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I've been attempting to devote more time to my own art projects. But you'd think I lived the life of a busy social whirl, because time for such projects, appears to evaporate in my hands. I am getting better at blocking out time, but I do really have to guard that space. Everything otherwise seems to encroach and gobble it up. For years if I did decide to commit to doing artwork, it was to paint. But I realised recently I was not particularly interested in painting anymore. It's as though I've exhausted my current capacity for that medium. Working in relief, assembling pieces from found objects, is more where my aesthetic interest arises.
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| The revamped shrine backdrop |
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| An old piece now painted |
This all began with one piece I made for my shrine, that I recently revamped. It suddenly seemed to stand perfectly well on its own, and didn't require use in the shrine anymore. When I look back I have dabbled with working in this way on and off before, but never saw it as a thing outside of making a shrine or a decorative fence for our garden. So I have returned to some early experiments I did a few years ago, that were essentially made from framing offcuts, and started to apply colour on them. There are far too many ideas floating around in my mind at the moment. The actuality will prove which one's have got legs or staying power. But I can see them stepping out of being reliefs and off the walls, til they become more fully three dimensional.
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| A new piece of artworks |
I'm not thinking of this as anything more than art being a thing that I do. I have created difficulties for myself in the past, with thinking art needed it's worth validating through the selling of it. But actually the making of art is validation enough. Seeing art as your personal legacy to the world is a bit of an ego conceit too. Exhibiting and selling your art is entirely another thing. I may indeed think about exhibiting later. But to do so now, would inhibit the tender shoots of what is a relatively new approach. I tend to take Quentin Crisp's view that it is in the process of making art where an artist's interest lives and thrives, the process of exhibiting it in a gallery, is ' where it hangs until it's dead' so far as an artist's engagement with it is concerned. It's not that I'm against selling my work, but I don't want that to become a primary aim. I don't want financial benefit to be all it is about.
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( because it's wet I expect)
There are some garden tasks that are not to be relished, and trimming a pyracantha hedge is one of them. It is, to not put too fine a gloss on it, a vicious bitch of a bush. Every two to three years it requires a severe cut back, simply to stop it taking over. In the past, even though I've been quite modest in the amount I've cut it back, I can confidently say a pyracantha bush is the nearest thing to immortality, it cannot die. This year I've been planning a more drastic cut back than usual.
The hedge grows in front of the house, it is one of two plants that survive from the garden we inherited eight years ago. But as the spring arrived this year the hedge was reaching the point where it half obliterated our front window. So I planned to take out one entire corner of the hedge, simply to give our living room more light. As I started executing this intent, I instantly fell into regretting it. A pyracantha is the most incredibly entangled interlocking mesh of branches I've ever encountered. And what makes it worse is that it bristles with barbed thorns along ever bleeding inch of them. In the past, I've emerged from trimming this hedge with lacerations up my arms as though a wildly rabid cat has mauled me. And in the midst of a high humidity heatwave adequately protecting oneself from being maimed, well that can be stifling.
As things currently stand I've only removed approximately half of what I intend. And it does look really bad, as if some ravenous hedge monster has taken a huge bite out of it. Hubby, a bit shocked when he saw it, gave me the sort of look that says, do you know what you are doing? Characteristically asking - did you research this properly before you started? And of course I hadn't, that's the sort of thing he would do, me? very rarely. And even though I am fairly confident, from previous experience, that the pyracantha will not let me down, I've had my moment of doubt. It will recover. I just couldn't say how long that will take. If I did by chance accidentally slaughter this hedge out of all existence, then we will have a new garden bed to play with. I have my back up contingencies, yes I do.
There is also the tricky thing of what to do with the briary hedge off cuts. Yesterday I sat with a lopper and pruning sheers, patiently chopping them into tinier bits. All so I could put them into our shared compost bin, without instantly filling it to the brim and overflowing. This morning, after a restless night's sleep because hands, hips and shoulders were too tenderly throbbing to sleep soundly, I am realising maybe I'll need to spread this job out - by quite a bit. My completist nature, does not remotely like this dragging out of a task . It's already been delayed by wind, rain and now a heatwave. But, I'll keep plugging away - but slowly I guess
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Hubby and I went one Wednesday morning to one of our favourite cafes. And as we were standing at the counter waiting to be served, you could not help but notice their was a truly horrendous level of cacophony going on in this cafe. At one table, eight women, seated and standing, all in leotard leggings were engaging in lively and very loud conversation. All of them speaking over each other at the same time, and trying to make themselves heard over others in the group. The volume level was constantly rising to the level of them all bellowing. Hubby looked at me, as though to say, must we going into that room?
Well, we did go into that room. We took out our hearing aids, and we still could barely think, let alone speak. Every other customer there, was either suffering in silence, focused rather too intently on reading their e.mails, or attempted to engage in making themselves heard above this racket. Now, I have to say this is not an isolated rare incident. We have encountered similar loud conversational competitiveness in other groups of women. A female friend of ours tells us this sort of loudly talking over each other, is now very common when women get together. It appears to be all about being heard in the group. It doesn't require much reciprocal listening, just the use of increasing volume to assert yourself as being at the fore.
I feel old-fashioned in saying this. I was brought up by my Mother, to not talk over someone when they were speaking, that this was considered the height of rudeness and showed a lack of respect. And even though you undoubtedly may be gagging to say something, you were to hold those thoughts till an appropriate pause appeared. Though I must to say, in my Mother's case, appropriate pauses were exceedingly rare in her conversation. Just saying. And, if I'm honest, I've not become expert at inserting myself into conversations, or judging when a pause is appropriate or not. I generally ere towards being overly self conscious, probably to the point of inhibition. Of not positioning myself as the dominant male authority in the room. I have been subjected to this from various Alpha Males I've encountered, far far too many times. Likewise the boorishly loud banter of a group of blokes on a pub crawl. These are not a pleasant experience either.
The group of women in the cafe, seemed to me to be qualitatively different. Demonstrating how conversation can become a generalised competition for audible dominance within a gathering. All eight of them were raising their voices to be heard over the top of everyone else's, and every single one of them dismally failing to be really heard. Is this due to too many interactions taking place on social media? A general decline in the quality of conversations? A manifestation of rampant individualism over the collective group? Or the egalitarian female group equivalent of the lone Alpha Male.? I am still a bit baffled, if not to say audibly battered, by the experience.
Strange overheard remark - 'Is it easy, or can you run it over?'
JUNE BLOG VIEWING FIGURES UPDATE
In June views of this Cornucopia blog went really berserk on one of its final few days. I had in one day 257,716 views, the highest daily viewing total so far. The total for the whole of June was hence another first, 388,955 views. There was also another milestone in that during June, total views since I began the blog in 2005, reached one million.
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