A friend (who is also my landlord) came into my studio this week and said with a sigh, You know were actually going to have to rebuild this place when you are gone?. Yip, its a mess. Ive always been feral with my space. In the old days when Craig went away I would pitifully miss him. On his side of the bed I would build an effigy of him out of cushions, pillows, soft toys, cereal bowls, novels, breadcrumbs and anything else one might find useful in the night. I would curl up happily in all this and sleep like a baby until Craig, and civilisation came home. Children Make you grow up. These days Craigspace is filled with one child, one soft toy and a kindle decorously next to the bed (technology does not like to be cuddled). My studio space in Grahamstown however, is MY SPACE. I can count on one hand the number of different people who have been there, but their expressions have all been the same. Polite horror. I dont really like to throw anything away. I never know when I might need a sample of a plane ticket, pencil shaving or fossilised apple core to draw from. Just this week I made about 10 different artworks from a single envelope my cousin sent me a couple of years ago. This envelope also triggered a whole new series of drawings and ideas which I have not done yet. I guess in the search for ones identity you can tell a lot from rubbish and waste, its an important part of who we are. Detectives use it. I hang on to mine and give it equal importance to things of actual value. I also dont like to hide it away in containers like bins and boxes. Its weird because my job is creating aesthetically pleasing things, and one would expect that this would extend to making the space around me attractive. I look at Alex Hamilton and Bruce Littles studios and I see exactly what one would expect, and in a sense I aspire to this but mess is very much part of who I am (my parents can attest to this - when I was a kid I used to have to jump onto my bed from the door). In real life just about all our spaces are shared and one needs to be considerate. Our house is quite tidy and Craig has had a wonderfully civilising effect on me generally, but I think, in the way of mulch or compost, its been amazing for my creative work to (for the first time actually) to have had a private space where I can let all of me out to play. Part of my job is letting my madness out - this is best done alone, in a controlled environment - and mine is a monument to me(ss).
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 03:29:44 +0000
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