PhD-Ness Part 12 year 2 Doing, Reading, Looking, Doing, Afternoon Tea-ing with Heroes

This was my fifth encounter with one of my all time heroes - my 'filth elder' and 'Pope of Puke' John Waters - after his excellent show at Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool on Saturday November 10th. I also had the incredible treat of going to afternoon tea with him the day before at the rather lovely Hope Hotel. I adore Mr Waters and his work - he makes me laugh and he makes me think which has to be one of the best combinations ever.

I usually shy away from being in front of the camera lens but I make an exception for Mr Waters - partly because I still can't quite believe I have met him and so I wanted photographic proof. This pic was taken by my lovely ever supportive husband.

I have been a fan of  Mr Waters and his work since I was 15 and saw an advert for Pink Flamingos (1974) (a film of his I didn't actually see for a long time after I became a fan) in the promotional booklet for Palace Video my Dad brought back from the video shop (remember them?)  and though I love all his films my favourites are Serial Mom (1994) ,  Cecil B Demented (2000) - sadly though I found out in conversation with Mr Waters that none of the cinemas featured in that film exist anymore and I also adore Polyester (1981)  - I am ever so slightly in love with the dastardly Todd Tomorrow played so beautifully by Tab Hunter....

If I could have told my 15 year old self that one day my fifty year old self would be sat next to him I doubt very much that she would have believed me but she would have been thrilled to think that such a thing could even be a possibility....and also very relieved that her fifty year old self in spite of being beside herself with glee just about managed to be coherent, didn't spill or drop anything at the afternoon tea and was also able to thank him for making her laugh and think and for being such a fantastic ongoing inspiration.

Post it note, signed afternoon tea menu, hoops I'm working on and with

I'd got into a habit of updating weekly again but after a conversation with my tutor who advised that my writing energies would be better directed elsewhere - namely into the actual writing I have to do for this Phd malarkey, so although I like to think that my blog is also academic reflexive writing I have been concentrating upon writing about the methodology I am using for my research into uncovering the hidden history of women buried in St George's Field.

Albeit with limited success so far in terms of a word count and structure I am happy with so I thought I'd do a blog post again to try and clear/order my thoughts again before I face my methodology chapter again or rather part thereof. progress has been further hampered by coming down with cough/cold/flu lurgy over the past few days meaning I have had next to no concentration span as opposed to a fairly limited one and so not made as much progress as I would have liked nor have I been able to go for my usual weightlifting sessions but as I woke up this morning without an immediate coughing session, an earworm of 'Long Live Our Love' by The Shangri Las, and an opening sentence that I'm pleased with fully formed - I'm hoping I can make much more and better progress today. 

But I also wanted to make a note - albeit in brief of the exhibitions/galleries I have been to over the last month:
Manchester Art Gallery Feb 2018-Jan 2019 Annie Swinnerton:Painting Light and Hope r
wonderful to see an exhibition of paintings by a woman, my favourites amongst the paintings on show were her portraits - especially the ones of Reverend William Gaskell and Dame Millicent Fawcett, and a society portrait of a young lady in a gorgeous black dress as well as her sensitive and expressive portraits of working women.
Walker Art Gallery permanent collection Liverpool
Utterly stunning collection of paintings - huge Victorian narrative paintings as well as portraits and thought provoking medieval religious art too. The medieval altar piece triptych Master of the Aachen Altarpiece 1485-1515 has a skull (one of my favourite motifs at its base as well as bits of bones) and one of the most graphically gruesome crucifixion scenes I've ever seen. The thieves also being crucified either side of Jesus had had their thigh muscles cut in order to prevent them standing up but it was paintings from the Georgian and Victorian eras which had the most impact for me.

The Ruins of Holyrood Chapel 1824 by Louis Daguerre (yep that Daguerre of photographic invention fame) made me exclaim 'oh wow' out loud and I looked at it from various viewpoints for ages - I still want to walk amongst its exquisitely painted moonlit remains, I also stood and gazed with wonder at Fourniers Funeral of Shelley 1889 and I spent a good couple of hours just sitting gazing at 18th and 19th century treasures. Huge narrative paintings and works by Waterhouse, Alma Tadema, Holman Hunt, Rossetti and other Pre-Raphaelite wonders - just visually drinking them in. Simply stunning paintings. Also pleasing to see some paintings by women as opposed to just paintings of women as well as a highlighting of LGTBQ artists and subject matter.

It has made me want to return to Liverpool to spend more time there - partly to drink in the wonderful surviving Georgian and Victorian architecture, to walk on the waterfront and go to the Tate and St James Cemetery but also to visit the International Slavery Museum based there so as to get a better understanding of the impact of slavery as well as a much better understanding of the history of slavery and its role not just in the history of Liverpool but the UK as a whole.

Along with trips to Liverpool to see one of my living idols I've also been to York to see the paper trail of one of my dead idols - Ann Carr's will written some 3 months before her death is kept at the Borthwick Institute at York University. It was quite something to be able to hold it in my hands, and see her signature. She leaves everything to her partner Martha Williams who is described throughout as Ann's Sister in Christ. Ann's signature is very thin and frail looking compared to the rest of the writing - presumably done by her solicitor. It was a fascinating document and a real privilege to be able to read it and I am very pleased it has survived.

Well I'd best crack on - I've made some good progress on my to do list so far but still got a huge amount to do which aside from writing also includes going back to St George's Field to recover some of the matte medium images I left there to see what impact being in the field has on them or even if they're still there...

One day my to do list will not only be shorter but also completed in a timely manner....

Phd-ness Part 11, Year 2, Doing, Reading, Doing.

Some instant pictures of St George's Field taken yesterday in the rain, my post it note for this week, an old photo taken of me (can't remember who by though) in 1987 in what I think must be St Marks Churchyard which I found whilst sorting out old boxes of stuff, and aside from the fact that I am much more likely to hide from the camera and be behind the lens taking the picture these days and the fact that I have eaten a lot of pies between then and now I don't look all that different really as in same hair colour, similar clothes, similar jewellery and load of bracelets on right arm, same love of grave monuments - though my appreciation of them these days is different and I don't think I would lean against one in such a blase manner these days.

Also pictured is one of the necklaces I made yesterday out of 'doll parts' available from Poundland as part of their Halloween range and some ribbon and silver beads I already had in. My friend and fellow artist Hayley Mills-Styles has a necklace she made out of a porcelain dolls head and that inspired me to make a dolls part necklace for myself. I painted the red nail varnish on the dolls fingers with a fine red permanent marker before threading them onto black ribbon using a darning needle.

It's been a week of tidying and sorting - hence my finding that photograph and some others also featuring me in St Marks Churchyard. I lived in Woodhouse when I was a student and used to cut through the churchyard to get to lectures and loved it as a space but purely on an aesthetic level then. I had no idea or appreciation of the wider history or practice of Victorian mourning culture then. I don't think the graveyard space is accessible anymore though, the last couple of times I've been there it has been cordoned off with metal fencing and signs saying it isn't safe.

Back in the nineteenth century there was great rivalry between the respective reverends of St Marks and St George's Field, they disagreed with regard as to who provided the best burial services as well as on religious grounds. St Marks was a Church of England site and the people who were behind St George's Field were Non Conformists. 

It's also been a week of rummaging about in libraries - namely the collection of maps and trade directories from the nineteenth century held in the Local and Family History section of Leeds Central Library. I know have a better idea of the size and location of the Leylands, exactly where Ann Carr lived and worked (I thought it was at the back of the Reliance but it was actually nearer down towards Regent Street) and it was a thrill to see her name and address and Martha Williams (her partner in Christ) in the trade directories along with the times of the services at the Female Revivalists Chapel.  10.30am, 2.30pm and 6.30pm on a Sunday and 7pm on a Monday evening apparently. Sadly though I am no wiser as to the age of the cobbles aka setts on Lower Brunswick Street and whether or not they were contemporaneous to Ann but I've still learnt a lot more about where she and Martha lived so I'm happy about that.

Along with rummaging about in libraries and breathing in that delicious smell of old musty books (which apparently is actually the smell of the paper decaying) I also attended a very excellent talk on the history of Central Library, a performance of Frankenstein at Leeds Library which was great - and unusual in that you as the audience followed a silent but expressive Viktor around the library whilst listening to an excellent adaptation on headphones and I went back to St George's Field after not having been for a while in the rain yesterday and took some pictures using my Instax mini 70 and a colour film disposable camera I got a long time ago. I'm not one hundred percent certain where it came from but I think it might have been from a seaside tat shop in Cleethorpes and it has a 'develop before 03-2014' stamped on the bottom. It has flash as well and amazingly that bit of it still worked - I used it because I wanted to take pictures in the rain and for the flash to reflect off the raindrops. I still have 9 pictures to take before I get it developed. I don't know what film speed it is as it is just labelled 'high speed'.

I also collected some leaves whilst I was there, some of the yellow ones I left as offerings on Ann Carr's grave and some I brought home and experimented with/on using black printers ink and this was the result. I'm quite pleased with it and husband really likes it. Part of the reasoning behind this kind of experimentation is I'm trying to capture something of the actual physical essence of the place, something a little bit more than site specific. Think I have a lot more experimentation to do before I find a way I'm happy with. I might try watered down acrylic paint next time instead.

I've also been doing some experimenting with kinetic drawing/mark making (where you line a tube with paper and enclose it with chalk or soft pastel) and I have made some progress with that as I've got a new container to put the paper in and thanks to doing more sorting and tidying workroom wise I've found some thin paper it will work better on. It's a pad of Daler A3 layout paper which is 45gsm and some 20gsm lighter than the 75gsm printer paper I had been using. I plan to do different walks around St George's Field with the paper and pastel in their tube at the bottom of my bag.

One of the things I've been thinking about this week and especially after catching five minutes of Coronation Street (a programme I have been conscious of since being in my mothers womb as she has been a fan and avid watcher since it started) is memorialisation. The character Jim McDonald was looking at an old photo album looking wistful and Liz McDonald pointed out to him that it's only the good memories that get put in albums. Leaving aside that this is a soap family and so had more than their fair share of traumatic events I think the point still stands.

So as ever - lots to think about, lots still to do. Maybe I need to be more like my beloved John Waters who in an interview I saw this week writes everything he need to do in a day on an index card and crosses it off as he does it. Referenced in his artwork '308 Days' currently on show in his retrospective Indecent Exposure at Baltimore Museum of Art. My to do lists remain frustratingly mostly uncrossed off....but I did write and get the slides ready for the talk I'm giving about my work on Friday 19th October at 6pm upstairs at Kapow and I also did quite a bit of reading.

Programmes/films watched
various promotional interviews with John Waters for his retrospective Indecent Exposure.

Books Read
see previous entry

Exhibitions visited 
none

Films Watched
Lenz H (director) 2018 Kusama Infinity UK Magnolia Pictures
Utterly gorgeous, uplifting and thought provoking film about the life and work of Yayoi Kusama. Featuring a mix of footage of her works,exhibitions and happenings, interviews with her and gallery owners, friends and critics. Also interesting in terms of the relationship between mental health and creativity and how being creative stops her from killing herself and the obstacles she battles with in terms of being a Japanese woman in the western art world.

PhD-ness Part 7 in weekly ongoing series - seeing, moving, dead earnings, will requesting, Whitby, help and Giants in Sheffield

Quite a full post it note this week, as well as the big brain dump list I was making in an attempt to make more effective plans for the forthcoming weeks workwise, notes from the Giants of Victorian Photography exhibition I went to see in Sheffield yesterday, a wood effect but plastic hoop given to me on Saturday by Hayley Mills-Styles whilst we were at the launch of her very excellent exhibition Archive and Other Stories at Whitby Museum in Pannett Park, it's on til 18th November so go and see it if you can - it's heartfelt, beautiful, thought provoking and engaging series of textiles exploring her relationship with the museum, her grandparents,and stitching. Also pictured are the sampler guides I bought from the museum - all three include rather exquisite grave poetry.

Last week before attending a fascinating talk given by Dr Ruth Penfold-Mounce at 1 Oxford Place (soon to be reworked into a fancy hotel apparently) I did some work in Leeds Central Library. I went to the art library section on the first floor and aside from someone with the most appalling cough banging big hardback books about for the first 15 minutes I was there - it was mercifully quiet, other than the noise filtering up from outside so a little bit of chatter, traffic and the sound of sirens. I took advantage of this by writing in my journal - just gathering my thoughts really. I keep a day to day diary for appointments and brief details of what I've been up to but my journal I write as and when I'm moved to or have the time. I am a bit ritualistic when it comes to writing it though as it has to be in black ink via fountain pen and I only write on one side of the paper. I used to use a big spiral backed notebook but more recently I've been using smaller more exercise style notebooks as they are easier to fit into my bag, lighter to carry round and quicker to fill.

Anyway once I'd finished that I then made a start on what it is I need to be concentrating on this term and what my next steps need to be. I'm very aware it's the start of the new academic year, the autumn term and I am just trying to get geared up for that really. My workroom is still full to bursting but the new bookcases are coming along nicely and once the little room is sorted I'll then be able to move the wardrobe out of my room, put up the new bookcases in its place and then hopefully move the books from the sofa bed (which has been acting as a temporary bookcase for far too long now) and generally rejig my workroom so it's more ergonomic and comfortable to work in and my materials will be easier to access as they'll be visible on the shelves as opposed to hidden at the bottom of various piles. Amazingly though I haven't bought any new stationery for this term - am using some of what I've already got stockpiled. I have however been indulging in halloween tat, I can always find room for another skull.

I also found an amazing book called The Memory of Time by Sandra Greenough and Andrea Nelson which concentrates on the work of the contributors to the exhibition of the same name held in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC in 2015. It was one of those serendipitous occasions when the book just stood out to me on the shelf as I was passing. I hadn't intended to read anything other than the book I had taken with me - Sebald's Rings of Saturn which I am still ploughing through. But this book almost called out to me and I am really glad I picked it up and started reading as the themes it covers are very pertinent to my work, I am now working my way through it...as well as still ploughing through Sebald...

I also picked up a copy of Capturing The Light by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport which according to the blurb on the cover is 'a true story of genius, rivalry and the birth of photography' which I am also planning to read over the next few days. I know a little about the invention of photography but I'd like to know more, especially it's such a Victorian era invention. I'm also interested in what role women had in its invention and use.

The talk by Dr Ruth Penfold-Mounce was the last in the summer talks hosted by the Leeds Bereavement Network and it was about celebrity dead and the way people interact with them and it also made me think of the Stranglers song 'Everybody Loves You When You're Dead'. I was fascinated to learn that Forbes not only have a rich list of live people but they also have a list of dead as in deceased rich people which Michael Jackson has been top of for the last few years. I understood that dead people could pass on their royalties but it seems there are also agencies who represent dead people after buying their persona and then use those dead people to advertise things. Mind well and truly boggled but then again not really - in a capitalist society EVERYTHING is a commodity that can be bought and sold - including the personalities of dead people.

This along with just wanting to see actual Victorian era photographs was why I went to see the Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography at the Millenium Gallery in Sheffield yesterday. It had a basic overview of the wet plate collodion process way to take and make pictures, mostly it focused on some of the surviving works by Lewis Carroll, Oscar Rejlander, Julia Margaret Cameron and Clemetina Hawarden. I was most interested in the work by Rejlander and Hawarden as I have seen images made by Carroll and Cameron before. There were quite a few portraits by Rejlander as well as a copy of one of his most famous combination images (in the days before photoshop images were manually compiled out of individual negatives) Two Ways of Life (1857) which was first exhibited at the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester.

I had never seen this image before and was slightly surprised by the amount of nudity in it given the time it was made and the fact that it is a photograph and not a painting. It shows a man deciding which of two paths to take - the one consumed with vice and the one leading to virtue. Apparently Price Albert loved it so much after being given a copy by Queen Victoria that he bought three copies of his own. It was very contraversial when it was first shown, it was alleged that the naked women in the photograph were prostitutes plus it was a photograph positioning itself in the same league as painted art. A debate that still goes on today in some quarters. It was lovely to see it in the flesh so to speak - or rather a copy of it. You can see it (or rather another copy of it) for yourself here.

Having recently read becoming: The Photographs of Clementina Hawarden by Carol Mavor, I was especially interested in seeing her work in all its torn out of an album glory and sure enough all bar one of the edges of her work were rough and torn, only one piece looked as if it had been taken out using either scissors or a scapel, but I didn't see anywhere in the exhibition a mention of this or the possible reasons why.

I realised that the images and photographs I was looking at were rarely black and white but sepia, I also loved the signs on them of human intervention - either still visible brush strokes in the collodion or the silver nitrate or in the case of Hawarden the torn edges - though I'm not entirely sure who did the tearing. I wasn't entirely comfortable looking at some of the images - namely some of the ones that Lewis Carroll had taken of children and the wording next to some of the images I found lacking or slightly misleading, for example one which was of Julia's maid talked of the long relationship between Julia and her maid and how they must have understood one another. There was no mention of the impact that being boss and servant might have had on their relationship and no wonder her maid looks so amenable in the photographs - I would too if in case I didn't had a knock on effect on my keeping wages and the roof over my head. Most notable for me on some of Julia's images were the handwritten words 'from life' and 'copyright and then her name - am guessing it was her signature.   

The exhibition also included personal captions by Kate Windsor (aka Duchess of Cambridge and that is how she is referred to throughout the exhibition) but they didn't add any particular insight or new ideas to research. Instead there was mention of how hard Clementina and Julia must have found it to fit in their photographic work alongside their household running and the fact that they were mothers. I don't doubt they did find it difficult at times but it must have been made easier by having staff whose job it was to do the cooking, cleaning and the looking after children. The only useful thing she added was the explanation that exposures took a much longer time then than they do now as a way of explaining how wonderful the capture of fleeting facial expressions were in some of the photographs and why people look so stern in so many of them.

I've been continuing my research into St George's Field and its inhabitants - in part thanks to a perusal on the paperwork available online at the Universitys website, in part thanks to a chum who has a subscription to find my past. I was amazed to discover there used to be a greenhouse at the back of the Chapel in St George's Field. It's detailed on the map from 1967 though so am guessing it must have been built by the university to grow plants for the rest of the campus. I'm hoping that the Borthwick Institute at York University will get back to me soon as to how much it's going to be to have a copy of Ann Carr's will which I'm hoping they still have tucked away safely in a box somewhere.

It's been a while since I've written and submitted an abstract for a conference - this one was for the Death and the Sacred conference at Manchester Met at the end of November. I won't hear back though until the end of the month. Fingers crossed I shall be successful.


Programmes/Films watched 
Mulvey Laura, Woolen Peter writer/directors 1977 Riddles of the Sphinx UK BFI
A feminist film made by a feminist film maker which is a mix of following a woman trying to negociate food making, caring for her daughter, leaving her male partner, getting a job, childcare – all filmed in 360 degree 16mm – constantly slowly revolving around the scene as opposed to the male gaze of the close up – split into different sections all labelled at the beginning and eacvh starting with a bit of text, sometimes with a section about the Sphinx and close ups of photos of it to a soundtrack of really mesmerising electronic music by Mike Ratledge who used to be in Soft Machine. Also featured a section with a woman juggling, doing acrobatics on a rope, and a long section of someone trying to do one of those hand held puzzles but instead of trying to put a ball through a maze it was a drop of what appeared to be yellow mercury – so difficult and frustrating to watch.
A really interesting film.

Books Read
Sebald - Rings of Saturn - ongoing
also finished the book I was reading for leisure - The Future Won't Be Long by Jarett Kobek which I really enjoyed. According to the Wall Street Journal 'it's a brilliant recreation of a disappeared New York...' and I have no idea how accurate it is as I have never been there nor was I ever a Club Kid but I enjoyed its two person narrative and descriptions. 


Exhibitions Attended:
Archives and Other Stories by Hayley Mills-Styles Whitby Museum
Victorian Giants: The Birth of Art Photography - Millenium Gallery Sheffield - see above for descriptions 

PhD-Ness Part 6 in weekly ongoing series - thinking, looking, doing, lifting, failing/falling.....

A much fuller post it note this week - though that is also because it was so empty at the end of the previous week I decided to continue writing on it underneath to save paper.

Am feeling really tired today though - in part thanks to a training session (am on track to reach my goal of being able to deadlift 80kg by the end of the year*) but mostly in part thanks to a really broken nights sleep which is in danger of becoming a habit again...but it's a habit I really want to break.

So what have I been up to over the last seven days - well lots of things including:

Being a Victorian era death customs expert for a chum who is researching the lives of some of the men involved with the Franklin expedition (the ill-fated voyage of artic exploration led by John Franklin in 1847 on the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror) she had questions re burial practices that I was able to help with, along with the prominent role that organised religion be it conformist or non conformist played in everyday life then.

Buying materials - got some more matte medium, some new graphite sticks in different hardnesses and some Halloween pom poms as it's my favourite time of year when the shops are filled with all manner of skull emblazoned goodness and other assorted goodness. The man working on the till in M+S at the station asked me if I was getting ready for Halloween when he saw my bodypart emblazoned bag, skull bracelets and coffin ring to which my reply was 'it's Halloween all year round for me' and he smiled.

Taking work for my Once and Now show at Kapow 15 Thortons Arcade from the beginning of October to be framed. I've never had any of my two dimensional work professionally framed before, I've always done it myself with cheap frames from either Wilkos or Ikea. They looked okay and were all I could afford at the time and the plain wooden deep frames from Wilko I'll continue to use as I can paint those the colour I want (black) and fill with collected fallen petals or whatever else fauna-wise I find at the graveyard. It was especially exciting though to try different coloured backing papers for the images I've selected to frame which are mostly greyscale on either tracing paper or acetate. I was initially thinking white but then there are many different shades of white to choose from and in the end I opted for a deep cream backing. A colour which really adds to the images and makes them even more oldy worldy than just being in greyscale does. Am really excited about seeing the end result.

Speaking of graveyard finds - pictured above is the piece of wood I found (minus the woodlice which I left behind after scraping them off with a stick) yesterday whilst I was mooching round St George's Field taking pictures and trying and failing to make some kinetic drawings. I have completely fallen in love with its animal skull like shape. I left behind the broken bit of stone that I think had come off a nearby tombstone that had been shorn of its ivy. Part of me really wanted to take it but I wouldn't as that seems really disrespectful to both the person whose memorial it was from (regardless of how long they have been dead) and the people who paid for it to be erected to/for their loved one. If I'm being 100% honest there is also a teeny part of me that has seen and read far too many horror stories involving people taking away things from places that they shouldn't...most notably the short stories by M R James 'A Warning To The Curious' and 'Whistle And I'll Come To You'.
I hadn't been back to St George's Field since my birthday gathering at the end of July and a lot of vegetation along what I call Obelisk Avenue had been cut back (re- revealing one of my favourite tombs which has BE YEA ALSO READY carved on it alongside two rather beautiful heavenly figures) and the subscription stones which have been laid flat around the chapel have been blasted clean. This has revealed their original pale yellowy stone colour and leaving aside my preference for their previous grey colour I also worry about what kind of potential damage is done when cleaning stone as it can make it more porous and prone to chipping.

Anyway I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the piece of wood I found but I did take some pictures of it in situ around the graveyard - using 35mm Ilford XP2 film and my trusty go to Canon SLR. I don't know how they have worked as I've not finished the roll yet (ah the delayed gratification of film) but the kinetic drawings I did didn't work out well at all. I put tracing paper in a drinks bottle (one with a wide neck) along with a couple of pieces of charcoal and then laid it flat at the bottom of my rucksack. The idea being that as you move the pieces of charcoal make marks. I walked along Obelisk Avenue along to the other side to see what was happening around Anne Buttery's grave - I also went to pay my respects at Ann Carr's grave but failed to make much of an impression. Next visit I shall try a narrower tube (a kitchen roll one sealed with masking tape and a different kind of mark marker - maybe chalk, or crayon or graphite marker or pastels and see if that works any better.

Speaking of Ann Carr I spent last Thursday holed up amongst the splendour and peace of the Family and History Library reading about her. I had previously scoured the card catalogue for mentions of her and thanks to the as always helpful librarians they brought me all the things I wanted to see. Things like reports from the Temperance Society reports from the 1830's whose title page included 'We whose names are subscribed, do voluntarily agree to abstain entirely from the use of distilled spirits, except for medicinal purposes, and although the moderate use of other liquors is not excluded, yet as the promotion of Temperance in ever form is the specific design of the Society, it is understood that excess in these, necessarily excludes from membership'.  And each title page also included the following verse from Isiah 5. 22 ' woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink'.  I didn't find any mention of her in their reports but I did discover that Edward Baines Senior (one of the founders of St George's Field) was a regular donor to the Temperance Society of the then comparatively huge sum of £1 a year. An online inflation checker transcribes this to be the equivalent of approximately £120 a year now. I wonder where Edward Baines Senior made his money to begin with.

Looking through the collected notes and queries columns from the Leeds Mercury compiled in 1893 (a beautiful red fabric bound book with a handwritten index and very neatly pasted in pages with no bits coming adrift) I learned more of Ann's funeral as well as looking upon gems querying the authorship of Wuthering Heights, and the 'old' practice of putting an extinguished candle in a coffin which the book just fell open at as I was browsing through it. I love that kind of serendipitous action.

However the gem was a copy originally from Dewsbury Library of Memoirs of the Life and Character of Ann Carr (of Leylands Leeds) Containing An Account Of Her Conversion To God, Her Devoted Labours and Her Happy Death by Martha Williams. Written shortly after Ann's death in January 1841 it contains Martha's memories of Ann as well as some of the people she used to say with in Hull when preaching as well as an appendix containing the Reverend J Rawsons funeral address for her. His funeral oration includes the sentence ' We are gathered round the cold remains of a friend and a sister in Christ.'  Not the kind of phrase you'd expect to hear in a modern funeral service. The Reverend Rawson meets a shameful end though as he is sacked for drunkenness on the job.Drunkenness on duty in what was originally a graveyard full of Temperance advocates is beyond the pale. 

I also attended the first day of the third Fourth World Psychogeography Conference at Huddersfield Uni. It was a fun and thought provoking day. The opening presentations by Dr Anna Davison and artist Lesley Eleanor Wood really made me think about my methodological approach to my studies as well as giving me pointers towards further reading and techniques - it's thanks to Lesley who I had the privilege to meet and get to know as she was on the MA course with me that I am experimenting with kinetic drawing techniques. Anna is making me think about the invisible forces behind places - eg although I know where the money came from for the creation of St George's Field  that is shareholders putting up the cash - where did those shareholders get their cash?

As ever lots of food for thought......

Programmes/Films Watched Morrison B (director) 2016 Dawson City Frozen Time USA Picture Place Pictures
Incredible film which was a documentary about the discovery and reclamation of loads of silent films from the 1920’s/1930’s from a filled in pool and bank vault where they had been put as ballast essentially or just left – because the place they were in Dawson City – the furthest north bit of the Yukon valley of gold rush infamy was too far for the film companies to pay for them to be returned plus as it took them almost two years sometimes to get that far north in the first place.

Really detailed overview of creation of film – hadn’t really realised it was essentially an explosive as it was thanks to gun cotton. It also covered the history of the Yukon gold rush, the displacement of indigenous peoples and the cultural assimilation of some and of course Dawson City itself in all its wooden regularly needing to rebuilt because of fires glory – all interspersed with restored clips from the films found in the ground. Apparently something like only 25% of silent films still exist. Also sad moments like the description of the death of mostly women and children in wooden cinema fire, and moment when glass plate negatives by Hegg were found in walls of cabin and new owner asked what was best way to get emulsion off so they could be used to make a greenhouse!! Thankfully the person they asked saw/knew value of the images and they gave them brand new glass. Hegg was main photographer in Dawson City. It was also a bit of a love story as the discoverer and museum archivist met and fell in love and got married.

Beautifully mesmerising soundtrack too by Alex Somers – who also works with Sigor Ross. But did find it difficult to stay awake at times – and it was also the first film of the autumn where I went to the cinema in broad daylight and left two hours later in the dark - definitely worth a rewatch.

Books Read
Still ploughing my way through Sebald's Rings of Saturn and absolutely loving it,am loving the style of writing but am finding some of the description of slaughter, war, exploitation and holocaust harrowing to read. If you compare the amount of post it notes in the picture above compared to last weeks you'll see the progress I'm making.


Exhibitions Attended
none - but got plenty lined up to go and see including this one .


* I really like the definiteness of weightlifting - as opposed to the indefiniteness of academia and artmaking at times...and I lifted 65kg from the block this morning so am on target for reaching my goal of being able to deadlift 80kg by the end of the year. 

PhD-Ness Part 7 - Material Gathering, Thinking, Useful Procrastination

Gravestone of Ann Carr (4th March 1783-18 January 1841) - leader of Female Revivalists and Presidentess of the Friendly Sick Society, pro christian gospel, education and anti-drink 

this months post it note, field visit notes, ticket to an excellent production, date notes re two of my Anns.....

It's just a month since I've written a blog post and as I am supposed to be working on my literature review (I am - it is churning away in the back of my mind) but I am struggling to get it down on paper or rather computer screen  so I am usefully procrastinating and thought gathering by writing this instead -  I've always found writing blog updates on what I've been up to academic wise useful.  Plus ever since I read an article that explained that procrastination isn't usually inspired by laziness but by fear of the task you're putting off or rather failure at the task you're putting off, I've felt better about procrastinating and doing equally useful stuff in its place instead. Like this, I have also written and prepared the slides for a talk I am delivering in May - I know its official name is now Leeds University of the Arts but it will always be Leeds College of Art to me - anyway they have asked me to talk to their current masters students about what it is like to be doing a PhD (in short exciting, difficult and wonderful) and so I've prepared that and it'll just need a bit of checking and final edits/polishes before the talk itself.

I like wherever possible to be working ahead of myself  - I hate doing everything at the last minute and as I'm not meeting with my tutor to discuss my literature review for another couple of weeks I still have a week to draft something and get it to her a week in advance of when we're due to meet...I shall keep tell myself this when I am metaphorically tearing my hair out and still struggling to get words on the screen by the end of today....

So what else, well the other useful procrastination I have been doing which is also vital research work is material gathering - be it in the form of site visits and photograph taking and making at St George's Field, reading books like Mortal Remains by Chris Brooks, Vigor Mortis by Kate Berridge, Pablo Fanque and the Electrolier by Katrina Palmer for starters...and I have been doing a lot of research into the life of Ann Carr and mulling about how best to represent/recreate/make work about her and her extra ordinary life. In an age where women were positively dis-encouraged to speak out (even more so than today) and legally far more restricted than today she was an amazing proto-feminist - though like the other nineteeth century proto-feminist who I admire greatly like Elizabeth Gaskell and Mary Elizabeth Braddon she would not have recognised or used that term to describe her actions. 

I am really enjoying trying to find out more about Ann and the circumstances in which she lived - it means poking about in the library, trying to read old census records, looking things up on the internet and just generally looking at old musty things trying to fill in gaps - basically things that make my heart sing. I do not share Ann's love of the Gospel or her strict teetotalism but I very much admire her bravery and constancy and strength in fighting for what she believed in. I laid a flower on her gravestone on what would have been her 235th birthday - what she would have made of such an action I'm not sure - other than she'd have exhorted me to read and abide by the Gospel and forgo my treat of gin at the weekends. I'm also researching other women called |Ann who are buried in the site - with varying levels of success so far. I have many more library visits in my future.....

I've also been battling lurgy - the cough/cold/flu kind that make my asthma flare up and leave me coughing my guts up and gasping for breath so I lost a good few days of study to that as well as taking a week off to celebrate mine and my husbands ninth wedding anniversary. We went to Falstone near Kielder so we could sky gaze at Kielder Observatory, sadly we only go to do that on the first evening as the rest of our stay and our trip to the Observatory was shrouded in snow and low cloud - but the nightsky we saw that first clear night was utterly incredible - don't think I've ever seen so many stars and we even got to see the Milky Way - it's made me want to do lots more stargazing and I can now recognise many more things in the night sky than I could before - I might even start watching The Sky At Night.

I love the title music more than the contents of the show to be honest and if I do see it I still feel like I am staying up very late indeed. The tinternet tells me the music is 'At The Castle Gate' from Pellias and Melisande by Sibelius. The snow also put paid to some of my plans too - I still have a problem with my left knee which means I do all I can to avoid slipping and so making it worse - so when it is snowy or icey I am extra cautious (using a stick) and some days like last week when it was really bad I err on the side of caution and just stay at home til I feel it's safe again to venture out.

I have been trying different ways of working - I got lots of reading done when we changed broadband provider and the tinternet was down for the afternoon so I've been working at the dining table without the computer as the temptation to keep checking social media is often too great when I'm working on the computer, and instead of Radio 4 burbling away in the background (I've mostly stopped listening to Radio 4 Extra apart from when I go to bed - as they repeat programmes two or three times over a 24 hour period and I was getting feelings of great disconcertion and wondering what on earth time it was) I've been listening to music shows on NTS Radio after catching Chris Carter's amazing set - which you can listen to here - I found it really conducive to working.

So am going to try doing more of that - I also get lots more done if I'm out of the house as I don't have a smartphone (though that can also be a disadvantage in this app focused age) and so have to concentrate upon what I'm doing/reading.  But it was thanks to Radio 4 that I was listening to whilst doing the ironing that I heard Tacita Dean talking about film as a medium which was really interesting. Social media helps me keep in touch with chums but it is also my biggest timesink and distraction....

Well I think this is enough useful procrastination for now and it's now in danger of becoming avoidance...so I'll just check my email, have some lunch, listen to the news and the Archers repeat and then lit review it is........

PhD-Ness Part 6 - New Focus, Narrowing Down Research Plan, MA/PhD Differences, Anniversaries

the last months blog notes, new weekly planner and opening hours notes so I can plan where I can work when not at home

snow photo - taken on phone camera (3.2mega pixel) and post processed to b+w and vignette added 

Just over a month since I last wrote and things are slowly but surely milling along - am getting better at some things - like reading electronic books though my heart still belongs to the physical kind rather than the virtual kind. Plus I am really pleased with how the some of the latest lot of film photographs I have taken have turned out - though that is a digital one pictured above, and I am really excited by the things I'm finding out about women like Ann Carr (1783-1841) who was Presidentess of the Female Revivalists and Friendly Sick Society and who was buried in St George's Field. I'm also looking forward to trying out some of the techniques described in the Experimental Photography Techniques book I got for xmas.

But and it can be quite a big but at times - I am still struggling with concentration and just generally getting my head round this whole PhD malarkey and exactly what it is I need to do and when by...plus I've had some hiccups with the uni email system (it's based on office 365 and has quirks that have taken me time to work out - like not always highlighting new emails if it's a reply in a conversation) but I am getting there and I do feel further on than I did last time I wrote and hopefully after my next meeting with my tutor that feeling will be completely consolidated and instead of having an overall and overarching idea of what it is I need to do and how to get there - I will have a much more concrete one broken down into much more manageable chunks.

One thing I do find though is that I seem to have extremely productive days where I've read a lot, got on top of admin type stuff, tidied round and washed up and managed to cook something decent for dinner, not spent too much time clicking refresh on twitter, been for a walk but then the next day is completely fallow in comparison. I'm hoping I can find a way to even things out a bit more so I feel a bit more productive overall and banish the guilty feeling that time not spent at my desk working or reading or doing a site visit is not time well spent as well. 

I am failing though in my plans to get out for at least a short walk every day - I really must work harder on this but I am in the process of getting my (outdoors) bike fixed up so fingers crossed once that is ready I'll be able to go for a quick bike ride round the bridlepath - which hopefully will help me both have a bit of exercise, clear my head and collate my thoughts more clearly.

I've done a bit of public speaking the last few weeks - I do find having to do a presentation helps me focus my thoughts as does the process of illustrating them with appropriate images on slides. On the 19th January I spoke to the 1152 Club at Abbey House Visitor Centre on the history of St George's Field its place in the overall history of cemetery creation in Leeds in the Victorian era and was very heartened that there were 45 people in the audience. It was a very cold morning and the paths were somewhat perilous so part of me was wondering whether or not people would come along, but they did and I got really lovely heartwarming feedback and then I spoke to a much smaller audience (maybe 10 or 12?) at Huddersfield Uni on Friday as part of a Postgraduate Research Symposium, when I also got good and useful feedback on how to develop my research further - both gave me a good fillip and I got to meet other postgraduate students which is always good.

One thing I am finding is that this PhD malarkey is a much lonelier and befuddling experience compared to my MA experience so far. Part of me still can't quite believe that I now volunteer to get up and talk in front of people - if you'd told me five years ago that I would end up doing this and not have a complete meltdown at the thought (still get a bit nervous but nothing like I used to and my knees don't shake like they did at one point) I would have laughed in your face and thought you were terribly misguided and mistaken.

I'm used to working on my own - be that directly on art projects or on archives so that aspect of things isn't especially different but as it was a partially taught MA there was much more classroom based time and so opportunity to talk things through with colleagues also wrestling with the same questions and concepts, plus the criteria for assignments was also much clearer. I miss the cosiness and artyness of the Art College - oh and the library (even if it was always eyeball meltingly hot) as the library at Huddersfield though good is not as art focused (obviously) and it's not as personable either as all the book dispensing is done by an impersonal machine that reads barcodes. Plus it has quirks like the main staircase not going to all the floors and it can feel a bit Kafka like when trying to find books - I always feel like I've won a prize when I find a book there - in fact I have to stop myself from shouting out 'Huzzah!!!' when I lay my mitts on what I'm looking for.

Plus it's a time of anniversaries - some happy like friendship ones, wedding ones - can't quite believe it's nine years as in some ways it feels like a lifetime ago and in others like a couple of months ago but also sad ones - the anniversaries of the death of much loved and much missed chums and relatives is always hard. I don't miss them any less the rest of the time but anniversaries are somehow especially hard. 

Well I can now tick 'blog update' off my to do list and get on with the rest of it....but first - it's time to put some washing on and have some lunch.