On October 1st, 2011 two friends came to dinner. Ami is a musician and Didge is a studying at Plymouth College of Art.
We asked them to take part in our art-video project Contemporary Art in the Community. Both of them agreed and were happy to do so. It seems both of them are into art in a big way!
Here is our 3rd video in the series:
Contemporary Art in the Community #3/n
Kasia's Studio; The Haldon Hills, Devon, South West England
In which Ami realises that art shouldn't be about "cutting us off from the fabric of our life experience. Art is about coming up underneath our life experience, and lifting us up".
Here is the second video of the project Contemporary Art in the Community. We had an unexpected visit from Doreen on October 1st 2011. She is very much into art and she liked our idea. The video has been taken outside my studio on the Haldon Hills in Devon. In this video Doreen recognises Hell when she sees it, and feels herself drowning in a really stormy, turbulent sea in one of my paintings.
The idea of taking art to the community came from Jim (my partner). I think he was just bored with my constant monologue about contemporary art, or to be more accurate perhaps I should say modern contemporary art.
Yesterday completely out of the blue a German couple visited my studio. They had just followed the yellow signs, not knowing what would be at the end of them. They not only loved my paintings but even bought one. We talked about modern art, especially modern conceptual German art. She lives in Essen and he is from Wuppertal. I absolutely enjoyed my time spent with those two very interesting individuals who really were into modern conceptual art.
Today is the second day of Devon Open Studios 2011. No visitors today. Yesterday a couple with a child visited me. They just saw a sign on the wall and because the child needed to take a leak they stopped and visited me. They were nice people but not really interested in my paintings or in what I am doing or why I am doing it.
Tomorrow is Thursday 1st September and it's the launch of Devon Open Studios 2011!
It takes place at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, Stocker Road, EX4 4QB between 2-9 PM. There will be speeches at 3pm, followed later by entertainment and of course the artist demonstrations. Several artists will present their art works, and one of them will be me. Refreshments will also be available. It's a great space, and we hope (the artists and the DOS organisation) it will be a great day, too. The studios themselves are open from 10 AM on Saturday 3rd for two weeks.
In an article about Devon Open Studios 2011 The Independent said:
Last year during the process of painting my Magnolia acrylics paintings I have been recorded myself. I made a short video document from the fragments I recorded. Every single artist has an own unique style of painting. Some love to paint when they are naked, some needs alcohol in their blood, while others prefer a good quality joint. I prefer listening to music and talking to myself. Dependent of the sort of art I create sometimes I sit, sometimes stay up, sometimes I run or walk around the work I create. Large abstract paintings or collages often lie on the floor or on the grass in the garden and I run as a crazy bull around them. From time to time I lie on the floor or kneel down.
On May, 11th 2011 I was invited by Tiverton Art Society to give a talk about art, video and the Boltzmann Paradox. The society has more than 200 members and is a very active one. Tiverton is an ancient borough and market town in the county of Devon, and the major town in the Mid Devon. It was a real pleasure to be there and to talk to the audience about quantum physics, my own art and art in general, and to present some of my videos. I even read one of my poems, the one about a physicist of course, the Nobel prize winner Niels Bohr.
I had some concerns before the talk, associated with my accent and random blockages of my memory; especially as I am tired (actually I am in a state of chronic fatigue related to my ME condition). I also wanted to talk about quantum physics, thermodynamics and the Boltzmann Paradox in a language in which I still struggle to express myself in the way I want to. When I talk in English I switch my brain into think-in-English mode, which is the way to master a foreign language. But still too often I am sucked in by antimatter, which tries to destroy my brain, confuse my memory and makes it impossible to have an intellectual, sophisticated chat. I find myself missing words, idioms, sayings, humorous expressions, knowledge of complicated grammatical structures. It is a matter of exercises, persistency and strong will, I know that. I am too old and I am lazy, I guess. J) However, I think everything came out successfully. The audience reaction was lively, and I thought they showed a real enthusiasm. I was talking about myself, my art, my videos, and physics and Boltzmann Creatures of course. I brought two big abstract paintings and a few new ones from the “Peter Pan” series. I was myself, spontaneous and a ‘little crazy’ as usual.
The Brits in general are very nice and polite people. Think about it for a moment; all the foreigners using and murdering their beautiful language and then the Brits listening and smiling and trying to understand the others. It is quite an achievement. They have my full admiration for their patience and calm. Definitely the majority of the audience preferred watching art videos and videos about my art than listening to my talk about quantum physics. (Maybe they were bored with my accent and my English!?) I wanted to talk more about thermodynamics and entropy but it was unanimously decided to watch all three videos about the Boltzmann Creatures, Betelgeuse and Mintaka instead of being educated about the laws of physics. Well, the perception of art proceeds in a completely different way than the understanding of the laws of physics. You have to force and to strain your grey cells to understand what quantum physics is all about. On the other hand it is surprising, to me at least, that we don’t try to understand the laws of physics more. As if the world we live in wasn’t extremely complicated. Just think about it for a second. Everything that surrounds us is related to one or another law of physics.
My talk was recorded. From the long video I chose the most interesting and amusing parts, from my point of view of course. Here is a short video part 1:
I created a video/slideshow to present my art from the last two years. Paintings, collages, installations, small sculptures all created in Devon, in Dunchideock. And of course lots of nature, black swans, trees, a cat and nice music.
I love trees; I guess it is impossible not to love them. They are the silent guards of human history, both collective and private memories. If they only could talk…they would be able to tell us the most incredible stories, stories beyond our imagination.
