Art or Craft?

Well, the summer fair stall was a washout. Rain forced the event indoors and meant that stalls were down corridors rather than as a nice market in the walled garden. I was encouraged when I was told my spot was just inside the entrance; one of the very first stalls. But what this actually means is that people come in and head straight past you at speed in order to get to "the action", ie tea, cake, beer, Pimms, bouncy castle etc.. The next time they pass is on their way out when they've spent all their money. It also means the traffic is mostly limited to the first and last 30 minutes of the event. I made 2 WHOLE SALES and a loss :-(

By contrast, one of my friends had a very successful afternoon at a different craft fair. She almost sold out of one entire range of products. And it got me thinking. The main criticism I have received from other stallholders/fair organisers is that my stall is not focussed enough. I don't have a product, I have a range of things, and customers don't like this. They like to look at a stall and say "ah, plants", or " jewellery", or "cushions", whereas mine they look at and go "ooo stuff", or "gosh aren't you creative" and then they shuffle on by because it's all too bewildering. They aren't there to see an exhibition, they're there to shop and they like it to be easy and clear. But that's just not how I work. I have one or two things I make repeatedly, but on the whole each piece of work is a one off. And I think, for me, that's possibly the difference between art and craft. If I were happy to be a crafter, where the making and selling is the main focus, then I should be able to happily reproduce a technique or product over and over because it sells. But I just can't do it.

I can't do it partially because my boredom threshold is too low, partially because the materials I work with (sometimes) are vintage watch and clock pieces, so it's unlikely I could reproduce the same thing even if I wanted to. But I suspect these are excuses. The simple fact is I don't want to be a production line. For me the thrill is the design, the putting together of bits and pieces into a new whole, starting with a blank space and filling it with ideas. I love to try new techniques and mediums, to have a go at something different and see where it takes me. And I guess that makes me an artist, of sorts.

moving, perhaps ...

So I've decided to try and move from Rugby to Coventry (a full 15 miles, for those of you not familiar with the area). Rugby is a small town that doesn't have a great deal going on and has really suffered in the financial down-turn. Coventry is a medium-sized city with lots of arts and music stuff as well as all the usual urban amenities.  So why, you may well ask, did I move to Rugby last year in the first place? Children!

My youngest has been at school in Lutterworth, while my eldest is at Princethorpe College (between Rugby, Coventry and Royal Leamington Spa). Rugby was the obvious choice as Meg could get a school bus from Princethorpe to Rugby, and Rachel could get a public bus from Lutterworth to Coventry after school. This meant that, although they couldn't easily live with me, they can and do come and stay overnight at least once a week after school, as well as stay every other weekend. So what's changed? Rachel will be going to Princethorpe along with Meg in September so there is absolutely no need for me to be in Rugby any more. There is a school bus to Coventry from Princethorpe, so I can live there just as easily. I've even found a house, yes a HOUSE! It's the same rent as my flat, has 3 bedrooms, separate sitting room, dining room and kitchen, and a garden. All in all it's about twice as much space as I have now, if not slightly more. It's a mid-terrace Victorian bay-fronted house in a well-maintained residential road within walking distance of Coventry centre.

But it's not all plain sailing. Firstly, the previous tenants apparently left the place in a mess so it's being refurbished, and the landlord won't let anyone look round and has given no date of when it will be finished. Secondly, I don't have a salary and am dependent on my ex-husband to pay my rent, which he does utterly reliably, but letting agents are a bit nervous about people who can't prove they earn enough a month to pay for themselves. Thirdly, the rental market is moving extremely quickly and I'm terrified I'm going to get "pipped at the post".

So I've made a bold move. I have picked up the paperwork to start the lease process WITHOUT HAVING LOOKED AROUND THE HOUSE. I have seen lots of interior photos, and a mid-terrace Victorian house is a standard kind of affair with predictable room sizes etc., so the risk is mitigated. But still. The letting agency don't really like people doing this because you have to pay an administration fee as a way of securing the property and paying for the references to be done, and so forth. And they get people doing all this, going to see the place, deciding they don't like it after all and trying to demand their money back. Which is against all the rules. Obviously I am 99.9% confident that I won't want to back out of the lease. I've driven past the house, had a look around the area, at the outside, at the bus routes ... and all seems just right. The house and street are both well-maintained. There's no peeling paintwork, or dodgy window frames. It has modern double-glazing, a little gravelled front garden and railings, on-street parking, sound-looking roof.

Next I have to get Jon to fill in the guarantor form, and take it back to the agent to see if I'll pass the references. She's given me forms for "unemployed" which I often feel as though I am, but strictly speaking I'm not. Whether that makes any difference, I just don't know.

Oh, and I've got an interview for the PGCE (teacher training) course at Birmingham City University. So hopefully I'll be in training for a proper job soon ...

The Princethorpe "Summer" Fair is only a few days away, so I'm busy making stock. And I'm unashamedly using my children as a market sample (so if I don't sell anything it's their fault ;-) )

So today I played in a Spires Music world premiere of Colin Touchin's Choose the Light. It was composed for the Coventry Mysteries and was inspired by the responses of many, many school children to the Doom paining in Holy Trinity Church, Coventry. It's a great piece, with material for school choirs, adult chorus and orchestra to all get their teeth into happily.

The interesting thing about Spires is they use professionals to lead the orchestral sections. This means the overall standard is impressively high. It also means I was sitting next to a very competent young man, and becoming all too aware of how incompetent I felt. Now that's not to say I played badly. I performed adequately, made very few slips (and none of them noticeable beyond my desk partner and myself) and generally acquitted myself professionally. No, what I noticed was how far my technical competence was from his. Ok, he's a professional. He's had high-quality tuition for many years (as did I, it has to be said) and he's clearly very talented and committed (the latter being something I always struggled with). But he had that ability to make it all seem soooooo easy.

It has to be noted at this point that I have been out of the playing game for several years. I've not played regularly with an orchestra since I moved to the Midlands in 2001, and I hardly touched my 'cello at all after I was ordained. Then, when I became ill, I fell out of love with it entirely and my 'cello sat in its case gathering dust. So it's only really been in the last few months that I have started to play or even practise again. It's not surprising then, that my fingers are a little rusty. But that's not entirely my point. I don't think that, even at my most capable, I was ever as comfortable with my instrument as this bloke. He had managed to eradicate all observable tension from his body, whereas I have a sore point on the tip of my thumb from gripping my bow, and I mean gripping. I'm fine in lyrical sections. My hands relax, my bow glides and all is well. But when the music becomes more impassioned, so do I. And as I've mused on this, I've realised there is a contradiction in performance. Musicians of every kind are trained to relax in order to perform at their best, just as an athlete needs to relax in order to compete well. But equally we have to express the emotional language of the music we are performing, and sometimes that music doesn't say "warm, fluffy clouds and marshmallow".

Clearly what I need to do is learn to disentangle my physical responses from my emotional ones. I need to be able to portray despair, anger, violence, melancholy, fear, surprise ... without it adversely effecting my playing technique. I understand the theory behind keeping relaxed. On a string instrument, as soon as you tense your bowing hand/arm/shoulder you effect the contact of the bow-hair with the string and it deadens the sound. The string is less able to ring freely, so you end up fighting against yourself to get enough volume. So I need to learn how to make a sound that is marcarto whilst having a right hand that's marshmallow.

Hopefully realisation is the first step ...

Rings and things

I have been chained to my work-table again today. This time it has been rings:

Steampunk rings

(the one on the left I can't bring myself to sell ... it's mine, all mine ... mwah ha ha)

Bead rings 

 Button Rings

On a more serious note, I've been looking for craft fairs locally to sell at but they are really thin on the ground this year. Yet another sad indication of the state of the economy and people's personal finance. When money is scarce, people don't buy art and craft items. It's all pound shops and pawnbrokers. So I've started up my Folksy page again. But anything you see on here, my facebook page, or Flickr account is available to purchase. Any items that catch your fancy, just send me a message.

Lots of creative stuff

So to balance out all the writing in the last posts, this one is mainly pictures :-)

Gluten, wheat and dairy free baking

As Meg is still on a restricted diet (and now looks as though she may have become sensitive to soya too!) we do lots of home baking: bread, gorgeous shortbread biscuits from Ariana Bundy's book Sweet Alternative, and an almond & polenta lemon drizzle cake.

I am a member of an ATC trading group called Mixed Media ATC and suddenly remembered I was supposed to be making some green textile postcards (4" x 6"), so this is the work in progress ...

... and this is the end result :-)

 

 And the rest are pics of some pieces I've made for my next craft fair.

A charm necklace

           

   

     A brass button bracelet

 This piece is a vintage watch face, coloured with alcohol inks and embellished. The reverse is polymer clay.

Standard watchpiece cufflinks. Nothing fancy, but quite pleasing none the less.







And a watchpiece ring.

parties, parties everywhere, and more than a drop to drink

Well, what a fortnight that has been. The weather may have been bloody awful, but the party-quotient made up for it! My celebrations organised by splendid friends was, quite frankly, legendary. I was given instructions to pack an overnight bag and meet outside a certain country pub at 9.30 am, and await further instructions! Was I excited? Was I ever!

I was met by Becky who then led me a few miles away to an outdoor activities centre called Avalanche Adventure. I still had no idea what I was doing, or even who was doing it with me, as there was such a long list of potential activities. In the end there were 8 of us, signing our lives away on a disclaimer to go HOVERCRAFT DRIVING!!!!! It's clean, it's relatively safe and is the best 1.5 hours of fun I've possibly ever had. Trying to manoeuvre a rear drive air-bed with a whacking great fan on the back AND ABSOLUTELY NO BRAKES around marker flags and over a pond. Brilliant.

This was followed by lunch at the local and a couple of pints. Then the designated drivers picked their teams and we were sent off on a navigational scatter. The task, find as many of the following in 1.5 hours:

• 4 geocaches (25 points each)
• 10 telephone boxes (between 5 and 10 points each)
• solve 6 riddles and find the corresponding place (25 points each)
• achieve 10 silly things
• acquire 10 silly things

There wasn't time to do even half of them so planning and strategy was required, something that after the adrenaline and beer we were surprisingly lacking! In the end the 2 teams were separated by a mere 2 points. We lost. I'm not bitter.

I was then presented with a remarkable cake made by my friends and a wonderful gift: a steampunk box containing a wax seal stamp and a document detailing a weekend away at a steampunk event in Lincoln to which they had bought me a ticket and booked a B&B for 2 nights. I am sooooo spoilt.

To round the day off we all headed in to Leicester for a slap-up meal at The Case and then off to my favourite pub, The Red Tent. I finally made it to bed, happy, tired and just a little bit tipsy at around 4.30am!

The following evening I headed to Bury St Edmunds with my eldest to spend the week with my parents. The weather kept us indoors for the most part but it was very relaxing and good to spend unhurried time together.

The weekend just gone was yet another party. A friend I haven't seen for maybe 7 or 8 years invited me to his birthday party. I may have only known him and one other (albeit vaguely) but a better group of strangers I have yet to meet. There were silly games, copious amounts of cake, the odd glass of shandy (whisky, cava, beer, wine, Pimms ...) more silly games including "the Rolling Game" and "I've never" which is a drinking game I shall never again play whilst drinking whisky, or I shall simply have to lie and pretend I really have never done those things ... ah who am I kidding!

So now it's back to reality. I have a craft fair in 12 days, and a large amount of making to do. So off to the workroom I go ...