:: Laura Boswell - Printmaker ::

Moving On

2011-05-02T21:21:00.003+01:00

After a lot of planning, discussion and sitting around at the kitchen table with cups of coffee, I have a new website. Along with that I have a new home for my blog. Except it’s now a studio diary as well. Please retune your rss feed and I can resume normal service.

You can find my oh so lovely new website at www.lauraboswell.co.uk or go directly to the new blog at www.lauraboswell.co.uk/studiodiary

Perfume

2010-12-06T17:38:00.001Z

It’s a black and white world out there, I know because I’ve just spent the last hour worthily raking up leaves in my monochrome garden in lieu of a slippery run along icy roads. The sensible would have chosen to go out in daylight; I dithered around until half three and started in the gloaming, ending up in decidedly creepy twilight. Leaves are an issue in the back garden thanks to a beech hedge planted, I’m guessing, in 1903. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that two world wars were enough of a distraction for the beech to be allowed to run away with itself and we now have forty two large trees masquerading as the original hedge.

It was beautiful: the garden iced white on black, a drift of mist and a filigree of photogenic cobwebs – perfect for one of those arty perfume ads. Since I mainly smell of butane from my studio heater in the run up to Christmas, I am never very happy with the parade of these inevitably black and white adverts containing women who are a) clean b) not dressed for the arctic and c) smell nice (or at least not of butane).

Given the senseless nature of the average perfume advert, I have come to the conclusion that there is some sort of random generating machine, working on similar principles to the Enigma code machine, throwing up advert length batches of black and white shots picked by chance. It may be entirely arbitrary as to whether you get Jude Law frowning with a tie or Kira Knightly in a bowler hat or (one for Dali) a speedboat coupled with a backless dress. I like to think of some ad man pulling a small brass lever and then departing for a long lunch, returning in the late afternoon to a floor scattered with loops of film and scooping it any old how into that brilliantly innovative Givenchy Christmas Campaign.

The thought that, well, a lot of thought goes into those ads is a bit depressing don’t you think? Though, and during my leaf raking I did give this more thought than it deserved, it’s all just the same as a real Enigma machine: ‘buy me’ goes in at one end and all these mad bits of film come out of the other end to bamboozle us. Not that I’m not bamboozled – let’s face it, a hot bath and a squirt of that stuff a Japanese woman floats across flower meadows for is a great antidote for butane and leaf mould.

Sound of Silence

2010-11-21T10:12:00.000Z

It’s been a while and, while I realise this isn’t quite the same as when I missed my last essay on King Lear, I feel I ought to explain. My excuse has all the brilliant melodrama and exaggeration that I sadly failed to summon in the face of Dr Sullivan’s wrath over my lack of comment on the use of the rhyming couplet in sibling rivalry disputes. You can believe me or not, personally I still don’t believe it.

Long story short, one morning a few months ago a man who used to be a family friend turned up at our house with a gun, some ‘devices’ and a scutch hammer and forced his way in. I learnt a few things that morning:

• Jumping from a high window is really, and I do mean really, easy if there’s a bloke with a gun on the other side of your bedroom door and it’s just your double bed holding him back.
• Time really does stand still: for two days after, everyone else in the world moved at half speed and colours were extraordinarily bright and clear. Briefly, like Sherlock Holmes, I wanted to shout ‘How can you be so s-l-o-w?’ at everyone and then annoyingly my moment of genius was gone and I was returned to my normal state of well, normality.
• The police keep change in a tupperware box for nipping round the corner to buy chocolate digestives for the rescued.
• Ten snipers in your back garden won’t be good for your herbaceous borders, not if they’re there all day for a siege.
• It upsets the neighbours, especially the one who shares a Christian name with the attacker, when the police marksmen get shouty and demanding.
• Lastly, if you do break in and then say you have lots of bombs, they make you take off all your clothes when you surrender and then they laugh about it down at the station with the victims.

It’s easy to be flip on here: the blog is flip and I like it that way. However, I’ve lost a few months of my life to this and it stopped me writing among other things. Last month it all went to trial and he was found guilty on several counts. We await sentencing. It’s not been much fun, but I’m getting there and I have written something down. Which is more than I can say for that last essay still due from 1982.

buzz buzz buzz

2010-06-18T10:23:00.002+01:00

We have a bee’s nest at the foot of one of our apple trees. Strictly speaking it is a wasp’s nest, but they left at the end of last summer and the bees have since set up home. They came under an entirely fruitless badger attack last week: the badgers left empty handed and we were left with large, deep and perfectly circular tunnel in the lawn. I ran over it with the lawn mower yesterday and froze in horror at the sound of deep buzzing. In my head I imagined the immediate appearance of a solid column of bees, angry as a mob of French peasants hunting down the aristocracy. What actually happened was that about half a dozen bees came out looking slightly cross and bewildered; more like a street’s worth of Highgate Guardian readers on finding they didn’t have advance warning of a mains closure.

I was entirely glad not to be massively stung, but I did sort of expect to have more impact. I felt a bit non-consequential as a result and that brings me on to the main thrust of this blog. Someone asked me recently ‘Why do you write a blog? Does anyone read it? Doesn’t it tie you down?’ Heavy questions indeed. Well, I do have readers: my mum-in-law and assorted other enthusiastic family members, the people who come up on Google Analytics (Berkshire Fire and Rescue: I know who you are and thanks for your support), the lads from Wells enamel factory (if they know they are getting a mention) and the very occasional kind person who posts a comment, but that really misses the point.

I write this because it’s a fun exercise to write something neat, amusing and short. Posting it means it has an end destination and no, it doesn’t tie me down. My friend saw blogging as a sort of monstrous chore: a necessary piece of public relations, relentless as the maintenance of a dark haired Hollywood starlet contracted to go platinum blonde. I see it as a sort of small indulgence to be enjoyed when I’m in the mood: more of ten minutes in the warm sun with a really good coffee. So it really doesn’t matter if, like the bees, people at large take no notice, I’m enjoying myself...

Numbers

2010-05-30T18:17:00.006+01:00

Six seems like a good number to me when I’m printing an edition. Every time I make a lino print, it’s a bit of a gamble: I print using one block of lino and gradually destroy it, cutting it away in order to build the print out of layers of colour. Start with six and, if I’m clever, finish with six. There’s no going back and doing another few copies or idly hitting the button for a fresh batch of giclee printouts. It’s about as close as I get to living dangerously...
However I have just finished a huge, really huge, edition. One hundred and twenty one lovely late summer sunsets thanks to my sort-of-relation Phil and his generosity in letting me into his printworks at Hand and Eye (www.handandeye.co.uk).To print on this scale I had to produce a set of blocks, piecing the image together like a lino jigsaw rather than using the one block. Precision isn’t my middle name and I suspect it’s actually Phil’s first name. It’s a good job neither he nor his team saw my dreadful inexperience at multi block work; the cold sweats and the idiotic mistakes (including a beautifully prepared upside down field) that went into preparing the seven cut blocks that make up the final picture.
The print is still an original linocut print and every print is unique – unique because I painted every one of the 121 sunsets by hand during printing.
But before this sounds too much of a personal success story, I should confess to having access to Rosa.
As secret weapons go, Rosa is pretty impressive, a former restorer of Italian frescos and a fine printer, she mixed my inks and matched colours brilliantly to my somewhat hopeless descriptions: ‘sort of a non-colour: greenish grey – you know, with a bit of red in it probably’ which is hardly a pantone recipe. She also operated the proofing press and helped me print, ha, actually I helped her print and learned a great deal in the process. The finished result costs £70 unframed and you can buy one from me via this link or from Phil at Hand and Eye.

Stage Fright

2010-04-01T16:35:00.001+01:00

I’m not keen on climbing ladders, positively scared of rollercoasters and nothing on God’s earth would get me pot holing.

That’s not a definitive list by the way, just a few examples to show that I’m not one of Nature’s bravest. What I will do however is to venture outside my comfort zone and to that end I have embarked on setting up some studio workshop days to allow people to come in and learn about printing lino.

Being an artist is a tough thing to define, but I think part of it is to be uncomfortable. Uncomfortable mentally that is – I definitely need access to a comfortable bed, a bath, oh and Radio Four, the odd glass of wine and a hot dinner. Normally I teeter on the edge by signing up for enormous public art projects with woefully little idea of how to complete them, embarking halfway round the world to condense a seven year apprenticeship into eight weeks and by finding ways of making my everyday printing near technically impossible. This time I’ve been agitated about stuff like where people will park, what they’d like for lunch and how to give them access to the loo and not my jewellery box*.

Finally I realised that I was dithering. It’s madness: I love teaching people about printing, I have the studio space (thanks mainly to my husband and brother-in-law, though I like to think my barrowing of the best part of three tonnes of concrete helped) and people are kind enough to be asking. So I’ll be sending out the booking forms soon and you’ll be able to come and haul on the Albions for yourselves if you wish...

*actually not worth the bother for the serious burglar consisting as it does of what my mum would call ‘schmuck’ – stuff I like, but an insult to any professional fence.

Missing

2010-03-11T15:58:00.002Z

If the world is divided into those who keep and those who throw away, I am standing, bin bags in hand, at the fanatical end of the throwing away section. I’m not sure when it happened: as a teenager I clearly remember sleeping in a bed which rocked, balanced as it was on a slag heap of under-the-bed detritus, my mother in despair and my cupboards bulging in dangerous and delicate balance. Somewhere along the line there must have been an epiphany since now I’m never happier than after a good clear out – that rush of endorphins that accompanies the appearance of an empty space, however temporary, in this house of male hunter gatherers.

Today it caught up with me big time: a deadly combination of technological ignorance and literal thinking. While I don’t have an iphone, I do have a mobile that will talk to my email (after a delay suggesting a collection of switchboard operators distracted by an unexpected box of chocolates). This morning I decided to clear my phone, getting rid of all the untidy messages in the inbox that I’d downloaded over the past few days while I was travelling, confident that they were now safe on my computer. You must all know where this is going: no, they weren’t safe and yes, they are all permanently gone. I’m left wondering how this could possibly be: imagine if I slung out all the redundant paperbacks in the spare room and came downstairs to find my cookery books gone too...

My husband has been very kind; instead of a well justified victory song and dance avenging his many beloved items I’ve disappeared over the years, he did his best to recover the mails. No joy. If you are one of the victims then I apologise. I’d like to say I won’t do it again, but actually, that empty inbox does look much neater...

Good Housekeeping

2010-02-23T10:26:00.001Z

The problem, I feel, with the short bout of food poisoning I had recently was that, after a couple of hours lying on the bathroom floor wishing for death, I was forced to the disagreeable conclusion that not only were the gates of Paradise going to remain firmly closed, but that it was high time to sand down and repaint the room’s skirting boards.

One thing we did manage last week was to replace the kitchen floor. It’s not often we get interior decoration wrong, but we’ve had nine years of a pale laminate floor which, since it showed every micro-particle of dirt in glaring detail, would have been a perfect worktop surface in a forensic laboratory (no more government enquiries into lost evidence, however small), but was a disaster for a working kitchen. Now we have cork – swirling chunks of the stuff in cross section a bit like marble, but marginally less expensive. It looks beautiful and is brilliant at concealing dirt; I know this because I only discovered the remains of a dead mouse this morning by treading on it with bare feet.

While our kitchen floor was approved by an architect friend and his wife who came round for dinner, my studio heating was condemned. This may have been because I put the fire on and it made their lovely clothes reek. I am resigned to smelling like a construction worker’s site office, but I realise that ‘Bute’ for men is never going to be a stocking filler. I am however quite safe: my brother has insisted I install a carbon monoxide monitor. This shows a touching concern for his little sister’s safety which I’m pleased to say he never exhibited when I was small and he was my twelve years bigger, marvellous, dangerous and tyrannical babysitter.

Trainspotting

2010-02-08T19:19:00.003Z

I’ve always liked the London Underground. I cut my teeth on the Metropolitan Line at seven, taking a couple of stops to school and back. By nine I was making the trip to see my dad who lived in Kensington High Street: a neat change at Baker Street and a loop of the Circle Line. By eleven the system was my oyster (though those were the days of singles, returns and seasons only) and I was loose to roam. These days, thanks to my enamels project, I count among my friends the people who cut, spray, print and fire all the London Underground enamel signage which adds a sort of warm and fuzzy feeling to my travels.*

Today I needed all the warm and fuzzy I could get once I left the shelter of the tube: a bleak howling day of sleet and pinched faces. I visited my print supply shop which is a gem. When I started out I found the assistants horribly intimidating with their total lack of eye contact and empathy. Now I know what I am doing, I find their obsessive expertise enormously helpful. I spent a long time with a man who was possibly even more interested in the mulberry fibre content of Japanese paper than me and knew to the drop exactly how much cobalt drier to use for each ink colour.

Travelling back I had to balance two heavy bags, a large and awkward roll of lino and a fiendishly expensive, long and delicate roll of Japanese paper. Like every over-burdened woman extra in every British film ever made about trains, I decided that I needed tea. Unfortunately, on reaching Marylebone, I was unable to do the sensible thing and find a seat, stymie the romantic end of a love affair and exchange some banter with Stanley Holloway. Instead I juggled a boiling pint of earl grey along with everything else up the platform and onto the down train home.

As a footnote, I have finished my experimental woodblock and lino mixed print that I mentioned in my last couple of blogs. You can see it and access the rest of my website here

*Sadly I do sometimes find myself patting enamel signs in a slightly mad sort of way and saying things like ‘I bet that’s one of Ian’s’.

Exposure

2010-01-12T12:49:00.002Z

Sometimes I despair: I have been printing now for five years give or take. Five years of cleaning down my rollers, palette knives and the sheets of glass for mixing inks. Five years of sloshing white spirit from five litre cartons and mopping it up with paper. Yesterday it finally occurred to me to put some of the white spirit in a spray bottle and, taa daa, cleaning up became a miracle of economy, accuracy and efficiency.

The print I mentioned last time has reached the stage where all the action is down at the bottom of the image. I’m on oil based lino now so using the press. It’s important to have a fair amount of pressure so I packed the press with additional paper and was heaving the handle across with my feet braced on its feet (imagine Mammy lacing Scarlett into her corset Gone With The Wind style). The print quality was still very patchy. In desperation I went to get my husband (now he works from home he is open to such abuses) to give it some more welly. Instead he considered the print for a moment, fished a small scrap of lino from the bin and positioned it at the top end of the block. Instant printing success: his small adjustment stopped the block from rocking away from the plate. His brains triumphing over my brawn.

It could be that the cold has addled my brain. My dad, supplier of the dehumidifier, also supplied the genes for a total inability to generate my own warmth. I get up, think of a sensible number of clothes to wear, double it and still I cool through the day like a human storage heater, needing to be reheated in the bath by evening. It’s tiring and it’s not great for my image. Van Gogh had the romance of candles stuck to his hat while he painted the wheeling stars in the French night sky. Turner, I bet, looked heroic in a sou'wester while lashed to the mast and sketching his storms at sea. I, on the other hand, resemble the sensible pensioner in the Government information films about winter cold; the one who’s wearing those oh so practical layers, fleecy slippers and a warm knee blanket. I too have the warming mug of tea and the hot water bottle. I’m even wearing the cat...

A little rusty...

2010-01-07T16:24:00.001Z

While the rest of Britain may be missing work days through snow, I have found that my studio is easily warmer than my home and my productivity is rocketing. It has insulation and double glazing; our house does not. Indeed our house, in the best turn of the century tradition, demands roaring fires in every room and the generous consumption of fossil fuels. Sadly its ambitions are all now bricked up bar one and the only echoes of Edwardian largess remaining are the five chilblains I’m currently nursing.

In Japan I learnt to cut linden plywood. The masters cut wild cherry which is not only frighteningly expensive, but very hard and it lacks the neat guideline of reaching a new layer of wood to tell me that I’ve cut deeply enough. Here I raided my husband’s carpentry supplies and ended up with builder’s birch ply. In a fit of optimism I decided on a starter piece that a) was at least twice as big as anything I’d tried before, b) combined water based woodblock with oil based lino cut (another first for me) and c) used up paper I already had irrespective of its suitability. I think the cheapness of the birch ply had a lot to do with my insouciance. So far it’s going ok: the birch splinters like hell and the paper wasn’t perfect, but a Japanese landscape is emerging and I will keep you posted.

The only glitch in the studio is humidity: the butane heater throws out moisture and my huge chilly iron press is the perfect condenser. Fortunately my dad bought me a dehumidifier for Christmas. I’d like to say this was an act of genius on his part, but actually the cheque came with a note to ‘treat yourself to something pretty’: I just added ‘fantastic to save your work and your press’ to the end of his message. I’m hoping that I can polish the superficial rust off the Albion before the Open Studios and embarrassing questions start.

Pipes and Quiet

2009-12-07T16:56:00.001Z

I’m not very big on shopping which is an unfortunate character flaw for anyone visiting Tokyo. Shopping there is a serious business: department stores have their own stations on the underground while Japan Railways own department stores in return; full size roller coasters twist through the high rise malls, illuminations flash, people throng and the noise is beyond imagining. Throw in a couple of replicants and you get the picture. Raised in central London, I suddenly found I was a village child in the big city for the first time.

I blame the subsequent feelings of confusion and deep longing for some quiet for my hiding in the Tobacco and Salt museum in Shibuya district. I’m even less of a fan of cigarettes than I am of retail therapy having spent years in the dense fug of my stepfather’s sixty-a-day habit, but this is a surprisingly charming museum. Miraculously it has a fabulous collection of Edo period woodblock prints along with a worrying encyclopaedic collection of fag packets.

The museum also revealed* that the washi paper I’ve been using and the same sort that I watched being made at the paper mill is largely responsible for Japan’s excellent record for preserving documents. Washi is phenomenally strong when wet: when fire threatened, documents were thrown into the nearest water to be rescued later. The damp paper printing technique (the cause of so much angst on my part) means the pigment dyes the paper rather than sitting on the surface and so remains legible after the dunking, the paperwork restored perfect nick when dried. Neat eh? And just as well with all those smokers around…

* bizarrely this was the only information available in English so I was unhampered by any serious consideration of the history of Japan’s tobacco production (last visited while in Mrs Smith’s upper fifth geography class.)

Coats of many colours

2009-11-12T03:44:00.001Z

I’ve got into the habit of watching a soap opera while I eat my lunch. It is in unfathomable Japanese, but I have a strong suspicion that it is sponsored by a fashion house. Every episode features the same pretty heroine who stands outside in a wide variety of elegant winter coats having angst ridden conversations with other women in other coats. I invent dialogue from the Archers and it works just fine (one of my finest achievements while here has been to convert American Betsy into an avid Archers fan thanks to BBC iPlayer).

I have also come to the end of my first set of editions. The terms of my contract were to supply three copies of three prints to the institute. Producing the woodcuts was hard, but nothing prepared me for the horrible gamble of printing: the potential for mistakes is huge and the further down the line I got with each print so the investment of time and effort started to stack against the knowledge that one small slip would write off a print. My last print required twenty three separate passes (a pass being to ink and print the block) which, multiplied by the fifteen prints I started with, adds up to an awful lot of room for error. By the end of yesterday I was twenty passes in, had nine good prints and a rotten bad back and head. This morning I finished: eight good prints and a handful of painkillers.

Now I am preparing to go again, this time editioning on hand made kozo and washi papers from the lovely paper mill we visited. It ups the anti considerably to know I’m now working with precious paper and I’m beginning to feel I left my comfort zone back in the UK by mistake.

You can see my work in progress at www.lauraboswell.co.uk/Japan_thumbs1.html

Size Matters

2009-11-06T07:50:00.001Z

I apologise for the gap in my blogs, but it’s not all been biscuits and sake here. We have now long finished with the teaching part of the residency and are working on our personal prints. This morning I started to prepare the final fancy paper for printing by sizing it with rabbit skin glue and alum which, especially before breakfast, smells just as nasty as its name suggests. I’m wondering if I can get glue like that in the UK or if I’ll have to put my butchering skills back into practise and skin a few of the rabbits the cat brings in? There has been so very much to learn and so many things that can go wrong, starting with the size and ending with a Prussian blue thumb print in the wrong place (today’s misery).

The more I do and the more I learn, the further I see I have to go and most of it is a matter of experiment and experience. There is a phrase common to all the sensei who’ve taught us which is ‘It is your choice’ which is just about as helpful as Alec Guinness saying ‘Feel the force’. Both I think translate into ‘You’ll learn’ and I should shut up before they make me do it blindfold like poor Luke Skywalker…

Yesterday we were taken to a small factory where natural papers are hand made, largely using local bark fibres. Better than the Bolshoi, we watched four experts make the largest sheet of handmade paper available in Japan. Standing at the corners of a frame 5m by 2.5m, they each hurled some dozen buckets of liquid paper fibre in a perfectly choreographed dance; the solution fanning across the frame in rippling washes which, when drained, formed a perfectly uniform sheet. Later this was polished smooth with immense dedication and a single camellia leaf.

This evening I am going to be interviewed by my fellow artist Philpp. His blog is a shining example of what a residency blog should be and you can read it at www.nippontribeconnection.blogspot.com

Munchies

2009-10-15T03:34:00.001+01:00

I’ve just eaten a whole packet of biscuits in two days. This is not like me: I come from a family where biscuits are eaten in twos with tea (the tea is compulsory): to have just one is unacceptably austere, to have three too hedonistic. I’m certainly not given to lying on a bed stuffing two at a time until the packet is gone. Admittedly they were Japanese which meant they were a lot more like little gems (remember those?) than digestives, but it’s still not good. Perhaps, now I live in a world where everything is individually wrapped, then wrapped and wrapped again, it was just that they only had the one plastic bag? Maybe my brain now thinks that one wrapping = individual portion. If that’s the case I’m in big trouble when I do come home.

I think the real problem is that I miss my cooking. That sounds horribly egocentric, but, since I am the cook at home, it makes sense. The food here is exquisite in every sense of the word: the fish twitching fresh, vegetables like jewellery, noodles in silken hanks, but the fact is that bread is not Japan’s strong point and it is mine. I want a big hunk of crusty, chewy bread, fresh and warm straight from the oven with a smear of salty fresh butter. I also want it to be richly wholemeal: malted, spelt or rye.

This craving for bread attacks periodically, I’m making do with computer access to Radio Four instead. I realise it’s a lateral solution, but somehow its welcome familiarity is almost as soothing. It also has fewer calories and, if I’m going down the biscuit route, that may be something I should think about…

Fine Tuning

2009-10-14T00:29:00.001+01:00

Three weeks into this residency and I have finally learnt to play the shower. The water pressure is great, but the temperature unpredictable. Such is the size of the bathroom that the sink does for bath and shower with a sort of neat flip over switch for the shower and an extra long tap to hook over the bath. Provided I have a hand out of the shower and play the taps with the sensitivity of Evelyn Glennie on percussion, I can have a really good shower while the bathroom floods like a rice paddy. The first time this happened I was horrified, now I realise it’s fine: it’s why there’s a drain at the back of the unit.

It’s good that I’m showing some signs of dexterity in the face of my slow progress with the hangi-to knife. Our current Sensei (one of the last few master carvers able to raise fluid lines the width of a human hair in cherry wood) has been teaching us all week with amused patience. I can see what he wants me to do with the knife, I can see what he can do with his knife, but so far I’m the five year old with a fat wax crayon scrunched in a hot fist (and yes, my tongue does stick out as I work). He gamely lent me his knives and let me cut one of his practice blocks. He’s also showered us with gifts. Such kindness in the face of our inexperience: he tells us his apprentices serve for seven years; we have less than seven weeks…

Deportment

2009-10-11T14:36:00.000+01:00

My feet and back are currently shot. My feet because I have failed to bring shoes suitable for walking up and down the steep mountain hillside. I carefully bought shoes suitable for taking on and off efficiently at Japanese doorways and they seemed comfortable enough. Sadly I now have a penny (100 yen) sized blister on the back of my heel and a crop of mini blisters between my toes which make me look like I am sickening for something sinister.

My back is the result of kneeling at a dinner to welcome me and the other five artists to Nagasawa. It was a great party; we were guests of the local people, mostly farmers, who host this unique and generous residency every year. Housed in a very traditional room with tatami mats and paper walls, it confirmed my every fear about low tables. While perfectly designed for the small and supple Japanese, they are a nightmare when you’re nearly six foot, have a dodgy back and toes that dislocate at every opportunity. Let’s just say that I deserve the Queen’s medal for unobtrusively relocating two errant toes and maintaining an unflinching smile in the face of cramp. Copious quantities of sake and lots of good home cooking helped of course.

I spent the best part of today cutting out twenty two tiny circles to represent persimmon fruits for my second ever wood block. It wasn’t a bad way to spend a Sunday and I’m a whole lot better at cutting circles with the hangi-to or cutting knife now than I was this morning. A razor sharp knife, the hangi-to is the primary tool for Japanese woodblock and is held in the fist, thumb on top, and pulled alarmingly towards the stomach. Ok so far, I try not to think about slipping…

Vital Statistics

2009-10-08T12:40:00.000+01:00

Some observations about size (in homage to Sei Shonagon)

Large: the insects. Our notes about the course included a warning about ‘virulent’ insects. I thought this meant a lot of mosquitoes (which there are); I didn’t think it meant hand sized house spiders and giant orange hornets (which it did). We are learning to live with Ashidaka gumo, the huntsman spiders living in the house which come out at night to catch cockroaches. I admire anything with a taste for roaches, but at 11cm across they are too big for comfort. Fortunately they are very shy: I shared the kitchen with one in the dark of early yesterday morning and we circled each other with mutual horror. There are also large orb spiders, Betsy (fellow artist from Seattle) and I went out for a walk and saw one, marvelled at its hugeness and then slowly realised, in true horror flick fashion, that every tree, power line and gutter were infested.

Also large: Philipp and Ross. To their great credit they were considered too big to learn to print traditional style on their knees so we are all seated at desks for which I will be eternally grateful.

Small: almost everything else. I notice it in the supermarket where there are no shopping trolleys, just baskets or, for the large family, two baskets in a frame with wheels. Our kitchen work surfaces are 79cm high which, even when the spiders are absent, makes cooking a challenge and me feel like a troll. Food comes in tiny packages - just as well as mostly shopping is a total mystery and sometimes it’s best not to have too much to eat before changing item.

Small (but deep): my bath. It’s lovely, like reclining in a large packing case. I need it at the end of the day. To say this is a steep learning curve would be to understate: gone are the days when I would mess about in my studio and get away with saying ‘but it’s art’ to every process error. It’s achingly clear when water based woodblock goes wrong and I am making every mistake in the book and probably a lot that aren’t.

Large: gap between me and a decent print…

Airplane!

2009-10-03T03:20:00.001+01:00

The last time I travelled long haul I was thirteen and it was back in the days when the in-flight film was a communal event with a wobbly screen at the front of the plane, no choice and someone’s head inevitably between me and the action. So I was amazed by the individual seat back screens and spent many happy minutes tapping around, doubtless irritating the hell out of my neighbours with excited squeals when I found I could see the outside of the plane with a choice of external cameras. I was less pleased to discover that my headphones were on an anarchy setting, rattling through all channels at five second intervals. Much screen tapping later and just before I complained I found that I had plugged into next door’s socket instead of my own and had to quietly move my headset, settle down and behave myself.

I did get to see us landing at Dubai at midnight through the pilot’s eye view camera and that was very exciting. I used to have a phobia of flying: 25mg of valium would just about keep me breathing and sitting still, but I had to give that up as its sedative qualities would kick in as I left the plane and relaxed, leaving my husband to support a sleeping wife, the baggage and our son. That and I would unpack under the influence and once successfully tidied our passports God knows where, causing a last night panic in southern Italy which had to be experienced to be believed. So I toughed it out and now enjoy flying – I would like to think there is a message of hope in there, but I think it’s just that I have a short attention span.

Osaka airport was a bit scary. Jet-lagged and sleepy, I was first finger printed and then photographed. I made it as far as customs where the white gloved and face masked official asked me if I was ‘sure, really sure’ I had nothing to declare. I immediately felt horribly guilty and it must have shown as he made me open everything up. Try explaining that the pillow you’ve brought to cuddle at night and have vacpacked into a white brick is not in fact cocaine – I had visions of immediate imprisonment. Fortunately he realised what I was miming, thought it was hilarious and released me.

Lost in Translation

2009-09-25T16:44:00.000+01:00

With my departure day a couple of dozen hours away I am now revisiting every serious exam situation I have ever experienced: severe inertia combined with nagging confusion as to why I’ve failed to revise/prepare well in advance…

Part of the problem is trying to absorb enough Japanese etiquette in time to prevent my kind hosts from discovering that the freckled giant they’ve agreed to teach is not only hopeless at kneeling, but also a savage. I do know that I mustn’t blow my nose in public or leave chopsticks upright in rice, that my business card must be presented with both hands and that (this from an American site) I must never say ‘your mom is pretty’ which is a bit counter to the English reserve anyway.

I do know I have to give gifts and that they must be nicely wrapped. In my lengthy career as a Brownie (I lingered long enough for Brown Owl to tell me I’d outstayed my welcome) I only ever had two badges: fire starting (you can bet health and safety have outlawed that one) and present wrapping. So you’d think that a few tins of tea, a split of whisky and five pots of Gentleman’s Relish would present few problems to the former Sixer of the Sprites, but I’m not that happy. Especially now I’ve read that ‘pastel is the “safest” choice for presents’ – is my retro fifties colour scheme unsafe and if so, in what way? All this and I haven’t even started to pack yet.

I was distracted briefly by an amusing list of dos and don’ts for visiting Britain, again written by Americans. I learn that ‘the British generally avoid eye contact with each other’ and that when eating peas ‘you must first crush them under your fork’. Dead right we avoid eye contact with each other: how else will we keep straight faces while our extraordinary foreign visitor is carefully making their own transatlantic version of mushy peas?

Feet and Inches

2009-08-29T17:22:00.001+01:00

Last week I had a mail from the Japanese Art Institute at Nagasawa asking me to fill in a questionnaire prior my residency. Mostly it was fairly standard stuff about flights, insurance and medical documents to ensure I was fit to complete the course (I’m guessing that on the medical front they want to make sure that my hands will scab over fast and that I can endure kneeling for hours at a time – not good for someone who had a note for school from their mum to be allowed off kneeling, fortunately not copied across to my medical records). The interesting question was ‘Are you of extra height?’ Am I of extra height and by whose standards? Is that extra height amongst the Japanese, in which case the answer is oh yes? Or is it extra height among our local teenage school children? In which case the answer that I am not only average, but totally invisible.

In the end I gave my height in centimetres and said I didn’t know if that was ‘extra’. One thing I am sure about is that I have extra big feet compared to the Japanese. I have been out to buy the sort of trainers that have no laces in anticipation of having to leave them outside every building and also in anticipation that there will be no shoe buying once I arrive. My son pointed out that I could just leave the laces tied and force the shoes on and off like he does, but I belong to the start right generation who were smacked on the legs for that kind of thing.

These are the second pair of shoes I have bought recently, the others being their sartorial opposite: an impossible, beautiful, impractical pair of silver and grey stilettos by Ted Baker with four and a half inch heels. Known in the family as ‘TRT’ shoes (taxi, restaurant, taxi) they are a perfect fit: Ted may as well be cradling my feet in his very hands. The physics of balancing my height onto such high spindles had two unexpected results. The first was that they put me eye to eye with Jools Holland when I wore them to a charity event (he was standing on stage). The second was that they sent my calves into spasm, leaving me with Barbie’s strange tip toe stance. I won’t be taking them to Nagasawa: it takes time to lace myself into them and the last thing I want there is to be extra extra plus height…

Writer's Block

2009-07-13T11:40:00.001+01:00

Normally I consider myself to be pretty good at multitasking. Stuff like cooking dinner while yelling considered responses to politicians on Radio Four and sorting the laundry comes naturally to me, but I have fallen down badly when it comes to writing a book and a blog at the same time. I’m finding it near impossible to balance the two. Safe to say that, if this was life in the wild, David Attenborough would be commenting sadly on the inevitable neglect of the blog in favour of the dominance of the bigger work.

I have the amazing opportunity to work on a book which will document the time I spent down at AJ Wells and Sons creating my first public art work. I’m working with Phil who is an extraordinarily talented letter press printer (www.handandeye.co.uk) and his publisher Brian. The book will be a beauty, with hand set type and linocut illustrations. Phil is a sort of relative, though not actually by blood. He tells me that I qualify as step niece-in-law which, though a tenuous connection, is nice: I don’t have any uncles left and it is always good to think there’s one on hand for trips to the zoo and ice cream. To be serious, I am hoping that working with Phil will be a bit like printer’s boot camp: a chance for me to get my act together and clean up my technique.

For the purposes of illustration, I went back to Wells for a flying visit to gather images. This caused huge amusement on the shop floor, though everyone was very cooperative. It was good to see my mates again and to be accepted back without question. The only stipulation from Wells so far has been that I don’t reveal any enamelling trade secrets. Best if I do that here then. As far as I can see, you put it on wet, you dry it out and then you bake it in a high oven until it’s done.

To Have and Have Not

2009-06-07T12:22:00.001+01:00

While I have a new studio, as yet I have not moved the contents down the garden to fill it. It’ll be an exhibition gallery for the visiting public over the next three weeks, though I will be doing printing demonstrations in there as well. I have however started to clear out the old studio ready for departure.

I stripped out the contents of my plan chest yesterday. I was lucky enough to inherit this from Ben’s grandfather via Ben’s parents who, in defiance of every in-law cliché going, support and help me with amazing kindness and generosity. The plan chest was full, now it is almost empty and I am filled with righteous pleasure. I think there are two sorts of people: the keepers and the keep-nots. Like my dad, I love getting shot of things. Out went my college work (though we have a definitive copy of every print. At the risk of showing off, so does the National Library of Wales Print Collection who acquired a set of my final project work) and lots of grubby paper, acetate and card in what I can only describe as groovy colours. This came with the chest and dated back to Ben’s parent’s art careers in the sixties and seventies. Casualties included dead beetles and a lot of fluff, probably from the thirties; beneficiaries included the men at the dump who were cheered considerably by my huge life drawings of naked ladies.

I have kept a few things including a Pirelli Calendar by Terence Donovan which is filled with African women, curvy and unimplanted, from the days when it was OK for models to be naturally beautiful. I also kept my pen and ink drawings from the streets of Soho. I spent a lot of time sitting, dressed in practical army surplus, on the pavement there in the early eighties and the drawings are a splotchy record of the days when Soho was a cheerfully smutty and run down law unto itself, far removed from the smart streets of today.

What's in a Name?

2009-05-29T10:52:00.003+01:00

The three weekends when I open my studio to the public are fast approaching (do come if you can, just go to the Open Studios link on my website for times and a map, though I excuse my faithful internet visitor from Guatemala who appears so gratifyingly on Google analytics) and this means a frenzy of framing, sign painting, packing of greetings cards and last minute printing. In among all this frantic activity I have to think of titles for my pictures to be printed onto little bits of card along with prices for the exhibition.

Most of my landscapes are an unravelling of reality, patched together and sewn back into a satisfying shape by me, usually in a mess of pencils and old fanfold computer paper. I would love to say that my considered drawings are complied in a series of dated and numbered sketch books, but we’re mostly talking about a couple of wonky lines on the back of a till receipt (the tax office will have an archive of my early work if they ever audit me). The upshot of the way I work is that it’s usually impossible just to title a print by location; not unless I wanted to combine a variety of place names and arrive at a new one in the manner popular with house names in the seventies and still so with beach huts (you should see the ones at Sandown). The upshot is that my work mostly appears under titles like ‘Winter hedge’ and ‘Fen Sunset’ – not very exciting, but honest.

The honourable exceptions and almost my favourite prints to make are those attributed to friends and family. You’ll see ‘Andy’s beach’ along with ‘Vicky, Kev and Ben’s landscapes’ on my site. These are a result of my pinching landscapes from other people’s descriptions of places they love. I never ask for these: that would kill the images stone dead in a welter of self consciousness. To take ‘Andy’s Beach’ as an example (www.lauraboswell.co.uk/landscape41.html), it is a very simple print and a direct reflection of Andy’s pleasure in walking with his family along the beaches on the Isle of Wight on weekends. I was aiming at catching his very British ability to relish a bit of sunshine, the possibility of brewing some tea in a beach hut and maybe pushing the boat out later with an ice cream…

First Impressions

2009-05-21T13:54:00.003+01:00

The new press arrived yesterday in the care of Jeremy and Giles. Jeremy owns a company called Antique Machinery Removal and together with old school friend Giles, he travels the country ferrying all sorts of printing presses to and fro with no fuss and a lot of love and care. We were agitated, to say the least, about the logistics of getting more than a tonne of press out of an upper story art room in Barnet and across a long garden in Buckinghamshire. We shouldn’t have worried. I’ve seen more bother caused unloading a week’s worth of shopping than AMR made delivering my Albion.

Getting the bulk of the press into the studio was really only the start. The men then sat in the garden and carefully cleaned and oiled (not greased, we know now that grease is a big mistake) every component part before reassembling everything. Then we started on an extensive round of test prints to check the press was correctly adjusted. The testing was, well, testing to say the least: both Jeremy and Giles being expert printers. I began to feel like a mum caught by social services raising a child on turkey twizzlers and the odd nip of gin, my inks and rollers being bad enough to distress both men considerably. They were far too kind to be cross about it, but Jeremy urged me to ‘treat yourself to a couple of good rollers and replace that ink’ in a way that suggested ‘for the love of God woman, get a grip!’ would have been more in line with his feelings.

Having sorted out my new press, they cheerfully set about my old one ‘as we’re here’ and rebalanced and repacked it beautifully, managing to teach me more about printing in a couple of hours than I learnt in four years at art school. They cost a third less than our original quote and I would urge anyone who wants to buy or move a press to use them (there’s a link on my web site). Apart from anything else, I can’t imagine there are many people like Giles; a man prepared to buff a whole press to gleaming with baby oil, just to do it justice.

Poor Little Rich Girl

2009-05-10T15:23:00.001+01:00

I always knew there would be some sort of trouble over the enamels for Great Western Street. It’s a perfectly correct saying that you can’t please all of the people all of the time and I never had any expectations of being a universal success. What I hadn’t expected was that my local newspaper would rocket me to dubious fame for charging the best part of half a million for my artwork. Oh Bucks Press, I wish it were true…

It’s a pity the journalists didn’t come and ask me, but I’m guessing they thought I was away on my yacht playing drinking games with Damien and Tracy. I could have given them the straight truth: I came pretty cheap (less than one of the street’s several bus shelters) and we worked out a way of producing the landscapes in a fantastically cost effective manner. To forget the aesthetics for a moment, I cost a lot less than a team of blokes power washing graffiti off blank white enamel every few weeks. This wasn’t art for art’s sake: it was a witty and engaging exercise in cladding a public space and I’m more than happy to stand by the superb practicality of the product and my added je ne sais quoi.

There have been lots and lots of ‘why oh why’ angry letters as a result of the article; understandable given the misunderstanding over cost and the implication that I’d whipped bread from the mouths of local orphans and shelter from the aged. My favourite was a lady who said ‘I honestly thought it was a temporary hoarding’. Now I said I’d be happy to do it all again like a shot, but even I wouldn’t throw quite so much energy into something so ephemeral. Though I would be enchanted to paint a landscape onto a hoarding in real time so the passersby could see an artist at work – anybody need one doing?

Launch

2009-05-03T15:11:00.002+01:00

A week or so ago we had the official launch for the Great Western Street enamels. It was organised on my behalf by AJ Wells and Sons and Aylesbury Vale District Council who between them did me proud and managed to pick a day of glorious sunshine.

I'm not really very good at doing stuff like that to be honest, give me an early start in an unseen corner of a factory any time, but I think it went well. Accounts manager Andy has since scarily told me that he filmed my speech. I sincerely hope he was joking. My dear husband made an animated gif out of photographs of the event, making me look like a recently escaped and soon to be recaptured maniac. The best things really were the commemorative coasters organised by Ced Wells which have one of my decorative trees on the front and are each signed as a numbered edition. They are brilliant and were a smash hit - the council cabinet member left with ten for the Aylesbury Vale Council board room (so he said, though I'll be watching Ebay) and the rest have been snapped up.

In an effort to prepare for the big day I went and had my nails done. A first for me and a bit of a disappointment I think for the nail technician as all I wanted was 'something that doesn't show much'. She improved my hands to a degree amazing enough for me to wave them excitedly at Andy before the launch. He handled this with the kind of urbane charm that suggests interestingly to me that admiring a subcontractor’s choice of nail polish is all in a day's work for accounts management at AJ Wells. I'm afraid it didn't last long as I've since broken two nails in a badger related incident (and there's not many women can say that of their first manicure). Our local badgers have been digging up our lawn in their annual hunt for cockchafer grubs and I tripped in a hole, flung out my hands and promptly smashed both thumbnails on our Worcester Pearmain. Like the enamels - nice while they lasted, but over with far too fast!

Collateral Damage

2009-04-19T13:51:00.004+01:00

I'm pleased to report dramatic progress on the studio: as I type my husband and my long suffering brother-in-law, Simon, are up ladders nailing on roofing felt. I missed the studio 'raising' as I was out at work, leaving the two of them to lift and connect the walls alone without any help from Amish farmers or even a young Harrison Ford. I'm frankly glad I missed it: we built a big shed along similar lines a few years ago and I have never come quite so close to being squashed flat. It was also the only time I have ever enjoyed whiskey and it was too high a price to pay for the pleasure. Quite why Simon is willing to give up comfortable weekends in town to come out to the country for the sort of activities forced on intellectuals by Chairman Mao is beyond me, but I'm dead grateful that he does it.

One casualty I am sad to report has been my padded lumberjack shirt. After seeing me through many dawns at the enamel factory (the place has no heating and it takes a while for the furnaces and drying sheds to warm things up) I'm afraid I have ruined it. Concrete, unlike my lovely enamel, doesn't wash off and I've sort of pebble dashed the front. I realised I'd gone too far when I wore it to the builders merchants to buy roofing felt and a kilo of flat head nails and the other builders looked like they thought I could have made more of an effort.

Later this week we are having a launch for the enamels. They are looking just great now that Shouty Derek has finished installation. I hope he will forgive me for the nickname. He is a lovely guy and has overseen the building end of the project with great skill and care, but obviously spends his days competing vocally with pneumatic drills and heavy plant machinery. When it comes to volume and force of opinion, my money's on him. You can see the fruits of his labours on my website and if you look at the last picture up you can also see me wearing my lumberjack shirt for the final time complete with concrete.

The Long Good Friday

2009-04-11T17:09:00.002+01:00

We’ve started to build me a new studio, though at the moment Ben is insisting on referring to it as a shed. The purpose of this is to house my new and bigger printing press and also to give me a warmer, drier place for my papers and inks.

Easter is our traditional time for large and difficult outdoor projects and it is also traditional that the weather should be as vile as possible. Appropriately we spent yesterday and this morning in miserable drizzle enlivened by bouts of heavy downpour. The studio will be at the bottom of our garden and on a patch of ground that slopes away fairly steeply. This means that the base frame is on the ground at one corner and the rest of it, like the fairground rides of my youth, is balanced level on bits of plank and shims. To my eye it looks totally off kilter, though the spirit levels tell it differently. Either way it’s a done deal as we have just finished filling the shuttering with concrete where the press will stand.

The experts told us that we needed a pad about 10cm deep for stability. Thanks to our sloping garden and the fact that the press has to go at the low corner, we have a pad 50cm deep by 1.2m wide by 2.2m long. That’s an awful lot of stuff to shovel, mix and pour. By mid afternoon yesterday I was beginning to have a grudging admiration for anyone prepared to hide a body in concrete. By late afternoon I was thinking of calling the police and confessing anyway in the hopes of a nice sit down in a warm incident room. Now it is done and I suggested to Ben that we add our initials ‘Better not’ he said ‘I don’t want anyone to know it was us…’

Oscars

2009-04-01T08:16:00.006+01:00

These blogs have always been intended as a sort of journal to keep you readers informed and entertained about my enamel project. This bit is different: it's a thank you letter and I make no apology for the fact that it may only make sense to those thanked. If you want to jolly it up a bit, think of it as a sort of speech from the Oscars - all arc lamps and red carpet. I'll have clean hair and a long gown (as opposed to a mere dress) to replace the jeans and enamel dust combo while you're at it...

There are lots of official thank yous to say now that I have painted my last panel and everything is being installed. That I will do at the proper launch party on 23rd April. This is the personal thanks to the men on the shop floor at Wells who made it all fun rather than work and made me feel an insider rather than a visitor.

Thank you to Ian, Michael and the team of printers who mixed my inks and handed out the many, many miles of masking tape, who kept me in propane gas for my drying shed and never seemed to mind that I couldn't get my head around how to change cylinders (a quick thanks here too for maintenance who checked the workings of the shed, and possibly me, out regularly and fixed my slack electrodes). Thanks to Paul and Andy for thinking of using clamps to hold up curved panels for me -pity we only came up with that idea at the eleventh hour eh?

Thank you to Guy and Darren who worked out schedules for firing and fitted me in among the many demands for furnace time. Darren especially for smiling at me and accommodating my needs when I am sure he'd rather have given me a smack!

Thank you to Greg, Dave, Julian and the team in metal work who cut and folded the mild steel into panels and pulled several stops out along the way to get me panels at short notice. Also for doing such a fabulous job on the ventilation panels, turning my artwork into cut screens which look wonderful. These guys were my climate control and opened or closed their delivery bay doors to keep me cool/warm as required - a kind thought that was much needed and appreciated.

Thank you to Dave, Colin, Kiran and Edward in dispatch who were responsible for making sense of my panel numbers, backing them with heavy concrete based board and packing them onto pallets for delivery in the right order. Given that they had to work with my numbers and two changing sets of factory panel numbers, which I in turn had to remember to scratch onto the side of my enamels daily, they did a fantastic job. Though I could have done without Andrew telling me I'd got section D's doors the wrong way around an hour before I was leaving for the final time (I hadn't). I should also thank Kiran for referring to my husband of over twenty years as my boyfriend which made us both feel all young again!

Thank you to Richard and Dangerous Dave who are two of life's real gentlemen. I'm not sure why Dave has that nickname though I did put him in considerable danger once by cutting the wrong set of cable ties holding two panels upright and nearly squashing him. Dave also kitted me out in Well's capsule collection of fashion for the discerning enameller which made me feel like one of the guys (literally).

Thank you to all the guys who sprayed the panels for me. This is a scarily demanding process involving spraying on ground coat and then top coat in smooth and accurate layers to provide me with a pure 'canvas' for my work. I hadn't realised how demanding until I watched the furnace man checking for consistent thickness with a digital device. Interestingly different sprayers prefer different consistencies of enamel for their work and so have it mixed individually - to me it all looks like pancake batter.

Thank you to George and Dave Staff who were generally around and good mates. George mixes colour to match a client's requirements. If you want a bespoke Aga in the same blue as your great aunt's Staffordshire tea service, George is the guy who'll write the pigment recipe for you and by eye alone. Dave has been an all round star, endlessly helpful and kind even though he works terrifying shifts and never seems to sleep. I have just about forgiven him for producing pictures of himself and his family whooping it up in Cuba to taunt me in the pre-dawn of a freezing, raining January day...

Lastly my thanks to Colin and Kevin. I think in one of my first blogs I referred to them as my new best friends. I hadn't realised it at the time, but that is exactly what they turned out to be. Between them both they made me feel that anything was pretty much possible. They made me laugh when things were bad, assumed I would triumph on mornings when I couldn't think how to manage, picked me up, dusted me off and set me going again more times than I care to remember. Colin is an absolute expert in enamel and always took the time to take my questions seriously, getting me out of several technical holes and saving us all the bother of making new panels by fixing various glitches as we went along. Kev was my furnace man, firing all of my work with meticulous care, seeing to it that no panel went into the furnace until it was cleared of my numerous and grubby finger prints, splashes and splots, building improvised jigs for the successful firing of tricky curved panels and generally working miracles.

I hope I haven't forgotten anyone or messed the names up - I was tempted just to refer to everyone as 'Dave' as that seems universal. Either way I am very grateful. It was a privilege and pleasure to work with everyone and I'd do it all again like a shot.

Let them eat cake

2009-03-17T09:57:00.002Z

I suddenly find that I am returning to the factory tomorrow for my last week of the project. The short notice was a result of the sudden end of a long saga concerning the making of various sets of doors. These are intended to fit seamlessly into the enamel landscapes without so much as a wobble in the plough lines and their creation has been tense and complicated. For my part I have left door sized cardboard patterns at Wells with aligned drawings waiting to be transferred across, let's hope everyone's read the 'Do not throw away!!!' messages.

Short notice when you have two jobs means a fast bit of juggling and the calling in of favours along the lines of the Godfather. Fortunately, like most women, I worked through my son's infancy so have had the practice. The difficult bit is the cake issue. This is the last visit, ergo I must give everybody cake on the Thursday before I leave. I've learnt enough about factory life to know that milestone events are marked in simple carbohydrate and I have no intention of disrupting the pattern. The only answer is to pack up a kit like I used to for school domestic science, but on a big scale and bake on the island having first done the egg, flour, butter maths.

It's a bit of treat really: I like baking cakes, but don't do it often. The dispiriting problem is that my son finally confessed that he 'doesn't really like cake much' and there's no point being a domestic goddess when your audience consists of a confirmed atheist. In fact I now know that he used to sell my cake when he was at school (banana bread made the best profit at £1 a slice which seems extortionate since he wasn't providing a squashy leather sofa and caramel latte on the side). So now I will flex my baker's muscles and set off tomorrow with the cake tins and vanilla along with projector and templates.

Press

2009-03-11T13:02:00.004Z

Since this enamel project began I have been promising myself a holiday at the end of it and now, like Jack with his Beanstalk, I have just swapped Nirvana for hard work. While I may not have to fight vertigo and a cross giant, I will have to forgo two weeks of drifting about Sicily wearing Ray-Bans and a series of flimsy dresses for digging footings and shifting hard core.

We went to a party where a friend of a friend idly mentioned that she worked in a school with a printing press and they were toying with the idea of selling it, but that it was 'a bit big'. We did some swift research and discovered that the press was a) an Albion made in 1851 b) perfect apart from needing a duster and c) affordable. The chances of this happening in the real world are about the same as being paid good money by a County Council to create a landmark artwork when they, you and the manufacturers have no idea how, or even if, it will work: ridiculous even to imagine.

So we bought it and that was the cheap part. Moving it from Barnet to Buckinghamshire involves hiring the services of experts in moving printing presses. The good bit is that they too are based in Barnet, the bad bit is the cost. Looking at their quote I can only assume that they will be flying in the brightest and the best of the Sherpas from Everest Base Camp, wrapping our press in several protective layers of hand beaten gold and conveying the whole thing to Buckinghamshire with a full military escort. To be fair, the press is about 2m high and must weigh well over a ton, is made of cast iron and will smash like an irreplaceable dry biscuit if dropped. It will also need to be installed, aligned and made to work in mysterious ways before I can use it.

Oh and we have to build a new studio big enough to house it...

So the holiday plans went early on and probably the holiday after that too. But it really is OK as the press is a far better thing than a suntan and I'll find time to paddle on the beach at Sandown - the holiday equivalent of a power nap - when I go to the factory for my final few days.

Hard Day's Night

2009-02-03T16:58:00.004Z

Last week at the factory I did a few 5am starts. People were impressed to varying degrees about this: my teenage son refused to believe that it was possible to get up at 4am with the intention of working, though obviously it's fine for him to come home at 4am with the intention of sleeping. My London friends were all horrified and obviously have visions of Wells as some sort of throwback to the early industrial revolution - all soot and brimstone with small children forced to shovel coal into furnace mouths through the night. To the guys at Wells it's no big deal: 3am is the early start. The only person who seemed in any doubt there was Lucy the printer who confessed to me in low voice that she didn't think it was entirely 'normal' to get up and still have the moon in the sky. Having done the five until five shift I have to say that I prefer the moon to be at one end of the day or the other, both is a bit much.

I'm not bad at getting up, but the switch from a 6am start to a 4am one did call for an alarm. Fortunately I had the inspired idea of setting my phone to a ring tone so banal and offensive that I was awake in a psychotic rage before I knew it, neatly combining early rising with a full cardio workout. Also fortunately in the quiet factory I was able to work my way down from vile to bad tempered to slightly ratty before anyone much arrived.

The early starts also meant bringing food in with me for various meals. Some people, Colin is a shining example, had things really sussed with stacking tupperware like Japanese bento, taking them through the day in neat courses. I had microwave porridge and an uneasy relationship with the chocolate machine. I work next to the vending machines and there is a steady stream of men who have an entirely guilt free approach: if they want three Mars bars and a packet of Monster Munch for breakfast, they do. I sat around like a large and grubby Miss Muffet with my bowl of porridge wondering if extreme weariness was enough justification for a kitkat. I need to either get over that or get some tupperware: my final week will certainly be more of the same.

Mini and Me

2009-01-22T17:28:00.004Z

Before I head down the A34 to the ferry, as I will be doing shortly, I do a sort of vehicle check on my mini. As I refuse to devote more than two neuron's worth of in-brain space to car maintenance, it does mean learning how to open the bonnet all over again and a few minutes matching the pictures in the manual to the stuff under the hood. This time I'm low on a liquid in a white Tupperware box that balances on the top of the engine which means a trip to buy brake fluid top up apparently. Hopefully insertion will mean nothing more than prising off the snap tight lid and pouring the stuff in. Need someone to develop the necessary processes for getting a landscape off the back of an envelope and onto about 600 square meters of enamel and I'm your woman, but anything car related beyond slopping liquid into various tubes is further than I want to go.

Last time I was down at Wells the furnace man informed me that my car was rubbish* and that all minis have in fact been rubbish since they were made by BMW. This was news to me on several fronts. I should have known about BMW: the fact that I bought the car from a BMW garage could indeed have been a hint, but in the fairyland of my imagination I like to think that the Issigonis grandchildren are overseeing production in a workshop somewhere British and rural. The rubbish bit seems unfair to me, though I agree it would be nice if the boot were designed to hold more than a slim volume of poetry and a lamb cutlet. In its defence, the car is a lovely shade of true red which is rare in car paint, the inside is as pretty and practical as Barbarella's spaceship and, since the car is very short and I am very tall, it fosters the brief illusion that I have the legs of a Thompson gazelle every time I climb out of the driving seat. What mortal woman could ask for more? Well, except for the keys to an eight litre Veyron of course. The minute I have diplomatic immunity and £800,000 to spare that's what I'll be driving.

In the meantime I'll top up my rubbish car's brake fluid, fill up its rubbish boot (and I must agree with you on that one Kev, it is a rubbish boot) along with its rubbish interior and hope that it's rubbish brakes work on the way over to the factory this weekend.

*words have been changed to protect reader's sensibilities.

Show Time

2009-01-16T20:43:00.003Z

I can announce that the first of my panels went up in Aylesbury's Great Western Street last week. I went down at the weekend to have a look. My reaction to seeing a piece of my work slapped five metres high and about thirty six metres long across a public space was essentially English: I found myself doing a sort of dance. You have to understand that this wasn't an American-style high-five air-punching victory dance, it was a sort of hopping shuffle on and off the kerb born of the profound desire for there not to be a fuss. I was pleased; it did and indeed does look pretty damn good (you can check it out on my web site), but it was all a bit much really and could I now be excused to have a cup of tea and a sit down? It turned out that I wasn't to be excused until my husband had taken many, many photographs. It was minus five that day and my embarrassed squirming had turned into a hypothermia avoiding jig before he'd finally finished.

I've been back a few times for a better look and have reached the point of being able to flirt with the idea that it's a fairly big achievement. It's a bit hard to see the art at the moment to be honest: the panels have a blue protective film over their surface and the whole thing is surrounded by scaffolding and a fence covered in strict warnings about hard hats, steel toecaps and who to call with the remaining digits of your right hand in the event of an accident.

It's great to see a whole section in one piece. Anyone who has, like me, spent happy hours with Airfix kits will understand that there's magic in the moment when seemingly entirely unconnected parts of a model all come together (for some reason I had a thing about making bi-planes when I was young, I made lots extremely badly and never painted any, littering my bedroom with pale blue-grey plastic debris). However, there are still gaps and an unfinished section to complete. I met the site manager Derek who is responsible for overseeing the installation of all my panels in Aylesbury and he was extremely keen for the work to progress. He was very nice about it, but I get the message: there's a few dozen men in reflective vests awaiting my finished work and sooner would be better than later love!

Christmas Story

2008-12-26T16:50:00.006Z

The house I rent while I am staying on the Isle of Wight is about a half hour commute from the factory and, since winter came, has been a drive to and fro in the dark. As my last visit coincided with the start of Christmas, there were various displays of lights en route. The garden centre had fairly freaky lights on their conifers which, in combination with my enamel dust filled eyes, danced alarmingly in and out of focus Bridget Riley fashion, causing me to drive past at geriatric speed each night. The real stunner was in Sandown itself. The wattage was so powerful and the combination of religious and festive icons so varied that it was a couple of days before I managed to make out some of the detail.

One of the things I noticed was a giraffe in blue twinkling lights. Now I went to a fairly high church Anglican boarding school and we had plenty of religious instruction. We had our own chapel and in addition to the usual daily assembly service we had evening chapel twice a week, Communion Wednesday crack of dawn, Compline Friday evenings and full services Saturday and Sunday. Come Christmas there were a lot of extra services and I emerged at seventeen with an encyclopaedic knowledge of hymns, ancient if not modern, and a fair grasp of the King James Bible. Nowhere could I place a blue giraffe in the Christmas story and yet I drove past it each evening, large as life and beautifully detailed.

Finally I decided that the thing to do was to go and have a proper look and see if there was some sort of African twinning theme happening. Imagine my utter disappointment when I walked up to the building from a different direction and discovered that my beautiful blue giraffe was in fact just an ordinary tree draped at random with a string of lights, reliant entirely on the angle of the road and the height of my mini to conjure it into life. I thought about this, wasn’t happy and decided that there was a bit of space in the Christmas story for a blue giraffe after all. What if one of the wise men (wiser than the other two and perhaps with kids of his own) realised that no young mum, however inexperienced, would let her infant near frankincense, myrrh or gold pieces so, knowing all babies like bright colours and soft toys, took an extra baby-friendly present in the shape of a blue giraffe?

Listen Again

2008-12-21T16:49:00.005Z

I've never been a fan of rave music to be honest. Actually, if I am entirely honest, I'm not very good on the subject of music at all. I dread the 'what music do you like?' question which usually wipes my mind entirely clean of any music related information. It's not that I don't like music, I do, but I like such a bizarre selection of fragments that it defies band, style or even genre. My brother-in-law and I sat down with as many CDs as we had in the house about a month ago and he complied a play list for me. After a trying few hours he looked at me kindly and said 'You do know it's really only music to do other things to?'. Since he lives in a flat insulated entirely with CDs, I guess that's me categorised: "likes music to do stuff to" which brings me back to rave music.

Thanks to Kev and Dave I have found that the stuff to do to rave music which makes it really, really excellent, is to pitch up in the 4.30am darkness when there's only the three of you awake, the furnaces are welcomingly blistering and getting six panels fired and back is viable before the factory fills up at 7.00am. I should say that I was late, they'd both been in since 3.00am, but I'll try harder next time we get a backlog on my work. It was early enough to make eating rum truffles at 7.45am seem perfectly reasonable, much as the porters in Covent Garden downed early morning pints, but I don't recommend it - it catches up with you later believe me. By 10.00am I'd been at Guy's stash of paracetamol, by 12.00pm I'd scored Pro-Plus pills off Dave and by 2.00pm I was only awake thanks to the sugar rush from a brick sized piece of Colin's birthday cake. I stuck it out until about 5.00pm by which time I was ready to lie face down on any available flat surface which is exactly what I went home and did.

I came home on Saturday on the early ferry clutching a hamper of Island produce courtesy of Wells. Why they should be so kind when I'm well aware that my need for random access to the furnace must make my visits a nightmare to accommodate I'm not sure, but I'm going to enjoy eating the lot. Again Red Funnel came up trumps in the costume department. This time it was a ferry man in full Father Christmas costume with his own lavish beard. As I was climbing back into my car at Southampton I heard the following exchange: small child "Santa, what are you doing on the ferry?" Santa, without hesitation and with exasperation "Nipper, it's my day job. Six more hours of this and I have to get back to the North Pole for the sleigh, so get back in your car and stop bothering me with your questions." Classic.

The Shipping News

2008-12-14T16:49:00.001Z

It’s been a long gap between blogs. That’s because there’s been a long gap between visits to the factory. I am on my way back now, sitting on a fairly empty Red Funnel ferry making valiant efforts to hack into their wireless network. I’m somewhat distracted by a pair of toddler twins sitting on the bench opposite. With exactly matching red hair and blue eyes, they’re both dressed prettily as snowflakes* and are watching me with total fascination (I have had a quick mental review and quite what is so engaging about a woman in a lumberjack shirt tapping on an old laptop is a mystery). It’s getting a bit disturbing to be honest and the temptation to suddenly shout ‘BOO!’ is becoming very tempting. Though there’s something of The Shining about them so perhaps best not…

I was far too early for my ferry today thanks to Tim, my sat nav (Tim was the English voice; Tod was the American who sounded frankly annoying and, being American, unlikely to handle roundabouts and London traffic well). Normally I have a stop before Southampton for a coffee, but today Tim took me on a strange and depressing circuit of Southampton’s suburbs, religiously avoiding anything resembling a coffee or tea shop, tipping me into the ferry terminal an hour and three quarters early. However, I’ve managed to get on the ferry before my booked departure no questions asked. This is an eternal mystery to me. Sometimes, like today, this is completely OK and I’m straight on. At other times asking for early admission is acceptable, but will cost an arm and a leg after a stressful session in the ticket office. Sometimes I’m not even allowed into the ferry port and have to wait in the overflow car park in disgrace. None of this bears any sensible relationship to the number of cars waiting to get on the boat, nor has any Islander been able to explain it. Answers on a postcard please…

*costume and the ferry: last time I crossed it was Halloween and extremely crowded. That time I squashed in with a baby disguised as a pumpkin and five zombies who ate chips with an enthusiasm you wouldn’t expect in people haemorrhaging badly from eyes, nose and mouth.

Changes

2008-11-11T17:39:00.003Z

My mother-in-law has instructed me to write a new blog as she's tired of waiting for an update. Apart from being flattered that she's interested, I think it's fair exchange for lending me her entire kitchen floor as a layout pad, her light box, pencils, pens and oldest son for the day while I designed a new section of landscape for the enamels.

When this project started, I thought I had things stitched up - all the panels designed, planned, consigned to individual template sheets and ready for production - I'd been two years in the preparation after all. You can tell it's my first public art project and I have stumbled into it a complete innocent as it has now become obvious that lots can change, change and change again.

The main change has been in the actual contours of the cladding: what used to be areas of smooth curves now have doglegs and bends, doors and differing levels. While I have the comparatively easy task of redesigning a few areas of artwork, it's the project managers, steel workers, sprayers and furnace men that have had to get their heads and the sheet metal around these new curves and bends. For them this has meant building jigs and special firing platforms, making doors for the first time ever and generally going about things in entirely new ways.

If you see this finished artwork in all its glory, take some time to look at the panels themselves and their construction - there's an awful lot of thought, invention and cooperation in them which is just as skilful and, in its way, creative as anything I've done for this project.

Shimmy

2008-10-24T12:33:00.003+01:00

I have a promotion of sorts here at the factory: Kevin and Colin have decided to let me take my own artwork to and from the furnace, something which has previously been done by Dave (Dave is now holidaying in Cuba where I would like to think he is sipping lush cocktails and enjoying the odd cigar with his wife-to-be). The promotion comes in the form of trusting me to manage the journey without disaster.

To remind you, I have my six precious custom-made metal trolleys for moving my work. These fit the 1.2m x 2.4m panels and are pretty solid. They are fine for swinging about in my studio space, but are singularly dodgy for travelling. To get a panel to the furnace, I have to weave it past other work which is stacked at random angles almost everywhere. There is nothing better designed to chip enamel than more enamel on the move: it is fragile stuff until it it safely installed. Add to that the problem that the stacks of other work (which can range from Aga tops to Boris Johnson's 'Don't drink on the Underground' signs) are balanced on trolleys made up of slats of metal effectively little more than stacks of knife blades on edge and you can see why Colin and Kevin are being so brave in letting me do this.

Progress is very slow and, compared to the men, I am painfully cautious. Even so I managed to knock a panel badly (much laughing and thankfully it was a dud one which I have suspicions may have been left especially balanced to hone my skills). The lift is particularly difficult, Kev manages to exit controlling a full trolley with a flick of the wrist at speed. I can only manage it by backing out bottom first, freeing the trolley with a sort of full on Josephine Baker shimmy.

Hmm, call me slow on the uptake, but it occurs to me now I write this that I may just have worked out exactly why I've got the promotion and why everyone's being so very patient about it...

Blue Sky Thinking

2008-10-09T17:11:00.002+01:00

I was interviewed for the local Isle of Wight radio yesterday along with the management. The man who turned up was very kind, while he couldn't be expected to be as absolutely charmed by enamel as I am, at least he was absolutely charming about it. All went well except that he asked one fatal question which went something like 'and how do you know you've got it right?'. I laughed in the slightly maniacal tone often favoured by Joyce Grenfell and explained that the dispatch guys checked every panel for alignment and colour before they were sent up to Aylesbury.

So with the dispatch team watching my back all should be well, but after the interview I got to thinking about the day's six panels. As I said before, the six panel waltz is best taken as it comes. I have done an awful lot of planning and preparation, I do check constantly for alignment and colour, but I don't think about the whole thing all at once, not until yesterday at least. Trying to take a considered overview of the situation when some were done, some downstairs, some half painted and one still propped up against the wall was silly - but it was a desperate and long few minutes while I stared at what I had, thinking that it couldn't possibly all be right. Then I realised that I was looking at a couple upside down and sanity was restored.

Trouble is that the sky in my pictures can as easily be at the bottom as at the top and, like most normal people, I'd failed to take that into account while panicking. I should explain that I see landscapes pretty much as a series of appealing shapes which lock together in a patchwork. Sky is useful as a backing cloth to hold the pieces together and, as such, can logically be as good below the landscape as above it. At least I've stuck to blue sky for this project: that's not always the case in my prints, but I figured that the townspeople of Aylesbury are in for a big enough shock as it is...

Metamorphosis

2008-09-29T11:20:00.004+01:00

I've been pondering a comment from one of the senior management which followed my brief appearance in a pretty skirt and top, neither of which were caked in my usual appealing mix of enamel dust, solvent and paint. He started and said 'Oh so you can look like a lady!'. Maybe I think about these things too much - ten hours a day doubled over mild steel will do that to you - but I'm amused that I only look 'like' a lady even when I'm giving it my best shot and also that I'm obviously so irredeemably vile the rest of the time that it's a shock to see me presentable...

Truth is that I do have a Jekyll and Hyde relationship with my appearance at the moment. Part of the time I am unapologetically Mrs Hyde, prowling the factory floor in my three for a fiver t-shirts, feet in filthy trainers, all mad hair and caked fingernails. At other times I am Doctor Jekyll in the shape of an arts consultant for Wycombe County Council. The job entails charming the business community into working with artists and for this I have to look more business than artist: tidy and glossy, all briefcase and heels.

Every time I come home there's a scuffle to switch roles. This extends to my laptop, mobile and diary, all of which have to be cleaned of incriminating grime and fingerprints. I quite like the switch, enjoying the clean white shirts and dust free internet access. I do notice however that I slip more comfortably back into my factory persona, it is, I admit, my more natural habitat. So you were right Andy: I can look like a lady, given access to the showers and a scrubbing brush, but it doesn't mean I am one...

sticky stuff

2008-09-23T15:27:00.003+01:00

Since everyone is handing out financial advice these days, I feel obliged to pass an insider tip - buy 3M shares and buy them now! I am walloping through their masking tape at such profligate speed that I predict a massive upswing in their market share. I use the masking tape as a kind of stencil which allows me to bump a wet colour up against a dry colour without needing it fired first. This speeds things up enormously and also cuts down on the expensive end of the equation which comes in the shape of Kevin and his fiery furnace.

We bought our first flat back in the eighties which, for those of you who remember, was a time of burgeoning enthusiasm for paint effects. I think I did them all: ragging, rolling, stippling, sponging and stencilling which, given the size of the flat, was possibly a mistake. I used masking tape a lot back then, but never on this titanic scale. Mercifully enamel behaves immaculately in conjunction with the tape: it doesn't bleed or lift or flake which gives me a clean separation every time. Considering that this is big, wide masking tape for the working man (none of that girly low-tack designed-to-go-round-corners TV makeover style nonsense here) it's a miracle for which I give daily thanks.

I also have my own wheelie bin for masking tape disposal. By the time I throw it away it is coated in wet paint and swiftly fills the bin with multicoloured loops. This loose mass can be repeatedly packed down into a pleasingly small lump. This it is best done with due care when the factory floor is empty. The first time I decided to have a go the bin was half full and I enthusiastically leant in and pushed it down with my hands, totally underestimating the slick wetness of the enamel, the stickiness of the tape, the height of the bin and the lack of my balance. You can see why I am an artist and not a physicist, though I could probably have sold the idea to the Arts Council as a performance piece guaranteed to leave the audience with a memorable and amusing impression.

BBC

2008-09-15T17:42:00.003+01:00

One of the things about being on the Isle of Wight alone is that, come the evening, I have to rely on broadcast media for company. I have forged a new relationship with Radio Four's listen again facility and now take the laptop into the bathroom for a swift half hour's entertainment while soaking away the day's grime. I have a great fondness for Dixon of Dock Green, although the acoustics on my laptop reveal that the programme, as is the case with many others, is recorded from the interior of an empty catering sized tin can (one can only imagine pineapple chunks for the DG's lunch). I think that the sound system on the laptop may be helping with this impression. It's not the fanciest of machines and came second hand from my brother who kindly 'altered the programming to something more primitive' for me. However it works fine when I drag my knuckles over the keyboard and as long as I can hear George Dixon clouting the odd youth on the back of the head I'm happy.

I have a rather anxious relationship with the TV as it has a sort of sat-top-free-box thing which is not at all the same as our Sky Box. My ignorance is largely to do with impatience and total disinterest in any form of instructions. Interestingly, while I loathe people who shout loudly in English at foreigners, I am perfectly happy to do the digital equivalent by hitting buttons at random asking the screen why it isn't working in ever more excited tones. The other night I gave up and watched Eastenders in a torpor, ignoring the fact that I had no idea who was who or what was what. I was once an avid watcher, but in my day there was Dirty Den whispering evil nothings from the side of his sneering mouth while A-nge registered wronged wife at the upper end of the Richter scale in purple satin self stripe. The only things I concluded from the recent episode were that Albert Square's housing still packs unfeasibly huge families into all too believablely small terraces, that the cast fails to learn from the lessons of history and remains about to get married or murdered, and that jobs are eternally passed around like babies with a 'mind the caff' or 'look after me stall' as nobody ever, ever just gets on with their work. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

Talking dirty

2008-09-05T09:35:00.003+01:00

Enamel is a dirty business. Mainly it's dust that's the problem and I think I probably raise more dust in my bit of the factory than the rest of the printers put together. Part of my work is to free-hand draw though the enamel to give the landscape life and interest. I can do this because the wet enamel, after fifteen minutes in my dryer, comes out as a hard powder coat which is perfect for scratching through with a wooden tool (have a look at this on my web site).

The down side of all this creativity is the gritty muck that coats me daily from head to foot. As it's a landscape it is unfortunately mostly green dust. The general effect is not so much Incredible Hulk as 'exhausted woman in the late stages of consumption' leading to kind enquiries from Kev and Colin about my state of health. 'Oh you do look tired' are dread words for any forty something woman to hear; we're all supposed to be clear, satin-faced beauties 'because we're worth it'. Right - try that in an enamel factory Claudia.

Yesterday for variation I scratched out a big stand of autumn trees which gave my face a coat of orange. I could have been Dale Winton's sister, though in matt obviously rather than the gloss finish favoured by Dale himself.

The other thing about this dust is that it works its way all over. Those of us less favoured in the bust department will have suffered the advice that 'clever shading can enhance the cleavage' (not something I have ever cared to believe). By the time I get home for a bath, the enamel has worked its magic and it looks for all the world as though an overly optimistic makeup artist has attempted to give me the boobs of Dolly Parton by trompe l'oeil alone.

Chicken Hands

2008-09-01T13:02:00.001+01:00

I thought enamel would be bound to do for my hands. At the start of the project one of the managers pressed large black rubber gloves on me along with a big tube of barrier cream. I was grateful and they have sat in silent reproach on a shelf ever since. The good news is that constant exposure to enamel hasn’t resulted in any effect whatsoever. My hands are fine, as my hands go, but then they were done for long ago.

My son met me coming in one day a few years back from winter digging the vegetable beds. I was cold and tired and horribly muddy and was grateful for his look of concern. I went so far as to imagine the steaming cup of tea which would doubtless result from his anxiety. However, after examining me intently for a few moments, he looked me in the eye and said ‘Ugh! Your hands look just like chicken feet’ and then departed repelled.

He’s absolutely right, I babysat my sister’s chickens recently and I checked. The price I guess for never bothering with gloves for anything from shovelling gravel to fishing etching plates out of acid.

Enamel is the most extraordinary stuff, quite aside from being reasonably hand friendly. The more I work with it, the more I want to experiment. It has aspects of printmaking in its application which makes it user-friendly for me, but it has the sensitivity and luminosity of watercolour. The slightest overlap or variation in thickness is apparent and its delicacy a challenge. I think it would lend itself marvellously to seascapes which I am thinking about for the first time (helps being on a small island) but not for this project. Sadly Aylesbury Vale is as far from the sea as anywhere in England.

Sleep

2008-08-26T16:24:00.002+01:00

It's my first day of a new shift and I didn't get much sleep last night.

I do tend to go through periodic bouts of insomnia which I accept with the help of cups of tea and the extraordinary offerings of late night satellite TV. The delight of my cat helps: he embraces my three am arrival with all the enthusiasm of an Enid Blighton school child. 'Crickey! A midnight feast! Ripping, let's open the sardines and condensed milk!!'

Last night I was woken up by a fight outside, I think in Polish. I had a look and was horrified to see two huge skinheads towering over a tiny girl. After an anxious moment during which I ran through all the things in the rented house I could use for hitting (nothing much except my heavy set of template drawings) it became clear that the men were getting the worst of it. I'm no expert in body language, but I've read enough Desmond Morris to see that whatever these guys had done, it wasn't big, it wasn't clever and their sister (?) was considering writing home to mama in painful detail. The men waved their hands about in appeasing gestures and shuffled from one foot to the other until things calmed down. They were then permitted to get into a pimped red hatchback which they drove away very slowly and very quietly. The girl dusted her hands together, something I thought people only did in bad films, and went inside.

I didn't really mind waking up for that, it was great. Besides I slept on the ferry coming over. I may not sleep at night, but there's something about Red Funnel ferries that knocks me out cold every time. I slept through screaming kids and yelling parents on a ferry so crowded that I had to fold up small to share my bench with two grannies and their packamac collection. When I woke up one said to me 'I expect you're tired dear, a nice rest on the Island will do you good'. Yeah, right.

The Colour Purple

2008-08-24T17:58:00.004+01:00

I should say, before I go anywhere at all with this, that I am no expert in enamel and its various properties. I could have done my homework on the net and filled you in on the technical stuff, but I had a bubble bath instead. Doubtless there will soon be a waterproof laptop and then you'll be better informed.

I am working with enamel in a liquid paint form. It comes in various types for spraying, silk screen printing and painting. Most of my colours I apply to the panels with a roller and for this the enamel is mixed to emulsion paint consistency. (I was going to refer to cream here, but cream seems to get thicker and thicker these days. M&S 'not just' double cream being more like clotted cream and their clotted cream presumably solid as a house brick).

I chose the colours for this project sat under a borrowed street light with a newly bought and heart stoppingly expensive pantone chart. Great Western Street is to be lit with elegant white light from liquid halide lamps and I decided on the colours to work accordingly. The lighting company then took back the light, which I quite fancied for my studio, which was a pity. Even more of a pity is that nobody will take back the pantone chart - it would have almost funded a weekend in Paris.

Printer Lucy mixed the twenty chosen from an engaging mix of stock London Underground colours and pantone bases. I can tell you now that all the rape fields are pure Circle Line yellow and as the artist, concede that this is a subtle but considered interplay on the urban and rural within my work (or perhaps not). The colours go on one colour, dry to another, fire to a third and cool to a fourth. This kind of painting is not for the faint-hearted: there is no confirmation, other than the pantone number on the roller tray, that I have it right until the fired panel cools from a shimmering purple haze (as was the case when I happened to pass the furnaces last week) to a down to earth ploughed brown. Greens are red, pink and orange at heat. I have yet to see what red or orange do, but I'm sure it'll be worth watching.

Meals for One

2008-08-19T11:50:00.004+01:00

Up until now I have never had much need to cater for one. Even as a student I was cooked for as part of my halls of residence deal. Bizarrely (we are talking Aberystwyth I'll admit) I was stuck on a campus populated with librarianship students and boys from the surrounding hill farms, sent down by their parents for a bit of taming and a diploma in animal husbandry. It wasn't a marriage made in heaven and led to much shrieking by the librarians as they found dead lambs in their baths and their carpets doused in slurry. Sadly no one ever retaliated by balancing Library of Congress indexes on the tops of barn doors or stamping 'overdue' on the pregnant cows, but the food was good and aimed at the farmers.

Later I shared a house with three Northern vegetarians. They didn't like me much: I was from the south, my dad wasn't a miner or steel worker and I came from public school. To maintain the status quo I became vegetarian and shared cooking. It was OK until things in the house got so silently aggressive that I had to make a small stand. I went out to the butcher and bought a bloody and substantial ox tail and slow cooked it in Guinness with herbs and dumplings, moving on later to rabbit pie, pig's trotters and chicken livers. I was tempted by the thought of a pig's head, but the oven was too small. The vegetarians were livid, but hey, what could they do? Funnily enough they all forgave my soft southern ways around the time they left college and wanted jobs and accommodation in London.

I've not really got the energy or the need for retaliation cooking while on the island. I certainly haven't got the time for the slow cooking of slightly controversial cuts of meat. No, after a long shift at the factory heaving mild steel and sweating in the heat of the furnace, I'll be coming home to a veg based stir fry. Oh how my old flat mates would be proud...

Can you see what it is yet?

2008-08-16T15:01:00.001+01:00

The answer to that, when it comes to this project, is nope, not a chance. We don’t even get to see the daily six panels en masse. The constant dance of painting, drying, trips down and back to the furnace and the need for space mean that the panels, like men on the swing shift, cross paths but never manage to all get together at the same time. There’s the odd tantalizing glance (we managed five together on the first day which you can see on my web site), but that’s it.

I console myself, slightly, with the thought that I will eventually get to see the whole picture. I read once that tapestry weavers in Bruges would weave huge scenes in narrow strips and send them away to be sewn together and shipped, presumably never seeing the result of their labours. Perhaps they didn’t mind their disconnected maidens and unicorns, but I care very much about my fields!

It’s been a successful week all in all. I’ve lost the ‘first day at school’ feeling now that I can find my way about (sort of, though I still find myself confused by downstairs which is a bit dim given that there are two furnaces the size of Luton transit vans for orientation) and everyone has been very welcoming. The only disappointing thing really has been to learn how pathetic my endurance is: I’m in by seven thirty feeling virtuous, trolley Dave has been in since three am; I’m one of a pair lifting the big steel panels and Colin tells me that when he’s spraying them with the initial coating, he lifts them with his fingertips to avoid smudging the wet enamel. I have a horrible feeling that I’m going to find out that one of the guys in dispatch is a Turner Prize winner on the side…

Some like it Hot

2008-08-13T16:26:00.002+01:00

One of the senior men at Wells said to me yesterday that he hoped my time with them would be a pleasant journey. It was a kind thought and conjured up an appealing image of a leisurely drive through the Cotswolds with plenty of stops for tea and antique shops. In actuality the last few days have been like finding myself at the wheel of a Bugatti in the middle of Le Mans - the chance of a lifetime and pretty terrifying.

I am working on six panels a day. The furnaces need a constant feed of work and the best way to deliver that is to work on several pieces all at once so they can be coming and going. Coordinating this is a bit like reversing a car - fine if you don't stop and think too hard or have your dad mouthing instructions through the windshield. I won't bore you with the details here as it's all on my web site, but suffice it to say that it is best done on the hoof. I did try to plan it out on the evening before my first day, but that only resulted in a strong desire to get back on the ferry and sail away again. (If you do check out my site I apologise for how I look. I began with good intentions, nicely brushed hair and make up. Now it's day three and you're lucky I've managed to change my t-shirt.)

I have two new best friends in the shape of Kevin and Colin who run the furnaces. I'd like to say we're a great team, but I think I'm getting an easy ride on the back of their experience. They work in startlingly hot conditions, Colin with music as loud as the furnaces are blistering, and seem totally impervious and cheerful. Conversely I am rendered unattractively pink and shiny by my drying shed which I am told is 'not hot enough to do anything serious'. I am also greatly indebted to Dave who ferries everything down to the furnaces on my six metal trolleys. Trolleys are in short supply and Kevin warned me to label mine. In fact I grow increasingly possessive and now feel like I've adopted six metal children, worrying about their welfare and safe return whenever they leave home.

Beverage Report

2008-08-04T15:45:00.002+01:00

As the artist in residence at AJ Wells I have a designated 'area'. It's a bit of factory floor next to the canteen. Actually it's a very big bit of floor, nicely situated by the ladies loo and the coffee machine. It's great and I look forward to filling it with Radio Four. I especially like the idea that Woman's Hour will infiltrate the blokey workforce: I picture the furnace man saying to his wife 'Need a new peg bag love? I hear Kath Kidson's big on polka dots this season.'
In reality I'm a bit out of the way and it'll be me and Drama on Four alone as usual.

The coffee machine is another thing altogether - solitude is fine, instant coffee is not. I went out yesterday and bought a nifty mug with built-in caffitiere along with a mini thermos for my cold milk. I hate myself for being so picky, but I blame my childhood. I went to a boarding school where the (instant) coffee came with rules: no coffee for those under fifteen (too much stimulation), coffee once on Wednesdays for over fifteens (milk compulsory) and coffee Tuesdays and Thursdays for the lower sixth by then allowed black. By the upper sixth, about to be launched into coffee drinking careers at the BBC or diplomatic core, coffee every morning at break in any combination with biscuit. I rebelled early on and refused anything to do with instant coffee on the basis that I wouldn't then have to obey any coffee related rules and would also be seen to suffer for my sophisticated tastes. What I actually did was to nick a pint of milk from the staffroom each morning and drink that instead. A couple of weeks into my thieving, the teachers upped their order by a pint and we were all happy until the day I left when they were presumably puzzled by a milk surplus.

I hope Wells will forgive me for spurning the coffee machine. At least I've made my own provisions and they won't have to check their milk crate every morning...

Pens perdu...

2008-07-27T12:05:00.004+01:00

When I started the final phase of this project I bought a box of twelve permanent markers. Now there are six. I am not very happy about this. I should say that these are specially tested (by the Michael the printer at Wells) markers: markers whose ink disappears in the heat of the furnace. Markers that I can draw with on enamel panels in the full confidence that no mark up lines will remain. Markers that will make me look good and furthermore markers that I hunted out on the net and ordered specially.

I accept that all families with kids lose the pen-by-the-phone, the only roll of sellotape on Christmas Eve, the one pair of scissors that actually cut. I know I was guilty myself - I can clearly remember taking my mum's dressmaking shears and (helps if you read this in a rising octave) using them to cut paper...

Trouble is that my son is on his way to being an artist himself so, instead of growing out of pens-by-the-phone and into motorbike parts, he's grown out of biros and into propelling pencils and fine sable brushes. The upshot of this is that he's had half of my boxed, individually wrapped, pristine black markers.

I challenged him about this, waving the rattling box under his nose while carrying on about my 'professionalism' and 'needing these specially for the factory'. He wasn't contrite and said, justifiably, that I'd let him ransack my sewing fabrics for his bookbinding, use my best scalpels and have almost unlimited access to my paper store, so why would he know these pens were off limits? 'Besides' he said reasonably 'I'm very careful with your stuff - I'd never use your dressmaking scissors on paper...'

bucket and spade

2008-07-21T10:10:00.002+01:00

I mentioned my relief in finding a little house to rent in Sandown while I'm staying on the Isle of Wight to a friend who knows the island well. 'Hmmm' he said 'you'll find it a bit bucket and spade...'

This made me think that worryingly he'd somehow overlooked my eight week project to paint a picture longer than one and a half rugby pitches (statistic provided by sport loving friend who tells me the dimensions of my work in relation to various sporting fixtures as they occur to him) and was thinking that, in the manner of all artists, I would dabble with paint on the odd afternoon I could spare from lying down with a glass of absinthe and a distant expression. Or perhaps he simply meant to warn me that I wouldn't be ending every working day by drinking my way around packed bars in a sparkly halter topped micro dress, finishing up dancing in a foam filled club and getting a new tattoo.

Either way, bucket and spade sounds good to me. I'll probably see very little of Sandown beyond the comforts of my rented house with its, thank the Lord, big bath and comfy bed, but it'll be good to know that, if only I had the time, I could sit behind a striped windbreak, suck on a strawberry mivvie and contemplate the final additions to my sandy replica of the Sagrada Familia.

The Blog Begins

2008-07-19T15:25:00.006+01:00

Now that the enamel panels are in production and there's an ever growing stack of blanks awaiting my attention it is time to start the blog.

I will be working on the first section of the street very shortly. My husband Ben will come with me to the Isle of Wight to help set up the projector (I'm transferring the drawings on to each panel from individual jpegs) as well as taking some pictures which we will post here. He also plans to get in some cycling and perhaps a paddle on the beach, weather permitting. I will be seeing how much work I can get done per day and should have a better idea of how many weeks work this will entail.

AJ Wells have been great, they do a lot of work with artists, but never before on a project this big and so reliant on one person! They have embraced all the problems that I have thrown at them and come up with solutions. I have a great space to work, my own drying shed (a sort of open sided hut where the wet panels sit in hot air for a while to turn the pigment from thick cream into a hard powder) and some great custom-made steel gurneys so I can move the panels around (possibly these will make their way to the local hospital after the job, very possibly with me lying on one of them in a state of collapse).

We're all very excited and enthusiastic. Good for Buckinghamshire County Council for being brave enough to seek out a local emerging artist and to give me such an astonishingly huge blank canvas...