Tuesday 12 February 2008

This is a thank you!

It’s almost a year since I’ve started my blog, and it’s been brilliant! My world has become so much bigger. Introducing artwork that would otherwise have remained unseen, reflecting on my processes, talking about what inspires me has been great, but most importantly, I’ve made connections with other artists, with you. I’ve come to feel part of a wider artists’ community again, and although contact and communication within that community is through virtual means, it is open and giving and inspiring and real and has helped mend some of this artist’s anxieties about being invisible, inaudible and out of touch. Many a morning I’ve gone straight from bed to computer to check if new messages greeted me, and that click on new ‘comments’ makes my heart beat in anticipation every time.
That my writing would blossom here was unexpected. Producing texts about my work has always been a way of making me think deeper, examining the pieces more closely from a slightly different vantage point, just aside of the maker’s. And although I always took great care when I wrote statements about my art I saw these as secondary, their main function to support and illuminate the art. This has changed here. Inspired by the positive feedback I’ve received I’ve dared to post discreet text-pieces, relying on the imagery held within.
Writing is an even more secretive pursuit than making art. My artwork is at least visible to those who see me at home, bits and pieces, unfinished as well as completed, are always scattered around the flat. Words on paper are more elliptical, and need to be actively offered up. My confidence has grown with every enthusiastic, even excited comment about my words, and it’s made me want to explore writing more seriously. Here’s my news: I’m now a student on a writing poetry online-course!! It’s a great challenge, mainly in terms of my energy and ME-clogged headspace. It will mean less art-making, alas, and I'll become even more of a minimal blogger – but please don't stop checking in, I'll be around. I'm so very hungry for new experiences and poetry beckons to me like a country that I’ve never been to. I can’t physically get around much so this is how I’ll do it, from bed if needs be. I’ll become an explorer! A space traveller! A deep-sea diver! The captain of a steamship, a story-teller, a bird, a sea-anemone, a witch, a wild thing, a piece of rock on the moon, a ray of sun. Spring is in me.

8 comments:

ainesse said...

I think you write exceptioanally well about your art- I sincerley do !!
-- I just wanted to let you know that I am finally sending you notice that "You've been tagged" !!

Please check out this url on my blog page
http://ainescannell.blogspot.com/2007/12/youve-been-tagged.html

lasuza said...

Enjoy your course marjojo. I think you write beautifully.
I've also been bathing in words - ducking and diving in abc, curling in letters, scraping into the page.
somtimes these black and white wonders make me giddy, breathless.

Unknown said...

How exciting, I hope you get great pleasure from this. And thank you too - your writing already moves and enriches me.

Ursula Achten said...

I'm so sure that this bud will blossom out to the most beautiful flower.
I love your writing!
You asked me to tell you what I think about Kassandra: without knowing you personally...she always reminded me of you with her distant view on people, her critical mind and her longing for connection and a nest AND: the way she expresses herself in an outstanding beautiful language is the way, you do this, too!!
:)))

Cally said...

Your blog of one year is one of the richest places I know online. Everything you have posted (everything!) has been compelling reading and viewing. Your own wonderful way of writing has given me courage to write more. I'm thrilled to hear you will be taking your words further.

I will bear the lack of your presence here more easily knowing you are being poetic and growing in that way. I will still check in in hopes of tantalising peeks at the development of your poetic side which is clearly longing to stretch it's arms in the sunshine and let the ink flow (or the keys tap).

Thank you for all your kind words since we made contact, knowing you in this virtual way has made my life better. I think about things more carefully, like I used to, and it feels good.

When you commented about the camel muzzle, and your own muzzle I laughed, because it just sounded so right.

If anyone else said they'd been making muzzles I'd be a little surprised, but to hear you say it seemed natural- day turns to night, we need water to live, you make muzzles. Just as it should be.

It was the muzzle that drew me to that photo, and the bright colours. I imagined it as a hat, a bag, hanging above my bed with one of my translucent sculpture lamps inside it. Or simply on the wall with my nets and knot-work, the sun casting a long shadow across the pale wall, that would be the best way, if not on a camel.

Enjoy this new adventure of yours, I think you were born to it. xxx

Susan Kruse said...

You are so right, this blogging/commenting community is wonderful and a blessing. I click on your blog almost daily, like a little christmas, hoping for new images or text.
It has been a privilage to see your new work and to read about your struggles, your inspirations and (always) your insightful and intelligent comments.
One Thousand Blessings upon you.

Modern Hairwork said...

Hi Marjojo,
Cally "introduced" me to your blog--I just wanted to say that I have been there...I had ME when I was in art school and have struggled with depression all of my life. Your work and your story are very inspiring; it is people like you who keep me going.

I also work with hair (something I started doing when I was too tired from the ME to go to the sculpture studio) and you can see it on my blog. I am so glad I did--I left the sculpture behind and fully embraced the textile arts, which I am much more at home with. Sometimes illness has hidden, unexpected gifts.

I hope you don't mind that I took the liberty of putting a link to your blog in my "favorite links."

Good luck with your course--you are an incredibly gifted writer and creator. All the best...

Jenn

Modern Hairwork said...

Thank you so much for your kind and insightful comments...it is such a blessing to find common ground with artists like yourself...I no longer feel like I am working in a vacuum! Be well.

Jenn