life | carole cluer

June 29, 2014

Drawing Conclusions – My Father

All of us own something whose value to you far exceeds its material one, your grandfather’s watch, a childhood toy or holiday souvenir.

Would drawing it change it?

What about that thing you have lost, or desired but never possessed, that belonged to another life, would drawing it change your sense of loss.

To have an effect does something have to be true, original, and authentic?

I am giving my imagination and memory a materiality that can then be perceived my others and myself, and can be reviewed. Constructing an alternative future, and past, that is founded on objects yet in which they are removed to reveal my truth.

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February 19, 2014

One Hundred Women

I am not sure if I am alone in this but so often when an opportunity comes along I see the difficulties rather than the opportunities.

When the opportunity arose a few months ago to take part in the forthcoming Leeds Art Book Fair I hesitated, what would I make? what could I make? could I make anything!

The weekend its running is awkward, I have a lot of other stuff to do etc etc ………….

Thankfully the opportunity to work with a great group of fellow students/artists under the guidance of an inspirational tutor, supported by Sheffield Hallam proved too much of a lure. Its an opportunity that might not come my way again and I really am grateful to add the experience to my growing list of things I never thought I would do.

It has also allowed me to create a work that I might never have done otherwise and in the process to learn a lot. Submissions were called for with the themes of “archive and office, stationery and document, marginalia and cataloguing, and accumulations and inventories”. I didn’t want to stray far away from my practice and pretty quickly I began to think about lists of people whose achievements were, generally speaking, passed over.

A question that I remember often being used when I was growing up kept going round in my head

If women are as good as men why aren’t there any great female artists/scientists/explorers/mathematicians etc – you get my drift.

I had sort of just accepted it as a truth. I mean I know now there are many great women leading every possible sphere of endeavour, but in the past they had so much to overcome, they had less rights, less access to education and training. Any achievement would first mean surmounting so many obstacles that it would be understandable if they couldn’t.

I decided to look, setting the parameters that their achievements should be primarily pre twenty first century and that they should not be generally well known by the public ( someone without a specific interest in their area).

I knew I would find some, indeed I already knew of a few, what I wasn’t prepared for was how many I would find, the breadth of subjects that women have always excelled in and how far back into history I was able to go.

I had set myself the task of finding one hundred women but let me say now that for each one I have included I omitted five or more.

What I did find spanning two thousand years were women who were successful, ground breaking, innovative and breathtakingly brave. Artists, inventors, doctors, scientists, soldiers, spies, explorers, and campaigners. Who lived and fought for their work, who fought and died for their beliefs, or who just perhaps stood up for their beliefs when others wouldn’t at a particular moment in time. Women who were overlooked or who found success but have been forgotten by history or women who perhaps we should just take a moment to remember.

One Hundred Women

Contained within a hand made notebook reminiscent of the traditional school exercise book.

A list of one hundred names, written in pencil, an inventory, a remembrance, an acknowledgement.

A prompt.

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Finding outstanding women wasn’t difficult, choosing which ones to use was.

http://www.leedsartbookfair.com

Hope to see you there

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January 26, 2014

Speaking Out Exhibition

I am delighted that in just a few days I am taking part in Embrace Arts exhibition at The University of Leicester’s art centre.

Although the majority of my practice involves drawing, for this exhibition I have revisited my interest with kintsugi, I have previously worked with blue and white plates for a piece called ‘unbroken’ related to my experiences of breast cancer.

This time I have chosen an assortment of plates that would represent different eras and social classes, I have included ones that would be easily recognisable, to contain something that would connect with the viewer’s own life and emphasise how domestic violence affects all areas of society.

Plates are often chosen when first setting up home, their design reflects the type of home we hope to create, the image that we wish to present as a couple or family. They are desired, saved for, gifted. They are present in our everyday, our special occasions, our celebrations, our tragedies.

Throwing or smashing plates is often used as an image of domestic arguments. The breaking of pottery can be found in wedding and funeral rituals to symbolise something that cannot be undone. Even attempting repair is to accept imperfection.

The contrast of these plates, that were perhaps once carefully selected and are now cracked and repaired, their joints widened and under tension, seeks to highlight the sometimes stark differences between our hopes and realities.

I will add more photographs after the opening night, this Friday, 31st January 2014, 5pm-7.30pm

The exhibition runs until Friday 28th March 10am-6pm.

Please go along and have a look if you are able.

For more information about the exhibition and symposium this Friday

http://speaking-out.co.uk

http://www.embracearts.co.uk

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July 2, 2013

Finding Jonathan

The Royal Derby Hospital is just in the process of organising its archive and they very kindly allowed me to search through their material, some of which hadn’t yet been archived. So much wonderful stuff! Reports on student nurses, midwifery books, numerous mysterious machines and Florence Nightingales signature. Wonderful indeed but not what I was looking for… although I didn’t actually know what that was until I found a pile of amateur photographs. Someone sometime in the 1930/40/50’s ( I can’t tell) had taken a camera in and photographed different wards, I expect it was unusual then to be photographed and patients are sitting up smiling in bed, but it was the photos from the maternity ward that made me stop. Smiling nurses held armfuls of anonymous babies, with nothing to identify them it felt easy to imagine that they could be who ever you wanted;

and that is when my imagination began to fly.

On the 6th April 1959 my brother Jonathan was born, overdue and stillborn. This was a time before counsellors and memory boxes and he was whisked away unphotographed and unrecorded to an unknown grave. He was my older brother, so I have no memory of his birth and wasn’t told about him until I was in my thirties with children of my own. Yet he has had a huge impact on my life, he was the family secret that I kind of always knew about.

When I was told about Jonathan my father was dying and my parents wanted to know what had happened to him, so I set about finding out. It took just two phone calls to solve the forty year mystery, as you might expect with officialdom, he had been allotted a number, his location recorded. Archived.

It was as if he had been waiting for me to find him.

I have always felt a sense of guilt that somehow I let him down by not knowing about him sooner, not carrying him in my heart as I grew up. Seeing that photo of the nameless babies I thought how they could be anyone’s child.. or brother. What if I were to create the memory box that Jonathan would have had if he were to have been born today, would that satisfy my need to memorialise him, to give him a presence in this world?

After a lot of research into what sort of things might go into a memory box and thinking about my own children’s births and mementoes I began to draw..and think .. and imagine.

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The content list not only itemises all contained within the box but other events crossed out – his first school photo, his first lost tooth, all the milestones he would never reach. The box is poignantly empty, indicative of a life unlived.

I do feel that this imagined memory box has helped me and would like to research further into the effects of the created art object. I would like to perhaps work with others who have lost a baby and have been left without anything to remember them by.

October 9, 2012

A Blank Piece Of Paper

Yesterday I started my first ‘proper’ drawing since my degree show.

My summer had been filled with making photograms for a couple of exhibitions and so I hadn’t really drawn for a couple of months. Okay I had been to life drawing and doodled a little bit but not really drawn. My drawings can take a long time, somewhere along the process I always forget to record how long but about fifty plus hours, that’s a long time to spend on something that you might be disappointed with.

I have been deciding on the subject and pose for a few weeks now, looking at photos, choosing and discarding but now that I have started my MA I felt I had to commit to actually doing something.

Yesterday was the day of reckoning, I got up early and taped my paper to the board … then I took it down, it didn’t look right. I lined my board … and took it down, it was creased. By midday I was ready to go, no, I needed to recheck my plans for another hour before I placed my pencil on the paper and made my first mark.

Why do I find a blank piece of paper so scary?

Its because I know that my work will never be as perfect as it is the moment before I actually start. In my imagination I draw with a talent that I can never replicate in reality.

I think a lot of us are afraid of failure and it can sometimes feel safer to find excuses to not try rather than risk discovering that we just aren’t good enough, but you know if we do that we will never discover that we are good enough.

It took me a long time to try at what I really wanted to do with my life, to believe I was worth the effort of trying, I am not sure yet if I have succeeded.

But you know, just like with my drawing, I can always try again.

June 20, 2012

Waiting and working and news

Life is odd at the moment, I have that feeling I have forgotten something or left the iron on, a kind of out of sorts feeling that you can’t quite catch to consider.

I am waiting for my degree results, after three years of pressure and stress my life is weirdly empty, real life has rushed in to fill the void, how did I ever manage to clean the house, shop, cook, meet people before when it takes all day now? My mind is full of what will be my next step, the MA, teacher training, life as an artist, I will have to make a decision very soon, up until now I have been nudged along step by step without really thinking of what I will do in the future. The future has arrived and I need to decide.

I am forever searching for opportunities and that is my news.

I have been accepted for an exhibtion at Royal Derby Hospital in September, the theme is light and I will be showing some photograms. I have 7.3 m of wall by the maternity ward, it thrills me to think that my work might be seen by people who are going through such a momentous time in their lives.

I have developed my process so that they are more vibrant than previously and am experimenting with digital inversion. I have put a few of my experiments below. I am pretty pleased with them and very excited about showing in a ‘proper’ (non university) show.

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June 3, 2012

Degree Show Open!

Last Friday evening, our degree show opened for its private view, after three years of hard work, soul searching and challenges it was over. Looking back at the fifteen year old who was persuaded to give up on her dreams of art college it seems at once like yesterday and a life time ago. I can’t quite believe I have finally done it. There is a saying that trying one new thing a day keeps you young, well it feels like I have been doing that for the last five years, ever since I stepped into my first class, aptly named ‘Drawing for the Terrified’ determined to see ‘if I could draw’ and petrified that I would find that I couldn’t. Thanks to some great tutors I have been encouraged and nudged on to each new step right up to now when hopefully I will soon graduate.

One of the best things about being on the course has been the other students, I am not sure what they think about having older colleagues but they have always been supportive and encouraging and they have opened up my world and made me feel just like another student. At a time when my views could have narrowed and hardened they have made me see things through younger eyes, they are funny, clever and inspiring.

Anyway, Friday night was great, I talked to lots of interesting people,saw great art, drank a little too much and got an award! The award for lifelong learning, a complete surprise and I am thrilled because if nothing else (and there is loads more) the course has taught it is never too late to start and you should always keep trying – and learning.

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I will write a post about my plates and book over the next couple of days

Our exhibition is part of Sheffield Hallam’s Creative Sparks 2012 and runs between 6-23 June, 10-4, Mon to Sat.

I am exhibiting at the S1 Artspace Gallery, 120 Trafalar Street, Sheffield,S1 4JT.

If you are nearby please pop in.

http://www.shu.ac.uk/creativespark/visit.html

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May 15, 2012

Self Portrait

For the last eighteen months I have been drawing portraits of people with scars. I have wanted them to be a celebration of imperfection and a counter to what sometimes gets mistaken for society, you know the magazines and films where the already surgically perfected get airbrushed into impossible proportions. There is a unique and geniune beauty about someone who has lived a life and who has come to accept what that life has made them, who accepts all the physical and emotional scars that life has drawn across their body and soul as proof of a journey taken. I have always known that I am interested in this because of the many scars I have and how difficult I find applying this philosophy personally – I find I am always less tolerant with myself than others.

Anyway, I soon began to realise that each portrait I drew had an element of self portrait in it, I was circling around something I was too scared to execute. All those wonderful people who agreed to let me draw them were so much braver than me.

At Christmas I drew my first self portrait, it was for my Jan assessment so when it came to having to display it I chose a dark corner in the basement of our studios and hoped no one would notice it. It made me feel physically sick to show it. I soon realised it was a pretty bad drawing, I was so scared of actually looking at myself Ihad rushed it so when it came to deciding what to do for my final degree show I knew I had to redraw it – properly this time.

I have taken twice as long to draw this picture than I usually do, really focusing on each centimetre. In the next few days I have got to hang it in the gallery, that is going to be the toughest bit and I am not sure how late I will leave it. A scar isn’t just a mark on your skin it is the story of a moment in your life. For me, my scar represents what I hate the most about myself, the fear that keeps me awake at night and is the thing that somehow makes me feel ashamed, I can’t quite believe I am going to stick it on a wall and let people see it – let people judge me. I have to remind myself that it also represents what I feel most proud about myself, what I have endured and survived and the example I want to show my daughter and son.

If I feel like this it might seem weird to you that I am posting this, but I am just sitting in my study typing, alone, this is me just dipping my toe into the water, any reactions are distant and removed. Real life begins on the 1st of June when the exhibition opens.

Its not the best photo but I hope you can see it well enough,it’s a little over life sized and I have framed it with glass so that the viewer can see their reflection over the drawing

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March 28, 2012

hope

I am making the artists book that I have spoken about before, I want to use cyanotypes of dandelions for the cover and end sheets and have been waiting for them to appear so I can experiment. Finally a spell of uncharacteristically warm weather has kicked nature into action and never ones to miss out, dandelions have begun to embroider the fields around my house. Its a little early for them to turn into clocks but I managed to find one on my first ‘expedition’ and I carried it carefully back in the palm of my hand. I am not sure if it was the hour long walk in the sun or seeing life bursting out around me but I felt a hell of a lot better on my way back than when I started. Life really is hope