Thoughts | Kate McCalmont-Woods

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.

I had a thing for Richard Gere when I was a teenager. I remember watching the film ‘American Gigolo’ which I had rented on video – one of his early films, before the likes of ‘An Officer and a Gentleman’ and ‘Pretty Woman’ – which had a brilliant soundtrack, ‘Call Me’ by Blondie. I tried to source the 7” from my local record shop, but had no luck as it had been released a few years before. One of my classmates at school told me her brother had it, and that he would sell it to me for £10 – in those days I could have bought almost 2 LPs for that amount; a single was just over £1. Needless to say, my crush on Richard and my newly discovered love of Blondie made me cough up some of the cash that I had earned from my Saturday job at the local Sainsbury’s. Even now when I hear the track, it takes me back to the opening scene with Richard driving along in his convertible, shades on, the wind in his hair. Ah, I could but dream…

’Call me’ is a strange phrase – often uttered when someone is pushed for time and can’t stop to talk; doesn’t want to talk; can’t make the time to talk; wants to leave it up to someone else to initiate the talk; is desperate to talk; is extending an invitation to talk. It’s not even as if we speak on the phone that often anymore – many households in the UK don’t have a landline, relying on their mobile phones instead, but as Donald commented in one of our sessions, we tend to use a device designed to allow us to communicate on the move, to message, take photos, make videos, play games, navigate, play music, and look things up, instead.

Anyway, I have managed to source a telephone for the interim show, as discussed with Jonathan in my last tutorial.

Am I bothered about using an object which I have sourced rather than made? No, as Jonathan commented, there’s no point making something which already exists; I don’t grind my own pigments to make oil paint, although many do as they feel it provides a greater connection with the work, and I respect that level of patience and dedication – it’s just not for me. But I do, now and then, and if time permits, stretch and prime my own canvases, but this is something I know how to do – all things electronic are alien to me. Also, I generally only do it when I want to recycle some old stretchers. And at the end of the day, ‘readymades’ were ok for Duchamp. I think what is most important to me is the haptics of using the dial – many of the phones I researched had push buttons. I used to love dialling a number – the slight resistance, followed by that sound.

The phone will enable me to leave a pre-recorded message and allow members of the public to leave messages for me, which will then form part of my research – I plan to exploit the public nature of the space. My issue now is, what’s the message going to be, and how will I exhibit it?

It’s not a new idea, not surprisingly, but I will put my own take on it. Having done a bit of research about artists who have used phones as interactive exhibits in their work, I came across Joe Sweeney who, in 2019, installed a phone booth facing France on a beach in Dungeness entitled ‘+44… Leave A Message for Europe!’. Members of the public were invited to leave messages relaying their feelings about Brexit, forming part of a permanent archive of public opinion. The statement on site explains: “The inactive phone box acts as a beacon. It is a nostalgic call to action – a reminder of the way we once communicated – with the nuance of the voice.”

(Source: http://www.ignant.com – 17/2/25)

I also discovered a project in Basildon, Essex – the Rotary Dial Phone Project which is part of a bigger initiative, ‘Bit Time’, devised by artists Dave Norton and Laura Travail. https://magpi.raspberrypi.com/articles/bit-time-rotary-dial-phone-project-showcase (17/2/25)

Norton: “The inspiration for the question/answer phones came from a desire to build a device that lets you share a message with someone you’ll never meet. A digital time capsule of anonymous thoughts, advice, stories, and memories that could be listened to by anyone. You have no idea who might hear your message and how it could affect them.”

Unlike in these two installations, my phone won’t have the ability to allow viewers to hear other people’s messages. Mine’s not so complex, but I still think it gives the person a sense of speaking to someone anonymously, and perhaps sharing thoughts which they haven’t shared with anyone else. Those words initially communicated by a phone, then also have the potential to be further communicated in my work.