made these drawings last week. feeling very aware of my current physical age and physical body. Not got control over my time and the days are slipping away like paper in the wind, I am marking them by drawing. I like the distorted perspective here. I am going to make more. I wanted to try non ink drawing for a change. The graphic lines of an ink drawing weren’t right for these, I want to look at starting to paint the body and I am tentatively starting out with these sketches, which, with the inclusion of 2 shades, black and white, as opposed to just pencil, is a big step for me : )
Update on whats happening not happening. I got up early today to read and review my blog, in a bit to get some perspective on whats happening. I had a bad week last week in terms of anxiety over my practice and where I am not at, its so easy to slip into a state of worry and negative thoughts, and its completely poisionous. Taking action is the only way out of these states so I have booked myself a session with Paul, photographer, on Friday morning to get the naked shots done and to finish the last 5 ‘I need to be ready tasks.’
I am getting around the potential problem of being actually naked by wearing flesh coloured underwear. I am going to not think about this process too much. I want it to be a real, un flattering or flattering whichever way it comes out, photo of me, now, aged 45. varicose veins. Slightly loose mid section skin. etc. We all live in a body. I am lucky to have the one I have. I have had 4 pregnancies and I have had 3 birth experiences. I have lived in this flesh for 45 years and its mine. I have a VERY different attitude to my body to what I had 20 years ago. I want the photos to be well lit, featuring me, straight ahead, full shot, not smiling, not frowning, just calm. Legs slightly apart, weight through both feet, arms slightly away from my body. I am going to ask people to interact with the image digitally. I am planning on keeping it VERY doable. I thought on the most basic level they could just snapshot the image on their screens and scribble on it on their i-phones. The plan is to collect different responses to the image. Like online graffitti. Using a body as opposed to asking people to just draw very much sets out a trajectory from the start. The body has so many connotations. But by not providing a smiling, or suggestible image, it might change how people might draw on it. I anticipate people drawing beards, dresses, scrawling something across it. I must think about how I can ask people to send the image back so as to allow them to be anonymous if they prefer.
The most important thing is to get people to respond. I will think of all the places I can ask creatives to get involved.
in the million facebook groups I am in – surely I could put it there
on instagram by asking people to get involved one on one. Unless I am very clear what I want people might not feel like they should get involved. I am just thinking if it was me , and I saw something like this online. I would feel a little unsure as to how I would come across if I rushed to start drawing all over a semi naked female body. So it might have to be invite by email. I could ask every creative I’ve worked with over the last while online, galleries, people from college, old tutors, local creatives, facebook creatives, people through instagram, etc. Ideally I’d get 100 responses at least.
thinking what to do with the results. could display as one image, could display as a film, showing the changing drawings over the unchanging image of the person underneath. First to get the images in and worry about how to work with them after.
Also going to film the last in the I need to Be Ready series, this Friday. I was questioning the validity of this work at present given how the experience of watching the riots in USA and the marches around the world centring around Black Lives Matter are rightly dominating the news and social media. My INTBR series seems trite and not very relevant right now. But I need to think about it in a bigger context, and I want to se it through and finish it for what its worth. I can show it, the next series, tasks 11-15, in whatever way I like. I can wait and present the work, tasks 1-15, as a whole, which might be more cohesive. Even thought my computer is still, still in the shop getting its hard drive retrieved, I hope, and the imovie app has bloody stopped working on my phone, therefore stopping me from accessing the saved works in the app and also preventing me from being able to make and edit short works at the moment. Venue: BallyBeg woods. I need to get up there this week and have a look at the space to see if I can find a tree to hang off. Other tasks – hiding/climbing/shouting, and one more. Look up name of performance artist who hung off a tree until he couldn’t hold on any more. I would need to name check this guy. Its Bas Jan Ader. The following below is from Wiki:
Ader’s mother, Johanna Adriana Ader-Appels, wrote the poem “From the Deep Waters of Sleep” on 12 October 1975, after having what she described as a premonition of his death:
“From the deep waters of sleep I wake up to consciousness.
In the distance I hear a train rumbling in the early morning.
It is going East and passes the border. Then it will stop.”“I feel my heart beating too. It will go on beating for some time.
Then it will stop.
I wonder if the little heart that has beaten with mine, has stopped.
When he passed the border of birth, I laid him at my breast,
Rocked him in my arms.
He was very small then.”“A white body of a man, rocked in the arms of the waves,
Is very small too.”“What are we in the infinity of ocean and sky?
A small baby at the breast of eternity.”“Have you heard of happiness
Springing from a deep well of sorrow?
Of love, springing from pain and despondency, agony and death?
Such is mine.”Psalm 30:2
