Saturday 30 January 2010

Misguided ghosts.


Align CentreLast year in March I had my exhibition for the 31 paintings in March project. It was my first (and last, at the moment) exhibition. And it was aaaalll mine. I had the whole gallery to myself.
The paintings weren't amazing but they went through a month of my life and each one had a story and I think that's what made it interesting. I made a lot of money and sold quite a few of them (which surprised me, personally).
It was good. I think the first picture, which is my friend Keira and I sitting on the floor of the gallery says pleeenty about how the day went.
I had a group of people who were there with me all day and we spent a lot of it on the ground in a circle. It wasn't lots of people who didn't know anything about what I had spent the month doing. It was a group of people who I had been in contact with all through the month who were interested in what was going on. Rachael, who was there, got to watch me frantically try to paint a picture on one of the last days before The Clock Struck Twelve and I was DOOMED. It turned into an odd self portrait which I did in 15 minutes. It's my favourite of the whole month. It is exactly how the whole month made me feel. Keira is someone I met when I was about 8 or 9 who didn't seem to realise that I liked art until I told her I was doing this (she also offered to pay me for a specific picture of a character she likes but it never happened).
The people who couldn't be there were the worst part for me. Some wonderful friends who had donated to my project and talked to and inspired me over the month but lived in other countries obviously couldn't make it. The girl I was sort of seeing and ended things with as a result of being busy with this and her being busy with her exams couldn't make it (partly because she was busy and obviously partly because she didn't want to), even though we'd spent lots of time in our favourite cafe discussing and her watching me draw on the little postcards I gave to whoever donated. My mum couldn't make it because she had work, my two best friends couldn't make it because they live in Australia.
But anyway, we sat on the floor in a circle and talked. It was more of a really nice and relaxing little party.
The way the gallery (The Papered Parlour...I think it's mostly used for craft classes and hen nights though.) is set up is: when you open the door and walk in, there is a wonderfully decorated little room with a table and chairs and some cute stuff. There's a door at the end, behind which is the actual gallery space. Through another door is their studio and then their office and a small kitchen.
Most of the day leading up to when I was starting to let people in was spent in the studio, making sure all the tags and numbered cards were with the correct paintings. When we let them in, we started in the area with the table and chairs, waiting for everyone to arrive. When everyone did, we read a speech and a poem written by a friend for a woman some of us knew who had died recently and for whom one of the paintings was done in tribute. Then we let everyone into the gallery area and started putting party food on the table (despite my friends all telling me that I should be all fancy and have wine and cheese because apparently that is what you do, I had party rings, cheese and crackers and fruity mineral water. And someone brought along two bottles of wine anyway). After everyone had stared at the paintings a bunch, after we all did our weird sitting on the floor and chatting thing, we went into the other room and ate lots of biscuits and things. When it got a bit dark, I closed everything and we went to a place for a break and some drinks other than fruity mineral water and (for those who actually drank it) wine. Then a few people went home and a few people came with me to pack up...and Rachael and I snuck off to have McDonalds and when we got back, everyone still there was lying on the floor. It was weird.

I don't know. I haven't really had a chance to recount the whole thing to anyone and I just saw the pictures, so why not?
Now you know about the weird thing I did last month that you didn't go to or (probably) know about, let alone care about. Thank you and good night to ye.

Monday 25 January 2010

When you are not too sturdy, I haunt you, oh, you hurt me.

I keep listening to Cake Bake Betty. My favourite song is...Something. My iPod tells me it's called 'The Charge' but Google tells me it's called 'The Charger' or just 'Charger'. I think I'll go with the google one. Anyway, it is a good song. It's really really long and for some reason it reminds me of long car trips where everyone is quiet or asleep. I can't sleep in the car so I always end up sitting there awake and bored, having read everything I brought to entertain myself and with nothing else to do.
I have been having weird dreams, lately.
The other night was about going to the cinema with my brother (who lives in London) Riley. He bought me bottle of Pepsi which I dropped by accident into someone's backyard and then it broke and filled their entire garden. Then I saw my mother and I asked if I could use my money to play on one of the claw machines and try and win something but she said I couldn't because it was a waste and I argued with her until I cried and I woke up and for the rest of the day I believed I had to ask my mum for permission to do simple things that I usually wouldn't think of asking anyone about even though she lives in London as well. I don't know if I can quite put across how bizarre that was for me. I don't think I asked permission for a lot of the things that were making me feel like that when I was younger anyway.
A few nights ago, it was a dream that a rich woman wanted to buy me to use as a doll to dress up and be friends with. I convinced her to buy Jennifer Aniston instead.
Somehow we were friends anyway and we went to hes fes (home education festival I've gone to a few times.) in a taxi and for some reason the campsite had been updated with fairground rides, including a 'Tunnel of Love' type thing (you get in the boat, the boat goes through the tunnel...whatever...) I haven't actually been on one of those rides so I don't even know what happens inside but in this one, our boats went under giant electric whisks/beaters.
My most favourite one was a while ago. I can't remember how long ago because despite it being in my notebook, I didn't put a date on it. But I think it was probably a couple of weeks ago and it's still incredibly vivid in my mind.
I walked into this place made all of grey concrete. There was an old woman drawing pictures on the floor. I remember her looking like the Wicked Witch from Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty'. No one else was around except for a few of her henchmen, standing in a cluster around her and it was all just grey concrete for miles.
I walked around until I found a cave with a little girl in it. She was drawing animals and children all over the walls with chalk of her own. I asked what she was doing and she said that the old woman was really a witch who killed animals and children and used their bodies to make her chalk. The little girl stole the chalk when she could and used it to draw pictures of whoever the chalk was made of (no idea how she knew what chalk was who). If she got caught, the witch would kill her. She was the last and only thing the witch could turn into chalk (I don't know why the witch needed the chalk either). I watched her get caught and try to run away. We moved really far until we got to the end of the concrete land and found a wall with a big happy colourful mural of the 'real world' on it. The little girl couldn't run anymore because there was nowhere to run. I couldn't look and tried to focus on getting out and back into reality via the mural, but I couldn't. When I turned around, everyone was gone. The witch, her henchmen, the little girl. I walked for a little while and found a stone table with a knight seated at it. I sat down and asked him who he was. He said he had worked for the witch, but he had killed her. I asked if he knew what had happened to the little girl. He told me that he had caught her. And that he had reversed her life cycle so that she could start again as a baby who had never seen all her friends and all the animals being killed and she wouldn't have to remember being chased by the witch. He handed me a box with a wrapped up newborn baby inside along with a few shiny jewels which he told me he had stolen from the witch and given to the little girl as a gift and he intended on raising her.

It was all very weird. I was thinking of writing a longer story about it...Bekki said she wanted to after I told her about it but I don't know if she still will. I can't really be bothered. I can't write. I tried to do NaNoWriMo in November but it was a disaster.

(terrible picture of the little girl drawing swirls instead of animals and children because all I could remember of her chalk drawings was circles.)

I bought a book titled 'The Pocket Guide To Wild Flowers' a few days ago, to destroy. It had all these gorgeous coloured pages with pictures of flowers on them, so I rescued those before attempting to make any future use of the rest of the book completely and utterly impossible by digging a hole in it.
Sort of like making a hollow book, but it's only a small rectangle on the bottom right of the book. And the hole is in the cover, too.
On the inside of the back cover there is a map, so through the hole, you can see a tag that says 'Southampton', making way for my own lame jokes about how I dug through to Southampton.
I'd post a picture, but I'm not going to.

Anyway, that is all. Unless you want to hear about how I am not sure what I'm doing and I'm upset because someone I miss spending time with is no longer returning my texts and I don't feel well...and I'm sure that if you're interested in that kind of thing, you are someone who can just talk to me on facebook or msn.
Fin.

Friday 8 January 2010

Longing.


I've finally managed to please my mother on some level. I told her that I'm going to take a course in illustrating children's books. A distance learning one that I can complete at my own pace.
I'd like to get a job and quite possibly a life, so it's necessary. I've also emailed a few places asking for volunteers for various things that I've decided won't look too bad on my CV...but then my email address died (I can now be reached at audreybishop@live.co.uk, which is better than my old address by miles). I don't recieve emails to it anymore. It's very odd.

It's been snowing like mad.
Today I went for a walk into town to meet Johnny after his doctor's appointment to go see 'Daybreakers'. He is a good person to go see movies with because he actually has opinions on them. Even if sometimes I liked a movie and he didn't and he tells me why it was bad and then I feel unsure as to whether or not I should have liked it and my head explodes with uncertainty. Aside from that, excellent person to see movies with.
Anyway, on my way there, I walked over the bridge and looked down to see massive pieces of ice floating down the river. I was pretty surprised as I didn't think moving water would freeze into such large pieces like that.
I've been having some real blonde moments.
A coffee shop was closed and had a sign out the front about frozen pipes, but it had weird capitalisation going on and was about 'FROZEN PiPES', so I ended up saying 'oh, it's closed because they have frozen pi-pes' (as in...I said it like 'pee-pez').
I really should not be admitting my stupidity on the internet, should I?
Anyway, I took some photos the other day. Here are a couple (made rather small. I should do that flickr thing again. Flickr does Good Things to photos.):




Aaaaanyway. I am trying to do more art.
When I did my first 'big thing' in March (I did a painting, whether it was large or small, well thought out and...er..good, or barely thought out and frankly rather terrible...as long as I got one done each day) I got a lot of support from friends and family all around the world. I got donations from people i didn't know. I sold paintings to people in other countries too, which was exciting. I had my first exhibition (at the Papered Parlour in London on it's first day as The Papered Parlour following some renovations, actually. I forget what it was called before that) . All by myself. It was an exciting and busy month.
It fucked up my relationship with an amazing girl I was seeing (I didn't have the time or energy to give it a real go. I feel horrible about it. In my defence, she also had exams and things that she needed to get on with.) and it was the month I stopped being able to tell my at-the-time best friend everything because he just didn't care anymore. And yet I never think of it as a particularly bad month.
I think I'm going to be doing something a bit better soon. I've been avoiding doing anything real. Aside from my card for the Amanda Palmer tarot deck (which I got to do because Beth Hommel had seen/liked my work and sent me an email asking me to do it! So ANOTHER great thing came out of my whole...weird...effort...thing.) everything I've done since then has been limited to sketches.
I want to work on something with someone else but all the people I really, really want to work with are in other countries (though I always consider Bekki L a teammate/partner in crime and Beth described us as an 'art making power team' a while ago which was lovely and made me realise that nothing would be the same without the Bek.) and...well...I don't really know anyone here who I'd be able to work with in a way where I could really throw myself into it.
Blah blah blah blah.

Christmas was interesting. I spent it with my family, of course, in London.
My dad called me on Christmas and gave me another one of his art history lectures, which is an odd thing to get for Christmas indeed. He too was pleased to hear that I'm trying to work more at...well...whatever it is I've been working at.
He said he was excited that one of his kids is getting into art and he sounded proud. Which is interesting. I guess it's the kind of validation I've been after for a long time...and he gave me that after I stopped needing it. I've been drawing and painting and considering those two things to be my favourite things since I was a little kid and I think it always was partly a 'let me be like yoooou' thing because he was always making things out of metal or painting or drawing and I loved going through all his work and seeing it up on the walls or sitting on the shelves.
Now it's not like that. Now it's just something I enjoy. It's something that's there when I feel like I'm stuck by myself, it's something my friends can enjoy, it's something that makes people I love proud of me even when I'm not great at it. It's special and I'm glad I stuck with it.
I'm not amazing at it but I will keep trying and getting better because it makes me happy.

End of long ramble about nonsense.

Audrey.

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