Up until now my work has often been quite literal – forms are easily identified, stories are quickly understood. The experimental nature of Handshake has presented me with an opportunity to push myself into a different kind of outcome. I want to find a way to make things that can elicit rather than be explicit.
So, I have been trying something new. My mentor, the wonderfully perceptive Catherine Truman, suggested I have a go at a different way of working. Instead of jumping in with both feet, holding my breath and hoping for the best (which is my standard modus operandi), she suggested I try to slow my thinking and making down, focussing on separate elements in the creative process and giving my work time to develop.
This is scary.
How will my hands cope with being still while my head runs with ideas? How can this work for me? Everything needs to feed of everything else, doesn’t it? What if it leads nowhere, leaving me with exhibition deadlines on the horizon and no actual work to show? Pushing all these fears to the back of my mind, trusting in the process and Catherine’s suggestions, I began.
First with my head.
I needed to allow my head to stretch, to explore new concepts.
I have discovered that my best thinking is achieved when my body is otherwise engaged, preferably in a repetitive, non-intellectual task. Often the addition of loud music pumping though my head also helps. My morning runs, driving the car, walking the dogs, making dinner…all these seem to promote the generation of random, previously elusive thoughts. The monotonous plodding of exercise and other everyday activities allowing me to discover and connect the space between my thoughts, to release my inner ideas and the cerebral musings usually inaccessible behind the noise. I have been trying to find out if this really is a thing, or just a me thing, and so far Google has not been able to shed light on this beyond WebMD telling me that it is a sure sign of cancer! Whatever it is, it seems to work for me. A new clarity of thought and idea-generation coming from a state of wakeful rest or exercise induced meditation.
Whenever a thought came to me, I wrote it down on a post it. I now carry these around everywhere I go. Whether it is just a word, an observation, a feeling, a question, or a more detailed consideration, I wrote it down.
I arranged these ideas on my wall…categorised, one leading to the next, a constantly moving and growing collection of vague plans and random ramblings. As I looked more closely at these, I began to see patterns. I edited, I regrouped, I re-evaluated. Ideas flowed off one another, it is starting to make sense and a direction is opening up.
Now, after months of thinking, writing, and arranging, I have begun to engage my hands…