Two faced

I went to art college two years after my daughter (my second and last child) was born. I did it because I wanted to bring my children up but being at home seven days a week was starting to make me a bit mad.

I was writing up until the time I went to art college. Mostly I was writing angst ridden stuff that will never see the light of day in any form other than an emotion for my fictional characters. But I was also trying (unsuccessfully) to write ‘how to’ articles for craft magazines. I hadn’t heard of perseverance in those days and my (non digital) photography skills were pitiful. However, it was pre-art college that through a friend, I wrote and recorded six or so talks for BBC Radio 2’s Pause for Thought.

Then I forgot the writing and went off to art college. It took two days a week, for two years, to do a part time foundation course in Art and Design. How I loved Mondays. When everyone else I knew was bemoaning the end of the weekend, I was cheering: Monday and Tuesday were my days in college. Towards the end of my foundation course, I knew I had to do another course and so when Daughter was one term away from starting school, I enrolled for a full time degree in Fine Art at the same university.

I knew, by the time this course started, that I was a maker (not a painter and I don’t like the term sculptor) and the more I made the less I felt the need to write. Except that I was writing essays – there’s always an element of theory – but I didn’t think about that as writing. So I thought that I needed one or the other: writing or making.

I’m not sure that’s true any more. Making takes you to that place where your subconscious does magic stuff all on its own for the benefit of your writing. And see, I’m still desperate to make…

Meet my two new friends; they’re helping with the hat making.

And then...

Next, Toby the skeleton went to medical school with my Dad.

Dad had been a year ahead at school which meant that when he finished his Higher School Certificate (as it was) he was too young for National Service. He went off to medical school (and did his National Service as a newly qualified doctor.)

Dad had been set to follow Bing to the Middlesex, but the then government had promised all soldiers returning from WW2 priority over university places. So Dad took Toby, who had a full set of teeth in those days, to Charing Cross medical school in 1948, the same year as the NHS was born.

In the early 70s, Toby’s box was brought out again as my brother took him back to Charing Cross medical school.

During the 80s I took Toby to school to draw him; he modelled for my A Level in art (he kept wonderfully still). I took him into my children’s primary school and finally in the late 90s, I took Toby to Art College where I used him in the metal workshop to learn how the equipment was used.

In between times, Toby has lived in my father’s study. He sits, separate from the rest of his bones, on Dad's desk. Whatever the provenance of this chap, however his skeleton came to be sold, since he’s lived in our family, he’s been shown only the greatest respect.

So Rock and Roll

I love knitting. I’ve learned to knit many times over the years. I was probably six or seven the first time and every time I want to do it again, I have to relearn. I’m clearly a bit dim when it comes to knitting.

I can’t remember if my Granny or Vera was my first knitting tutor. I think Granny’s speciality was crocheting so it was probably Vera. Vera lived in the village; she and her husband had lots of feral cats and no children. They had a cat called Winky, which was the euphemism our Mum used for front bottoms; I was a bit shocked by this.

There was no pattern Vera couldn’t knit. I remember her knitting tiny intricate Fair Isle patterns – and I was already in love with Tristan Farnon of All Creatures Great and Small who wore Fair Isle jumpers - I so hoped one day to have a husband who wore Fair Isle jumpers. (I grew out of that.) And she did that magic thing that several of my knitting teachers have done… she didn’t look at her knitting while she did it: she watched TV. To this day, I can’t take my eyes of my growing knots knits.

Vera used to hand knit jumpers for shops in London. She’d get about £2.50 per jumper and the shop would sell them for £80. I can remember being outraged on her behalf.

Although I was okay at knitting straight lines: the first successful project I remember was a Tom Baker Dr Who-like scarf for my brother, and actually the lines weren’t that straight but it was really long. Thinking about it, it might have been my only successful project until recent years. Success has to be measured by completion and not by the recipient wearing/using it. In my gap year, I tried to knit a jumper but it was abandoned half way down the second side. Thank god; frankly, it was hideous.

Having not knitted for years, I had to learn to knit all over again for a project I did at art school. I had to learn to increase and decrease stitches for a project on personal identity. This time my knitting teacher was my lovely mother in law.

I shall leave you with two knitted Jennies from my foundation course. Tomorrow, I’ll try to come to the point on why I started knitting stories.

♪ "I Have A Dream" la la la ♪

The mentoring thing is going ahead.

I had a conversation with the coordinator yesterday. This was to give her an idea of what I was like … so she can match me to the right mentor. She said ‘when we talk of a mentor, do you think male or female or doesn’t the thought occur to you?’ and I said ‘female.’

When I was at Art College a lot of my work was labelled ‘women’s art’ in a snotty, derisive way. Our lecturers (mostly male) were lovely, and tried to explain if I made work that was gender specific, I was wiping out half the potential viewers. I tried to explain to them that I couldn’t take my femaleness out of my experience of making art. I don’t accept that that makes my work less important, less good or less anything and I won’t apologise for it.

I am fairly sure my writing will be the same.

Let’s look at the evidence: the main character is a woman; of the next five characters four are women. There are two other main male characters and they are both dead! Hmmmm, interesting. The mentoring coordinator has read my first chapter and agreed with me.

Anyway this won’t do – I don’t know where that soapbox moment came from - I must pull myself together and do some work.

I should really turn off the soundtrack to Mamma Mia. I can’t write with music on … and particularly not when I’m warbling enthusiastically but tunelessly along with it. It’s most off putting.

But I’m rather enjoying it. In my dreams I sing so well ♪ ‘Gimme gimme gimme a man after midnight…’ ♪ although the snorting, mocking laughter that Husband’s just emitted might pour scorn on that idea.

Tagged by Liz

Liz has tagged me. Phew, I'm less bad tempered today, but feeling a bit dry of inspiration, so thank you Liz.

Rules:
Link to the person that tagged you.
Post the rules on your blog.
Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

Liz said: ‘These tags are tough because it is to find things I haven't said before so I repeat myself forgive me.’ She’s right; I can’t think of a thing I haven’t already shared on my blog … so hmmm, let’s see, without mentioning my love affair with tea...

1. I’m obsessed with the colour orange. This started when I was at Art College and did a piece of work on me, myself and I and I realised that I was orange. Because my ‘office’ is actually our dressing area I write facing a mirror, which is quite horrific, so I’ve decorated it with the bits of orange stuff that I, family and close friends have bought for me. You can see it somewhere on my blog but I can’t remember where.

2. I thought it was normal to want to make a patchwork quilt out of old teabags? No? Well, it was a relief then to get to Art College and realise that there were other people in this world who wanted to bathe in paint, print with teabags and make sculptures that look like bodily functions. Phew, I thought I was on my own there.

3. I LOVE potatoes. When I worked in York there was a little church that had been turned into a café and resource centre. It had a yummy wholefoody café that I frequented with another potatophile, and we always ate Homity Pie (this is potato pie) and potato salad.

4. I’m a repressed vegetarian. I love veggie foods: particularly lentils and chickpeas and mostly I’m not bothered by meat. But I like roast lamb, (English) sausages, and the odd steak when out, so you see I wouldn’t be a very good veggie. I also blame my family who are all dreadful, confirmed meateaters (apart from daughter who’s tried to give up meat because ‘it’s wrong’ but mostly gone back to it because she loves it.)

5 I sing all the time – it’s a very irritating habit because mostly I sing (badly) only two lines of the same song over and over, or a deeply embarrassing song (Fireman Sam was a big favourite and my children used to sing this to me deliberately so it get stuck in my head and I’d sing it ALL DAY). Or worse: both of those things. I’m not very good at looking cool but still I sometimes try and it often goes horribly wrong because of the singing. In the first few days of Art College, I was sharing an easel with a woman called Sally and as I started to relax, I must’ve started singing because Sally peered round from her side of the easel, and said ‘Are you actually singing Pat-A-Cake, Pat-A-Cake, Baker’s Man?’ Then in Koh Chang for Skyros this Christmas, after my group had gone home, Husband, Yogi David, Julia Bell, and I went off scuba/snorkelling for the day. For lunch we got put down on this perfect desert island, and after lunch it was so hot that some of us went into the water. So as I start to relax, floating about in the warm shallow water yup, you guessed right, I start to sing… until eventually, Julia swims towards me saying: ‘Are you really singing ‘Jingle Bells?’ (It could’ve another tacky Christmas carol, but anyway, you get the picture. And look, it was Julia Bell, and really, I didn’t want to look a total twit. Still, I think it may’ve been a bit late by then.)

6. (Ho hum … What else?) Uhm, I often run out of energy for finishing things?

Tag six people... Pacha, Helen, Yvonne, Cally, Leigh and Angie. Or not if you don't want. I shan't be offended.