Back in December last year, I contacted Pete and Indi of Scale, to see if they could help me get my projects organised, online and connected to each other, linking social medias and making some sense of the overflowing basket of my years as a creator and the many things I like to be part of doing. I was asking how to introduce myself to a new way of working , let people know I'm not just the organiser of Tribe of Doris and think about promoting my work for old and new audiences, thinking of myself as an artist rather than a "do everything that needs doing" person, maybe they are the same!
It was a tall order really, being a busy person, having a wide stretch of things to try to pin together and no real understanding of the whole tech thing of websites and thinking about selling my wares, a resistance to thinking like that and then ............ Covid , so everything halted anyway and I got locked-down in Cornwall for 2 glorious months , probably the best weather ever, hardly anyone around , it was like going back 50 years, and I loved it .I spent the time roaming the cliffs and beaches, playing with rocks, going to my first primary school and walking " home " down and up the valley as we used to , making lines, patterns , little videos and slideshows, doing yoga , eating lovely suppers with my brother and his family . It was the best thing to happen to me for decades, nothing else to do but be in North Cornwall and love it . I had needed to STOP for so long and now I finally could and it was as close to home as I'd get .
Pete and I started to try to pick up some of the threads and so began the building of this website.
I kept changing my mind about what I wanted . I didn't really want anything . I struggled to find a way to compartmentalise my work until finally I found Jeremy Deller's website and then I knew I could present my work in a way that made as much sense to me as it might to anyone else. (Biggest thanks to Jeremy Deller)Sometimes days and weeks would go by and nothing would get done by me, I wondered if Pete and Indi would despair of me actually getting the hang of this sort of way of making my statement.
Lockdown finished and I was back in Bristol , picking up my city life , carrying on my Theatre Bristol job of artists support and resisting finding the time to sit down and actually do the work that needed to be done , write the words, choose some fonts, why do they have soooo many? I didn't really like the way the website looked, we tried to get as natural as possible but it just looked bare until one day at my friends the sky was so blue I took loads of pictures and thought "thats what I want my website to look like" and then I started to get excited about it, I could see how it might work .
It was still a slow process, days and weeks would pass when I totally forgot about , but as it slowly got filled with things I was proud of and proud to share , the website became my gallery. I haven't really ever thought of myself as an artist, I'm constantly creative and active etc but the building of this website and a grant for the Arts Council called Developing Your Creative Practice has helped me both see myself in a different way and present most of my creative ideas and pouring's in one place .
Pete has been great, patient and supportive, Ive challenged his ideas about what a website should look like and he's supported me to make mine, the way I want to and not the way it ought to be. No doubt some will say , "oh you should have done this or that ", but you know what? I am happy to launch this website and see what comes from it . Its exciting and I hope whoever encounters it enjoys something here and will engage with me, as someone who can help develop their own ideas or become a supporter of my work. feel free to contact me and lets see what we can make happen together.
