Moving... again!

I'm moving this weblog over to a new home it's about time really. I have projects all over the web world and it was high time I made a website. In actual fact I didn't make a website at all, a wise man called Gavin Logan did. Thanks Gav! I've tried twice now to go on a web design course but to no avail. I don't have a webby mind, luckily I was saved by a man who does.

I won't be updating this blog anymore, my new home is prettier and has post it notes, however would we survive without them eh? There's not a lot on there and I'm having a fight with the gallery who doesn't like my lack of web design knowledge (pah) but I'm sure I'll work it out.

My life as an artist (potentially)

This week is the first week I've had off since I went to India last October. I'm trying an experiment: To live the week as if I was a 'real artist' just to see what it feels like, so far I'm enjoying it. I walked to town today (my first substantial walking activity since before the operation) it was a glorious day and I felt the sunshine on my back all the way there. I only had to stop twice for a knee related rest. Then I printed some images out to be made into a new edition of books I have planned and the rest of the afternoon was spent in The Tyneside Cinema coffee rooms eating banofee cake and drinking mango juice reading Mslexia magazine and planning how I was going to make the books, before stocking up on some linen thread and a tool I'm hoping will act like an awl (a tool used in bookbinding to pierce the pages/signatures for sewing a book block together). I spent all day yesterday piercing roughly 800 signatures for a new book sculpture with a tapestry needle, I couldn't feel my fingers by the time I'd finished.

The rest of the week is filled up already with artist related activity. Tuesday: meet a man who runs some studios near to the gallery to talk about working together, then printing all day. Wednesday: meet a woman about an exhibition I'm doing in October, then going round the galleries, Thursday: make some of the book sculpture then finish off the origami flowers for the paper tree followed by a gallery meeting, Friday: take the finished pieces down to the place where the paper tree is and pick up the payment then go to the pub. Ahh if only I could do this all the time, or even for a living.

I'm also moving house, to my 41st in 29 years. I couldn't believe it either, in case you don't believe me here is a list:

Flat somewhere in Grantham
Belvoir Cottages, Belvoir
Brixham Walk, Corby
Oakley drive, Cramlington
Pusan, Korea
Jin-hae, Korea
Jinhae Town centre, Korea
Seoul, Korea
Oakley Drive, Cramlington (2nd time)
Brixham Walk, Corby (2nd time)
Chalet x2, Ilfracombe
Chalet x4, Hemsby
Somerset House, Hensby
Caravan, Great Yarmouth
Scott Street, Langwith
Dudley Road, Grantham
Ford Escort, Roads
Lamb House, Cramlington
Dudley, Northumberland
Beacon Hill, Cramlington
Loftus House, Benwell
Elswick Road, Elswick
Wellesley Terrace, Fenham
Vallum Court, Fenham
Elswick Road, Elswick (2nd time)
Sidney Grove, Fenham
Wellesley Terrace, Fenham (2nd time)
Elswick Road (3rd time)
Egham Road, Chapel House
Woodlands Road, Glasgow
Nairn Street, Glasgow
Woodbine Street, Gateshead
Bentinck Road, Fenham
Phillip Street, Fenham
Jubilee Road, Gosforth
Fouracres Road, Cowgate
Wingrove Avenue, Fenham
Severus Road, Fenham
Otago Street, Glasgow
Normount Road, Fenham
Trewhitt Road, Heaton
Wingrove Avenue, Fenham
Tenth Avenue, Heaton

New things

I've been really busy these past few weeks putting plans in place for a new creative future. I was a little disheartened with a market at Baltic that wasn't too well attended and have been rethinking the items in my shop and that now that I have made enough sculptures to last me probably the rest of the year I can focus on other things, which is the fun part.

What's been taking up most of my time though is this I've been working on producing a pilot programme of events since February this year to start in August but it's only in the past two weeks that things have really started making a move on. Only two days ago I was tearing my hair out at an arts council application something I hope that will be really worthwhile. The great thing is that most people we've spoken to have been really supportive and while they may not be able to contribute financially they've been keen to find ways where we can work together. One of the artist groups I'm really excited about working with is Rednile who really got me excited again about making art. I think perhaps it's because a lot of things we hope to do are things that have been achieved by them already, they've really thrived in the last 4 years and the simple fact that they want to work with us reaffirms my belief that what we're doing is really worth our while.

I think one of the things I love so much about art is that it can be time based and have a start and an end date which allows time to look back at things. I've just finished an origami installation project which was very time consuming and repetitive and even though this way of working is crucial to my practice it's also really nice to have finished it and now I can look at doing something completely different if I want to.

My new projects involve printing photographing and cutting with a huge emphasis on finding new and exciting art to show in the gallery and forming new relationships with other artists. I must say though one of the most interesting finds for me as an artist is this if only we could have a Korean Cultural Centre in Newcastle where I could go to a Korean film night and meet other Korean artists who have similar interests. I walked into Waterstones the other day and there was not one book on Korean history, I've contacted multi-cultural projects in a bid to find the Korean community in Newcastle, it appears I am the Korean community and when I rang up the Tyneside Cinema to ask when the South Korean film festival will be back they appeared to have no recollection of it making me doubt that Korea was even a country at all or just my own little utopia in my head so I was ecstatically pleased to discover the Korean Cultural Centre in London. Nnow my plan is to go and visit it as soon as possible.

Words and Vision

Northern Film and Media in conjunction with New Writing North are looking for 60 second film ideas for 10 poems on the theme of Sense of Place.

If you fancy giving it a go, follow the link here:

http://www. northernmedia. org/?mod=news&pageid=38&id=331

My poem 'Suspended Conflict' is one selected.


The deadline is Thursday 19 June (it didn't really occur to me to advertise it anywhere before now doh! this is probably why I don't make any money out of doing creative things)

Good luck

Design vs Art

Today I visited the Textiles and Surface Pattern Degree Show at Cleveland College of Art, I've had a temperamental love affair with textiles for some time now, dipping in and out of it as I please, falling in love with the tactile and being frustrated by it's limitations and difficulty in translating it into art pieces. I've always linked my folded books to the qualities of textiles, the nature of the repetition, their tactile quality, the focus on print and touch. I abandoned textiles in 2004 when I was appalled at studying something so visual and hands on which would lead to eventually getting a job using a computer to produce patterns. I was using 100 year old looms at the time to make weaves that took me a day to produce an a4 size piece of fabric. It was all equations and grids, I've always liked the mathematical obsessions in fabric. I knew that when my drawings of tampons and bandages stitched onto foil and plastic carrier bags wasn't received well it was time to move on.

Now I realise that as much as I wanted to be free to produce work that had meaning, I must also acknowledge that nobody may be listening and that the notion of using a computer to make art (rather than using it to do mail merge) is a rather appealing prospect. I wonder whether changing from a design degree to do an art degree was such a wise move after all?

Seeing poems

Gosh gosh golly gosh! Two weeks on the sick and you sure do have some weird dreams. The bone that is apparently floating around my knee is still in there, somehow lodged in a place that can't be retrieved using keyhole tools. I'm wishing my crutches were a nice fuschia to match my hair, too much to ask of the NHS I guess.

One of my poems has been chosen to be made into a short film, that's exciting. I wonder how, who and where the film will end up, if the images that are in my head are translated well enough in the poem. Either way I can't wait to see it.

During these two weeks I thought that many side projects could be revisited. I tend to use sick days as a means to sneakily delve into real work, but it hasn't been the case at all. Sometimes it is best to be sick and recover, watch films, relax, read, put the local chinese takeaway on speed dial, read until the very end of newspapers.

I did manage to revisit an old novel I started while I was alone and free in Glasgow, novels confuse me in ways that liberate me in poems. I love poems because they can be obscure and secretive and end anywhere. Novels demand structure and patience and glue, they need to be understood and jigsaw like. This story has posed many questions for me including how many people do we actually meet in our lifetime, is it at all possible to work out, is there some brilliant mathematician who has been obsessive enough about people and numbers as I am about folding? If there is, where can I find them? What on earth is Cartography and is there an idiot guide to this or will I actually have to invest time in doing real research?

I read a poem today and pictured it in scenes.

Bunker period

It's day 8 of the bunker period and I'm slowly going quite mad. I tried to walk on my own before, I'm now realising that this was a very bad idea and now have to contend with shooting pains up and down my leg.

So naturally I'm spending much of my time overthinking things about life and art and mobility and setting myself up to make a cup of tea which I know will take at least ten minutes what with all the rests in between and scoring myself on spillages. My it's fun being housebound. Yesterday was my birthday and so my friend came round with a wheelchair and took me out except that the arrow that the doctor had drawn with a permanent marker was still on my lower leg for all to see so now going out seems to be on my list of very bad ideas.

I did however receive this book from my friend Lucy.


It's been keeping me occupied. It has a lot of beautiful things like Peter Callesen who's a little bit special. He does quite fantastic things with paper.


It also features Lisa Solomon who's also quite brilliant.


And you'd think this has given me lots of time to make, but I suppose I haven't really felt up to it. I'm in the middle of organising a series of exhibitions for a gallery space that lives in a pub in a delightful area of town called the Ouseburn. I won't harp on about the details just to watch out for something quite different and the chance to exhibit yourself, if that's what you'd quite fancy. I'll post links to the website and other such fascinations as and when they occur.

Something I have been thinking long and hard about is looking into getting some experience working as a set designer in theatres. I'd never considered it before, but after seeing a few dance shows as part of the Dancing the World festival I've been constantly fascinated with sets and how exciting it must be to design a set that needs to be flexible and versatile enough to change and be used for several purposes throughout a narrative or performance. The use of cross art form materials such as video, sculpture, installation make theatres a completely viable industry for someone who's studied fine art or design and I wonder why that has never been an option that I'd considered before. Perhaps it is quite a specialist field but after discovering that of the top ten Regularly Funded Organisations by Arts Council, Opera, Theatre and Dance were right at the top (not art galleries which are free to the public) I'm beginning to wonder what else I haven't considered.