First batch of mail order drawings.

A pilot for a project based on posting a sketch made in words to artists around the country with the instructions to render the words back into a drawing in pencil marks.

The writing of the 'word drawing' has been very problematic. The initial stage of a drawing is looking and I wanted at first to describe the scene as I would interpret it to draw it. In a flattened series of lines.

As it happens the text has now become a description of a further stage. That of the mark making and a thought process or two down the line. It almost tells the story of how the drawing comes into existence. Not really happy about this, it needs to be far more vague and objective. And so I'll wait for the first batch to be returned and analyse the findings. Terminology aside the scope for pathways into discussions around cognitive drawing ideas and on another track the collaboration involved in this one (eventual) installation - which will raise questions around authorship - are already causing me to lose track of myself. So it is potentially a very exciting and full project for me.

It has taken such a long time to get to this point though. Took me six weeks to suss out what type of paper to send to the artists for them to draw on!!!! It's so fundamental to the end result.......

The project is intended for an exhibition in Sheffield called Pandemic (http://pandemic2011.blogspot.com/)

My son drew along the lines of his palm and it inspired so many further 'lines' of enquiry for me.

When I will get the chance to follow them, I do not know, but I thought if I documented it here they would stand more of a chance of growing to fruition than inside my head.

Apart from the visual research what intrigues me is the pragmatic reduction of a superstitious activity of reading palms. If I dealt with narrative in my work I might be tempted to pursue this idea but as it is there is enough in the simplicity of it being a negative of a print.....that the lines are readymade......that the drawing is now gone........that the drawing is worn.....that his father is a tattooist (yikes!)

I'm going to take some inspiration from gardeners now. I am planning my year, as though it was a plot, as though time itself was physical and manageable.

First, having prepared the ground (found my studio, hurrah) I will sew some seeds. Some will flower, some will fail and some will produce. There are about six beds to tend. The most tender is a drawing club project at Markeaton Primary. This needs nurturing and growing gradually, not forced. I'm trying to remember to take baby steps and appreciate the small details. I was getting a bit panicked about not being able to provide an exciting enough drawing experience to the group of junior school kids but all I have to do is create a space for us all to try things out, learn, talk and share. It's hard to take the pressure off yourself but this needs observation of process not production.

I have had a lot of ideas that haven't germinated. They don't die, though, they lie dormant until the right combination of conditions allows them to spark. Keeping the garden tidy, tending the seeds that are emerging, waiting, learning from experience are my new motos for 2011.

Let it grow. Move with the seasons. No hot housing....

No studio. Drought. Some ideas but nothing coming out. What if my well is dry forever?

I have been interested in the documentational aspect to all drawing. It records. It all records. Lovely mentor Kate's work is ALL documentation. Tracking her moves, marking her time. I thought mine was but it seems to be a material. The drawings become pieces of sculpture, or installation ingredients. What is documented hasn't been the focus. The space and the changing/altering/highlighting of that space has shone over the mark itself. I still cling to objects. The paper and pencil and the mark - all objects. What is the distinction between that and a drawing in a frame. We look past the medium, don't see the pencil mark we see the idea or the image being conveyed.

However underneath it is all still documentation. A record of an idea of an image. A proof of the moment(s) in time in which the exchange between artists hand and material happened.

I'm just fretting about where to take it now, this awareness of archiving. Cause right now the only record of these ideas is in my memory and that isn't too reliable. Time to get drawing. Make a space. And don't get me on the one about whether the photographic documentation of work creates a new piece or merely records the original one....

Marking Time | Reviews | Interface | a-n

https://www.a-n.co.uk/reviews/marking-time

This lovely artwork has been produced for the Derby Big Draw brochure, it's by Emma Reading.

The more I look at it the more I see.

The festival begins on the 1st October with a launch party and opening of 'Scribble and Scrawl'. Kate Smith Jane Dearden, Tracey Meek and myself all showing work at the Crompton, Crompton Street, Derby.

We've worked so hard to get everything off the ground and there is still so much to do.

The exciting bit will be occupying an empty shop for the month with No Parking (my creative family) and turning what was La Senza - a knicker and bra store - into a drawing space. It's 48 St Peter's St Derby.

I've had lots and lots of help lately, generous people giving time and energy and skill to this project so I am really determined to give back somehow.

Derby is brimming with talent. We need to show more of it off. x

The Archers' Omnibus

Kate Smith has introduced me to this software. Drawing with sound. Sort of. ....this is Jennifer and Brian discussing their troubles...There are lots of other links like this on the Derby Big Draw website - www.derbybigdraw.co.uk

Counting down for trip to Brighton for the Drawing Research Network conference. So excited. Like Christmas Eve. But better.

Haven't been able to blog anything of any worth for a long while. I have been so pre-occupied with organising the Derby Big Draw festival - www.derbybigdraw.co.uk - which has been a real learning curve. It is going to happen on NO money but an awful lot of goodwill and drawing passion. It's quite easy to lose sight of the real reason I wanted it to happen in the first place and that is just to create some spaces where people can have a little personal adventure with drawing and all its amazing benefits...

Keep the faith x

Recent photos from the Malt Cross in Nottingham. I spent a week in the gallery reacting to the space and then the result was up for a week for visitors.

I'm still reflecting on what when on and desperately trying to get it down in a blog but despite completing the MA and seemingly having more spare time life is getting in the way of ART!

This morning I re-read a paper I submitted for my MA last year. It was a crap essay. Some of the ideas were great but as ever, my execution of anything academic was thwarted by being badly directed and unedited.

I am facing the firing squad again soon for my final assessment and so I am tracing my steps back to my initial intentions to give it all a thorough critical 'going over'.

What was evident in the paper was a concern with materials. Mainly ones that could be termed feminist.

A huge digression into the problems of being a contemporary female artist who would resist the feminist label yet still employ domestic, underprivileged materials ensued. I couldn't conclude. I managed to avoid the subject in my practice by steering away from materials coded with feminist, feminine, connotations. I abandoned knitting, stitching, food and fabric (although I was using them for an entirely different reason to the feminists). The detail of piece above was made with paraffin wax and fishing wire. It was formed from casts of domestic doorknobs. I look at the image now and I still see something vaguely feminine. The piece was to do with Sartre. It was based on the existentialist question of whether we turn the handle or does the handle turn us. As far I thought: genderless.

Despite all attempts to avoid being tagged a feminist I think by placing myself in a gallery, making a tally mark over and over with the suggestion I am trapped or imprisoned can still be assumed to be a feminist action.

The reason I have difficulty with all this is because A: why do we need to deny associations with feminism? and B: Do we just confuse female with feminist?

I referred to Rachel Whiteread and Eva Hesse in the 'terrible essay' neither of whom seem to receive the lowly monica 'feminist'. But then Whiteread's works have a masculine, modernist form and Hesse spent her entire career striving to appear intellectual and not emotional.

As far as my own work goes, I am using the most democratic, non- heirarchical, non-gender-specific materials to support the content but the mark-making still looks girly!