Whether it's an Art School, College, or Uni.
Teaching in these institutions is not always what we expect it to be, so this month our open call is for artwork, and writing that defines what we are or are not taught or draws attention to what we should have been taught.
We also have work that is just generally creative or about the arts in some way. A little quieter this month compared to others but still some really good work.
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Artist name - Frances-Ann Norton
Website -
http://frances-ann.blogspot.com/; https://francesodonnellpoetry.blogspot.com/
Instagram - @francesann2819
Description
two poems - what art school taught me. One about growing up in an art school, one about drawing and teaching.
The ontological art school and what it taught me
Art school geometries
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Artist - Wesley Finch
Social media links
Twitter @wesfinch
Instagram @wesfinchuk
Bio
Wesley Finch is a UK Midlands-based writer, musician, songwriter, and sound designer. He works with various charities in his local area, running workshops and facilitating performances with socially isolated and vulnerable adults. This piece was written during a residency at The Nest in Coventry; an opportunity given by local company Talking Birds in which Wes read and responded to a range of fairy tales, folk tales, and legends.
Article - Mel & Ray
Abstract
A modern, vernacular re-telling of an old (possibly French?) folk tale. Full of humour, old tropes and like all good, ancient stories a timeless message.
Is it about a rich kid marrying a water nymph he meets on his gap year travels? ...Yes, sort of.
Is it about life, love and marriage? Probably that, too.
Mel and Ray
Ray has a rich Dad. Landowner. Old money.
As soon as school was done Ray was wanting to go travelling.
Ray Senior says, “Pass all your exams, don’t get kicked out and then you can go gallivanting.”
So that’s what he does. Off he goes, sees all the sights, and has himself some fun by all accounts.
Off trekking in the forest God-knows-where, he stops by a stream to rest and cool down.
Who does he meet there but a beautiful thing called Mel.
Mel was the spirit of that stream. A sprite, like.
And she’d never left the water until Ray came along.
She’s a bit different from any of the others Ray’s met along the way.
Hard and fast, he falls for Mel and starts thinking she’s the one, as you do when you’re young and foolish.
“Do me the honour of being my wife, Mel?” he says, almost surprising himself.
“OK,” says Mel, and smiles, “but there’s one thing I want.”
“Name it,” says Ray, “I’ll sort it for you.”
“What I want,” says Mel, “is a bit of land, something to build a house on.”
“Oh,” says Ray, thinking it’d be more along the lines of a ‘big diamond ring’
or ‘church wedding and a month in the Caribbean’,
but he recovers quickly and says, “Anything for you, love.”
So, they have a right lovely time, trottin’ the globe, hiking the trails, seeing the wonders, and eventually making their way back home. It’s all one big holiday for them. Young, sexy and money’s no problem. Back home he takes her to meet his old man and fill him in on the whole deal.
Now, Ray Senior has always been a bit tight. You don’t get so much land without a bit of the Ebenezer Scrooge in you. He isn’t everyone’s favourite, but he does love his son and wants him happy.
“So, land you want, is it, Mel?” says Ray Senior, who has more of it than anyone could handle, “How’s about this, then…”
Ray Senior says Mel has half an hour, to hop on one leg around his estate, and what she loops in that time she can have for a house. He doesn’t place much stock in the slip of a thing his son’s brought home.
“Don’t let your other leg touch the ground. I’ll be watching you like a hawk!” he straightens then bends his arm to look at his Rolex, “3, 2, 1, GO!”
And to be fair, Mel makes a proper good go of it. Ray’s Dad begins to think he underestimated her but sure as anything ain’t going to show it.
Mel’s legs are strong from all that trekking, and she makes a good loop and gets herself a decent-sized plot.
“Amazing, babe!” says Ray, “How’s your leg?”
“I need a sit down for a bit,” says Mel.
Ray Senior nods his head and raises his eyebrows like he’s a bit impressed and goes off to get the paperwork done.
A year later and they’re almost ready to move into this tasteful 5-bed they’ve had built on the plot Mel’s won them. Ray Senior’s pulled a few strings and it’s a good and remarkably fast job.
It’s who you know…
“And what do you know about them.” adds Ray, “Happy, babe?”
“Oh yeah,” beams Mel, “just one more thing…”
“What is it, my love?”
“Well, it’s just, y’know how I love my Saturdays, to just chill out and do my thing?”
“Yeah, I know you do, babe.”
“Well, I just want that; to be able to be here, like, undisturbed, just on my own on Saturdays.”
“What, like every Saturday?”
“Yeah. It’s kind of a deal breaker, really, honey.”
Well, as strange as that request is, Ray thinks Mel is something special and she properly has him wrapped around her little finger.
He umms and arrs, mumbling something about wanting to see the lads on Saturdays, anyway and they’re agreed on it.
That arrangement works out well enough for a long while. Every week Ray heads off on Friday evenings finds something to do and comes back on Sunday mornings to be with his beautiful wife.
But this one Friday, Ray’s gone off in a hurry and forgot something important.
Is it his wallet, or his phone? Some antibiotics he was on for some reason?
Or maybe it’s just a convenient excuse. Maybe he’s had enough of his mates’ taunts and questions and has some burning curiosity about what Mel’s really up to back at the ranch.
So, off he goes, back to the house about Saturday lunchtime. He’s a bit crafty and leaves his car up the lane and walks the rest, up to the house…
He lets himself in the front door and hears music playing upstairs.
“It’s just me, Mel. I forgot my…” he calls, but no answer.
She’s nowhere to be seen but the music’s coming from the upstairs en-suite.
Some classical stuff with opera singing over the top. Very dramatic.
She must be in the bath, thinks Ray, and cracks the door open for a sneaky peak.
Sure enough, that’s where she is, all candles and scented foam, but then he clocks it:
It’s Mel from the waist up, alright, but the bottom half of her isn’t those lovely legs he knows but one big tail!
like a big fish!
all covered in shining scales!
and a flipper at the end!
And it’s as if Mel can sense he’s there, on the other side of the door and yells out,
“Ray! Is that You? What are you doing here!?”
Well, you’ll have to imagine what happened next because I wasn’t there, and Ray doesn’t talk about it except when he gets really drunk. And even then, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Suffice to say that after that the big romance went the way of the dodo.
Mel disappears back to wherever it was she comes from.
Ray mopes about for ages.
“Well, at least there’s no sprats involved.” Ray Senior is apparently overheard saying.
Ray, try as he might, can’t do a thing with the house.
It‘s been on the market for 3 years but every time someone comes to view there’s a nasty smell of dead fish no one can place,
or all the taps suddenly just come on and flood the place out before you can turn them all off.
Ray Senior’s long gone now and left the estate for Ray to manage.
I don’t know why Ray didn’t just marry someone like Maggie Simmons from the village.
The way she used to look at him, pulling his pints at the Red Lion.
That ship’s sailed now.
(retold from ‘French Melusine’ in Treasury of Folklore – Seas & Rivers… Batsford 2021.)
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Artist name - Kim Pilgrim
Website - www.kimpilgrim.co.uk
Instagram- @kimpilgrimartist
Bio
Kim is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Cornwall, UK. She has a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University (2004) and MA in Contemporary Visual Arts from University College Falmouth (2007). Kim has nearly 20 years of experience as a practicing artist and working with communities, in education and creating projects and commissions. She works at Tate St Ives as a Learning Specialist. She is also a mother, vegetable grower, clothes mender, and sea swimmer.
Kim’s work explores concepts, experiences, and stories, often based on a specific location, a moment in time, or a current state of being, including themes such as relationships to the natural world, heritage, journeying, and the female experience.
“I am driven to connect with place and stories. I love diving into concepts as well as working intuitively and meditatively. My work connects me back to myself as a form of re-grounding or positioning myself. It is a continually evolving journey of expression of myself as a human, woman, mother, and creative being.”
Kim works with museums, galleries, heritage sites, ‘wild' places, and local patches of weeds and wildflowers.
Her work ranges from being project-based creating installations or artifacts, to working in paint, mark-making, and photographic processes, within a framework of environmental consideration.
Article
The shape of my artwork
Abstract
My writing is in response to the call out on 'What they don't tell you or teach you in Art School'.
My piece poetically explores my relationship to being an artist in this current phase of my life and reflects on the widespread notion of being a career artist and how this isn't for some a real representation of being an artist outside the institution, from the viewpoint of my current life phase as a mother to a young child.
I feel that I am constantly pushing against my own and societal expectations of being a 'successful' artist based on what is taught and represented at art school when the reality for most who leave these creative institutions is that art practice weaves in and out of their lives as they earn a living, travel, support families or other caregiving roles, and that being an artist isn't an all or nothing career status.
Perhaps it would have been beneficial to have heard the juicy, honest, real stuff from visiting artists and lecturers at University, about how they make a living, manage their time, and what their week looks like, in a creative, engaging, and real way; to hear that sometimes the only artwork you do that week is in your lunch breaks or drawings in your sketchbook waiting at the school gates.
‘The shape of my artwork’ is an honest and real insight into the balancing act I currently find myself in. It is a call for a reflection and discussion about sustaining creative practice in the world outside of the art school/institution, particularly for women, parents and carers, and is a call to present those who are creating in this way.
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Artist - Hilary Watkinson
Bio
I write from the heart; emotions trigger the content of my poems. Sadness, happiness, determination, desperation, pain, and love make me who I am.
I open my life to you in my words.
Abstract
A poem about the debilitating effects of PTSD.