If It's Thursday It Must Be Blog Day, Nostalgia, Groundhog Covid-ness, Distraction Working

 

Out of focus digital image taken at St George's Field on Sunday 5th December,

post processed to monochrome - it's been a while since I've been to St George's Field for fresh air and for picture taking and making. My plan wasn't to do a 'proper' photoshoot as really I just wanted to wander but I popped my favourite digital point and shoot in my pocket in case there was anything which caught my eye. 

Many things did catch my eye as I ended up taking 91 images (oh the clicking freedom of digital as opposed to the measured use of film) - some of which I'm really pleased with and others are much more meh.  It was balm for my soul though getting back in the picture taking zone as the last few days have and continue to be a time of great worry about seriously ill loved ones and here is hoping they'll make a full recovery.

As a space St George's Field remains one of my very favourite places to be and one of the best for recharging my mental batteries. I continue to research its history and that of its occupants and make work in and of it.

It can be hard to take an out of focus image with an automatic focus point and shoot digital camera and there's something serendipitous about this image - I meant to take and subsequently did an in focus image of that tombstone grouping too but there's something about this out of focus one that really speaks to me as I think it accurately reflects my current state of mind and the ongoing uncertainty and disconcerting nature of covid times.

Once I'd had my booster (again thank you NHS) I'd started to feel a little less frightened and a little more positive and open to the idea of going out a bit more and socialising in person rather than through a screen but the events of the past few days, the emergence of a new Covid variant and our ongoing shitshow of a government and their crass incompetence and corruption has made me feel less light at the end of the tunnel but more light of an oncoming train again.

So this image accurately reflects the way I feel about things which I had been able to take for certain in pre-covid times are now jolted and jumbled and no longer reliable. 

My beloved digital point and shoot Lumix - the camera I used to take the picture above and which remains my go to point and shoot digital if I want high resolution in focus images, a backing card for 'Fashionable' buttons which makes me smile as if there are 'fashionable' buttons then is somewhere selling buttons labelled as 'unfashionable'? , an old receipt for something I didn't buy from Binns Ltd for £1.90 on 21st August 1975 (that would be approximately £16.50 in todays money) that I found in a book I bought from a charity shop a while back and despite it having no personal meaning for me I can't bring myself to throw it away.

If only I had telemetric powers then I might be able to discern who it was that made the purchase and what it was. Binns was a department store that became part of House of Fraser and I'm wondering what kind of things would have cost £1.90 in the summer of 1975 and would have been sold in a department store.

There's also a photo of me meeting Father Xmas mostly likely at Lewis or Kendals in the early to mid 70's. I am wearing a kind of sailors outfit which my Mum loved and used to dress me up in all the time. I don't remember loving my sailor suit but I do remember loving my red boots and I also had a pair in white, there's also a ticket to Sometimes Always Never that I saw at the Hyde Park Picture House in the before times (Friday June 28th 2019) that fell out of a pocket of a handbag I hadn't used for a while and made me feel very nostalgic for carefree last minute trips to the cinema.

The Hyde Park Picture House have been posting photographs of the things they've found as the refurbishment continues - so far I've seen an old packet of Woodbine fags, a card from a box of Needlers chocolates and a wrapper for a Zoom lolly from the mid 70's.  You can see them if you look them up on their socials.

There's also this weeks post it note and a blue bic biro - one of the survivors from my sorting out my pen pots on my desk earlier this week - the imprints of the other survivors can be seen scribbled on my beloved green and white lined proper old school computer paper.

Still enjoying my renewed blogging mojo and it does now seen to be a bit more of a habit again - hence if it's Thursday it must be blog day and in the midst of ongoing uncertainty and distress having fixed points is something of a comfort as is Buffy the Vampire Slayer which I missed first time round but am now catching up with thanks to its showings on E4 at 6pm. I know I could download it but I find it easier to watch it on a live broadcast - in part because it's a full stop to the chores of the day and permission to wind down by collapsing on the sofa and watching some flawed undemanding brain fluff that takes very little effort to watch.

I am still watching Dark Shadows too but that does take a bit more of an effort at times as periods of what appear to be the writers treading water whilst deciding what to do next (it didn't begin with a grand overall story arc are then followed by rapid plot twists and turns which can be so lightning quick they're a bit  disorientating. Continuity and logic are not one of its strong points but no matter I remain completely in love with Barnabas Collins and who in episode 1112 is back to being a vampire with a near uncontrollable thirst for blood. 

I increasingly carry out the chores of the day - be that cleaning, cooking, food shopping, christmas preparation, creative work, life admin to a soundtrack of either Radio 4 Extra or a podcast. The podcasts I'm especially enjoying include Peaches Christ Midnight Mass which examines various cult films by talking to performers from it or people who just absolutely love it. The enthusiasm of Peaches and Michael is infectious and it's by turns insightful and revealing, as is the Boulet Brothers Creatures of the Night podcast.

Just as enthusiastic and revealing is Danny Robins Uncanny but by far the most disturbing thing I've listened to this week is The Haunted Generation by Bob Fischer. It's an audio recreation of my 70's childhood with a mix of evocative tv theme tunes, folk songs from the time *shudder*, 70's adverts, and is mostly gentle and lovely (so most unlike the 70's then really - but hey that's the rosy tint of nostalgia for you)  but most terrifying of all in the midst of rosiness there is a clip of the soundtrack to the public information film narrated by Keith Baron detailing the perils of grain silos and how easy it is to drown in them. Til I heard that bit I had been merrily thinking about Fingerbobs, Wombles and the like - a lot of public information films were just short horror films weren't they? I like my horror cosy and as an asthmatic anything where it sounds people are struggling to breathe really unsettles me...hence my ongoing fear re Covid and its potential effect on breathing ability. 

I've often used creative work as a distraction rather than just as an end in itself  - either reading or watching someone else's creative work or making my own. This week I have mostly been distracting myself with the creative work of others but I have also done some photograph editing and workroom tidying and my plan is to start making some image transfers with some of those photographs tomorrow, as well as think about about another possible exhibition submission in January. 

But here's hoping for better news all round next week eh? Thank you for reading. 

MA-Ness Final Term (!!!) Week 2 Reading, Writing, Doing, Planning, Buying, Sorting, Straight Line Making

This weeks post it notes plus a to-do list with quite a few things ticked off it - though sadly this is only a mini to do list and not a great big to do list which remains laregly undone....oh and the trimmings from my submission to the community and college show at Potternewton Mansions

Think I'll set a trend for odd coloured disposable latex gloves? I was wearing them so I didn't get fingerprints on the print whilst trimming it after having fixed it to backing board with spray mount - did the sparying in the garage as that can be more easily ventilated plus that doesn't have a curious Mapp sniffing about and I don't think cats and spraymount are a good combination. First time I'd used spraymount - it sticks things neatly and quickly but a) it really pongs and not in a good way like sharpies aka sniffy pens do and b) it also seemed to take some of the colour out of the print - hence my using a tissue as well to ensure it didn't smudge.

So what have I been up to over the last 7 days then - well a lot of ouching and limping as knee continues to be sore and painful - though thankfully not quite as sore or painful or swollen as last week so I wasn't completely housebound but I was very slow in terms of getting about and at times having to use a walking stick.

I also had to leave myself extra time to get places so I wasn't late which led to my having to leave a really intertesting lecture on library services and narrowing down your dissertation/research question effectively that is going to be massively useful when I start applying for phd places/funding.
I've decided that is definitely what I want to do - just got to decide: where, when and what on....

I left that lecture at the college early so I would have plenty of time to get to my next appointment which was a talk at Leeds Museum by Dr Rachel Rich which was on Cooking Without A Clock - Domesticity and Time Keeping Without A Clock which was absolutely fascinating and looked at the use and nature of timepieces in people's homes in the 19th century. Then as now such mechanisms were not always very reliable (the clock I have in the kitchen is often slow - even with new batteries and the one on top of the television is a law unto itself) and then as now whilst sometimes they were there for display purposes they were also used for measuring time. There was also mention of the differences in timekeeping throughout the country - think it was Canterbury that was always 5 minutes faster than anywhere else and also the differences in homes - for instance one hostess writes in her diary how she always set her clock fast so that her guests would think it later than it was and so leave her in peace without her having to provide them with further nourishments. 

Dr Rich had mostly been analysing the documents left behind in Parisien arrondisement authorities which listed a persons worldly goods on their death and cookbooks of the period. Some had quite precise instructions about the amount of time a dish needed to be cooked for - eg 5 or ten minutes though one dish had the length of cooking times listed as 'several days' - though of course this was all before there was such a thing as gas marks, regulos and what have you. I have always had a gas oven and so I cook by gasmarks but even so each of the ovens I have used have each had their own foibles and the one I have now I know where best to place cake tins if I want as even a rise as possible and that if a recipe says gas mark 7 I need to nudge the dial a bit to between 7 and 8.

Her description of the information she found reminded me of how much fun I have had over the last couple of years ferreting about in libraries and archives looking at original ephemera for the era - newspapers, trade directories, jewellery, clothing and how much I want to be able to continue ferreting about in such places. I adore looking at contemporaneous material.

I did spend a couple of hours in the Local History section of Leeds Central Library last week - partly just because it is such a beautiful woodlined high ceilinged gorgeous room in which to sit and think (it's lots less noisy than the lending section of the library)and write and i had a couple of hours to kill til my next appointment.

I had planned to write in my diary whilst there but I thought I'd just have a peek at the trade directories again for the Victorian period and so got lost in their dusty wonder again - not a word was written in my diary but I did discover that in 1839 there were just 3 undertakers details listed in the trade directory and that by 1872 there were 54 - I'm no good at working out percentages but that is a massive increase. How much of that was due to a rise in population,how much due to a rise in customs and fashions  relating to death and so a ready made market for such firms I'm not sure. 

But I am hoping to find out at some point, first off I'll need to go back and see what each of the directories lists as the population for Leeds at that time and so see how much  potential business there was in terms of population numbers. It was also fascinating to look at old adverts with their wonderful turn of phrase like 'begs to announce' , 'respectfully bring to attention' and an amazing two page advert for a retreat near Leeds which was for 'the reception and recovery of persons afflcited with disorders of the mind' run by Mr Hare and in which the 'Medical, as well as Moral Treatment of the Individuals who are committed to his care' was their prime motivation. Fees were not mentioned but could be found out by either personal application or by letter to their office on East Parade Leeds where it would be met with 'immediate attention'.

Talking of archival material I had a chat on twitter with a chum of mine who is an archivist and was on her way to a training session on how to deal with the potentially distressing material held in archives and how best to support people accessing those materials. Family history in particular is not all fun like it looks on the adverts for records websites - especially when it can encompass potentially very sensitive issues like illegitmacy, domestic violence or records kept by medical or social services departments. Which in turn led me to thinking about my work - I wouldn't people to be distressed by it...though am quite happy for people to find it 'creepy' as I take that as a compliment but I saw or heard this quote the other day about writers and writing (and stupidly forgot to write down where I saw/heard it) which was 'no writer is entirely in charge of the meaning of what appears in their text' and I think this can also be applied to artwork too. I'm very conscious that as my work features the materiality of mourning that some would find it distressing or disrespectful regardless but that is not my intention and I hope people would give it a chance first.

The other quote I wrote down was 'good artwork takes careful preparation' which is very true - one of the things I'm struggling with at the moment is trying to prepare all the things I'm working on and working out which deadline needs what doing for by when - hence I was very glad to get the pic delivered to Potternewton yesterday (thanks to my lovely husband giving me a lift there) and to have made a start on the words project too.

Now I just(!) have in chronolgical order:

• Gothic Creative Showcase in Sheffield - need to sort out which images to take and write a short piece about them
• Victorian Representations Paper to finish writing - it's two thirds done words wise and I have decided on my beginning, middle and conclusion and the accompanying powerpoint images are also almost done.
• Materiality of Mourning Conference - sort out which images to take and transport to get there
• WI Walk and Talk - mostly done , just need to find a guinea pig to practice it on so I can fine tune it
• Final module hand in - the biggie as it's portfolio - I have a structure and stuff to put it in it - just need to start putting it together
• Paper for Death and Culture - really need to think about this - not just yet though but need to start mulling it over in the back of my mind as this will be the biggest conference I've been toEnd of Year Show - this might need sorting out sooner than October though as I'm not sure what access if any I'll have to college facilties once the course formally ends on August 12th...have emailed head of studies to clarify this... plus annoyingly (for me)the dates clash with Whitby Goth Festival...
• Phd place/funding....

And why with all this to do do I still find myself clicking refesh on social media pages when I have got better things to do with my time and definitely better things to do with what limited time I have left at college. I know part of it is distraction from non college based worries but even so I really need to get focused over the next few days so I can have as much prepared in advance as possible so I am not running around like a headless chicken at the last minute as I HATE doing that more than anything.

But aside from my passion for looking at this sort of stuff I also spent part of last week doing some printing and then copying images onto acetate - some to use as negatives to make cyanotypes and anthotypes with and some I copied very small indeed to try and make small slides with as I have been given a box of empty slide mounts. I also hope to use some as artworks themselves. I also bought a couple of embroidery hoops, some thread, and a fabric marking pen to make some small pieces out of the coffin lining offcuts I was so generously given the other week. Need to work out best way of transfering the design I want for them - as the images will be my interpretation of designs I saw on tombstones in Dewsbury.

I also met with a colleague to work on a joint project based around words for the pedagogy cluster exhibition next month and we decided what format we wanted our interactive piece to take. I'm fascinated by words and especially by the words used around artworks and whether or not they add to or detract from a piece and whether they are an additional insight or a further barrier to participation. To this end we've designed a collaborative piecew which I typed up the words for last week - using courier font size 32. I've not worked in a collaborative way on a single piece for ages and I'm enjoying it. I'll also have lots of guillotining to do and here's hoping I can get the edges fairly straight. I am rubbish at straight edges - even with a ruler or a guillotine.

But although I might have failed at getting edges straight I did have some computer wins last week - namely making a table in word finally do what I wanted it too, and I even finally suceeded in making the computer do a copyright symbol. I have followed the instructions on how to do that to the letter UMPTEEN times with no success and so I asked my husband to stand behind me and check I was following those instructions correctly. Of course as soon as I interrupted him and asked him for help it worked....even though I did exactly the same as I had been doing all those umpteen times.

I did spend some time looking back through pictures I've taken over the last 18 months or so and was surprised by a) how many I've taken, b) how successful some of them are, c) how disappointing some of them are - if only I'd crouched a bit lower or the focus is not quite 100% d) or if only I'd waited for a few minutes longer....plus it was nice to be reminded of some of them that I'd forgotten I'd taken.

I've also got loads of new books to read as well as the ones that are still on loan from the college library and which I've had on repeat renewal (I'm not worried I'm stopping anyone else from reading them as you get an email if anyone has requested it and when I have had I have bumped that one up to the front of the reading queue and so taken it back for the other person to use) but I find it difficult to sit and completely focus on a book sometimes. Maybe if I set myself the goal of a chapter of a couple of them a day rather than looking at the pile of unread ones and sighing....

Well best crack on - as well as the pile of unread books - those unwashed pots aren't going to sort themselves out either.