“When you start working, everybody is in your studio – the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas – all are there. But as you continue working, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave.”
– John cage, American musician
These are opening lines from the first of three sessions with mentor Iris Bodomer leading up to our group exhibition in November. How quickly she has managed to get to the essence of what making is. The state of flow I aspire to when I work. The reason I am a maker.
In contrast to Estella’s workshops, focussed on making, Iris discusses ideas of what art and making means. In order to use our brief time to its fullest I sent my questions to her before our meeting. This allowed for responses in the form of quotes, some from a mutual hero Joseph Beuys. Quotes that reminded me of an exercise I did at the start of my last year of training when we were encouraged to talk quietly to our objects and ask them what they needed. To learn to listen. To learn to know that thinking and intuition are not exclusive but that they are related.
It is with these two different approaches that I head into what will now be an intense time of research and making as I aim is to leave myself behind and become fully absorbed in this body of work.