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 1 - as in a new hopefully weekly series of posts - Supervision-Ness, Experimenting and Reflexive Academic Writing...

Works in progress balanced on top of a light box - matte medium image transfers of 35mm film image of the Chapel at St George;s Field taken with a lomo fish eye lens camera  - trying out different materials (from l-r off white muslin, white muslin, light grey poly cotton) to see which takes and shows off the image best - am currently leaning towards the off white muslin as I like the air of 'oldy worldy' it gives off. I also asked chums on Farcebook and the Twitter and of those who replied most agreed with me - one said it was because it makes the sun shining through the columns look more sunshine-like.  I plan next to try making these again either on material soaked in graveyard dirt or with a wash of graveyard dirt or dried powdered flowers. I also want to make bigger versions - these are only 10 centimetres across. 

No post it note this time as the one I have just says 'getting back to work' and nothing else. I haven't been working very much as I a) needed a considerable rest after my viva and b) I have also been stretching out the celebrations of a significant birthday with a zero. The celebrations have included all manner of loveliness ranging from going to see Dusty Springfield The Musical at The Lowry - I really enjoyed it and have had a bit of a Dusty earworm since, staying at Lindeth Tower where my beloved Elizabeth Gaskell used to holiday and write (see previous blog post) and amongst many lovely gifts being given a wonderful medium format camera by my husband, it's the kind with a viewfinder you hold up to your eye as opposed to look down into and I am really looking forward to loading it up and taking some pictures with it.

I did go back to work a bit last week - I went over to Huddersfield for a meeting with my tutor in which we discussed the feedback from the external examiners at my viva and what steps to take next - in terms of reading and in terms of writing. One of the things she suggested was to work on reflexive academic writing and one way to do that is by updating this blog at least once if not twice a week and properly referencing it as I go along. I'm definitely keen to do this as at the moment referencing in particular is not an automatic habit and I have to write with the uni leaflet 'a quick guide to referencing' by my side. So I'm definitely going to try and do that. I'm not sure if I will keep these more frequent posts public though, I might do private ones and just one public one a month instead. I haven't decided that yet though. I find I write differently about things depending on whether something is public or private. The aim of this more regular writing is twofold - increase my skill as a reflexive academic writer and to see if any patterns start emerging.

But one thing I might do is to try and write things in a more standard way each time - with the same headings. Throughout my Masters I used my blog as my research journal and I wrote it once a week (usually on a Monday) using the notes/reflections/ideas I'd jotted on a pad kept in front of the computer in my workroom. That was a good habit at the time but I think I need to refine it with categories/subheadings - and maybe ones like these:
Programmes/Films Watched
Books Read
Pictures Taken/Pieces of Artwork Made
Exhibitions Attended
I'm open to suggestions for others....

Programmes/Films watched: in the last week it's been - Before Stonewall, Schiller (1985) - a documentary made in the USA which interviewed lesbians and gay men about what life was like for them before the Stonewall Riot in New York which lasted from June 28th 1969-July 1st 1969. It was a mix of people talking about their experiences as well as news footage from the time. Almost all the contributors mentioned how being in the military during WW2 had enabled them to feel less lonely as they met other people like themselves, some mentioned books and how they had realised they weren't the only one as characters in books were also feeling the same way. I found it heartening and fascinating but I was also struggling to stay awake to watch it because I was really tired and the heat in the Hyde Park Picture House was making me really drowsy. I could do with seeing it again really.

I've also seen Psycho, Hitchcock (1960) which was a real treat to see on the big screen at the air conditioned Pictureville in Bradford. I've watched Psycho a few times but this was the first time on a big screen and with a proper big sound system, which made me realise that it isn't just the wonder of Bernard Hermann's intense score that make it such a powerful film but also other elements of the soundtrack like the sound of water - which is used not just in the shower sequence but also the rain preceeding it which leads her to the Bates Motel in the first place but also the sound of the swamp as it swallows up her car. I am also rather fond of Anthony Perkins so it was especially lovely to see him on a big screen. Then for some light relief we watched The Producers, Brooks (1967) another film I have seen before but not on a big screen. It was a delight to see Gene Wilder's face writ large as he evolves from honest accountant into drunk swindler and theatre impressario.

Books Read
I must be honest I've been struggling to concentrate because of the heat and also because my attention span is of a wandering kind unless I get completely absorbed by what I'm reading. I found the biography of Alexander McQueen by Andrew Wilson 'Blood Beneath The Skin' (2015) really interesting, as well as saddening. It was very much a reportage of what people had said to about McQueen in interviews with the author or from interviews as opposed to in depth analysis of either the clothes he made or the runway shows he created but nevertheless I found it engrossing. I am very much on a McQueen kick at the moment, having seen the recent  documentary McQueen(Ettedgui 2018) about him and his work at the Hyde Park. I found the film very powerful and moving as well as inspirational in terms of his designs. I treated myself to a book about his designs for my birthday and it's next on my reading list.

I did try reading an extract from Foucaults 'We 'other Victorians' which I came across in the Cultural Studies Reader (Munns and Rajan 1995) I picked up secondhand for a quid from Brodsworth Hall the other week but I just couldn't get into it, the words either swam on the page or made individual sense but didn't as sentences and after a while instead of forcing myself to continue with it I thought I'd read something I could make sense of so I started The Butchering Art (2018) by Dr Lindsay Fitzharris (a birthday present from my brother) which with its extremely graphic descriptions of bladder stones which made me feel rather faint and very glad to live in age of pain relief,antiseptics, and antibiotics. I asked for that as I thought I'd find it interesting but its subtitle 'Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine' also tells you that is at least related to my studies too. As is the 'Who Do You Think You Are? tie in to the tv series book I picked up from Oxfam in Huddersfield on my way back to Leeds. I'm not especially interested in the stories of celebrities families covered in the book but the tips about how to get the best out of official record sources like birth and death registers are excellent and will come in very handy as I try to trace more details of some of the otherwise unrecorded women buried in St George's Field.

I came back somewhat laden with books from Huddersfield last week, as I also picked up copies of some of the reading suggestions made for me after my viva. I have an awful lot of reading to do over the next few weeks and I've still to get the balance right between reading,doing and writing. I am also very glad that I am continuing with my weight training sessions or else I would not have had the strength to carry home the mighty tomes I picked up. I did feel very stiff the following day though.

One other thing that is going through my mind and fermenting are the concepts of authenticity and proximity. As in why is it so important for people (myself included) to go to or see wherever possible the actual or original place where someone lived or died, or the original piece of work someone made rather than a copy. Mmm lots to think about there - as ever......


Bibliography
Schiller G, Rosenberg R (directors) (1985) Before Stonewall (film documentary) USA First Run Features
Hitchcock A (producer/director) (1960) Psycho (film) USA Shamley Productions
Brooks M (producer/writer) (1967) The Producers (film) USA Embassy Pictures
Wilson A (2015) Alexander McQueen Blood Beneath The Skin UK Simon and Schuster
Munns J, Rajan G (1995) A Cultural Studies Reader - History, Theory Practice UK Longman
Fitzharris L (2018) The Butchering Art London Allen Lane
Waddell D (2004) Who Do You Think You Are? London BBC Books