Rooftops and pageantry: Grizedale Arts volunteering and ideas for artist re-orientation awards 2013 PAGEANTRY IS A QUICK AND USEFUL PUBLICATION WITH HAIR EXTENSIONS This is a reframe between proposing a useful project for Grizedale Arts artist reorientation awards and the volunteering I did there from the 15th-19th April 2013. It s important that these two link together for the short time frame I was volunteering. From volunteering to launching into useful art and craft Grizedale me re-think what I could do with my use of publications, design and energy and culture filtered in from writing and painting. Designing a cook-book sounds ideal ‒ from talking to Adam Sutherland about the Coniston Youth Club. I hope this could be a good project to focus on at Grizedale Arts with my interest in publications and book design at large in the art world and also help to build a relationship with Grizedales focus on use value. As a practicing artist, I have been re-thinking what craft means and what it could mean in Coniston village in the forms of collage, publications, drawings? What is the use value of the library? What could this bring to the new craft of publications: book making, artists zines and the general feel and design of libraries online? I don t think pageantry has anything to do with my experience at Grizedale Arts as a volunteer from the 15th April ‒ 19th April 2013, or does it? Infact the only reference to pageantry was seeing a jigsaw puzzle box named Rooftops and Pageantry stopping of with Alistar Hudson, Adam Sutherland and Intern Rebecca Page coming back from Blackwell House Arts & Crafts whilst semi-stalking and catching up with the Tate Patrons trip that visited Grizedale the night before where we all chipped in to serve them a first class meal. I say semi stalking because this could go on a record somewhere in the present and also because it was also a non-stalker-but-really educational trip about the links between John Ruskin, glamorous (that s right I said glamorous!) Grizedale architecture and the use value in 20th and 21st century craft at the farmhouse. The only pageantry I can think of that would be going on at Grizedale would be at night behind the doors or to do with a discussion we all had about German Bauhaus and their fancy dress parties? Or it could just be someone in the stunning communal living room upstairs watching the father ted episode where it features a spoof of the lovely girls contest. Or the lovely girls from Coniston? Or it could all swing both ways apparently swinging was also a big thing in Coniston.
The main work was gardening and cooking and could be anything on a day-to-day basis of weeding, planting and some other continental gardening names that I can t remember and probably won t ever remember. I thought gardening was pretty gross personally but very essential to the projects at Grizedale Arts in a non-gross way and maintenance of Lawson Park Farm. I had numerous discussions with Adam Sutherland and Alistar Hudson in car journeys during my volunteering that spanned across introductions to the daily living at the farm, the growing evolution of the Coniston institute, stopping to pick some fresh Basil Leaves to produce some fresh pesto (somehow I managed not to pick potentially dangerous poisonous leaves thanks to Adams knowledge on plants and garlic death?) and me being shit at silver service and shit at arranging flowers (that are grown in the paddy fields in the farming land) This was all refreshing to do as an average working day.
MEALZ TIME at Grizedale Arts (not for us) living room come dining boudoir or something to do with public transport patterns for London underground? (2013)
ROOFTOPS: USEFUL ARCHITECTURE AS COMMUNES?
In a non-pushy way if you are not use to communal and out of your comfort zone er, can I say ‘hippiedom?’ way of thinking and doing? At Grizedale this seemed important to the voluntary basis where a full working day would run. It made me think how important a full working project would be useful in the long run towards thinking as an artist and accepting some basics in the daily living of employment, volunteering and use value of the communal? What some people might dread in a Wicker Man (1973) way but secretly hope for a Young Ones (1982) revival is the place of commune at Grizedale Arts. What struck me most was the exciting farmhouse that is now Grizedale Arts headquarters. It was renovated in 2008, designed by Sutherland Hussey. So I’ll probably start to draw out the commune from a romantic perspective, or what Grizedale Arts seemed to have re-thought in their living space. Everything you do as daily living at Grizedale Arts makes me think why have there been little or no architectural projects happening like this in the North West? This reminded me of a film by Rebecca Miller The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee (2009) where a young teenage girl in the 1960’s decides she has had enough of her mothers use of amphetamines to keep up a routine for a working Catholic family so she moves to New York. Pippa Lee, then split between her life married to a famous publisher and art collector, first meet at a modern beach house in long island, New York . This beach house is usually where writers and artists get together and party. Pippa recalls her life changing from a communal lifestyle to married life. This idea of useful communal reminded me of projects that architects such as Le Corbusier (1887-1965) started out as re-thinking housing in a exciting way have now become privatized or museums and how the use value of cheap craft i.e weird spiritual concrete shit turned global as a means to an end. There are probably many reasons for someone to choose to volunteer at Grizedale Arts and this is not exactly my story but I was re-thinking ‘the commune,' The Private Lives of Pippa Lee focuses on the modern commune, modern art, modern relationships, modern ‘Beach Houses’ and glamorous living in the 1960’s. However Grizedale’s communal living, the architecture, design, collections of quirky modern furniture (mostly found on ebay?) was the reason why long-term relationships with young artists and hopefully outside of an ‘arts background’ will excite you and make you want to stay.
*My weekend beach house designed by dressmakers from Toxteth on Crosby Beach for Liverpool John Moores Art Students (2013) Long Beach House, Architect: Resolution 4 architecture, Long Beach Cottage, Long Beach, *New York http://www.e-architect.co.uk/new_york/long_beach_cottage.htm (but designed by dressmakers somewhere in the world?)
LAWSON PARK COLLECTION: INSPIRATION FROM THE USES OF CRAFT
An early 20th and 21st century look at collage - a collaborative project, could be called the craft of collage? This could be applying the use of collage to something useful in Lawson Park farm i.e a collage installation: (this comes from thinking about the lights in the dining room designed by Adam Sutherland and artist Matt Do) Or how it could be useful in the village of Coniston? In the day-to-day hard graft of volunteering is the use of craft. However at Grizedale one of the flourishing and as Alistair described it ‘slow processes’ is building a relationship with Conistion – this was impressive by the projects that Grizedale have encouraged and proven useful to Coniston by the artists they work with. This is why I was weary about the use of residencies in todays art world and how effective this can be to thinking and producing work – or as Adam Sutherland described their interjection and project at Frieze art fair last year in October 2012 where they invited the Youth Club from Coniston to set up shop and produce homemade juice in a bag with a straw and made a little useful, entrepreneurial mark. This is sometimes the problem with what sometimes seems to be the shut-in approach to talking about capital and artists, but the shut-in can be unhealthy. Volunteering can come from messy states of employment and unemployment and I wonder if craft can become useful in these messy states for volunteers? The uses of craft at Grizedale Arts spans from using cups, mugs, plates, glasses, vases and seating from the 20th and 21st century. My trip to the Manjushri KMC Buddhist centre in Ulverston not so far down the road from Coniston after Grizedale, selected one extreme volunteering condition to another. The Buddhist centre is relied on constant volunteering and dedication to keeping up with paying festivals. Some people I met were working towards the festival in summer 2013 by means of the art studios by the main house - so using craft to produce objects i.e idols of buddha and larger sculptures to use and ship to Portugal for part of the festival in summer 2013. There was a mix of people from Spain, UK and people from Finland. I also met people using the centre for a hardcore six-month training programme for Buddhists. The similarities between Grizedale Arts and the Buddhist centre was that they both offer free accomodation and three meals a day for volunteering. These basics are a security needed to help secure present and future volunteering work. With the ever increasing dangers of volunteering in organizations frowned upon in unemployed situations such as jobseekers (JSA) and the ever decreasing support networks such as Citizens Advice Bureau being cut to get you into jobs faster I guess my question is how volunteering and craft can be useful together in the longrun for artists? Or can volunteering be a new craft?