On Tuesday afternoon I was at the Free Space Gallery working on my Mistress Axolotl identity and some wall hangings. I've getting back to my favoured colour scheme of muted oranges, blues, pinks and off-whites: all the colours of fabrics dyed with onion skins, black beans and avocado, as well as old linens: some of which are beautiful pieces I've taken from Grandma's house. Seeing as tattoos often commemorate people and immortalise memories, I think it's appropriate I weave some of Grandma into this, and some of Grandma's house which was really one of my safest spaces.
On Wednesday I went to visit a professional artist and printmaker in her Kentish Town home. I was invited by her and Free Space Gallery director, Mel, to go have tea there. Nothing could've prepared me for such an amazing, mad, colourful and interesting house, or for the fascinating and wonderful Judith who resides there. Mel and I ventured over to find Judith sitting her living room (which is full to the brim with gorgeous prints and artworks by her and her friends, and Rembrandt, as well as years of accumulated treasures from markets and street corners.) with her cockatiel Beaky perched on top of her giant, crammed bookshelves.
Her house was my heaven! Her kitchen table is her huge old etching press, and her studio is her conservatory. Every corner of her house is filled with treasure!
Her house was my heaven! Her kitchen table is her huge old etching press, and her studio is her conservatory. Every corner of her house is filled with treasure!
We had tea and looked at her prints (Richard Hamilton taught her to print, and she in turn tutored at Chelsea College of Art) and talked about all sorts of things such a poor chicken welfare, how to cure cramp with corks, Beaky's five wives (all of which are now little birdy ghosts), her time living in some godforsaken fallen town in New Jersey, and her time in Brooklyn and working in a pet shop. While she was in America she'd begun a series of paintings based on Holbein's 'The Ambassadors' in which she painted a person, surrounded by objects that represent their interests and personality. This appealed to as a sort of curated view of others' talismanic processes; what people do to feel like a whole person.
I felt so comfortable at her house, and it's so rare that when I tell someone I have an alter-ego who is a lone ranging cowgirl living in a personal fantasy land called The Swaglands, that they actually get on board with no questions and help develop the character with me - Judith immediately asked if my cowgirl wears white leather?!!! amazing!! She does now!! I wore a fake (for animal rights reasons!) white leather jacket today :)
So it was a brilliant day!! Followed by a brilliant evening of hand-printing t-shirts in the garden at the Fossil Free Southwark meeting. A nice feeling of grassroots effort and full of commradery!
On Thursday I went for a run with my new i-pod which was a treat in itself.
And today I ran a joint workshop at Free Space, in the garden, with a drawing group for people with aphasia, which is a condition resulting in communication difficulties following a stroke.
I set up a mono-printing station and we all sat round and mono-printed and chatted, and Judith came too which was lovely! She drew Beaky, of course. The people in the drawing group were all so amazing and charming, and we drank lots of tea :)
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| prints by all! |
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| By Virinda |
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| by Dave |
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| by Mick |
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| by Judith |
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| by Me |
So i'm really super excited for the two workshops I will be running at Free Space in the afternoons on the two coming Fridays, which will involved mono-printing, drawing, and fabric painting. We will be chatting about the idea of safe spaces (inspired by the shed) and how we all have talismans and amulets and charms (whether they are physical objects, or imagined ideas and characters) that help us inhabit our own bodies in a way that those bodies become safe spaces for our souls. Often the people we wish we could be (more confident, more calm, more sociable, more creative...etc) can be manifested, developed and expressed through how we present ourselves; our clothes, our hair etc.
Of course this is where tattoos come in. Body painting is an ancient form of body adornment, which serves as identification but also as a way to channel certain processes (painting bodies for rain dances, or to signify puberty etc), and has since developed into tattooing, as a more permanent expression of identity and intention. Tattooing is a pop art medium in many countries now too.
Of course there are other methods of self-adornment that can be talismanic too, such as jewellery, painted fabric patches for your denim jackets, make up, and band t-shirts for example.
So my workshops will also involve making fabric patches.
I will hopefully be wearing my Mistress Axolotl outfit, or some garment and decoration to that effect. For next friday will be the first day of her Imaginary Tattoo Parlour!
In the mean time I will be designing six tattoos for myself, three to ward off or make peace with my fears, and three to channel my desires and remind myself to strive for them. The latter is in line with the one tattoo I already have; a lightning bolt on my knee like Patti Smith which she adopted from Native American warrior Crazy Horse who painted and tattooed lightning bolts onto his war ponies ears so as to remind himself to never stop to reap the spoils of battle, but to always keep going:
“I thought of something I learned from reading Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas by Mari Sandoz. Crazy Horse believes that he will be victorious in battle, but if he stops to take spoils from the battlefield, he will be defeated. He tattoos lightning bolts on the ears of his horses so the sight of them will remind him of this as he rides. I tried to apply this lesson to the things at hand, careful not to take spoils that were not rightfully mine.” - Patti Smith, Just Kids.
Patti - babe
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| Me and my knee |
Below are some interesting takes on the spiritual aspect of tattoos.
"The tattoo is a primal parent to the visual arts. Beginning as abstract maps of spiritual vision, records of the 'other' world, tattoos were originally icons of power and mystery designating realm beyond the normal land-dwellers' experience... In decadent phases, the tattoo became associated with the criminal - literally the outlaw - and the power of the tattoo became intertwined with the power of those who chose to live beyond the norms of society...
...A tattoo is a symbol of a tribe or a dream" - Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless
A tribe is often a collective identity, and a dream is usually a very personal mystery. Both help to cocoon our souls with the safety of some sort of knowledge of belonging, either to a tribe or to our own dream. We've got a place.
In Kathy Acker's novel she writes of the moment that a character walks into a tattoo parlour for the first time:"...he felt himself to be in a 'mysterious region', a place more precious than any he had ever visited. Here must be his sexual desire."
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"Tattoos are souvenirs. They're road maps of where your body's been." - John Irving
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The novelist Elizabeth Hand has a tattoo that reads TOO TOUGH TOO DIE which is the motto of one of the characters in a story of hers. That is so damn cool - and rings pretty true for me: making up these characters to live out lives you wish were yours, and then getting and aspect of that invented character tattooed into your own skin. It's like really soaking up that fantasy life and making it yours. So cool.
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This one, on American writer Harry Crews, I really like: It is a line from the poem Buffalo Bill's by E.E.Cummings:
How do you like your blue eyed boy, Mr Death?
It seems like a taunting challenge or a jeer at the ultimate fear that almost all of us dread, but suppress as our certain but unthinkable fate, despite it being evident to us at various points throughout our lives.
After the workshop today I went into Scratchline Tattoos in Kentish Town to scope things out. I was really just on a bit of a cloud after having such a good day and wanted to talk to someone else! But i've been looking at one of their artists, Susanna, and I love her tattoo work. I'm seriously considering getting her to design me one, despite vowing to only ever have homemade tattoos designed by me. I wonder if getting someone else to design one would undermine my entire project, or whether it would be like having a sidekick help you channel a vision? Maybe if I got her to design an image based on a phrase I give her. After reading about Elizabeth Hand's tattoo, i think I want a tattoo of a misheard Jimmy Eat Word lyric from their song Littlething:
It was always half invented, but the other half was true.
'True' is actually 'good' but i always hear it wrong, and i prefer if that way. It kind of sums up my life with these characters and lands I imagine I spend a lot of time in.
GOOD WEEK DONE!
