Stressy new year. I guess what’s on my mind is how I pace my developing practice with the demands of the firing schedule in the studio I’m in. I do work exchange in a fantastic ceramics studio, so I give seven hours a week in exchange for studio space. But because the kilns there are MASSIVE, they only fire them once a month – we’re entitled to a shelf on one bisque firing, one gas firing and one electric. So that forces parameters around the pace of the work. I guess what I’m really struggling with right now is the stress of the domino effect if those firing dates change (which they frequently do). Or if, like before Christmas, my test pieces get missed out of the kiln pack, meaning all my process is a month behind. I have spent more time colour coordinating my diary than feeling creative.
How can I manage this? Parameters can be actually freeing for creativity – instead of considering the overwhelming Everything you’re considering one or two boundaries things. But right now the parameters of the capricious kiln schedule feel un-freeing to say the least. Technically I’m free to explore and do what I want…while wearing a electronic monitoring tag on my ankle.
I dream of there being more space in my process at the beginning, the middle and the end.
It turns out though that having dug deeper into the outcomes for the first Unit of the MA, that this is exactly what we are tasked to do.
Self-awareness seems to be the real work here in terms of developing an independent practice. Awareness of my circumstances, my internal narrative and where I am in my journey.
And after this comes the job of accepting these things. I can’t afford a ceramics studio without the work exchange deal – this is the studio space I have and it has lots of advantages and lots of challenges. My internal narrative is shaped a lot by late-diagnosed ADHD – having spent a lifetime battling with how I do things and how they go in the world while masking that it’s all absolutely fine – well, I now have a name for it. Acceptance isn’t easy. When explaining all of the above to my ADHD mentor (thank you CSM) she says ‘well that’s your time-blindness so…’ and it’s suddenly real and not for the first time since my diagnosis I feel shame and anger.
And the third one, where I am in my journey? I’m from a different practice and I’m finding out about how that translates. Alex Schady said in the recent Art in Context lecture ‘not knowing can be a point of departure’. I’m really holding onto that.
Following last week’s class I’m actually looking forward to making that plan that leads me towards space in all stages of my process. I want to put more space for dreaming and pottering about. The way I’m working right now, with the stress of the firings changing etc, isn’t conducive. I’m following an idea and I’m trying to commit to it but I cannot tell if I love or hate what I’m making. I think I hate it but I’m pushing through.
What attracted me to this course was that rigorous enquiry into the work, that critical engagement alongside the practice. I see a lot of ceramic work that is visually arresting in terms of materiality and craft – with an accompanying grandiloquent text explanation that I cannot see in the work. A good deal of that may be about developing my critical skills – but also my gut says I want the text next to my work to have integrity. I want to have that ballast behind my practice. I want to own it.
At the end of the class last week I wrote in my notes ‘we are the research’.
Alex Murdoch, Artist 