Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.
Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.
Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.
The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms
is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.
The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
Marge Piercy, Circles on the Water: Selected Poems of Marge Piercy (1982)
Yesterday I went to the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret, where I arrived just in time for a talk. I was glad of that, because the museum would have made a lot less sense without it. It’s mostly three hundred years of medical history (including bit of bodies in jars) without a great deal of explanation. There’s all sorts of interesting things in there, but it makes a lot more sense if you happen to have spent the past few months reading books about the history of medicine!
In the afternoon I made my way over to Kensington Gardens, where Alice and I enjoyed a very decadent afternoon tea in the Orangery, and then went on to be thoroughly Enchanted by Kensington Palace.
Most of it’s closed at the moment, because of ongoing work to make the palace more accessible. So they’ve put together the most amazing exhibition/installation in the State Apartments. You’re given a little map and a “dance card” as you go in, and you have to collect the names of seven hidden princesses as you go round. The princesses are all real, and all connected to the history of the Palace, and the regular guides are all still there, so if you have any actual historical questions they can answer you. There are also a bunch of vaguely steampunky people with drapey coats and head lamps (and in one case an accordion) wandering about the place, and if you ask them nicely they’ll let you play with the soldiers.
It costs £12.50 to get in, which seems like a lot, but it’s absolutely worth it. You can’t take photos inside the royal collections, so I can’t show you what it’s like, but enchanted really is the word for it. It’s on until February, and I heartily recommend it.
This week I’ve been at my local school, taking part in various art courses. The first one was “Create With Clay”, and above you can see the first thing that I’ve created in clay for approximately seventeen years. It’s a slightly wonky thumb or pinch pot, with coils added to the top.
This is a slab of unfired terracotta, rolled out to a uniform thickness, and then curled into a pleasing shape.
I didn’t really enjoy the time I spent working with ceramics on my Art Foundation course. I hated getting my hands dirty, I didn’t like working in three dimensions, and I wasn’t really interested in waiting for weeks on end for the finished piece to come out of the kiln. Especially as it was quite likely that something in there would have exploded and ruined everybody else’s work. As a result I didn’t really pay much attention in ceramics classes, and so I made rubbish pieces which only confirmed that I didn’t like it.
This one’s a “pod”. I made two pinch pots, stuck them together, and then made a hole – as per Kay’s instructions. The texture on the outside is done with the end of a pen and a dried up old paintbrush. The texture on the inside? That’s just my fingerprints.
I tried really hard not to mind about having dirty hands, although it turns out that I’m still pretty squeamish about the way that the clay draws all the moisture out of your skin. I also tried not to have a pre-conceived idea about what I wanted to achieve, and simply followed the instructions and enjoyed the process.
As it turned out, I actually did enjoy the process!
On the second day we made a piece of our own devising. I enjoyed the simplicity of working with a slab of clay (particularly the fact that I didn’t have to stick my thumbs into it!), so I decided that an oak leaf would be my “inspiration from nature”.
I drew out the shape onto a pice of A4 paper, and used that as my template for the size of the terracotta slab. After some experimentation with mark-making (something else that I loathed in college) I decided to use embroidery thread to mark out the veins. The underside of the leaf was textured by rolling it out onto a sheet of newspaper that I’d scrumpled up and then flattened out again.
Once that was all done I spent a long time smoothing down the edges of the piece, and coaxing it gently into a more interesting shape. After I’d carefully pulled out the embroidery thread, the top surface was very gently textured with a damp sponge.
All of the pieces will be fired during the summer holidays, so we have to wait until the end of September to get them back. I’m really excited to see how the leaf looks once it’s been fired and finished with a clear glaze.
I’m not entirely certain what I’m going to do with a 12″ long terracotta leaf once I get it back… but this course definitely helped me to get over my fear and loathing of working with ceramics. In fact, I wouldn’t mind signing up for a longer course so that I could play with colours and glazes. That seems like fun!
Hopefully you can all see this embedded video of the finches at the Barbican in London – an installation by Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. We went on a little trip yesterday evening, and had an absolutely magical time watching and listening to a room full of little birds and musical instruments.
The video is of a previous incarnation of this installation, so the environment isn’t quite the same. The floor at the Barbican is wooden decking, with little islands cut out of it which are filled with sand and grass-type plants. The guitars and cymbals are mounted in these islands. The rest of the room is white, and there are roosting boxes high up on the walls so that the birds can hide away if they want to.
The sound at the Barbican isn’t quite as dramatic or as loud as it is in the video – unless the birds were just in a particularly quiet mood yesterday. The speakers are mounted well away from the individual instruments, so it’s quite hard to tell exactly where the sound is coming from. This makes the experience slightly more surreal, and presumably helps the birds not to be terrified that they’ve just made a bass guitar go CLANG.
The birds do fly free, so if you’re nervous about that it might be a bit stressful.
But you can get really close to the finches, and pay real attention to them as they go about their birdy business. I stopped noticing the sounds after a little while, but it’s really interesting how the noises that the birds make blends in really well to the constant little feedback sounds of them landing on the guitars or the microphone cables. Every now and then there would be a flurry of activity on a cymbal or a guitar, but for me the excitement and magic of the room was getting to see the birds up close and personal, interacting with one another. The whole room was filled with quiet, respectful, smiling people. You could see that everyone was dying to get really close to the birds, but everybody kept their distance – and if you got too close, the finches would simply fly away. At one point a finch sat on a man’s foot, and he looked as though he might explode with joy whilst standing extremely still.
Paul spent ages watching and listening to one little finch that liked to sit on the cable of a microphone that was attached underneath a cymbal. His little feet made scratchy pickup sounds as he shuffled back and forth. The cymbals were really lovely to listen to. They were mounted upside down, and two were filled with seed and another with water. As the birds pecked at the cymbals to eat the seed, there was a beautifully gentle ringing sound, like the softest gong.
I spent ages watching one little finch that had fallen asleep on the neck of a guitar. He looked so comfortable, perched on the strings! His eyes were shut tight, and he was gently rocking back and forth as he slept. Bless. There were also a pair of birds that had made a nest on another guitar. They were making a lot of noise as they rearranged all the strands of grass to their satisfaction. They were also quite defensive, and would sing loudly at anyone who came too close.
The Curve Gallery at the Barbican is open from 11am-8pm every day, and until 10pm on Thurdsays. We went at about 6:30pm, which turned out to be ideal. We only had to queue for about five minutes (sometimes the wait is up to three-quarters of an hour), and we spent around an hour inside. They only allow 25 people inside the exhibition at a time, so it never feels crowded. Entry is free, and sadly you’re not allowed to take photographs inside.
I only wish I lived close enough to go back again and again.
When I was at University I harboured a sort of a romantic notion that I would somehow land a lovely job with a publisher in London, and live in a tiny little flat which I would paint purple. Sadly none of those things materialised in the end, but this picture is extraordinarily close to my imaginary living space.
Occasionally Paul and I will discuss the possibility of getting rid of all our belongings, and living a more minimalist lifestyle. We both like the idea of Container City, and I am madly love with these pod houses, by Eco Hab. They look like something Wallace and Grommit might build!
Usually we end up shaking our heads sadly – we’ve already built a twelve foot square shed in the garden because my sewing had drastically outgrown the house, and one look at our bookshelves will tell you that we don’t really know the meaning of the word “minimal”.
In spite of my over-developed hoarding tendencies, I do sometimes think it might be incredibly freeing, to just get rid of all the things we collect and hold on to but don’t really need. There’s so much unnecessary consumerism in this world that it might be nice to somehow step outside it and start again.
