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Autumn already, and for me the start of a new project. I always love starting new things in the Autumn – I’m still tuned into the old school year I suppose, so it seems like the right time to be starting something.
Getting this project off the ground should be easy – I’ve been working with the theme (female magicians) for over a year now, doing research for the book I’m writing – but I have to admit it’s off to kind of a slow start. So far I’ve done one test print just to get some ideas going but there’s a enormous amount of preparatory work to be done before I can really make headway. I’m also using this time to re-examine the way I work, as I’m worried I’ve become too set in my ways and that the end result will suffer and not be as good as it could be. One downside of having become so focused over the past couple of years is that I realise I may not be giving myself any room to explore and experiment. I need to address this before much progress can be made.
I’ve been very lucky this year to have made the acquaintance of some great artists and to have been able to spend a bit of time with them just chatting about work and stuff. It makes a huge difference to my outlook be able to do this. Art is so much about communicating but it’s amazing how little of that actually happens in the day to day life of an artist (at least the ones I know!), especially with other artists. I think this is part of the reason why I love printmaking so much – because of the workshop and being around other people making work and getting to see what they’re doing. I love it.
Recently I got to meet up with Roxana Halls again and to see her amazing studio in London. It’s in the disused bar of an old theatre that has been a bingo hall for many years. The room is enormous – it makes my studio look like a store cupboard – and still has the actual wooden bar stretching along one side of it. It’s full of books and all the materials that she works with and lots of wonderful weird things (I got to see some the sets that she built for her series of paintings Tingle Tangle which are basically works of art in their own right). Seeing other people’s studios is such a rare treat, and this one is really quite special. As if that wasn’t enough, another treat that day was to meet Roxana’s friend, the extremely talented Frances Borden. As luck would have it she had some of her work there with her and I had a chance to have a look (I had already seen photos of her work but not first hand) and I thought it was beautiful and genuine; she has such a wonderfully intimate style.
Talking of talented friends, today is a momentous day as the lovely Nova Ren Suma’s book Dani Noir officially comes out in America (available on Amazon and in book shops) and I’m so proud of her as this is her first published novel – although she has ghost written loads of them. I’ve known her for many years and I’m just extremely excited for her, as well as being excited to read it myself when it comes out here.
Cover from Dani Noir by Nova Ren Suma, published by Aladdin / Simon & Schuster
My own work has been released into the wild recently as all fifteen prints from my series A Sage of the Stage, not a Beast in a Cage are currently very far from home, up in Thurso on the northern tip of mainland Scotland as part of a magic themed touring exhibition organised by Highland Council. I wish I could go up there and see the exhibition as I’d love to visit that part of the country but unfortunately I can’t. I will however, go and see it when it makes its way to Inverness in November where the show will be at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery.
As a result of my solo exhibition in Glasgow over the summer, I’m happy to say I now have gallery representation in that lovely city at the Mansfield Park Gallery. It’s a great little gallery representing some excellent artists so I’m very pleased.
Today I moved out of my large sunny 2nd floor studio overlooking Arthur’s Seat on one side and Portobello on the other, and moved into my new studio on the ground floor of the same building. The new studio, once all of my stuff was in, looked a bit like a store cupboard when I left it this afternoon, rather than a place I’m going to be spending a great deal of time in – but tomorrow it gets a makeover, and I’m feeling really positive about the move (which was for financial reasons) and looking on the bright side: having people around me since it’s a semi-shared space as opposed to the solitude of the old one, having doors direct to the outside world for sunny days, and never again having to cause myself bodily harm hauling framed artworks up and down the stairs whenever I have an exhibition.
The past couple of weeks have been the usual hard work and relentless list ticking off, but a number of nice things have eased the pain. Afternoon tea at the Howard Hotel for my cousin’s 50th birthday, another trip to London and The Magic Circle for research, where I also met up with a magician friend Will Houston (who’s book has just come out) to talk magic history over lunch, the opening of a friend’s exhibition in Glasgow – FeltusFeltus, Domestic Zirkus at the Citizen’s Theatre – which is getting rave reviews and is also showing at the Whitecross Gallery in London, and my own little bit of good news: that I will be showing some pieces from the learned animals series of screenprints A Sage of the Stage, Not a Beast in a Cage at The Magic Circle Collector’s Day in May. I also got to see the invites for my show in August at the Tron Theatre which are looking good.
And something to look forward to this weekend, Hauntings: The Science of Ghosts at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, where amongst other things, stage illusionist Paul Kieve will be talking about staging ghost effects in the theatre – can’t wait!
And as if that weren’t enough, the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album comes out on Monday!
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