Well, I’ve come back from a rather rainy Scotland to a rather rainy Bristol - are we going to get any sort of summer this year, I wonder? I’ve just been out in the garden between showers to re-stake my tomatoes, which were so battered by the recent winds that one of the bamboo canes had snapped completely. There’s still plenty of fruit on my ramshackle three plants although they can’t hold a candle to my dad’s very impressive crop but then he does have two greenhouses full of them!

Scotland was good fun, despite the rain, and I managed to squeeze in some art stuff between all the family commitments. Unfortunately, despite taking my password with me I couldn’t log in to my blog for some reason and had to content myself with taking lots of photos and notes instead.

So here’s the edited version of my week:

Last Wednesday, I met Kate from the Needled blog for a delicious lunch at the Fruitmarket gallery. Meeting her was definitely one of the highlights of my trip; she’s a fascinating and intelligent woman and two and half hours fairly flew by as we discussed everything under the sun.

On Thursday I visited Rosslyn Chapel (warning: link has music). It’s only about 20 miles from my parents’ house but I’d never been before.

Kirsty Hall: Entrance to Rosslyn Chapel, Aug 2008

It’s a stunning medieval church that has been popular for years because of its unusual architecture and disputed Knights Templar associations but interest sky-rocketed after it featured in The Da Vinci Code. Apparently the church used to get about 10,000 visitors a year but got 70,000 visitors in the year the book was published and numbers have remained high since. The Trust that runs the church was initially quite overwhelmed but all the extra visitors mean they can now fund an ambitious conservation programme for this unique and very special building.

Personally I was far more interested in the incredible quality of the ornate carvings than the possibility of the Holy Grail being buried in its crypts! A guide pointed out a lovely little fact to me: the botanical carvings on the outside show the front of leaves, while the carvings on the inside show the backs of leaves - how fantastic is that! Unfortunately you aren’t allowed to take photos inside but the outside is almost as highly decorated as the inside and the protective metal structure that keeps rain off the building means that you can climb up to get a closer look at the wonderful flying buttresses, carved spires and large windows.

Kirsty Hall: Large stained glass window, Rosslyn Chapel, Aug 2008

Kirsty Hall: Flying buttresses, Rosslyn Chapel, Aug 2008

Kirsty Hall: Carvings on spires on Rosslyn Chapel, Aug 2008

The thing that struck me most about the church was the sheer confidence of it. To build such an ornate structure in the war-torn and brutish Scotland of the Middle Ages spoke to me of great power, wealth and artistic vision. I don’t suppose that quality stone workers have ever come cheap and the building took 40 years to build and is absolutely covered with carvings, both inside and out. It really is a remarkable achievement and if you get the chance to visit, you should.

…….

Sadly most of the galleries in Edinburgh were in a changeover week so I didn’t do my usual round of exhibitions but I did manage to see the Tracey Emin retrospective at the Gallery of Modern Art on the Sunday. I’ll do a separate review for that because I have a lot to say about it.

Oh, and my son and I saw The Dark Knight, which we both thought was astounding. All the performances are amazing and although it’s a fast paced action movie, it also raises a lot of questions about loyalty and the meaning of morality. On reflection, it doesn’t completely hold together on certain plot points but it’s well worth seeing.

Right folks, my son and I are off to Yorkshire to visit my brother and his wife for the weekend and then we’re heading up to Scotland to see my parents. I’ll try to update while I’m away but my parents only have dial-up, so posting is likely to be very low key if it happens at all. I’ll be back in ten days.

I won’t be checking email but in the unlikely event that anyone desperately needs to get in touch, leave a comment on here and I should see it.

After saying that I wouldn’t, I got assimilated into the world of Plurk. It’s like a more visual version of Twitter and for some reason the Ravelry knitting crowd have adopted it with great gusto.

I thought I wouldn’t like it but I’m finding it surprisingly addictive; for me it’s a combination of the best bits of Facebook and instant messaging without the disadvantages. I got bored with Facebook because there’s way too much junk on it (as you can tell from this and the last post, I like my internet to be pretty clean and linear) but the ‘Kirsty is…’ box was always my favourite thing about it. Plurk is basically a whole series of ‘Kirsty is…’ boxes without all the crazy requests to join this, that and the next thing. I don’t use any sort of instant messaging service because I absolutely can’t stand being interrupted by little pop-up boxes when I’m working but Plurk feels like an instant messaging service that I control.

If you’re on Plurk, feel free to add me.

And don’t worry, I promise I won’t start writing blog posts in the third person, even though I’ve been thinking in pithy third person sentences for several days now!

I’m a little disturbed that I haven’t posted here since last Tuesday because I could have sworn that I had. I hate it when I start losing time, it usually means that I’m overdoing things a little and falling prey to the brain fog that’s common in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

………..

So, another Tuesday, another look at the concept of mess. I’m considering it from a slightly different angle this week.

DRAWING A LINE IN THE SAND

I had an interesting experience last week: someone contacted me offering to ‘moneterize’* my blog with an advertising link. I politely declined and then got a slightly cheeky email back saying, amongst other things, that ‘it’s just a link’.

But it isn’t just a link.

While I’m flattered to be asked, adding advertising to my site is not something I want to do. One of the reasons my site looks good is because it isn’t covered with too much visual information. This is deliberate choice on my part. I loathe the way places like MySpace look, I find them almost nauseating in their visual clutter and one of the first things I said to my web designer was, “I want my site to be clean.” My designer did a fantastic job making a sleek, beautiful and functional space for me and I do my part by not messing it up!

My site is an area in my life - one of the few - where mess doesn’t randomly proliferate because I have to make a conscious decision to make a mess here; I can’t just randomly wander through, put something down and wander off again. Instead, I resist the temptation to put lots of stuff up on my sidebars. I think long and hard about every single item that goes up there and on occasion I’ve decided not to put up things that might benefit me because I feel that the resulting visual clutter would outweigh the benefits.

Why would I compromise that purity by putting someone else’s advertising on here?

I don’t need advertising on this site, it’s not expensive to run and I consider it part and parcel of the ongoing costs of being an artist. Paying for my hosting once a year is no less important to my art than buying art materials, getting business cards printed or buying art books and magazines for research.

I make no money. In the 5 years since I graduated, I haven’t had to pay taxes once because even when I had a part time job, I’ve never made enough to exceed the personal tax allowance. I survive through the good will of my partner who financially supports me. So you’d think that I’d jump at the chance to get a bit of extra cash.

But there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Having advertising on this site would be messy and I feel that it would compromise my art. I’m not saying that it’s evil to advertise. Every artist must make the decision about whether to accept advertising for themselves. For some artists it might be the right choice. For me, it’s not.

I was trying to pin down exactly why it isn’t right for me when I read this spot-on blog post by Seth Godin last night and had an lightbulb moment. He writes:

Here’s the essential truth:

This is the first mass marketing medium ever that isn’t supported by ads.

If a newspaper, a radio station or a TV station doesn’t please advertisers, it disappears. It exists to make you (the marketer) happy.

That’s the reason the medium (and its rules) exist. To please the advertisers.

But the Net is different.

It wasn’t invented by business people, and it doesn’t exist to help your company make money.

That’s it exactly! My blog does not exist to make YOU money. Heck, it doesn’t even exist to make ME money, although it may well have that effect in the long run. Certainly part of the reason it exists is to increase my profile in the art world and hopefully to garner me real world art opportunities but mostly it exists simply because I like to write, share photos and talk to other interesting artists.

Not everything in the world is for sale and I value having this one clean, controlled space in a mostly messy life far, far more than I’d value a few extra quid in my bank account.

* Incidentally, can we please take the word ‘moneterize’ out back and have it shot!

In fact, all my days are messy.

Kirsty Hall: Messy Altar, July 2008

This is our altar area on the middle floor landing. Spiritual, ain’t it!

It can be a beautiful space but it hasn’t been for months because we were decorating and moving stuff around and somehow this space became a dumping ground. See the lanterns behind the mattress - that’s the remains of the Christmas altar? What month is it again? Oh yes, July…

I suppose I could just leave it there for another 5 months but most years we make a spectacular Halloween altar like this…

Kirsty Hall: My favourite Halloween altar, October 2003

Or this…

Kirsty Hall: A witchy Halloween altar, October 2005

Having stuff piled up in front of this gorgeous window always depresses me a little. Come to think of it, it’s little wonder that my head feels chaotic right now when I literally have An Altar To Mess in my life. I need a pretty summer altar filled with flowers instead.

The bedframe is mine. It was in the room that is now my studio, then it was in another room for a while and now it’s sitting on the landing in bits. I thought about getting rid of it, it seemed the sensible thing to do but I realised last week that I just don’t want to. I want to sleep on it again. It’s MY bed: I have perfect grey flannel sheets for it, a beautiful pale blue duvet cover that I love and although it needs a new mattress, I adore the drama of the bed itself. When it comes right down to it, I’m a Victorian cast-iron kind of girl and why shouldn’t I have the bed I want in my room? So I’ve decided that I’m going to dismantle and get rid of the bed I’m currently sleeping on and reassemble mine instead.

I think maybe I’m not quite getting the point of Messy Tuesdays. At the weekend I cleaned the pile that I showed on my last Messy Tuesday post and I want this mess gone by next week. In fact, I’d like to clear it up right now, but since it’s the middle of the night, that probably wouldn’t make me very popular.

It’s hard for me to accept the fact that I have so much mess in my life. I fight against it. When I see pictures of it, I feel guilty and anxious and want to clear it up instantly even when I know it’s not possible to do so. Unfortunately I’m a perfectionist and a procrastinator; it’s a bad combination! Still, there are plenty more messes to document and I can’t imagine there will ever be a time when my house and life are completely tidy.

Sometimes I come across an artist who’s ploughing very similar ground to me and occasionally I find someone who’s working with the same materials as me. However, I think that Bird Ross and I may actually be sharing a single brain!

I was looking through old copies of Fiberarts Magazine to see if there was anything I needed to photocopy for my sketchbook, when I spotted a small photograph of a ball of knotted string by Ross.

Bird Ross: 6000 Knots

Anxious that I might have accidentally copied her string work when I came up with the idea for 3 Score & 10, I checked the front of the magazine, but it dated from 2005 and a quick search through my sketchbooks revealed that I was already making 3 Score in Jan 2003.

Kirsty Hall: 3 Score & 10

Rather oddly, Ross’ 6000 Project using knotted string was about 9/11, which of course, I’ve also done a series about. Here’s what Ross wrote about her project:

From the four airplanes (266), the confirmed dead (201), the 5422 people still missing and those that died at the Pentagon (188). It equals a little over 6000. As of today 6077. I wanted to know what 6000 looked like. How can anyone possibly imagine what 6000 of anything looks like, let alone people. What would 6000 names struck from the pages of a phonebook look like? What would it look like in terms of their handprints, their footprints, in terms of the number of people that miss them? It’s like nothing we can imagine. This was my attempt to imagine.
18 September 2001

And here’s what I wrote about my 3,533 (Requiem) piece:

I sat in the space and burnt 3,533 matches over the space of four days. This number is the current estimated number of victims of the terrorist attacks. The matches were then laid out so that both the scale of the numbers and the individuality of each match could be seen. The thing that I really couldn’t grasp about the attacks was the sheer scale. I needed to make work that encompassed those numbers and I thought if I could see objects laid out then I might begin to understand the loss involved.

Of course, I’ve never imagined that I was the only artist who took this approach, I’ve seen other 9/11 counting projects; it’s a pretty natural response for visual people trying to get their heads around the scale of something like this. Still, when I went onto Ross’ website and found that as part of her ‘counting the dead’ project she’d also used burnt matches, I was slightly spooked.

Bird Ross: 6000 Matches

Kirsty Hall: 3,533 (Requiem) in progress

Then I spotted her time clock piece and just started laughing because several days ago I wrote in my notebook, “I should get one of those old fashioned work clocks so that I can punch in and out when I’m pinning”.

Oh, and I’ve also had ideas about using layers of sellotape - guess what, so has Ross!

Bird Ross: Wounded

How crazy is this! Bird Ross and I have never met, I wasn’t aware of her work before this and I don’t imagine for one minute that she was aware of mine but we’re clearly tuned into the same art wavelength! I’m sitting here just giggling because it’s so weird.

My favourite piece of hers is this beautiful little folded paper piece called It All Adds Up. It’s clearly a till receipt and since it’s part of the 6000 series, I’m guessing that it’s folded 6000 times.

Bird Ross: It All Adds Up

Isn’t that lovely. I like the way it’s encased in the narrow glass or perspex vitrine, it sets off the piece so well.

Right, I’m just off to check one more time that there are no pins on Ross’ website!

It’s National Shed Week. What, you didn’t know that Britain has a National Shed Week? Shame on you! There’s a blog and everything.

The winner of this year’s best shed competition is Tim, a man who has combined two great British passions to create a Pub Shed.

Images from readersheds.co.uk

This isn’t the only pub shed I’ve heard about; a friend of my mum and dad has a small ‘cricket pavillion’ shed in his garden, complete with beer on tap. And yes, there is also an area to play cricket, although I believe that they often go straight to the beer part. You have to make your own entertainment when you live in a small Scottish village…

There are a ton of other inventive sheds on the shed website. including this fabulous Tardis one.

Image from readersheds.co.uk

In fact, there are so many Tardis sheds that they have their own category. but I particularly like this one because of this quote from the female owner, “I don’t think of it as just a shed - more a David Tennant trap.”

Some of their sheds are a bit posh but as a fan of wabi-sabi, I prefer the more ramshackle versions like this one or this. Some sheds are particularly organic. This one makes me envious - I’d absolutely love it if mine had a living turf roof but it’s pretty far down the list of gardening priorities.

And of course, we can’t talk about sheds without mentioning some art inspired by the humble shed.

I find most traditional shed paintings a little boring but I was quite taken with the naive style of allotment painter, Chris Cyprus.

Simon Thackray’s photograph of his shed door inspired him to start The Shed, an unusual series of music, poetry and art events in his small rural community.

Simon Starling’s Turner Prize winning installation, Shedboatshed started life as a Swiss shed that he turned into a boat.

Image from Tate website, unknown photographer

He sailed the resulting boat containing the remaining shed parts down the Rhine to the venue where he was exhibiting before rebuilding it into a shed. I have to say that the confidence of this project impresses me, I’m not entirely sure I’d want to set sail in anything I’d built! Loathe as I am to link to the Mirror newspaper, this attempt to replicate the project made me laugh.

Cornelia Parker’s famous piece Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View involved the British Army blowing up a garden shed that Parker had filled with a collection of objects sourced from jumble sales, charity shops and the sheds of the artist and her friends. The resulting charred remains were collected and hung around a single light bulb.

Images from Tate website, unknown photographer

Sheds, what’s not to love?

A traditional Devon cream tea…

Kirsty Hall: Cream tea with sweetpeas, July 2008

Kirsty Hall: Scones with clotted cream and jam, July 2008

…on a traditional British summer’s day!

Kirsty Hall: Rainy day, July 2008

Kirsty Hall: Wet chair, July 2008

I’ve been seeing references to Messy Tuesdays for a couple of months now. I thought, ‘hmm, sounds right up my street’ but didn’t follow it up. And then, whilst following a link from the excellent needled blog yesterday, I found the fascinating Felix and discovered that, along with Lara, she was one of the originators of the Messy Tuesdays idea.

Here’s Lara’s post introducing the idea of Messy Tuesday and Felix’s original post, complete with manifesto…

Messy Tuesdays Manifesto:

You are not your flawless surfaces. You are not your orderly laundry-pile. You are not the seamlessness of your Finished Objects. You are not your risen cakes. You are not your sewn-in ends.

Messy Tuesdays seems to have struck a cord with many bloggers. Felix’s post, Mess Is Beautiful has inspired me to order some Toni Morrison from the library. The F-Word addresses the feminist aspects of domestic mess but Penny points out that someone has to clear up. I loved the story behind this box of tangled threads on Practical Polly’s blog. The needled blog celebrates mess while mootthings experience with breeding plant pots will doubtless be familiar to every gardener.

Here’s my contribution to the conversation:

Mess is a vital part of art. Without mess there can be no art. That doesn’t mean that all artists are inherently messy - although many are - just that the creative process itself is not a tidy one. There are wrong turns, false starts, abandoned pieces, 3am ideas scrawled frantically in sketchbooks, creative messes left lying on desks and in corners. Even if you are a tidy artist who puts things away when you’re done, in the midst of creating it’s likely that paint is smeared all over your palette, your pencils are in disarray, fabric pieces are scattered randomly around your sewing machine or you have clay, paint or plaster lodged under your fingernails.

And more than the purely physical mess of creating, there is that singular moment in many art pieces when chaos descends and you can no longer see what it is you are doing. The original purpose gets lost and suddenly there is only messy paint on canvas, confused lines on paper or a hideous lump of clay beneath your hands. This is the point where many people give up, not realising that this moment of sheer chaos is the fertile ground where new art grows. Not all your creative seeds will grow into something wonderful and worthwhile - some just stay messes - but without the courage to step into the messy, uncomfortable, annoying part of the creative process, nothing new will arrive.

I can’t write about Messy Tuesday without spotlighting a mess of my own. Here’s the current state of my bed.

Kirsty Hall: Messy Bed, July 2008

Yes, my bed; the place that all the magazine articles and decluttering books tell you should be a romantic, restful haven. Notice how mine is covered with work instead! Here we have piles of books and magazines that I’m in the midst of reading, a journal, pens, a roll of pencils, several pads of cartridge paper, a pile of finished drawings, a pile of unfinished drawings, drawing board (what, you don’t have a drawing board on your bed?) and lots of lists.

Why don’t I put it all on the floor next to the bed? Er, well, there isn’t room…

Kirsty Hall: Messy Bedroom Floor, July 2008

I will be tidying this soon as it’s getting to the ‘too much on the bed’ stage. That doesn’t mean the bed will be empty when I’m done, just that I’d like to change the sheets before starting a new, fresher pile of work!

On Saturday I was in the mood to take photos so I wandered along a couple of Clifton roads that I haven’t been down in years because although they’re just around the corner, they’re not particularly on the way to anything. Noticing new things in familiar places is one of my favourite things to do.

Late afternoon light and these ornate old windows made for an unusual abstract shot.

Kirsty Hall: Broken Reflection, June 2008

This shot is typical of the things I love to photograph - fragile, battered, ephemeral objects that are still beautiful.

Kirsty Hall: Fallen Flower, June 2008

At first I thought this patchy grey lichen was blobs of chewing gum!

Kirsty Hall: Mottled Wall, June 2008

There’s something pleasingly primal about this silver graffiti.

Kirsty Hall: Silver Man, June 2008

This was my most intriguing discovery.

Kirsty Hall: Commemorative Plaque, June 2008

Ellen Sharples was a miniature and portrait painter working in pastels. Born in Cheshire, she later emigrated to the United States with her artist husband, James Sharples, where she became one of America’s first professional female artists before returning to live in Bristol after her husband’s death.

I’d never heard of the Sharples before but they were apparently quite influential in early American portraiture with James Sharples drawing a famous portrait of Washington in the last year of his presidency. This portrait and others of notable Americans really paid the bills, with both James, Ellen and their children making copies. Although her career involved making copies of her husband’s work on commission, Ellen was obviously quite financially successful because she left £2,000 in her will to help set up the Royal West of England Academy and also donated her private art collection to the new gallery. You can see some of her art here.

Encouraged by her mother, who had advanced views on education for women, Rolinda painted in oils in a variety of genres, including portraiture, Bristol cityscapes and images of contemporary Regency life. She was one of the first British female artists to tackle large crowd scenes, most notably in her paintings of the races on Durdham Downs and the Clifton Assembly Rooms.

So there you go, a little bit of feminist art history right around the corner from me but unnoticed for years.

Because of health issues and poor weather, I haven’t done as much gardening in the last couple of weeks as I’d planned. However, I did manage to finish the bed I was working on.

BEFORE

Kirsty Hall, May 2008

AFTER

Kirsty Hall, June 2008

Isn’t it great how weeks of hard work can be made to look miraculously simple through the wonders of technology!

In fact, it was so magical that I want to do it again…

BEFORE

Kirsty Hall, May 2008

AFTER

Kirsty Hall, June 2008

Big improvement, huh.

As I’ve said before, gardens are a constant work in progress so it’s not exactly ‘finished’. I’m watching it to see what does well this year before moving stuff and tweaking the planting; I’ve already decided I need some taller plants in the middle of the bed and some stuff needs to be closer together. There are also a few annuals that I won’t bother with next year because the slugs liked them too much.

We also harvested the first of our strawberries.

Kirsty Hall: First Homegrown Strawberries, June 2008

The six plants didn’t produce much because they were only planted this year but the dozen berries we got were so delicious that we shared them out gleefully like tiny red treasures.

I was surprised to discover that this tiny geranium cutting had flowered.

Kirsty Hall: Trying Hard, June 2008

I pinched out the buds on the other pots because I want them to be making roots and leaves not flowers but these had already opened and I didn’t have the heart to remove them. I always say that I practise ‘Darwinist Gardening’ because it’s the survival of the fittest around here. I can’t be bothered with plants that need endless fussing and coddling but I do have a sentimental side, especially if something is clearly trying hard.

This would have been posted yesterday but I stupidly spilt tea on my keyboard last night and promptly killed it. Oops. One trip to PC World later and I now have a gorgeous flat aluminium keyboard that’s quieter and easier on my hands and most importantly, not full of tea!

…………….

I’ve started drawing again. Since the start of the year it’s been an on/off kind of thing but I’ve drawn so much in the last three days that I ran out of my preferred heavy duty cartridge paper and had to switch to a lighter weight pad. I went to the art shop but they’d run out too, so I had to order it online. I didn’t come away empty-handed though; I was delighted to discover that Derwent has expanded its range of my beloved Inktense pencils so I bought five new ones to try out and two pads of other paper because being low on paper makes me feel antsy. Of course, I have a drawer full of paper but that was all the wrong size or type. Ha, never underestimate the ability of artists to justify spending money on materials…

I’m still in a bad place with my health so I haven’t managed to work in my studio but I have been lying in bed drawing and sitting at the computer listening to podcasts while I work on the embroidery piece. Like many artists, I have an almost mystical attachment to the idea of ‘the studio’ and I have to keep reminding myself that it doesn’t matter where I make art as long as I get it done.

This is why I don’t have a studio outside my home. I feel bad that I don’t spend enough time in my studio when it’s just up the stairs, imagine how guilty I’d feel if I was paying for the privilege of never getting to the studio. Some artists need the routine of getting out of the house and going to a special place to make art. I understand and respect that but for me, art needs to be rooted in my domestic surroundings or it’s just never going to happen.

Hey, if making art in bed was good enough for Frida Kahlo, it’s good enough for me!

And on days when I can’t make art at all, I can still take photos.

Kirsty Hall: Forget-Me-Nots, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Clematis Seedhead, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Garden Visitor, June 2008

I’ve always noticed cast iron. Even as a kid I was fascinated by the different shapes of gates and railings. Maybe it’s because there’s a history of blacksmithing on my mum’s side: if I’d been born a boy in an earlier generation, I might have spent my days banging bits of metal into ornate curves. So it’s no surprise that I like to take pictures of railings, especially when they’re deliciously rusty.

This railing is really unusual. I’ve not seen another one like it and I can’t work out what era it’s from.

Kirsty Hall: Rusty Railings, May 2008

Kirsty Hall: Rusty Railings, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Rusty Railings, June 2008

These railing are just round the corner from me and the design is clearly based on oak leaves.

Kirsty Hall: Ornate Railings, June 2008

I like it when you can tell what the original design is meant to be; sometimes they’re so over-painted that it’s just a vague organic blob. This decorative cast iron rose is still recognisable but it’s becoming softer and less distinct with every layer of paint.

Kirsty Hall: Cast Iron Rose, June 2008

Two of our ceilings have been painted so often that none of us can decipher the original pattern of the plaster mouldings. One day I decided it was ‘baby feet and broccoli’ and that has stuck.

See what I mean…

Kirsty Hall: Cream Plaster Mouldings, June 2008

The white baby feet in the kitchen aren’t quite as obscured but I’ve still no idea what it’s meant to be.

Kirsty Hall: White Plaster Mouldings, June 2008

Maybe one day I’ll get up a very tall ladder and strip all the layers of paint off, but somehow I doubt it: I think we’re stuck with baby feet and broccoli.

Tina Mammoser over at The Cycling Artist has been doing a fascinating series of podcasts about her artistic process. Last night, I listened to the latest one and I was very struck by something she said about how artists are either good finishers or good starters.

I’m definitely much better at starting things than finishing. Truth be told, I often dither over starting things too - I like to get everything sorted out in my head first and then I’ll suddenly dive in and get going. So when I say that I’m better at starting than finishing, it’s all relative: it’s just that I truly suck at finishing.

I’m currently at the stage with the red embroidery (yes, the one I said I was going to finish weeks ago) where it’s very hard to work on it because it’s getting towards an end point. I know it isn’t finished yet but I’m having a lot of trouble deciding where the next lines go. It’s stopped being filled with infinite beautiful potential every time I drop the thread onto the canvas and the narrowing options are making me increasingly uncomfortable.

My instinct is to rush off and start a new one. A better one. One that will somehow miraculously instantly work without all this tedious humming and hawing.

But I’m plugging away trying to finish this one because I know how I am: new work tends to push old work aside and then the old work doesn’t get finished. You wouldn’t believe how much unfinished work I have in my studio. One of the things I loved about The Diary Project was that I had a daily deadline so I had to finish; there just wasn’t the option to sit around being indecisive for weeks on end.

I wonder how I can incorporate that lesson, that discipline, into my regular practice? I’ve noticed that I often do better when the rules or limits of a project are clearly laid out at the beginning. Do I need to make all my work that way though? Surely there needs to be a place in my practice for freeform creativity too?

Sigh, you see how I am - these are the sort of knots I endlessly tie myself in. How odd that sometimes the work flows out of me almost effortlessly and at other times, it’s this tortured, labyrinthine process. My mother says that I always have to make things difficult for myself; sometimes I think she has a point!

If you feel that you need a creative boost this summer, the lovely Camilla is running an online summer school. I’m still swithering about whether to sign up or not; it looks like fun but I don’t know how much energy and time I’m going to have. But I’m certainly going to be dropping in regularly to see how they’re getting on.

I am in a place of struggle with my art right now (as indeed, I often am).

I am second-guessing myself all the time. Is this embroidery good? Is there any point to it? Does it mean anything? Is it derivative and boring?

Bah, and indeed, humbug.

The chief enemy of creativity is “good” sense.
Pablo Picasso

I often have to trick my analytical side into letting me make art because my art is essentially nonsensical. It’s a daft thing to do. Putting thousands of pins in a piece of fabric or tying thousands of knots in bits of string is loopy, I’ve always understood that, whilst at the same time (mostly) believing that it still has value. Yet holding those two opposing beliefs (this is daft/ this is worthwhile) in balance is not always an easy thing to do.

It’s hard to make art when your mind is tied up in knots like this. Often it seems that we artists spend most of our time clearing out the junk in our heads that stops us making, instead of actually making. Hmmm, perhaps it’s time to read one of my favourite books, Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, which is all about how not to quit. I reread it at least once a year, it helps get me through times of doubt like this.

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso

I want to get back to uncomplicated creating, making without thinking, joyful making. I miss it. Perhaps I will drag out my pens this afternoon, lie in bed and just draw and draw and draw. I know when I feel like this - dissatisfied, antsy and annoyed with myself and my art - that work is the only cure. I might not make anything good but even lousy art usually moves things along.

One final note: I’m not looking for sympathy here. I am not in crisis, despair or needing reassurance that my art is good: I’ve been through this many, many times before and I know that I will pull out of it and start making again, usually with renewed vigour and enthusiasm. I am well aware that this is a natural part of the artistic process that most artists periodically go through. I’m putting this out there in the hope that other people will learn that this is just part of making art and so that they don’t despair when it happens to them.

And now I’m going to go and take a walk with my camera to get some fresh air, buy something yummy for dinner and hopefully clear my head.

Unfortunately I’ve been unwell for the last few days but I hope to get some proper writing done in the next day or two. In the meantime, in celebration of having my broadband back, here are some new photos from my garden. When I’m ill, my life often focuses down to very small things; a reflection in a bucket, the wind in the grass, pollen laden stamens, bats hunting across a twilight sky, the cat on my lap.

Kirsty Hall: Red Lily, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Blue Convolus, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Reflection, June 2008

Kirsty Hall: Grass Seeds, June 2008

A friend of mine is raising money for the cancer charity Maggies Centres by climbing all the Monroes in Scotland ( a Monroe is a Scottish mountain over 3,000 feet and there are 284 of them!) He’d originally planned to do this in a year but didn’t manage it due to various issues, however, he kept going and he’s now nearing the end of his project. I’d love to surprise him with a last minute boost from people he doesn’t even know, so if you feel inclined, please stop by his site and make a donation.

Hmm, apparently I did something weird this morning and this post vanished into the ether even though I’m sure I published it. Even more annoying, it didn’t save most of it, so I’ve had to rewrite it. Fortunately most of it is based on an old piece of writing from way back in 2001, so it wasn’t too much work. I’ve even managed to put in a couple of pictures - if I’m very patient, I can link to photos that are already on Flickr, I just can’t upload any new ones. Using dial-up is like wading through treacle and I can’t wait to get back to the 21st century and a fast broadband connection although I am enjoying hearing the old modem sound again, it’s quite the nostalgia trip.

Anyway, it’s time to raid the vaults… this has been edited slightly to tighten up the language and grammar but is more or less unchanged from the original.

Still Life
1/7/01

I have come to realise that much of what I make is actually Still Life. My photographs, in particular, have a Still Life sensibility. I am looking at small things - like hot raspberries on the beach or the reflection in a bowl of water - and saying that they are small yet important. It seems to me that that is what most Still Lives do: they take everyday things and set them apart so we can truly see them.

Kirsty Hall: Blue Bowl Reflection, circa 1999

Still Life demands that we really look at the flagon of wine and the apple; the bowl of cherries; the lifeless carcasses. It ponders the flowers, the glass and the tablecloth. It shows us the texture of everyday life and forces the realisation that actually these things are amazing: the bread we eat, the soft cheese, the pile of fruit, the luscious cakes, the humble or grand spread. This is what keeps us alive after all. This is what nourishes us. Of course we also need vast epic pictures of the imagination and portraits that force us to look at our frail human bodies. We need art to consider many things but it seems odd that Still Life should so often have been considered the least important subject matter in art, when it deals so intimately with life and death.

Kirsty Hall: Grape Stem, May 2003

Mortality is a vital component of many Still Lives. Those flowers will soon be dead: they are just caught for a moment in time. Caught at the point of perfection? Or perhaps already weeping their petals onto the rough-hewn table or perfect lace. That food will spoil or be devoured by a hoard of hungry mouths. Even that fine glass goblet will eventually be broken or lost. The table itself will be consumed by history. Who knows what happened to the musical instruments, the sheet music or the pile of books? They are lost to us except for this captured image.

It is that quality of stillness that I love most about Still Lives. More and more my work has been edging towards stillness and quiet, not actual silence but definitely quietness. I think I am looking for contemplation and the mysterious void. Stillness is a quality that I associate strongly with the colour white, which is why I think my work has contained so much white in the last two years. I am searching for that perfect moment perhaps, that moment of clarity and stillness?

Sorry for the radio silence. We’re transferring to a new ISP and despite the fact that we were paid up until the end of June, our incompetent old ISP cut us off early so we’ve been totally without email and internet access since last Thursday. But it gets even better, we found out today that they managed to cut us off so completely that it will be another week and an extra £50 before the new ISP can get us reconnected. We’re not best pleased as you can probably imagine. Don’t use BE Internet, that’s my advice.

Fortunately my partner has just managed to cobble together dial-up access but it’s slow and frustrating. So while I plan to do a couple of posts this week, I warn you now that it’s likely to be all text.

I’ve actually quite enjoyed having a bit of an internet break. The weather has been lovely, so I’ve been out in the garden a lot and I’ve been catching up on my reading. Although I’m cross that we’ve been jerked around, another week without blogs, Ravelry and endless noodling around online doesn’t sound too bad.

Sigh, I’m not sure where this week went. Do you have weeks like that? One minute it’s Monday, the next it’s Sunday and you’re not sure what happened to the in-between bit. I seem to be having more and more of them - maybe it’s true that time speeds up as you get older.

I have been working fairly consistently on my embroidery piece this week and I hope to get it finished later today or tomorrow. I’ve decided to set myself an informal target of finishing a piece of art a week because I need a bit of a push.

Kirsty Hall: Red Thread Drawing In Progress, June 2008

It’s been very interesting watching this evolve because I’ve been doing it freehand, so it’s been at least a hundred different temporary drawings so far. It’s impossible to keep things in place, the loose thread spills across the surface and moves with every stitch I make. I find it a very meditative way to work; accepting that perfect arrangements of thread will come and go each time I pick up the canvas.

I once read a quote from a writer who said that as soon as you’d written the first line, your novel was committed to a certain path but before that first sentence, anything was possible. That’s not the case with this work. Certainly as I sew the loose thread into place, the number of ways the remaining thread can fall on the canvas become less and less. Yet until the last few stitches are in place, the possibility of change is still there.

I enjoy knowing that I could do a million of these and they would never be the same. I wish I’d photographed every single variation as I went along - hmm, that might make an intriguing little artists’ book.

Kirsty Hall: Red Thread Drawing In Progress, June 2008

We had tons of rain this week, so I didn’t get as much done in the garden as I’d hoped.

Kirsty Hall: Rain on dill, May 2008

But I managed to get more of the left hand bed planted up and it’s nearing completion, although I need to go back to the gardening centre for yet more plants and some sand to dig into the annoying patch of clay.

Kirsty Hall: Rain on dill, May 2008

I’m learning to accept that gardening - like art - is a process and there will probably never be a time when my garden is ‘finished’. I certainly won’t get everything done this year but that’s OK; any improvement is better than none. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Kirsty Hall: Rain on coriander, May 2008

I guess that’s where my week went - lost in creativity, both indoors and out. Ah well, there are far worse ways to spend your time. I hope you all managed to carve out some creative time this week.

I have a problem with categories. Basically, I’m just not very good at them. I find it difficult to choose tags for blog posts. I have too many sets on my Flickr account. I have too many email folders. I struggle with organising my filing cabinet. I desperately need to go through and rationalise all these things but it doesn’t come easily to me.

In terms of organisation, this is obviously A Very Bad Thing. I constantly lose things and I sometimes avoid tidying up because I simply can’t decide where stuff should go. And then I end up with this sort of thing!

Kirsty Hall: Messy Study, May 2008

[I've tidied my desk since this was taken because the photo appalled me so much. If you have problems keeping your desk clear, check out Inspired Home Office for resources that may give you the push you need. Since tidying up this disaster zone, I've been noticeably more motivated and I'm feeling more on top of things.]

I do have systems but things still stump me. I’ve got a box that’s been sitting in my study unsorted and neglected for 6 months because it’s full of the sort of random objects that I find almost impossible to categorise. The pile of papers to be sorted into my filing cabinet is so large that it’s developed geographical layers and may actually have started to fossilise down at the bottom.

Since I’m so visual, I sometimes wonder if I should simply file things by colour - but I know that I’d just end up spending ages trying to decide if objects were blue or green instead because having trouble with categories is a global failure in my brain.

TIME TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE…

However, while it’s a problem in terms of organisation, being bad at categories can be a distinct advantage for an artist because you can see across boundaries to make associative leaps than non-artists often don’t. Leaps of logic that make perfect sense in KirstyLand often seem innovative and original to others.

For example, this piece called Lost was made for an exhibition in a church. To make the piece, I carefully broke an unglazed bowl, then mended it with glue, leaving deliberate holes. For the exhibition, the bowl was placed on linen and filled with salt water, which gradually evaporated through the porous clay.

Kirsty Hall: Lost, 2003

Lot’s Wife was the inspiration for the piece and I combined her familiar story with the Japanese tradition of mending broken bowl with gold to make them more valuable than when they were whole. I’d read about this several years before and had been utterly captivated by the idea of regarding a mended object as beautiful and powerful instead of flawed and damaged. Somehow in my head, this linked with my sympathy for Lot’s Wife, who was forced to leave not only her home but two of her adult children. In that situation, what mother wouldn’t turn back to see what had happened? Isn’t it interesting that she’s usually held up as an example of female disobedience but if you turn it around, her story can just as easily be interpreted as being about the power of maternal love.

Kirsty Hall: Lost, 2003

As artists, we need to turn things around. We have to learn to look at our problems and disadvantages to see if they also contain power and wisdom for us. It’s time to recognise that the things that make us bad at fitting into the ‘real world’ are sometimes the exact same things that keep us making our art.

Hooray, I’ve cleared out my links folder. Of course, I still have another two to get through but at least one of the three is empty.

ART

Beautiful microscopic photographs of sand from scientist and artist, Dr. Gary Greenberg.

An elaborate and intricate laser-cut book from artist, Olafur Eliasson

Arthur Ganson makes strange mechanical scupltures.

Tips on being an environmentally aware photographer.

I’m loving Poppytalk’s series of interviews with artists about their studio spaces.

Amy over at Life Craft makes intriguing collages and assemblages.

Miwa Koizumi makes ethereal sea creatures from plastic bottles.

There’s a ton of drawing lessons over on Drawspace.

I like J.T. Kirkland’s pierced wood drawings. He also has a great blog called Thinking About Art.

Reya Veltman makes very lovely pebbles covered with felt. Link found on the excellent This Is Love Forever blog.

RANDOM STUFF

Off-Grid is an excellent environmental site. I was particularly fascinated by this story about Microbial Fuel Cells, which use a combination of very basic technology and the energy given off by soil microbes to provide electricity.

A fascinating collection of objects found under the floorboards of an old British house that’s being renovated.

An alphabet made from clothes pegs shaping flesh - ouch!

Animals in formalin - what’s not to like?

25 Amazing Everyday Do It Yourself Inventions - the fangs made from a plastic fork are my favourite.

Lost caverns and buried cities from the excellent Web Urbanist.

Ladders made especially for cats - who knew such a thing even existed?

FUNNIES
Andre Jordan’s pointed cartoons about disability always make me laugh.

Cookie Monster faces his cookie addiction and asks ‘Is Me Really Monster?’

Ah, real comedy of recognition here - The Artist’s Decision Tree

Not at all seasonal but as a knitter, this photo story about Christmas sweaters made me laugh a lot and gave me 80’s flashbacks!

I sometimes think I was dreadfully scarred by growing up in the 70’s. I look at the things I make and I can see the legacy of string pictures and macramé.

3 Score & 10 vs crazy 70’s macramé birdcage.

Kirsty Hall: 3 Score & 10, Jan 2006

Random Macrame found on internet but unfortunately I’ve lost the link

I rest my case!

Well, what can I say? Apart from reproduction prints of paintings or images in books, string pictures and macramé were the primary examples of art that I saw as a child. My parents aren’t big art people plus I had three noisy younger brothers so although I’m sure I must have seen paintings in museums, I don’t remember visiting an actual art gallery until I was in my teens. By the time I was 15, I had started taking myself off to galleries at every opportunity and had broadened my art horizons a little but before then, pins and string had featured highly in my formative visual experiences.

Ha, you should think yourselves lucky that I don’t feel an overwhelming urge to make all my art in shades of orange and brown!

I started a new piece on Wednesday and to my eyes it’s got a distinctly 70’s look, probably because it’s on brown linen. It’s another thread drawing but from a brand new series. I’ve been contemplating this particular series for a while now; it’s all to do with pithy phrases, emotional tension, domesticity and lots and lots of red thread. For ages I’ve been collecting strange trite sayings that people use - things like “well, I suppose it could be worse” or “but apart from that, how are you”. I’m fascinated by the emotional gaps in language, the way we use clichés and meaningless phrases, especially in Britain, to cover a vastness of things unsaid. For some reason, this is connected in my mind with endless images of red thread.

Kirsty Hall: Red Drawing, May 2008

I had an image in my head of a red thread drawing on raw linen that I wanted to test out. I found a natural framed linen canvas that may work although I’m not entirely sure about it because it’s sized with clear primer and I think it might be too glossy and stiff. For some reason, I’m a lot more comfortable sewing on framed canvases meant for painting than on loose fabric and when I was in the craft shop, I got scared by the proper linen embroidery fabric and coped out and bought a sized canvas instead. This one is my test piece to see if I can live with the sized surface or if I need to make that intellectual leap and do ‘proper embroidery’ on ‘real fabric’.

It’s odd: intellectually I know that what I’m doing is probably embroidery but I don’t think of it as sewing. Instead, I always think of it as a very slow and laborious way of drawing.

With little bits of thread.

On fabric.

I mean, obviously I know it is sewing. Except that in my head, it isn’t. I cannot explain this.

Kirsty Hall: Red Drawing, May 2008

I don’t know why I feel this way about using cloth. A couple of years ago, I started doing sewn drawings on felt and that didn’t bother me so it’s clearly something to do with the fabric. When I was about 7 or 8, I had a scary primary school teacher who endlessly criticising the sloppiness of my stitches and I suspect this has a lot to do with my fear of using ‘real fabric’ and doing ‘real sewing’. I did like threading shoelaces through pictures with holes in them though (did anyone else do that, what was it supposed to teach us?) and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I now pierce holes in my canvases before threading my needle through. Actually, you have to when using sized canvas because if you make a mistake, the hole doesn’t close up again but I also think it takes me to a safer, happier place than the word ‘embroidery’ does.

I’m in a photo mood this week. Here’s some luscious British flora that I took earlier today - not as shockingly vibrant as the Australian photos from yesterday but the colours are still very lovely. And maybe these will seem as beautifully exotic to my Australian readers as their flowers do to me.

Herb Robert grows freely around here. There’s loads in my garden and it’s so pretty that I always feel guilty pulling it up but if I don’t, it takes over.

Kirsty Hall: Herb Robert, May 2008

No idea what this is but the shape of the stems and buds are just gorgeous.

Kirsty Hall: White Buds, May 2008

Red blushed leaves on a shrub at Clifton Cathedral.

Kirsty Hall: Red Leaves, May 2008

Beautiful pinky-red flower buds on the same shrub.

Kirsty Hall: Red Buds, May 2008

Check out the luminous red stems.

Kirsty Hall: Red Buds, Close Up, May 2008

I woke this morning thinking of Australia and was inspired to put together another photo essay (you poor people are going to be seeing my holiday photos for months to come!) It’s been a little grey in Bristol over the last few days, so some hot tropical colour is just the thing to keep me dreaming of our own summer flowers still to come.

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Kirsty Hall: Australian Flower, March 2008

Edited to add: Erin left the following comment with a few names. “I recognize a few of these from florida and thought you might want to know names. The first is a bottle brush, the fifth looks like perhaps bird of paradise and the last is a canna lily.”

I’m a fairly slow artist at the best of times: I like to potter, to muse, to drink lots of cups of tea and endlessly faff around. I generally only work in a very fast and focused way if I’ve got a deadline. I’ve always berated myself for this - feeling that I ought to be one of those artists who works for 10 hours every single day of my life, despite the fact that I’ve never been that sort of artist. Trying to be that person aggravates my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and then I end up crashing for weeks or months on end, unable to do anything at all. I’ve gradually come to see that my meandering way of making art is my body’s way of protecting itself and that it probably ensures that I get more done in the long run.

I need to appreciate the way I actually make my art instead of continually wishing that I worked faster. Part of that is accepting my own art rhythms instead of fighting against them. I have fast times and slow times, times when I’m making and times when I’m not. After a major piece of work or an exhibition, I invariably need to ‘lie fallow’ for a little while.

I can always tell when I’m in this stage because the idea of making art makes me incredibly grumpy. I just have no motivation for it and even though I have ideas, I can’t bring myself to do anything about them. If I try to push through and do it anyway, I end up ruining pieces or souring myself on a good idea. So instead, I catch up with the rest of my life: I rest, knit, read, organise household stuff, garden, visit friends, bake cakes and declutter cupboards.

It’s been five months since I finished The Diary Project and I would normally be out the other side and onto the next big art thing by now. However, with my son being ill and then my trip to Australia, my schedule has fallen behind and I’m still stuck in the unwinding/rewinding stage.

In this particular fallow period, I’ve been working in the garden. It’s been very neglected in the last couple of years because I haven’t had the energy for it but in the last week, I’ve remembered how much I need the garden. Being outside makes me feel a lot better, it helps my mood and my health and I want to get the garden to a level where it’s a restful and healing space for me. Unusually, instead of trying to do it all at once and getting overwhelmed and giving up, I’ve been breaking it down into small manageable chunks and doing one tiny area at a time and I’m starting to see results. I think that ‘little and often’ was the valuable lesson that I took from drawing every day last year. Now if I can just apply it to my art again…

I can always tell when I’m starting to come out of my art funk when I reach The Manic Mad Project Stage. In the past, I’ve impulsively wanted to do things like buying a piano (I can’t play), learn to play the harp (can’t do that either), learn bellydancing (I’ve got a big belly, it seemed a shame to let it go to waste) and various other ideas that seem perfectly sensible at the time but involve me having far more time and energy than I actually do. My poor, long-suffering family have learnt to to dread the words, “hey, you know what would be a really great idea…”

Sometimes I actually go ahead and start one of my mad ideas, especially decorating projects because for some reason, those always seem practical and achievable. Sadly this often doesn’t end well because I’m notorious for running out of steam half way through and abandoning things - especially since the mad project stage is usually a precursor to a new burst of art energy and in a knock-down fight between decorating and art, art always wins.

I’ve learnt through bitter experience that it’s wise to run such things past my family. If they say ‘no way, are you completely nuts?’ or sound a note of sensible caution, then I probably ought to listen to them. If they say “why don’t you take piano lessons first and see if you like it” and my answer is “where’s the fun in that?”, then it’s a sure sign that I’ve reached The Manic Mad Project Stage and need to get back into the studio before all hell breaks out.

So… last night I decided that I wanted to own chickens. I’m doing up the garden, I want to grow more vegetables and our family is interested in environmental things like micro generation of power (we have solar panels that heat our hot water) and getting off-grid as much as possible. So a couple of urban chickens producing lovely fresh eggs wasn’t that out of left field - food yards instead of miles, it would be great!

Actually, I originally thought that both chickens and a beehive would be the way to go but apparently I’m learning because I recognised that bee-keeping was probably a bit beyond me and discarded the idea before enthusiastically announcing it to my bemused family. But I honestly thought that the chickens were perfectly reasonable. One little chicken ark and two chickens - how hard could it be? My family kept chickens when I was a teenager so I know how to look after them - in theory. What could possibly go wrong?

Yes, well… apparently, my family did not share my wild enthusiasm for this wonderful idea and I was told in no uncertain terms that there would be no chickens unless egg prices went through the roof or the fall of civilisation seemed imminent. So it looks like The Manic Mad Project Stage may be starting and the art should be back soon. In the meantime, I faithfully promise my family that I won’t start any large decorating projects and I’ll continue gardening in a slow, sensible and sustainable fashion.

Um, digging a pond isn’t an unreasonable idea, is it?

Something a bit different today - my very first blog tour. Alyson B. Stanfield, author of I’d Rather Be in the Studio! The Artist’s No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion is here to promote her book. I recommend visiting the other stops on the blog tour, I read them all last week and it was fascinating to see everyone else’s questions.

Read on to find out how you can win a free copy of her book, but first here’s our short interview:

KH: Firstly, I’d like to congratulate you on the book, Alyson, I think it’s amazing and an incredibly valuable resource for artists. I’ve already started working my way through the exercises, I’m currently rewriting my old artists’ statement using your guidelines and although it’s not finished yet, I already feel that the new statement is going to be much more accessible and powerful.

AS: Kirsty, I’m so glad to hear that! I’m glad that you found value in the book right away–that you could pick it up and use it immediately.

KH: I did have one small problem with the book though – it was really tough to come up with a question for the blog tour because every time I thought of one, I’d turn the page and find you’d answered it already! It was as though you were anticipating my needs before I even knew I had them.

AS: I’m psychic that way.

KH: I know you’re a big fan of blogging for artists, as am I. However, I’ve noticed that much of the art world doesn’t seem to have caught up with us on this; I feel that I’m far better known online than offline. So my question is, how can an artist translate blogging success into offline art world success?

AS: Oh, wow! You are spot on with this question, Kirsty.

First, let’s define “the art world.” I’m going to assume that you mean the traditional art world that is defined by high-end galleries and museums. Is that correct? (I tend to believe that there are many different art worlds that are somewhat oblivious to one another.)

Second, remember that blogging is only one tool in your marketing arsenal. It has to be part of an overall self-promotion plan in which everything works together to help you succeed. Again, I return to your original question, which is a search for “offline art world success.” And I have to reiterate what I wrote in the book: You must define success for yourself (pages 9-12). Knowing what “offline art success” means to you will help you clarify your path.

The best advice I can give you (an artist in the “online art world”) is to keep it up. The more people who know you, the better off you are. It doesn’t matter if the people are in a virtual or real space. It only matters that you are known and that you keep your name in front of people.

At the same time, most art needs to be appreciated in a real space. And most people need to see the art in a real space in order to fully value its complexities. That means getting your art out there and on exhibit as much as possible. Keep showing, keep showing, keep showing. Use your online contacts to set up shows in new venues or to trade venues with artists in other locations. Differentiate yourself from other artists (and other artist-bloggers) as much as possible.

Kirsty, I loved the energy behind The Diary Project. I think this was a stellar example of how to bring the virtual world into a real space. Artists who create online projects such as these should also come up with some sort of marketing plans to go with them. These might include mailings (snail mail as well as email), updates to patrons and potential galleries, being a guest blogger on other sites, creating articles about the experience, issuing press releases, and so forth.

Getting your art appreciated in the real world might also mean developing strategic alliances with others (pages 190-193). In The Diary Project, I can see possible strategic alliances with a stationery (envelope) supplier, stamp collectors, or even with the post office. I can’t tell you that this will meet your definition of success, but I can tell you that these people exist in a real space and are involved in the real as well as the virtual world.

Bottom line: an online presence can’t be seen as separate from your overall goals. Take a serious look at how the blogging fits in with your definition of success and what you need to do to supplement and to build on your Internet fame.

KH: Thanks for your detailed answer, Alyson, that’s really helpful to me and I hope it’ll be helpful to my readers as well. Guess it’s time to do the first step in your book and define just what I mean by success.

Thanks for visiting Up All Night Again, Alyson and best of luck with the book.

And now onto the all-important freebie! Visit this site, read the instructions, and enter. Your odds are good as Alyson is giving away a free copy on most of the blog tour stops. You can increase your odds by visiting the other blog tour stops and entering on those sites as well. I highly recommend that you do this as the book is great, with masses of helpful information and lots of well placed nudges for even the most reluctant artist (and let’s face it, when it comes to promoting ourselves, most of us need all the help we can get). In short, it’s a very helpful addition to any artist’s library. Although I got my copy for free, I would have gladly paid for it; I found it much more useful than the other books I’ve read on this subject.

Because it’s a posh area, there’s not much graffiti in Clifton but there is some and it’s often more quirky than the brightly-coloured tagging popular in other parts of Bristol.

It’s a bit hard to decipher but the text reads “the way is in the heart” - yay, Zen graffiti!

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti Heart, April 2008

Someone having fun juxtaposing a house shape with this very appropriate sign. Or perhaps it’s a warning, with the cross through the house indicating that they’re a bad agency to use?

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti House, May 2008

These next two bits of graffiti have been ineffectively painted out, I love the resulting subtleness.

This one reminds me of Jean Dubuffet’s art…

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti Covered With White Paint, May 2008

…while this one’s like faded Arabic writing.

Kirsty Hall: Graffiti Covered With White Paint, May 2008

Very Jean Miro.

Kirsty Hall: Abstract Graffiti, May 2008

My favourite shot, I can imagine this as a huge oil painting in a gallery.