Art in Ed

Exhibition looming... breathe in... and remember art is fun!

My next exhibition is only 2 months away and I am doing the calculations in my head... that means I have to paint 3 - 4 pieces per week, start my brochures, signage, catalogue, have marketing plan.... aaaagh!

I have to say for someone preparing for an exhibition I have been a bit slack over the last year in output, even though I gave myself plenty of time between exhibitions (2 years). But I have an excuse... some 100,000 words I wrote this year for my thesis and another 120,000 last year (sadly I had to delete a fair bit of that to get it down to size!). In november I finally sent off my thesis to my examiners. A sigh of relief. A week or so to sit back, and relax.

Then I went into my studio, lined up all my bisqued (fired but unpainted) pieces, moved them around, scatched my head. As you will have read earlier my intention was to create pieces around the theme of evolution and transformation. Many were stand alone pieces. By putting them altogether I got a sense that "this one" related to "that one", that I needed another one to tie a couple of pieces together, and maybe these two over here could be part of a series.

So now a time for sitting on the sofa doodling images and forms. Suddenly with a clear head (removed of all epistemological methodological and editorial considerations) I could see the big picture with my art. I think it is really important for an artist to be able to zoom in and zoom out like this. I often find I have a very creative generative period capturing lots of ideas in an "ideas page" in my visual diary, which is really handy to go back to on days when I have little original creativity.

Within a day I had ideas for seven new pieces which I put into clay over a period of three weeks. I was on a roll... got started on the painting end (which is not my forte) building up slowly until it was realitively easy and actually enjoyable and exciting watching the personality of the pieces emerging.

But then burn out. I don't think I am cut out for being a full time artist.

Yesterday I took these new pieces out of the kiln... there they are sitting on my living room table. I am off on holiday up the east coast of Tassie for a week. With laptop. We go with a friend and usually immerse ourselves in literature and poetry. My friend is bringing some poems by emerging Australian women poets which hopefully should inspire me in the creation of the poems, little booklets and the catalogue stories which go with each piece and give them that extra dimension.

Hopefully the sea air will transport me to a place where I can see the meaning of my evolution theme with wisdom, insight and intriguing perspectives. Ha ha! And pigs might fly (in another parallel universe where evolution has taken a quite different turn!)

posted by Sue Stack @ 7:27 AM