Objects in Collision

I have been invited to hang my artwork in a prestigious show.
"Whatever you dream up you can put in that space," I am told.

I have this one drawing that I will include.

Crotchet Drawing

C and I are making drawings of a piece of Elgar's music. My old french teacher Mr H pours us copious glasses of champagne and we feel deliriously happy.

Our ink is running out and Mr H is reluctant to give us any of his. He has an idea -  he will search for a later part of the music which will not require so much ink- I think he must mean that it has more minims and quavers rather than crotchets.

I secretly think that as he will be buying our drawings anyway he should give us his ink so we can get on with it.

Alan Turing Erotica

A paper covered in diagrams which reduce obscene erotic acts to mathematical formulae.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

Mystery of Choreography

I've got lots of questions for the Ballet Rambert choreographer:

Like where do they start?
Does he have an overall idea in mind?
Do they just dance around and see what happens?
How do they remember it?
Do they use notation? What does it look like?

Face Paint

As an "avant-garde" experiment I black up my face then sleep on it.
The next day I do the same with luminous yellow paint.

Despite being the only one to find it hilarious I am convinced this is radical progress.

Two Dream Fragments

A kidney shaped bowl with attachments.

A badly drawn car with brown splodge on the roof.

The drawing gets placed in the bowl and then slowly disappears.

Twigs and Weeds

I am furious with my friend. We are supposed to be driving our flying car but she got waylaid taking instructions from someone with an old A to Z. What particularly annoys me is that I have missed out looking at the illustrations in this rare 1964 edition. There is a small engraving of Lots Road from that time when it was nothing more than twigs and weeds.

Back To Basics

A statue of Lenin high in the mountains is illuminated by artificial flames. I am finishing a week's drawing course here and I am the only student to have achieved nothing.  As dusk falls I set out with inadequate materials.  I wear a necklace I have found hoping this will give me inspiration but I am not optimistic. I decide all I can do is to make a series of small noctural landscapes- anything to get me going again.

Light Touch

There are four of us presenting our work. 

I show a laborious sequence of images first. 

A woman paints everything royal blue including a local factory chimney. Its big and showy stuff but touches no-one.  

But it is the last that is the simplest and has most impact. A man directs us to concentrate on our breath and all of a sudden I am transformed and have stopped worrying about the poverty of my own contribution.

Meat Beat

I have heard about this art installation where participants are encouraged to paint with raw meat. At the entrance of a dark labyrinthine warehouse you buy a big slab of meat and then whack it against the walls of the building. Some have a much more delicate approach but everyone is covered in blood. I didn't really want to get dirty but now I find myself slamming the meat against the wall leaving red and yellow marks- its revolting but sort of pretty.

A Lifeline

I have learnt to draw a lifetime using one line.

J has just died- her husband sinks into a state of depression.

How can I demonstrate that unravelling the life that has departed will draw in a lifeline, hauling her out of a slump?

Angel At The Window

On my first night at the Friary I meet one of the other artists in residence - a tall man who tells me he is going to spend the two weeks recreating a Brueghel painting. I am about to say I understand where he is coming from but it will not leave him free to experiment or let things happen. As I speak I look out of the window and see a colourful figure- is it Brueghel's Icarus?- flying through the air. Then an angel- "I don't believe it," I say,  but there are no wires. To my left a Victorian winter scene appears with a coach and horses - the coachman (Howard from Take That) is wearing shades and laughs as the whole image falls apart.

Delicate Drawings

Is this the West Ham Unit? I ask Alice. We have been divided into three groups and I am reluctant to join any other. Yes I am in the right unit. I am thrilled. The room is full of students' exquisite work. Big glass cases display hundreds of identical objects in compartments like a sweet shop display or an old fashioned builders merchants. My favourites are delicate drawings like kaleidoscopic spiders' webs. I want my work to be as detailed and fine- I wonder if I can manage it in the time.

Learning Disabilities Workshop

I recognise few of the learning disabled group in the large hall. Areas have been set aside on three long trestle tables for hair brushing, makeup and clothes making. I make a brief announcement asking everyone to make their way to the clothes stall. One man stands up and chants some kind of grace which annoys me a bit. The group collect their clothes which I notice are predominantly drawings rather than real garments. Some of the drawings are very beautiful.

No Originality

Tracey Emin has been asked to paint a portrait of the Queen, but nobody has seen it because it has been banned everywhere. The initial sketches are like something by Rosemary Trockel: closeups of the pattern on the Queen's Aran sweater. Then I see the final image- it' s painted in a kind of impressionist style and shows a young girl wearing a three quarter length dress, dotted with scarlet flowers. She looks like Frida Kahlo but there is a crouching Paula Rego woman to the left eating a pile of cakes. I think she's Ruby Wax. The painting is criticised because it lacks any originality and is nothing more than a hybrid of styles.

Stubborn Student

I am running an evening class. I have set a non figurative mark making exercise but the students have not understood my instructions. One young woman has brought some expensive paper and is unwilling to use it for what she regards as a scribbling exercise. She finds a small corner of her notepad to doodle on. I instruct her to use her good paper. She reluctantly does as she is bid but draws an immaculate but stilted image of a candle on a grand piano.

Holiday Painting

I am painting from a photograph of somewhere I have been on holiday. In the manner of the painter Peter Doig, I carefully reproduce the splashes that the photo has accumulated.

Elephant Drawing

The last exercise is being written for our book. It shows how to create a life size drawing of an elephant from lots of sheets of paper.

A Way Out

We are discussing something about thinking patterns. I have a disagreement with one of the women who thinks the only good decisions about the future must contain a negative rule - like "Don't do ..." I don't think negative statements help anyone but she stops me from getting too argumentative. Enclosed within transparent flaps of a box we clink glasses. June shows us the drawing she has just quietly made depicting us walking out of a circular pathway. On the exit path are the words "JUNG, WILL, ME , I."

Chaos In The House

I am in a public building - maybe a community arts place - trying to get my old drawings into some kind of order. In the kitchen antique crockery is piled on the dark shelves. There has been an attempt to place everything neatly but there are too many things and so the overall sense is of chaos.