




soaking in the sun after hibernation.






yesterday i planted crocuses. i dug a bulb sized hole and unearthed an inkwell. today i run it under the tap and see it still contains a dried pool of ink. buried under my floor for many many years. the glass is iridescent and shimmers with a rainbow in this february sun.

penryn arts festival

penryn has just had its first ever arts festival courtesy of lidl (and other generous funders). i'm not quite convinced by the logic behind it but apparently when lidl was built 6 years ago there was an agreement that they paid £10,000 towards an arts festival for the town. i'm unsure if this was in some way supposed to compensate for the impact of another supermarket on penryn's already dwindling small independent food retailers and..... why an arts festival, or who decides these things...... but...... it was really wonderful and the community feeling was inspiring.  

during the week my friend minko took up residence in her cardboard shed in my studio with her maracas, xylophone and boyfriend for her project 'one song wonder'. from inside her little world she played beautiful pared away songs to an audience of one or two people. 

"the project was inspired by the intimate spaces where she rehearses with other musicians - sheds, garages and bedrooms and aims to offer a completely different experience to that of being a member of a crowd or even a faceless listener on the internet".

and on the saturday night she played a candle lit gig to launch her second ep, 'creature' (which you can find here ).this was partly inspired by my current lack of electricity in the building but also the feeling that walls of candles would create a magical atmosphere. so i set to work bending spoons (more brute force than uri geller panache) to quickly russell up forty candle holders. fortunately soup spoons seem to be out of fashion these days so i managed to find thirty in the salvation army shop alone.... and got a discount for buying so many! i mentioned to the old lady that they were just what i was looking for. she said 'you look like an arty type' and i replied that i wasn't intending to have thirty people round for soup. with a self-assured, knowing twinkle in her eye she said, 'i knew you were going to make something'. but time was running out so i had to dash without letting her in on the plan. 

spoons bent and candles secured the evening got off to a flickering start. minko pinned yellow flowers to the walls and as audience members filled the room a warm glow radiated out into the street. i hadn't anticipated that the combined heat of people and candles would make for a very warm room. maybe a source of heating for the winter? we pondered which gave off more heat - a candle or a person? as night fell shadows became stronger, the music ever fuller and i felt like we'd created a world apart. people wandering home looked in, two drunks sheltered in the doorway from a brief shower. from outside i saw my space radiant with light and life - a quiet but fiery haven.

smoke and drawing

excited to discover one fireplace. slightly bewildered to discover another! i mean, one lovely big one is enough. how many fireplaces does one need? but hidden to the right of the large one is another smaller fireplace. possibly an old bread oven with a granite lintel.

so today i unbricked it and dug it out. it took the whole day but was a lot easier than the other as there was more earth and less heavy granite stones. and yes, it's another fireplace alright. it has it's own chimney that looks as if it rises straight before curving to meet the main one. the same black sooty soil swirled out into the room, followed by sticks and stones and feathers and bones. i found all sorts of interesting pieces of paper and cloth and string that must have been woven into nests dating back over decades. i've kept all the little things which i'll photograph and write about in another post. one nest was made with tatters of newspaper from 1928!

and as i was amidst digging and filling yet more sacks with sooty soil i stood up to straighten my back. i looked out of the window just in time to see a chimney sweep getting out of his van across the road. i ran out to him and told him excitedly that i'd just discovered two chimneys, thinking that this might be the sort of thing that would excite him too. he was in a bit of a hurry, said he had a chimney to sweep but would pop back after he was done. 

a little while later he returned with a torch, a smoke bomb, a bag of sketchbooks, a long tin of coloured pencils and a box of top quality artists' materials - charcoal, conte crayons, pastels and more. he said he didn't have much time but he'd test my chimney if i drew something in his sketchbook. he told me that's what he does with all his customers - asks them to draw or write something while he sweeps their chimney! and there were about 8 artists' sketchbooks full of drawings, collages, poems and messages. he said he was going to do something with them but he didn't know what yet. unfortunately there was no time to look and barely any time to draw as lighting a smoke bomb takes a lot less time than sweeping a chimney. so i started to sketch my newly found fireplace and bread oven as the smoke started to plume upwards but then out into the room. it was getting harder and harder to see what i was drawing and the chimney sweep was outside looking at the sky. he told me that he couldn't see any smoke emerge and that it was likely that the chimney was blocked on top. the smoke billowed out into the room and my subject became vague and misty, all definition lost in a haze.

i was disappointed that the smoke hadn't made it out but told the man that i was still on the lookout for hidden shoes. when i was at school i went to stay with my art teacher and she showed me the tiny worn leather shoes that she'd found in the chimney breast of her house. they were beautiful and very old. it was common for people to conceal them in walls and rafters but particularly in chimney breasts to ward off evil spirits, witches' curses and disease, or more positively, to encourage fertility. i asked the man if he'd ever found any. he hadn't but he had found a tiny gold ring hidden away in a chimney when he was asked to clear a bird's nest. and he was told he could keep it.

atmospheric

a little difficult to observe my subject!

beneath the surface : re-discovering beauty

well, this post is what this blog is all about. looking beneath the surface and re-discovering what has laid buried by the layers that have built up over the years, obscuring the primal beauty, fundamental truth and integrity of a person, object, feeling, idea, culture - anything really. that's what i was thinking when i named this blog. it's what i care about most. a common thread that runs through my life, my existence. my reason for living. 

so when it comes to my new studio it's as important. i've been peeling back these layers to reveal the bare bones, the essence of what my building is. that changes how i feel about it, how i relate to it and ultimately the work i make in it. i've been surprised by a few people's comments or looks of puzzlement  as they wonder why i'm "creating so much work for myself". i don't see it like that. it doesn't feel like that. yes, there is a lot to do and i could have just moved my things into a neatly plastered space, splashed a bit of white paint on the walls and been busy making my work by now. but i'm not. and i'm happy that i'm not. what i have instead is a very dusty building site. there is enough rubble and detritus to fill a large skip and more to come. but beneath it all something of great beauty and discovery is slowly emerging...... something worth waiting for.

why does everything have to be covered up, boxed in, dressed to be something its not, hidden under layers of artifice? i love beauty in its raw state. integrity and honesty, it's more real. this is what i like in life and this is what i like in art, craft and buildings too. i like to see how things are made, how they join together. you know where you are, you know what you've got and life is simpler and more spacious for it.

one of the first things i wanted to do in the studio was to uncover the central structural beam. it had been neatly boxed in with plasterboard creating straight rigid edges. underneath that, it was boxed in again but by victorian panelling and architrave. i wanted to see this beam. it holds up the flat above and the roof above that. i wanted to know what it was. if it was original or had been added at a later date. if it was wood or metal. if it was old, if it was warped, cracked, riddled with woodworm? why would i not want to see and know these things? because if i did, it might mean more "work"? if there's a problem at least i can see it and deal with it and then there is no problem.

so in pulling back the uniform and characterless layers, the facade of over 100 years of changing fashion and how things "should" be done, i have unearthed a beautiful, original wooden beam. to me this beam is important. not only is it part of the structural fabric of the building but it is a tree. it was a tree. it's a connection to nature. this studio is in a town and there is a road that runs outside but it is a historic town and unlike today, many of these older buildings that remain were built from nature with natural materials. why would i want these beautiful organic materials to be covered up and hidden from sight?

so in a similar vein, i've stripped back the rest of the space and discovered some amazing things. for a start, it's become much bigger. there was so much dead space that was boxed in just because it was easier and quicker to make straight lines rather than to wiggle and curve carpentry around the existing structure. the interior of the under stairs cupboard was so much smaller than the outside. that was a joy to remove, albeit very physically demanding. 

pulling all the plasterboard, layers of wallpaper, old fibre board and victorian tongue and groove off the left hand wall has also been hard work but totally worth it. underneath is a thick and beautifully built granite wall with the remains of the original animal hair and mud rendering. most of that crumbled to dust upon touch but it did look as if there was something that had been painted directly on to it . i've kept the small fragments to look at more closely. and in revealing this wall i spotted a piece of wood embedded in the granite running behind the victorian panelling and more modern under stairs cupboard. i noticed a little tiny singed patch and it occurred to me that it could be the end of a lintel above a fire place. this was very exciting but puzzling because there isn't a chimney on the roof and i wondered if it had been altered over the years. i found a little hole just big enough to jiggle a crowbar into and it seemed to go back a long way. then i  made that hole just big enough to squeeze a gloved hand into, and pulled out a palmful of sooty earth with some feathers and sticks. so exciting. this meant the under stairs cupboard had to go and the victorian panelling behind that. after a lot of crowbarring i could see that i'd found the original fireplace, all walled in with mud and granite. 

after digging out a vast amount of earth and a huge pile of granite stones there is a lovely large fireplace and a chimney that runs up through the thick wall and emerges out on the roof of the adjoining building. it all needs re-pointing which will be fun to learn. this fireplace with it's slightly curved wooden lintel transforms the feel of the space. even without a fire it makes it feel more warm and homely. and i love the space all the more for it. it's beautiful. it will be even more beautiful. i've always thought that beauty is a fundamental human need to fill the soul. and this in turn will feed the work i make in this space.

i have a quote that i refer back to time and time again. i used it to conclude my dissertation many years ago and it has been pinned on the wall of every studio space i've ever had. so far, it hasn't appeared on my blog.

it is a excerpt from a lecture that meret oppenheim gave at 'the federal institute of technology' in zurich in 1983. it formed part of a conference called 'science and art - contrasts and identities'.

"when nature has stopped being treated as the enemy of man, when the battle of the sexes has become an unknown, when the so-called feminine traits that men share in full measure - feelings, moods, intuition - have been fully exploited, when the significance of woman's contribution to the preservation and development of human society has been recognised, when comfort is no longer mistaken for culture, when beauty has become a need again - then, at last, poetry and art will automatically come into their own again, even if the veil of longing always lies upon them like an eternal promise".

last saturday i was interviewed again by the lovely lizzie on the funkin' arts radio show. a bit giggly but some more stories about my studio discoveries. you can listen to it here

taking down the false ceiling - showing the under stairs cupboard before

peeling back the layers on the same wall 

uncovering the beam

under the plaster board - animal hair and mud render

investigating the under stairs cupboard

finding old strip light bulbs, painted tongue and groove where once there were shelves. level with the second shelf down is the end of what i was hoping would be a wooden lintel and beneath that, the hole i poked the crowbar into!

black cobwebs and a 1950s curtain

frantically pulling away the tongue and groove to make a hand-sized hole to investigate further

running out of floor space....

pulling out the back of the under stairs cupboard and removing the first stone - very sooty!

behind the under stairs cupboard

unbelievable excitement and covered in soot by now!

i have a fire place i really do - hooray!