Practically speaking, I feel my top priority in these coming months is demonstrating my commitment to myself and to my art practice.
I have a natural curiosity; a desire to be adventurous with ideas and experiment with material and form.
However, now more than ever I want and need to foster that instinct into practical outcomes. Into material that independently communicates my ideas, my emotions and enthusiasms, my ladder love…
In these shifting, uncertain times, I am particularly responsive to structure and direction. With this in mind, I plan to designate Thursdays + Friday afternoons (if possible) to being in the studio.
This is something I have trialled in C.22 this week and seems to work quite well. Organising my time like this initially appears prescriptive and limiting, contrary to the kind of organic playfulness I want to foster in my work. However, when there is so much going on with the demands of dissertation and the general, tangible undercurrent of anxiety and imminent doooooom, having a fixed weekly commitment designates a focused space within which to explore themes and ideas that have been percolating away in me heid with limited palpable output for some time now.
This is not to say I won’t be thinkingabout or making work outside of my ‘allotted’ days. I think commiting to the security of having at least one studio day will inspire a greater level of focus and remove some of the persistent guilt I’ve always felt around being in the studios ‘enough’.
Consistency is the game here. Along with sanity. And graduating. And not getting covey. Or getting covey and then not knowing that you’ve got covey, then giving it to someone who can’t afford to be covey and then actually gets quite poorly.
Anyhoooo…
Weeks 3-5
Starting with some of the quick-fire experiments I’ve scribbled in my sketchbook, make some actual, real life work!
Something to photograph and record which I can use as a springboard moving forward.
Book a couple of mornings or afternoons in the workshops and see what happens.
Weeks 5-7
Check in with the old study plan. See what has worked and what has been less successful. Take forward some of the preliminary workings out, or make the call to start afresh. Maybe a round of research,playing with a material with no specific outcome in mind, looking at other people’s workingsis required.
