Whoosh! Off we go! 2025. It feels less pressured to make a new year post on 2nd Jan.
I like January. It is a definite purple month, almost violet, it is crisp and spacious. New diaries. Old habits. It’s a funny thing the whole “in/out” game of what we want to keep and leave out. We should do this more often. This isn’t a post sharing my ins and outs. But it is a studio update. I’ve moved house and am tucked away in a secret corner of what I am told is London, and does indeed have a local tube station, but feels very countrysidey. I can hear the birds, the wind and my many thoughts, whistling between my ears in varying degrees of harmony. In the garden, over the stepping stones, past the big old tree with the swing and though the white door… I have a studio!
It shan’t be a painting place, we all know how I need to be messy and big and all over the space, but I have got some nice intentions to make other mischief…
This year I”m starting work on my next publication, Eleven. There are, oddly enough, to be 11 chapters. Some will be written essays/ramblings, some are photographic, some will be scanned mono prints (hint hint studio hint), there will be dialogues and diagrams. It’s a complex body of work. I”m very excited about it. It’s like having a very bizarre dream on the tip of your tongue. you can’t really explain what is happening, you just have to let it unfold and reveal itself. It is intwined in my thoughts, my observations, my interactions with others.. and I am looking forward to spilling this warm fuzzy firesome curiosity outwards, performatively throughout the year, culminating in a publication.
On the dreary days this is my little haven, the fat raindrops plummeting on the studio roof, my breath in front of my eyes evidencing the temperature. Thankfully I have a huge fluffy black and white dressing gown, a brilliant blue hat and a sturdy stubbornness that I want to be there, to keep me warm. I feel very grateful. And now I must work.. peel myself away from the (genuinely obsessive ) list making and actually do the things.
Does anybody have any experience / tips / knowledge on:
- monoprinting
- electromagnetic fields (and references to writers, eg Carlo Rovelli)
- constellations of stars (names, histories)
- writers/theorists/artists who study gender & ‘the self’ (eg Judith Butler)
This is a combination of research, experimentation and making. I hope to make the book within 11 months, and ooh, release it on 11th November. At 11.11. But I want to make sure I am thorough and make something good so won’t rush. That said, I feel as though if I had an undisturbed period of time (say, 2 months), with no obligations (say, working in the shop), I could get this out in no time. Ahh the fine balance of reality and dreamworld. And the beauty of that liminal space between, dancing on tiptoes, treading lightly.
That’s what I think I’d like this year to be. Treading lightly.
Gorgeous photos, Elle!
I loved this! I can help with mono-printing !