2010: Creative Recovery

I started the year by enrolling on a one-term course called Photographic Seeing which got me out and clicking again. I’d been through a major bereavement and didn’t have the perceptual and emotional energy required to engage in creative pursuits and so I found myself stuck in the dreaded artist’s block.

When I rang up the college to enrol I was told the class was full. I was in the midst of The Artist’s Way and knew that I had to get on that course. I emailed a friend who was enrolled on the course and she emailed the tutor. I emailed the tutor. I kept ringing up the college in the hope that someone didn’t turn up and pay the fees. Nobody dropped out, but the tutor asked for a larger classroom and voilà, I had a place. I might have been kicking and screaming on the inside every time I ventured out with a camera but by the end of that course I’d produced a body of work. I was showing up at the shutter button or whatever the photographic equivalent of the page is. And so the journey began.

At the end of the term I volunteered to curate and edit a book made up of the best of the images from all the students on the Photographic Seeing course. It’s been a long haul and often other priorities have taken precedence but it’s well on it’s way to completion now.

Not wanting to lose momentum, I signed up for another short course in the following term, it was about learning to work on projects as opposed getting that one good shot, and also about developing a portfolio. As a result, I exhibited for the first time at the end of term show and produced two zines based on my coursework projects. One featured cups, cutlery and so on and the other about shop window reflections. My intention is to produce two ‘real’ books via Blurb.com.

The tutor also teaches City & Guilds Photography and Photo Imaging, so I dutifully went along on enrolment day with my folder and sat in the queue along with all the other hopefuls and was accepted on to the course. And that’s what I’m doing now. The workload will ramp up in the New Year as I work on the projects that will be submitted to City & Guilds for assessment.

This year, I’ve started making movies with nothing more fancy than a point-and-shoot digital camera. I’ve learned how to use iMovie as a result. How far will I go with this new interest? At the moment, it’s just enough to explore and see what’s possible.

I’d also like to collaborate with writers—you know who you are!—and I’d like to publish the results by making zines or eBooks or Blurb books. But that’s for later.

There are two writers that have inspired me to keep on with the making and doing, namely Julia Cameron and her books The Artist’s Way and Walking in this World, and Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit. No matter which way you look at it, you’ve got to keep on making things—photographs, poems, songs, cakes, whatever.

So, that’s the more conspicuous achievement part of my 2010. There’s been a lot more boom-and-bust in my attempts to keep up with it all and there have been times when I thought the City & Guilds course was too great a commitment and I have honestly thought about giving it up. And I probably will think that way again. And again. But I don’t want to give up.

As fitting with all this end of term/end of year stuff, the photo above is the one I exhibited earlier this year. I’ve also entered it into the Modern Perspectives photography competition at the National Gallery. I’m not so much ‘in it to win it’ but rather to be just one part of something bigger.