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What Is My Work About?

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

Our first two sessions since we’ve been back have made me think – a lot.

This week’s session was about our artistic identity and how to answer the question – what is your work about?

It’s a difficult question to answer. I don’t want to be pigeonholed and I don’t want to be pinned down, which is why I deleted the contents of the ‘About’ page on this blog because it didn’t relate to me anymore, and I’ve been struggling since to think of what to say. I couldn’t think of a way to encapsulate how I see my practice and my work.

But this session has helped me in finding a way forward.

Jonathan showed us a quote by Robert Henri:

‘The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.’

It resonates with me as I interpret it as meaning that art comes out of a way of being, and that artists should focus on the process rather than the making of a product.

We considered the 6 prompts: idea, material, process, context, identity, and mood.

My responses:

Identity:

A woman who feels like she’s on the back nine of life who has been trying to find herself by reflecting on all that has been, is and will be. After Fatemeh mentioned the Iranian philosopher who said that his identity was a lover and his job was to love, I think I’ll change mine to a living maker who lives and makes.

Context:

My lived experience

Process:

Drawing, painting, photography, video, printing, sewing, paper-making, mark-making, playing, whatever feels right in the moment.

Material:

ink, pencil, paint, fabric, paper, canvas, paper, thread, charcoal, pastel, whatever feels right in the moment

Mood:

Exploratory, experimental, fluid, reflective

Idea:

The reiteration of shaping what I make and in turn being shaped by what I make.

A possible short answer: My work is an exploration of becoming; how I shape what I make and how it shapes me in return. I work fluidly across a range of materials and processes from print and drawing to video and photography allowing each piece of work to evolve naturally through experimentation. My work is rooted in my lived experience both past and present, reflecting on an ongoing shifting sense of self.

I like the reference to fluidity, it reminds me of my earlier thoughts and videos about flow and flux. It needs further work, but will do for the time being.

It’s All Part Of The Process

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

I’ve been doing quite a bit of thinking this week.

The first time, as a result of our weekly session, unprofessional v professional. We considered all that is implicit in the terms professional and unprofessional, and then read and discussed an article ‘How to be an Unprofessional Artist’ by Andrew Berardini, 23 March 2016, MOMUS.

I came away from the session feeling confused, and no longer having a clear sense of direction. My aims in my Study Statement are designed to help me fulfil my aspiration of becoming a practising professional artist. I’m now questioning what I even mean when I use the term ‘professional’. If it means losing creative autonomy, losing the love of creating because it has become an expectation or much worse, a chore; having to repeatedly make things because they are popular or asked for, then, no, I don’t think that’s what I want. But what is the alternative, just to carry on as I am now, making art for me and leave it at that – be a hobbyist like my mother said; be an amateur? I don’t think that’s what I want either. That’s not why I’m here.

Maybe when I get there, if I ever do, the answer will become clear. Perhaps the best course of action is to aspire to be a practising artist for the time being, making more time for creating. There’s no point trying to run before I can even walk.

I then spent some time reflecting on the cyanotypes I made, and all the possible further paths that I could go down. I started thinking about processes and re-processing. How you can take a painting, for example, take a photo of it, digitally alter that photo, incorporate other elements, say, by way of collage, print it out, print on top of it, paint on it, photograph it, keep changing it, keep re-processing it.

It then occurred to me that I’m just one big walking process made up innumerable smaller processes – breathing, talking, thinking, digesting, and on and on. Not just that, but that life is a process with all its constituent processes. Growing, having children, loving, caring, grieving, healing, dying are all processes by which we are, ourselves, processed.

So, I think that I’ve reached a point where I’m thinking about the reprocessing of art and the reprocessing of me. It’s probably because I’ve been thinking a lot about process recently, writing the word goodness knows how many times in Doing Lines, and reading ‘Ultra-Processed People’ by Chris van Tulleken. But it does occur to me that I have led most of my life too focused on the product, and not really living in the process.

Something for me to think about.