This is a piece of work I did at the beginning of my final year at Art College. It was photographed by the hugely talented Kris Emmerson, who doubled as a student and technician while I was doing my degree (he went off to the Royal College of Art when he finished his BA).
We had to produce a piece of work to go into some promotional material for our degree show, or the website or something.
And guess what? I was having a creative crisis. This was, though I joke, extremely serious and a horribly bad time to have it. The work for the degree show is hugely important if you want to go on exhibiting, applying for MAs etc. It requires extensive research and development so that the result is as good as it can get. I was fairly certain that I didn’t want to continue – though I loved doing the degree – but I have always been a perfectionist and I wanted to do as well as I could. (Ha, that’s a mature student for you!)This creative crisis was proper block. I don’t use the word very easily these days because having been there I don’t want to make light of what I experienced. I’ve had all sorts of ‘I’m bored /not motivated/think this stinks’ moments but this block was close to depression (yes, I’ve had that too, so I can make that statement.) For the first time in my life I got close to understanding what faith really meant, and I only knew it because it had gone. In fact I didn’t know I’d had it, until it had gone. It wasn’t a religious faith – it was a faith in myself; my ability and my process.
I couldn’t have told you faith was crucial to my process and ability to make art. I suspect it’s got something to do with writing too, but I’m not sure I’ve been doing that long enough to know if I have it or not. It’s close to confidence (I am SO NOT confident in my creative ability) but not the same thing either.
It’s interesting (to me) because my story is about faith (the non religious type) and I think may have been identified to me as part of my crisis in my last year at art college. So, anyway, I produced this for the promotional photo, and it is very quintessentially me; my work.
And no wonder really that the basket picture on Friday reminded me of my sculpture work. Now I’ve gone and done it, and posted some stuff I’ve made, I thought I might post some more too. Watch this space.
