Lockdown - Overthinking, Goslings, Socially Isolating Chickens and Stripey Stuff

So, two and a half months since my last blog post. That must be a record. Not one to be proud of I have to say. (I initially wrote 'two and a half moths' until I noticed and corrected it, still, I like the image it throws up. . . )
I suppose the enforced limbo we are all in has eroded any sense of urgency I might have felt. Also, feeling guilty about not posting for weeks doesn't help. How can I possibly post after so long a gap? etc. etc.
Oh well, I am doing it now aren't I?

Scratch design rustic, turned look tube beads

The trouble is, for us, so far this lockdown has actually been rather pleasant, which is something else to feel guilty about. We have had fine weather, a lovely big garden to spend time in, access to pleasant country walks and good, responsible neighbours. I know, sickening. . . And it's so much like the everyday existence of self employed freelancers working from home, which is all I have ever done, that it doesn't even feel even vaguely disconcerting. (OK, the supermarket trip is a bit weird with 2 metre distances and masks etc but everyone is pretty chilled and considerate. I tend to go at 8.30 a.m. to avoid any queues.)

Pleasing shape stripey rounded bicone type beads

I feel guilty mentioning it, which makes no sense really. Feeling guilty doesn't actually help anybody else. You can end up feeling guilty because you feel you ought to, that somehow it's not right not to feel guilty considering the predicament some people find themselves in.  Somehow it's the least you can do. You find yourself feeling guilty for even wanting to not feel guilty. . . Like it's a social responsibility to make yourself suffer because others are suffering. Not that affluent middle class guilt is in any way comparable to real suffering you understand. Anyway, I've been round this convoluted moral dilemma enough times for one blog post so I'll stop wittering on about it. Apart from to say that of course I miss seeing friends and family, I miss pubs, I miss meals out, I miss finding cool things in charity shops and I miss playing music with others, but as long as they are just deferred pleasures and not permanently withdrawn ones I can cope without them.

Extremely bad taste

Obviously we wish the situation was different for those unfortunate enough to have been directly affected by this potentially lethal virus, and send them our sincere sympathy/empathy/thoughts/prayers/support. Meanwhile we will keep our heads down and maintain social distance and all the things a certain government advisor has shamelessly ignored recently. I'm not even going there apart from to say 'Grrrrrrrrrr!'. . .

Distressed blunt ended turned look spike bead

As I am talking about domestic stuff, I'm pleased to say that the two geese have done themselves proud and produced two wonderful, greeny yellow, fluffy goslings. ( I don't have pics, sorry) They have even reinvented themselves as good parents, the goslings are about two and a half weeks old and are thriving, unlike last year when the poor little things lasted two days.

Using some simple digital patterns and upcycled steel split rings

The chickens are also in lockdown. We have confined them to the orchard and the pond area, as they were trashing the spring flowers and threatening the well being of anything that might show it's head in the veg patch. (and pooing everywhere) There is more than enough room for the four of them and they are still amongst the most environmentally fortunate chooks you will ever come across so don't waste any sympathy on them ;-)

Weird conjoined tube bead focal thing

My jewellery components have had a few ups and downs, but that is more to do with general retail variation and the fact that I make different stuff every week which will either tickle someone's fancy or not. Recently things have been going nicely, so that is one more thing that hasn't changed much in this time of lockdown. They say that craft supplies are undergoing a boom as people turn to crafting to alleviate the boredom of lockdown. Not so sure about that in my case as I sell to a variety of repeat customers with only the occasional new buyer appearing. Whatever, I am still busy making stuff, so again, situation almost normal. .

An actual necklace - 'Red Lorry -Yellow Lorry' retro rubber stamp images with nylon garden string. .

I have been experimenting as usual, and producing variations on tried and tested things too. The images throughout this post are in chronological order, (apart from the first one) just showing some of the things I have made and mostly sold in the last two and a half months. Enjoy ;-)

I will post again soon, probably. . . ;-)

best, Jon x

Sideways spikes, like fairgound ride spaceships

Boombox!

Seriously large hole tube beads

Multi blob painted distressed spikes

Image transfer wrapped chunky large hole wooden beads

Face

Stripey painted tube beads - these and others like them have been popular ;-)

These rustic image trans wrapped tubes have been popular too

The World is Suddenly a Different Place. .

Well, strange times. . . Surreal times. The fragility of the links that hold everything together are suddenly exposed, although I guess this fragility was obvious enough if we chose to look in that direction -which of course we didn't.

Not that it has had much effect yet round here. Nothing tangible, which makes it like a kind of Phoney War, everything is fine and normal until the first bomb drops on your house. But the advice is to practice Social Distancing, which makes a lot of sense if slowing the rate of infection is the idea, which it should be. It will be weird not seeing friends or family for weeks on end but it has to be done.

It did occur to me that when some people have survived the virus and are no longer infectious, they can act with impunity, mustering in confined spaces at will, having wild parties and dancing on the tables while us virtuously uninfected types lurk in isolation, looking on and muttering darkly over our stacks of toilet roll.

A friend of mine joked that he will be 'self oscillating'. . . Which, I pointed out to him, could get messy if you need to go to the bathroom. . . Could an outbreak of mass self oscillation explain the panic buying of toilet paper?

I am foreseeing complications on the bead making and selling front looming. I have to weigh up the risks of standing in a line at the Post Office, and whether customers are prepared to wait indefinitely for their orders if I decide not to risk it. I need to mail stuff in person to get proof of postage which covers me in the event of things getting lost in the post. I may have to risk not being covered, and print out postage labels online. Also, are people still going to be buying components when they perhaps won't have venues to sell their finished work? It's all very up in the air right now. All I can do is carry on and see what happens. It's all any of us can do I think.

But doom and gloom and viruses aside for a moment, Spring is in the air, I heard a skylark singing yesterday (who knew skylarks could sing Paul McCartney songs? groan. . . ) sorry, I also heard a chiffchaff (a kind of warbler) for the first time this year. The geese are getting frisky in the pond, and as a consequence a goose egg appeared on a patch of mud at the pond's edge. Not in the nest box thing nearby, or on anything resembling a nest of any kind. . The female goose showed no sign of wanting to sit on it or any awareness of her motherly duties. So the egg is forlornly sitting there, being rained on etc and obviously not going to progress to the point of hatching. I thought birds had strong instincts concerning that sort of thing. Evidently not these ones, silly creatures!

So we will be Social Distancing and continuing our own brand of Self Isolation, not because we have symptoms of covid19 but because we have both been freelancers working from home for the last three decades at least, and that kind of social isolation (at least for five days in the week) is completely normal for us and we wouldn't have it any other way. . .

Please stay safe and well and keep up your Social Distancing whenever possible to give the health care system every chance to keep up with things as they transpire ;-)
And as the legendary comedian Dave Allen used to say, "May your God go with you".
Jon x

Stringing things up, Issues with. Advice gratefully received. . .

Well, having created and constructed a good few interesting pendant focal pieces, in my view anyway, I have been mulling over and wrestling with the problem of how to present them as finished necklaces, if that's not too loose a term.

Wire wrapped copper links and jump rings

Simple chain. . .

I can make pendant things that look great on their own, and that are recognisably my work, but as soon as I try to put them on a string/chain/other, they look kind of wrong and somewhat amateurish in a worrying sort of way. It is occurring to me that the choice of stringing/hanging material is a lot more important than I had previously thought. It might just be that am not used to seeing my work in this way, and that I just need to get used to it, but I don't think it's that simple.

Upcycled wire links and industrial style heavy washers

Simple suede cord, titanium clasp - I think this one might actually work

A necklace is a construction in it's own right, I know that, and admire the work of the many necklace constructors whose work I see online etc, but it's hard to echo what they do in my work. By that I mean that the take away I get from others' work is that the combination of beads/items and string/chain/whatever just looks 'right'. It suits their creative identity/aesthetic. The choice of carrier suits the thing carried if you get me drift. I find it hard to find and nail down that relationship in my work. Sometimes sticking something on a chain might work, sometimes something more complex and visually demanding might work too. The issue is working out, or feeling instinctively which approach suits which pendant/bead/etc.

I have made some small progress I think, in that often my work is quite bold and somewhat eccentric, with industrial overtones ;-). Therefore, the choice of 'string' should echo that. To that end I have made chain links out of bits of the wire grid i like to use, from copper wire, and from upcycled steel wire, basically a short length of wire with a loop at each end, which can join onto one or more others. These work OK, but aren't suitable to go round the back of the neck, for comfort and possible allergic reasons. Therefore a piece of chain, suede cord or suchlike needs to be added. This never seems to look quite right to me.

I think I need to accumulate a larger and wider stock of possible stringing material and try things until something 'works' and is identifiably my creative choice and belongs to my aesthetic.

OK, I could spare myself the grief and just sell the pendants themselves, should anyone want them, (and I have done that quite often) but I see my dilemma as a challenge, something I should be able to surmount. Then of course I will have the issue of actually trying to sell the resulting jewellery, but that is something to be addressed when the time comes ;-)

Pruning, which has no relation to Prunes, Swords, Mixing Wires and Getting Back into it All

Well, the weather got a bit wintery for a change! In a good way, it's been dismally dull and wet for weeks round here. Steady light rain and the kind of dull light that makes you feel like you never actually woke up fully, so you mooch around, squelching across the mud and moss that may revert to something like a lawn one day if it ever stops raining, grumbling, mumbling and tripping over the chickens, feeling like your battery failed to recharge properly and you left your 'oomph' in your other trousers. .

But a few days ago it was crisp and bright. Cold, (comparatively of course - this is the south eastern bit of the UK after all) but we had bright sunshine for two whole days, which meant it was actually pleasant to be outside. This was convenient as there was work to be done in the garden. 

The apple trees needed pruning and as it was the right time of year for such activity I got the ladder out and set to work. I might have been a bit too enthusiastic as when I looked up a Youtube vid or two  after the event, (I know!) it seems I cut some of the new growth back a bit too much. Still, I got rid of the millions of spindly vertical bits called 'watershoots', that produce neither fruit nor blossom, so if we get fewer apples this year than we potentially might it's no great loss as we usually get far too many anyway. . . 

It's the cooking apple tree up next, Bramleys, lovely great big buggers they are. We get shedloads of them, maybe I should start up an apple pie factory or something. 

Still I'm not really complaining, I am only doing a good impression of somebody complaining, I mean, we have an actual (small) orchard FFS! Not something I imagined I would be lucky enough to own years ago ;-) So I feel suitably blessed.

Anyway, pruning aside, I have been back in my workshop making stuff. I think people, including me in my capacity as a person, are a bit tired of the chunky rectangular image transfer stuff I've been making lately, so I will leave that alone for a while I think. 

I am busy making some spike related things. Spikes with a slight difference, as I am using upcycled wire instead of copper for the bails and loops. Something I have done before but not quite in this way. I have been making Swords. . . Cool huh?

Oh yeah, before I knocked the image trans stuff on the head temporarily I messed around with using thin copper wire wrapped round some of the upcycled wire I like to use as bails etc.

Note the copper leg warmers, very 80's

I liked the effect, so I have integrated it into the Sword thing. . .

 

Selling wise, things have been a bit slow but it's all going OK, with a few things actually selling on Etsy believe it or not. Maybe I have ceased to be invisible there for a brief time, who knows?
Anyway, onwards and upwards, or at least not backwards and downwards, the climate is taking that journey on it seems. . . ;-(
Until next time, whenever that might turn out to be,
be well,
cheers
Jon x

Holding Back and Falling Off a Cliff

This Holiday/Christmas/Other break, as well as being a pleasant bit of family time and chilling out time, has been quite useful as regards the space it provided for contemplation and for gaining perspective about creative work. For me anyway.

I don't feel massively renewed and refreshed necessarily, but I do feel that I've gained a bit of insight into my creative process that might help me, 'going forward' as they say.

I have come to realise that I hold things back. This seems to be out of a sense of anxiety.
It appears that I need to have something 'in reserve' to bring out if 'all else fails'. Something that serves, in my mind at least, as a kind of creative insurance policy. A fence between me and the void. . .
It's not the most sensible thing to do, as whatever it is that I have in reserve may not be the killer sure thing I imagine it to be at all. And if it fails then that's my supposed parachute shot full of holes and me making an unpleasantly close and very swift acquaintance with the cold hard ground. . .

It all comes from fear I think, deep down somewhere there is a fear of . . Well, I'm not sure quite what. Not failure as such, maybe fear of finding out that I was delusional all along and really my work is total rubbish ;-) Or that those that have approved of and followed my work will suddenly realise that they were also delusional. . .
(Actually that fear, at various levels of severity,  is quite common amongst artists I have spoken to over the years. Rationality is not us. . .)

This revelation regarding undue and unnecessary retention of creative work came about from a growing and persistent feeling of being blocked, by myself. Not wanting to make something because it wasn't what I felt I 'should be' making. Or not wanting to put something up for sale as 'nobody would like it' or 'it doesn't feel right' or because now is not the time somehow. Though exactly what I think I am waiting for and why is by no means clear.

(Beware of the concept 'should be', it's you imagining an outside observer judging your behaviour and output. No such judgemental outside entity exists and even if it did, you could never accurately predict such an entity's opinions. So don't go there. . . Easily said mind. .)

This led me to notice that I was holding various components back when making pieces, being retentive about some particular found or made object because whatever idea I had at that moment about how to use it might not be the best use for it. It wouldn't be using it to its best advantage. Maybe I would have a better idea at some amorphous and unspecified time in what is generally known as 'The Future'.
Anyone else do this?

It all comes from a place of fear and lack, as if I will never find or make another object as good. As if the supply of interesting and usable objects in the world will run out, or as if inspiration is actually finite.
This mindset is obviously unhelpful, but thankfully, once noticed can be combatted.

In future, I intend to be less uptight about what I make, I shall use that 'precious' component and then move on. I will always have new ideas and find interesting things to mess around with. The world is an abundant place ;-)
And if I am delusional about my work's value to anybody other than me, well so be it. I'll fall off that cliff when I come to it. . .

I think these creative semi-crises are part of the creative process to some extent, and follow the classic bell curve of slow build up, tipping point/revelation and then slow build up again. Despite the psycho drama, work gets made, some of it not bad, I hope ;-)
Happy new Year,
Jon x

Well, Well. . That Went Well. . .

So after all the hand wringing and anxiety about the showcase thingy, it turned out to be a big success. A bit nuts to be honest, but in a good way ;-) So I shall most likely do another one, but not for a couple of months I don't think. Meanwhile I shall carry on listing a few things on Tuesdays and Thursdays, without expecting much to happen, it being holiday season and all.

As for us, we have no plans for Christmas yet - no idea what to get anybody for presents and no idea what we want them to get us. So no change there ;-) Funny how when you're young, you have a list of wonderful things you desperately want, but when you get older, there really isn't anything much (in anyone's price bracket!) that you want at all. Hence all those 'Gifts' you see everywhere. Things ultimately destined for the back of the cupboard but which at least tick Auntie Emma off the Xmas prezzie list. . . Cynical? Moi?

And of course we have this bleedin election coming up. I shall vote but it will be a waste as 'the other lot' are very safe in this neck of the woods, (whatever a neck of the woods actually is).

It amazes me that with all the headline writers in the world, that nobody has used the phrase 'Brexistential Crisis', not that I have seen anyway. Slackers. I thought of it on day one. God I'm so witty. . . ;-)

Meantime I shall ignore the News and stick to acceptable music radio stations like 6 Music (a UK thing) and occasionally check the BBC World Service, which is a good reminder that there is a World out there full of people with very different concerns to us, but which are just as valid. He said, piously polishing his halo.

Bead and component work wise, just to wind down from the showcase frenzy of a few days ago I have been making a few simple, textured disk beads using one or two of the small, wooden, Indian printing blocks I have accumulated in the last few years.

My simple technique was to squash a small ball of poly clay into one tex block with the flat, reverse side of another one to give me a deeply textured, slightly irregular, disk with a flat back. The inspiration being those old stamped coins from Roman and Saxon times (or before in other parts of the world).

On some of them I pressed the back of a block onto the raised texture to flatten it out slightly and to give it a faint wood grain texture.

After baking, I messed around with alcohol inks, gilder's paste and maybe some discreet sanding and waxing and some rubbing to emphasise the resulting textures. In case you were interested. . .

No domestic drama on the home front since the 'wheelbarrow incident', thankfully. Though the down side of life being relatively uneventful is that it doesn't make for very interesting blog posts. . .

Though, as we appear to be living in 'Interesting Times' right now, uneventful is good.

Until next time, Jon x

Comet