A New Project

With my impending application for Master of Fine Arts at Falmouth University in 2013, I have decided that I need to get my portfolio up to date.
So a new major project is born....the first major practice based work I have undertaken since graduating in 2010.

Here is the introduction.........let me know what you think.

I always begin a project by picturing what the end product will be, so......

Imagine finding a box.....it is average sized, about the size of 4 shoeboxes, but not as big as a trunk. It is wooden, carved and painted and has a brass lock.

Inside there are documents, newspaper cuttings and photographs, both loose and in albums documenting the life of a woman from her childhood to her death.

The contents are mixed up, all together, in no particular order, as if they have been taken out and put back many times.

I want to create this woman’s life. She was famous in her youth, a burlesque dancer and actress.

She had a normal childhood; there is a family album of photos dating from her birth in 1969.

Her rise to fame is charted by newspaper articles, magazine spreads and studio photographs. As is her fall from grace. There are scandals, affairs, gossip and numerous photographs of her rebellious lifestyle. Nightclubs, fetish clubs, drugs and alcohol feature heavily in the diaristic photographs.

There are letters...many letters, from her to her sister; from lovers to her. They document the hidden self that she hides from the media. There are diaries and scrapbooks she has made herself.

Everything ends with the final document...an obituary cut from a newspaper.

And this is where I intend to start: the obituary. It will help me map her life; the dates and events that led to this box being found. 

The Night Mail

Wandering around Eden a couple of nights ago, I came across a couple of lines of this poem. It defines everything I believe is being lost in the modern age of email. It's magic. Enjoy!

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

W H Auden

Friday 9th December

I have just composed my letter to Patricia.
It is written on handmade textured paper, in a matching envelope. I believe in writing proper letters, by hand, on nice paper. It's all about the object for me! Oh and I won't start ranting about how hard it is to buy nice writing paper and envelopes any more (but it is impossible!).
I had to be quite gentle and tactful in the letter, as I spoke to someone yesterday, who pointed out that getting a random letter from a complete stranger, saying they have your wedding album and they've been tracing you, might be construed as 'creepy'.
I can see their point. I can only hope that she's not easily freaked out, and that curiosity gets the better of her. After all, that's why I started all this........curiosity. It is the bane and the blessing of most artists.
Now.....everybody cross their fingers, I'm off to the post box.