PhD-Nes Part 11 Reading, Doing, Talking, Having A Break and Beginning Again....

Phone pic of Lindeth Tower - utterly incredible place to stay - not least because it was the favourite holiday home of Elizabeth Gaskell and where she wrote Ruth - possibly her most radical novel. 

here is this months note, along with notes of book to read which feature cemeteries almost as characters in their own right (as heard on the book programme on R4)  a card of a watercolour painting by Janice McGloine of Lindeth Tower Silverdale - where I have had the immense privilege of staying as a pre significant birthday with a zero treat and one of the things I have been making recently - a repurposed supercheap lightbox from Home Bargains filled with a 35mm image printed on acetate of Ann Carr's grave taken on what would have been her 235th birthday.

Am writing this - partly as a way of getting my thoughts together but also as a way to ease myself back into some writing as I've had a few very welcome and much needed days off since my upgrade viva on July 4th. Which frankly seems like a lifetime ago now but was only a couple of weeks ago. I feel like I had been preparing for it for months - which I had but it also seemed like a very long winded way of assessing whether or not the work I had been doing was of a good enough standard to become a proper full on PhD research project. I first started writing the upgrade report back in March and it went through many drafts, rewrites, reformats and much metaphorical tearing out of hair before I finally handed it in for assessment on 17th June electronically and then in paper form on 18th June. I then had a mock viva with my tutor and then rejigged my presentation based on her feedback before the official one on July 4th.

It felt like an impossible, insurmountable, never ending task at times which seemed to dominate my every waking hour - as it was/is a really important milestone. There were three possible outcomes:
a)No - it's not PhD standard - try for an M Phil instead
b) Mmm - it could be good enough but it isn't yet - take on board these points and we'll go through this assessment process again in 6 weeks and we'll see if it's improved enough by then.
c)Yes - that's okay, you need to think about x,y,z but it's basically okay and you can proceed.

I was quietly confident that it wouldn't be a) as I had done loads of work plus bottom line - they want my fees for the next two years, my ideal outcome was c) and I am still both very glad and very relieved that that was the outcome I got - along with some really useful feedback and pointers for moving it forward. So I am now officially a doctoral candidate and all set for the second year of my research and studies and then all being well - the third....

Except I haven't really done much studying or research since then - instead I have been having the occasional lie in, I have been to the pictures - seen Yellow Submarine (1967) which I enjoyed but was a bit too sick of its hippy message by the end and so wanted to go on a metaphorical killing spree, That Summer (2017) which was an interesting but also slightly disturbing documentary about a well to do woman and daughter living in comparative squalor in the Hamptons, and on tv - Cash on Demand (1961) which was a taut thriller with Andre Morrell and Peter Cushing at the height of their fantastic acting powers - I absolutely loved that and want to watch it again. 

I have caught up with some chums, I have properly cleaned and tidied the house (it needs doing again now though - oh how I wish bathroom tiles stayed scrubbed once you've done them) and I have mooched around charity shops. I have lain on the sofa and read books bought from said charity shops, books read entirely for pleasure -  the wonderful Diary of a Provincial Lady (first published 1930) by EM Delafield which transported me to a different time and social class and made me chuckle, the gritty and transporting in a different way Johnny Come Home (2006) by Jake Arnott and the thought provoking and wonderful Grayson Perry - Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (2006) by Wendy Jones which if I'm honest does have some passages that have made me think about my own artwork making processes.  But at some point soon I really need to get back in a thinking/working way of behaving, I'm still going to take things relatively easy until my birthday is out of the way though but then it's back to the grindstone in earnest. No mean feat in this horrible soul sapping energy dampening heat though. I am (almost) literally praying for rain.

I celebrated the evening of the viva by going to the Wimpy in Huddersfield - they still have the Wimpy and whilst it is not quite the Wimpy I remember from my childhood (when it was a very special treat to have one of their big frothy strawberry milkshakes in a glass and I was told off for either blowing back down the straw in order to make more bubbles or slurping up the last of it loudly) it still has waitress service, Benders and carbon copy order pads. It was delicious in the way that fast not very good nutritionally food is and that was followed by lots of fizz when we got home. I avoided any and all world cup games because that kind of organised sport gets on my last nerve. I did a talk on my work for Curator Space at the Art House in Wakefield which went well and then we went to Silverdale - via a quick stop off at Blackpool Tower where I steeled myself to walk on the glass floor about 350 feet up before escaping to the relative quiet of the upper more open to fresh air but still meshed in floors.

Silverdale was amazing - peaceful, quiet and picturesque and it was so amazing to be staying in what had also been Elizabeth Gaskell's holiday home (part of me wonders if there as many terrifying 'DANGER QUICKSAND' notices in her day on the shoreline - so there was no paddling but there was a fair amount of walking along the rocky bits of the shoreline along Jenny Browns Point) though it was also quite hard work as the staircases in the Tower were steep and high. They were not the things to tackle if under a heavy influence of gin so drinking was kept to a minimum or non existent until the steepest of the stairs had been conquered for the night. Plus the loo was on the ground floor. It was absolutely gorgeous though and we really want to go back again. Re-reading Ruth (1853) which she wrote there was a special treat, as was writing my diary with my trusty fountain pen looking out of the window that Gaskell herself would have done when writing. The bats which swooped round the Tower at night were also wonderful - but being bitten by midges was not. 

Along with a bit of mooching along the shore we also had an enjoyable afternoon in Carnforth - replete with visit to the railway station where bits of Brief Encounter (1945) were filmed. I am ever so slightly in love with Trevor Howard (though I love him best in The Third Man (1949) and Stanley Holloway and there was much quoting of Joyce Carey's delightful cafe owners '..all over me banburys'.

There was also the most glorious secondhand bookshop - 14 rooms of gorgeous old books spread over two floors and I got a copy of Winifred Gerin's book on Gaskell from 1976 for just £2.50. So far I have only looked in the index and read the sections which featured Silverdale but I hope to read it properly soon - be interesting to see how it compares to Jenny Uglow's more recent longer work. As you can tell - my love of Gaskell shows no sign  of diminishing. Gaskell, Collins, Braddon, the Brontes and Eliot remain my main nineteenth century literary heroes and inspirations.

I was straight back to work in a way though the day after we got back as I gave a talk on the history of St George's Field at Leeds Central Library which thankfully I had prepared and practised before we went away. Despite the heat and the climb to the top floor around thirty came along and it went well. I still feel nervous when I'm talking in front of a group of people like that - but I have lost the tremble in my knee and in my voice thankfully. I love my subject and I love sharing it with others and I think that comes across and I hope I never lose that love for it. 

So I've still got loads to do but for the moment at least it feels like the pressure is off - I don't have any tours or talks booked in for a few weeks, so I feel like I can stop whatever I'm doing without worry in the early evening and watch comedy on E4 - I'm still enjoying black-ish, Young Sheldon (I love his Meemaw) and The Goldbergs. Regular gym trips are also helping me keep a better work life balance plus I don't think I'd have had the strength for the many stairs of Silverdale without having been a regular for the last few months and building up some much needed stamina. I want to be able to keep this feeling of being more relaxed up though - I need to get a better work/life balance for the rest of the summer and the new term.

MA-Ness Term 3 Week 9 Show, Talking, Drinks Tokens and Tat.

this weeks post it note - again not so full as others but this flanked by some gloriously tacky fridge magnets brought all the way from the home of Dracula himself - Transylvania............

A lovely chum of mine has just come back from a Dracula Society trip to Transylvania and along with some other goodies - a prayer card featuring St George,some holy perfume and a mug featuring a lady with not very much on and a blood splattered knife between her teeth she brought me back these gems. Both featuring an image of Vlad the Impaler - they are gloriously badly executed and whilst ostensibly the same differ in the way the vines and the grapes, his imperial headgear and his blood ravaged lips have been painted. I like also how both have come from the same mould but thanks to the different placing of the magnet on the back of each one they look as if he is facing in different directions. Utterly wonderful and I look forward to placing them on the fridge later.

Otherwise this last week has been overshadowed by lurgy (again!!) and I am bored of coughing and aching and feeling so under the weather plus my heart is still breaking and broken from the death of my beloved Lucia. She would often keep me company in the work room - either sunbathing on the windowledge behind the computer monitor or in her favourite cardboard box which she used to squeeze into (it's sides are bowed) on the landing just outside. Mapp has spent some time in all of Lucia's spaces apart from this one - I hope she takes over this one too at some point.

So although my heart isn't really in it 100 percent I have made myself carry on doing things and there's been time when I've been able to be distracted enough by what I've been doing to put heartache aside for a bit or like on Thursday night when it was the delightfully dark musings and stories of David Sedaris read by the author himself which provided much welcome distraction and laughter. I doubt there are many people who could describe having a benign tumour removed and wanting to feed it to a snapper turtle with a growth on its head and part of its foot missing with such wit and warmth. He was very wonderful indeed and if you haven't read anything by him then you must and if you can go see him give a reading then you must do that too. He's also not a fan of people taking pictures of anything and everything on mobile phones and had signs up saying no photos please at his book signing table and as far as I could tell people abided by his request.

His use of words is exquisite - scalpel like in their exactness and words are something that I keep coming back to time and time again as part of my studies which both amuses and bemuses me seeing as as my work is mostly in a visual format as in I take photographs and then make the resultant images into cyanotypes or try copying them onto canvas using pva glue - without much success so far but I suspect that is refinement of technique/materials needed as opposed to the actual technique itself not working as the image did transfer - just not  as well as I would have liked...

And now the formatting of this blog is going skewiff again - part of the reason I use blogger (aside from it being free) is because compared to wordpress I find it easy to use but it can be a right ball-ache sometimes when it comes to formatting, it doesn't always insert pictures where you ask/tell it to so then you find yourself moving text around and it then centres the text when you actually want it justified to the left and no amount of highlighting the text and clicking that alignment makes it align that text but it does for the text after the picture......and then the 4th time of telling it to do it it does.....oh FFS - why can't things just work first time when you tell them to?

This kind of technology fail - either of the person attempting to use it or on the technology itself drives me witless. It happened last week at college when I tried to log out after doing some printing - it wouldn't let me and I had to go and disturb the computer chaps in their lair to get it to let me to log out (force quit apparently) and yesterday my lovely fridge magnet donating chum and I had similar issues trying to get the chromecast thingy to work as she had bought a copy of the Skull (1965, F Francis, Amicus UK) for us to watch online and it took us ages to get it to work - made me realise why I prefer having a physical in your hands product as opposed to a streamed ethereal electrons malarkey.

As I've said before you know where you are with physical stuff and it's often much easier to spot the reason why it's not working....anyway we did get it to work on the laptop at least - it juddered so much when 'cast' to the television that we gave up watching it on there as it was making us feel sick. And it was worth it - both Mr Lee (RIP) and Mr Cushing gave very fine performances and the story though unlikely was at least true to its own logic and I really enjoyed it.

So got sidetracked there - was talking about words and their part in art - in what is usually perceived as a visual medium and whilst I do write a bit and have performed semi autobiographical monologues at Headingley Literature Festival I think of myself primarily as a visual as opposed to word artist but so much of art is reliant upon words - either on the words used to describe it, the application you make to get the chance of being in an exhibition, the grant application, the publicity.....plus a fellow artist talked on Saturday about artists statements and asked the question 'are they an insight or a barrier?' which is something I think about a lot - my immediate reaction on reading some artists statements is often one of bewilderment or on occasion ' oh ffs get over yourself' but it's a treat when I read one that I can understand and offers insight too. She also talked about looking at artists sketchbooks too and how insightful that can be - she'd just bought one of Frieda Kahlo's and I'm still plowing my way through the Derek Jarman one I bought at the Whitworth - it really is wonderful and if you get chance to peek at an artists sketchbook then you should....

Plus all this is feeding into the ideas I've got for my dissertation which is due in December which might sound like a long time off but it isn't really and the sooner I get started on it the sooner it'll be in a draft version and I can begin to refine and polish it...this course is about academic hoop jumping after all and I want to jump those hoops as well as I can. John Waters and his comments about art being an elitist club and having to learn the language to take part is one I keep thinking of. That plus his wonderful speech on being given an honorary doctorate which if you haven't seen you must for it is wonderful - warm, inspiring and witty - and you can see it here.

The other article I read this week which also made me think about the accessibility of art is Stewart Lee's interview from last June with Julian Cope - and you can read it in full (should you wish to) here but the bit that stood out for me was the section in which he says of his book 'It's demanding but great art is demanding' and I can certainly see his point.......but.....still not sure.....

I had a tutorial last week , and I showed my tutor some of the pieces I've been working on for the past few weeks and as ever my tutor gave me some useful feedback and ideas on how to develop them - I'd been very pleased with the 'happy accident' when putting away some acetate copies away on top of the original images and making images from that but I hadn't developed it further - but I have now by layering acetates and photocopies on top of one another and so creating new images and then layering that new one upon the existing acetates and copies - so that an image of two cross topped memorials from Undercliffe Cemetery has now become a multi crossed image with 5 layers of crosses - it would make a lovely pattern for fabric (an idea from a chum commenting on an image I posted on Farcebook of me stood next to my work in the windows as part of the MA end of year work in progress show) and I can't wait to make it into an acetate and then make a cyanotype with it......

.....the process also reminded me of a film about WG Sebald (called Patience After Sebald) which I half watched a while ago in which someone described his process of creating his distinctive b+w prints was take the pictures on colour 35mm film, get them developed at Snappy Snaps, then photocopy them in b+w and keep photocopying the photocopies til they have the right level of murkiness. The images I've made aren't murky - well I don't think they are but I am really liking them and they are made from multiple photocopies...

The other thing which I thought about a lot this week was a meme which went round Farcebook from PetaPixel in which it showed 3 different image formats 120 film, 35 mm film and an sd card with the tag 12 exposures 6 are awesome, 36 exposures 6 are awesome hundreds of exposures 6 good results and it made me nod and go 'yep' - me and my husband refer to this as 'the money shot' and there is a good definition of it here - we use it in its non pornographic definition and it's true - amongst the many pictures we take - there is usually (hopefully!!) a few that stand out and so are referred to as 'the money shot'. My current money shots are mostly coming from the pictures I took in St Mary's Churchyard in Whitby, Cleethorpes Cemetery, St George's Field and Undercliffe Cemetery...can you guess what they all have in common? 

Curation and curating are also words and actions playing on my mind - there's a school of thought that says they have been so overused as to become meaningless and I'm not sure what my thoughts are on it as yet but the interview I read with Richard Boon (manager of the Buzzcocks and a librarian) in which his response to the question: 

'As a librarian you are a custodian of words. There’s a lot of misuse of language in the media. One that irks me is ‘Curator. ‘What do you think?'
was 

'It is a hugely misused word. It should have an academic context and imply knowledge, expertise in a given field. My daughter is assistant curator of a collection at the Science Museum; some hipster with a beard in Shoreditch is NOT curating a coffee bar, he’s selling coffee. Do you curate your oranges in a supermarket in the green grocer display? No! It’s really sloppy use.' and I can't help but agree....you can read the rest of his interview here

I don't know where the phrase 'surviving memorials' on the post it note comes from or to what it refers exactly though it does make me think of an Ausonius quote I have used - namely that 'death comes even to stone monuments and the names upon them'.

So onto the main events of last week - the end of year show opening and giving a talk on Photography and Victorian Death Customs to Darling Roses WI. I'd finished putting up my work last week so only had to do a couple of finishing touches - eg putting away a ladder, putting the empty drinks can I'd left on the windowledge in the recycling and that kind of thing. It was good to see the MA room and ante room filled with work and I've never seen the college so full with people looking at stuff - it was far too hot and far too crowded at times and I am looking forward to going back in and having a proper look at some of the things that caught my eye on Friday night, I did manage to have more than one glass of wine too thanks to chums of mine not wanting to use their drinks tokens and it was lovely to see lots of my chums making their way to the college and down the corridor to see some of my work and massive thanks to all those who came - learning points for next time are: try not to have lurgy...and know that tracing paper attached to windows with double sided tape in sunshine warps slightly so that what was absolutely flush to the window edges when you left it the previous week will look a teeny bit saggy in places when you come back to it.....still A2 tracing paper and a free lightbox ie window are a good way to guage what things will look like if you have them blown them up to burial plot size instead.......plus it is lovely when people tell you how much they like your work.....

The other thing which took up a lot of my time last week was preparing for the talk I gave to Darling Roses WI group on Saturday morning at St Johns Church Hall - a lovely slightly musty smelling hall next to St Johns Church which fittingly enough has some very lovely victorian gravestones and they listened very attentively to my talking about cyanotypes, the meanings behind some of the symbols used on gravestones, the social etiquette of mourning, the history of cemeteries in Leeds and focusing in particular on the history of St George's Fields and a bit about the bodysnatching scandals in Leeds and the Anatomy Act of 1832 and the shame that is the laying flat of the subscription graves in St George's Fields to be used as lining for pathways....I was struggling a bit - lurgy-wise and my voice was very croaky but it held out and I got lovely feedback and have been asked back and asked by another WI group to talk too so it's all good.

Well I think that's enough for now - got lots to do this week and here's hoping this lurgy will let up and let me do them....
and I really must sort out the white balance on the digital camera - those walls are actually white....but here is a pic of me in front of my work in progress called Mourning.