The Meaning of Success

Hi! See, still in September and I'm doing a new blog post. I'm cooking up a virtual blogging storm!

Well, not really, still could do better, but I'm trying. Part of the problem is, I'm so far behind with news that it feels a bit overwhelming. Let's see how much I can catch up with in this post: So, first I'll talk about what progress I'm making in getting my work OUT THERE, one of the biggest challenges artists seem to face, especially shy and retiring ones like me that aren't good at approaching scary people like gallery curators. I've had work in an exhibition called "No Place Like Home"  in a gallery in Huyton, a smallish town near Liverpool. The exhibition began in July and will run until October 11th. This was something I applied for months and months ago, and had kind of forgotten about when I got an email saying "We'd like to put 3 of your pieces into our exhibition". So, I had to rush and get the pieces printed and framed, and then put up. The gallery is an exhibition space attached to the local library, and is a really nice light and airy space. I haven't actually been back to see the exhibition since it was all hung, but I'm hoping to get there before the exhibition comes down, and combine it was a visit to Liverpool Biennial which is also coming to a close in October.
I also entered a piece into the Warrington Contemporary Open Exhibition, and to my great pleasure, got accepted into the photographic side. It's a competition/art exhibition, but I don't really care about the competitive bit, it's just really satisfying to get into the exhibition, especially as the main judge was also the judge for a previous art exhibition that I applied for but didn't get into. I think what did it was that I choose a piece that very clearly shows what my work is about - it looks like a piece of abstract painting, but at the same time it is clearly a piece of the urban environment. Here it is:

 It's just nice to get my work into a few exhibitions, especially ones that has a competitive element like this. I've applied for several during this last year when I've been seriously pursuing an art career, and I'd all but lost hope of getting anywhere. I only really entered this one because my friend who's a textile artist has got stuff in it before, and urged me to apply. She got her work in this year too, so we'll be off together to the opening night next Friday to sip wine and hob knob with the artist community. I'll post pictures and a write up in my next post!
Of course, exhibitions are all very well, but it's also nice to sell some work, and the good news is, I've been doing that too! I sold the two pieces that were in the Mill Bridge Gallery that I mentioned in a previous post, and as we speak, the gallery has a stand at the Manchester Buy Art Fair, which is on this weekend. In fact, when I finish this blog I'm going over there to man the stall for a few hours. There's a few of my pictures over there on the stand, but as of this moment, none of them have sold. Watch this space though! Here's a picture of the corner of the stand that has my work in it - they are the two pieces immediately behind the wooden sculpture.

 Also, I have sold 2 pieces fairly recently on my Artfinder page, bringing my grand total to 4. So, overall I've been making really good progress! Of course, I'm not really making much money from it - that may come in time, but experience of other artists suggests maybe not. It's hard to make being an artists into a paying career, I'm realistic about that. It's more important to me that people like my work enough to part with money for it, or to put it into the exhibition. That just confirms my belief that it IS good and worthwhile work, and that's the most important thing for me at the moment.

Ok, more soon. As usual, there so much more to say, but I have to go and try and sell a few more of my pictures!

What are the chances?

Right! Time to roll up the sleeves this Autumn and blog! I've been really neglecting it lately, partly from busyness, then from being on holiday, and then simply from a bit of blogging inertia, but that's all going to change! Oh yes! Really!

Ok, so what have I been up to? Well, loads of stuff. The Geocaching project I mentioned in the last post has finished now, and I think it was pretty successful. As a side shoot from that I have got quite into going Geocaching as a hobby, so maybe more about that another time. As I mentioned, we set up a Geocache to go on the global network as part of the project, but having submitted it I haven't been given the OK by the official Geocaching organisation, so it's not live yet. Chasing that up is one of the things on my "to do" list, so I'll let you know if it does make it. Having found a few official Geocaches myself now, I have a feeling they may ask us to move it, as it's currently pretty easy to find.

Other than that, I've been away in Hungary for three weeks. Hungary is kind of my second home, as it's where my husband's from, and I lived there with him for five years in 2000-2005, and we still go back regularly to see family and friends. 

We were based in Budapest which was a great place to live, and was/is full of young creative people making waves at ground level, not least my friend Peti, aka Petyka, who's a super talented street artist. Check out his website for lots of examples of his work, but here's one of my favourites, featuring lots of Budapest's architectural landmarks both famous and everyday, mixed up and given a cool urban twist. We own this as a large print and it always reminds me of Budapest whenever I glance at it.

Anyway, what I was trying to say was, although there's a good creative energy in the place, one thing it was lacking was a really good art gallery that put on internationally important shows. I've seen lots of interesting smaller exhibitions in various places over the years, but the national collections don't have a lot of great art in them, and the bigger shows have also been a bit lacking in star quality. However, I've been to a couple of art shows in the Hungarian National Gallery in the last year or so that make me think they are really trying to up their game. The first was a show about Post-Impressionism that I saw back in October that was excellent, and on this trip I saw a show about Dada and Surrealism that was awesome. Read more about it at the museum's webpage. It was full of really great work by the big names of the movement(s), and it was particularly resonant for me as I have been reading a book lately about chance in art that talked about a lot of the artwork here, including Marcel's Duchamp's 3 Standard Stoppages

In this work, Duchamp took metre long lengths of thread, and let them fall onto a canvas covered in glue. He then made these wooden measuring tools based on these new "standard" shapes that he had randomly created. This really chimed with a lot of things I have been thinking about in my art lately, where I want to try and actively re-create the chance marks you can see in my photographs. But how to make "random" marks? This is the question I've been trying to solve. I'm not sure I've come up with the answer yet, but here was my first attempt...

Yeah, so it's a random video of me hitting tennis balls covered in paint against some old wallpaper. Pretty surrealist, huh? I actually did this a few months ago. I had the idea and just went for it. This again shows the benefit of having a studio, you can try these crazy things and not worry that you're going to get paint everywhere. I want to try again in a bigger space, and maybe with more people involved instead of just me. But in the meantime, I think it did produce some pretty interesting images. Not sure what I'm going to do with them, but they're interesting.

Ok, as usual, more to tell you about, but let's do it later, OK?