Bacchus

Bound with ivy and dripping with honey

the beneficent wand of Bacchus

Fucked me up.

The Princess

Cinderella eat your heart out.

New rags and high heels.

Feeling like a princess

With a nervous pounding heart.

I held my head up high. 

Swallowed hard and walked in.

Stale beer stench in a smoke filled room.

Saw discarded rags and high heels.

Feeling like a princess

With a shocked and sickened heart.

She held her head up and swallowed hard.

I walked out.

Once Upon A Time - a generational fairytale - but not for the faint-hearted

Conceived in anger.

The King and Queen fought for her attention.

Fought for possession of the offspring princess.

He for love of him.

She for love of me.

But I couldn't feel her love,  

Only her disapproval.

The King held court.

None of it was the Queen's truth.

She was mute with her own frustrations.

Tempted away from the castle battlements

With false promises and testosterone,

The Princess thought she knew her own mind.

She'd get what was rightly hers; 

She'd get what she deserved.

She'd  get what she deserved.

whether she wanted it or not.

The King  had handed her the poisoned spindle.

And my father cried.

Tears for his first love. 

His first loss. 

Not mine.

Drunken sex in squalid squats and seedy motel  moats.

Flattered by the damp croakings of a randy frog.

I cried to my mother one night when i was drunk. 

She sat with me in silence and held my hand. 

But he'd told her that he loved her.

Surely he'd give her what she deserved.

The  princess was a frog-kissing prick-teaser

and he was her own true love.

Prince Charming.

Prince oh so charming.

I could hear my mother worrying that he would hit me.

He didn't hit.

So he must have been ok.

She was going to get what she deserved.

He didn't hit her so it must have been ok.

She wanted to leave him but 

He cried. 

Told her how much he loved her.

He'd never find anyone else like her.

He'd got more than he deserved. 

He loved me.

I was his princess.

Frog-kissing, cock-sucking princess.

Her carriage turned back to pumpkin, and

the horses turned back to mice.

Her dress in tatters and shoeless when Prince Charming raped her.

My mother sat in silence and held my hand.

Normal service will be resumed

If the stuff in my head 

is my stuff,

I can 

sort

 it.

It's just stuff.

It's my stuff

I'll sort it.

But the stuff that I was holding in my head was your stuff.

Not my stuff. Not good stuff.

Your stuff.

I don't want it any more than you did.

Suspended for over 30 years

Normal service will be now be resumed.

What's that?

Oh yes, 

It's me.

And my stuff!

Bear Pit

The bear in the pit is not so scary if you take a closer look.

I found sympathy for the bear.

The fear is in my head. 

The only thing left in the bear's pit is 

a sad tortured bear.

Dark

There's dark and light when it's light.

But when it's dark, it's dark. Not night.

Night doesn't follow day.

Night can be light as the day can be dark.

Stop the noise, dark or light!

When it's dark, it's dark. Not night.

Daisy Chain

Standing shoulder to shoulder with my sisters.

The sun forces only my unique whiteness into your eye.

The majestic sweep of green blurs as I shoot into stark focus.

Virginal but with a tinge of pink around my yellow heart.

Others whose whiteness took your eye 

Hang  limp and lifeless between your thumb and finger.

Admired, chosen. Plucked. 

A thumbnail forced through their soft flesh.

Another's stem driven into their core.

I want to be the chosen one.

But can i risk a thumbnail through my heart.

Work on my my new screen project

I'm really enjoying myself at the moment. It's the first time in literally years that I feel engaged with my work. I have a plan. I'm working towards that plan, and feel good.

Parts of what I'm doing really remind me of some of the work I did for my degree show, nearly 30 years ago.  I've finished 2 of the panels now and started the third. With the newly made framework made out of dowel I am starting to really see where this is going. And I like it!!

My new studio space is proving very conducive to work. The studio in the attic will be a playground for ideas. How lucky am I? Things are going well. X x 

STUFF (and nonsense)

Well where to start? I have been swamped by 'stuff' for years. This 'stuff' has been following me around since I sold my own house and opened a shop called 'That Arty Place' in Faversham, Kent. 

That Arty Place was a craft shop, packed full of goodies. My customers used to call it an Aladdin's cave or a sweetshop (without the calories).  I also had a large workshop, where I held craft classes for groups of up to 12 people, and every weekend held at least 2 children's craft-based birthday parties. And don't forget I had a house-full of ordinary household 'stuff' as well.  I rented That Arty Place because the exchange on the shop and flat i had been buying fell through. I had terrible problems with the landlord, and ended up taking him to court (but that's a different story!). The bottom line was that even though the shop was a success, I couldn't sell the business on as a going concern.  I had a sale for weeks before closing down, and was virtually giving stuff away, but there was still an awful lot of 'stuff' including all the fixtures and fittings which I owned.

When we got married, we bought a new house, and effectively moved two house-loads of 'stuff' PLUS all the 'stuff' from the shop into it. Rob had his own unique brand of 'stuff' as well. We had 5 bedrooms, a large attic, a double garage, 3 garden sheds and my studio in the garden and still we didn't have room to breathe for all the 'stuff'. When I first moved to Scarborough I left the 'stuff' in Kent, and felt free for the first time in ages. I forgot i had 'stuff'. I only had the 'stuff' I wanted, and began to enjoy the novelty of acquiring new 'stuff'. MORE stuff. But then we sold the house in Kent, and bought a tiny, damp house with a dilapidated shop attached in Lockton. All the 'stuff' I had left behind, and happily put out of my mind, came back to me. Not only my own stuff, but also a lot of other 'stuff' which wouldn't fit into Lockton! 

The Studio Gallery had become a depository for 'stuff'. Not stuff that was wanted. Not stuff that was even really useful. Just the detritus of life, and 'stuff'.

We went about refurbishing and refurnishing the property and shop in Lockton. You guessed it. More 'stuff'. When Lockton failed, for various reasons, we rented a house in Castle Crescent - fully furnished!!! Then we all moved into The Studio Gallery. All of our 'stuff' in one place. Under one roof. One 5 floor house, stuffed top to bottom with stuff.

To be continued . . . . .  

Fairy Tales and Happy Endings

Fairytale endings and love's true kiss.

I want to watch without crying.

Life is supposed to be a comedy for fuck's sake!  

But even Laurel & Hardy makes me cry.

Because 

its 

just 

not 

funny.

Light & Dark

Seeing is believing. 

Same screen, same position, 

different time of day; 

different light; 

different dark.  

Today I have tried to take a look at the light and dark of my depression. 

But its hard. When I am in the light, I can't remember the dark. But much more worryingly,  when I am in the dark, i can't remember the light, and certainly can't imagine it coming back. When it's light, it's light. When it's dark, it's dark. But it's not like night following day. The nights can be light, just as the days can be dark. 

When it's light, and maybe i should have been able to look for answers, for some reason i haven't been able (or willing?) to see. 'Blinded by the light?  My challenge now is to try to recognise when the light is gong to go out again and somehow try to prepare for it. The light doesn't just go off. It gets brighter and brighter until the filament burns out. The light stops and the noises in the dark start.

Ebb & Flow

This is the first piece of work I made when I moved to Scarborough.

It is called  'Ebb & Flow: Tidal Prozac' 2010

As a very brief explanation, this piece represented how I saw my mental state at the time of moving here; the boxes signifying my need for solitude, but also attempting to acknowledge my relative insignificance when set against the backdrop of the historical context of geological layers and the inevitable ebb and flow of the tide. There was a line drawn, in thread, which represented 'the norm' and the boxes were deliberately set above or below it. The line was taut, secure and comforting in its strength, and confident in its air of being 'right'.

The reason I am blogging about this piece again, 3 years on, is that I noticed this morning that 

'the norm' thread has broken and I began to muse about the significance of this.

There may well be no significance, but I've noticed it, and it's made me think.

Here you can see both ends of the broken thread. One hanging at the far end, and one lying along the bottom of the box. I think that it's current position will be temporary. I am sure that gravity and time will continue to have an effect.

It's quite difficult to get a picture of the thread, but it is just hanging in mid-air, like a cobweb, with no apparent means of support, and of course all the tension has gone from the line.

I was thinking yesterday that moving in and out of depression is like flicking an electric light switch; but not being able to remember the the state of light or dark which came before it.  This thread now reminds me of a delicate power-line hanging between pylons, spanning the space between the boxes, but expectant; like a washing line waiting for its inevitable load. But somehow you know that even the slightest weight exerted onto it will see it drop to join the rest of its length along the bottom of the box. The taut strength of 'the norm' is too hard to maintain, and really serves no purpose other than to judge or to compare.

I wonder whether 'the norm' is something I no longer aspire to, or feel the need to measure myself against. Hopefully I am beginning to appreciate, and be able to manage, my own ebb and flow in a more productive way.

Mindset

By Helen Birmingham

My mind is cluttered.

An untidy, uncomfortable mess.

So i stuff thoughts into cupboards 

to vacate the space,

to set the scene.

But there's no audience to please.

No applause to acknowledge.

So why do I only act my life?

Forget the script.

Unconstrained the compressed and crumpled fabric of ideas will 

expand to fill the space and I will float 

on a glorious, vibrant tide of clutter, texture and pattern.

I won't drown.

After all -

I set the scene.

July 2013

Revisiting work from 30 years ago!!

I'm very pleased with the way my work is going. I'm still working on the screens, hopefully meeting up with David Stephenson, Artist Blacksmith, next week to talk about the structure of the forged corners and hinges. All the forging will be very obvious and exposed and an integral part of the design.

I am feeling so much happier with the design of the panels too. Gone are the rather obvious Hundertwasser inspired spirals (although they may make a comeback later). I have gone back to looking at a basically monochrome palette and the designs are inspired by pebbles, rock formation, core sampling and tidal erosion patterns.

Realising that the proportion of the screen panels is the same as the microscope slides I have been interested in for ages, was a real turning point for me. It meant that I could revisit my Darwin work, and find a new direction for some of images, which I felt at the time, still had mileage in them for me.

Everywhere I look now, I am seeing images which remind me of work I was doing during my degree (and that was over 30 years ago!) - the same marks, the same images and the same interests recur over and over. There MUST be a reason for this. I need to push on through these investigations, which might feel a little repetitive, and hope that I will find the reason. I've never really dedicated enough time to see where the ideas will lead me. Now IS THE TIME to do it . . . . . . 

Well, tomorrow. Now it's bedtime. Good night x

Eggs, Leaves and Eyes of Bees

Not a new spell or love potion, but the things that have been grabbing my attention over the last few days, and which have encouraged me to start doodling in a sketchbook/notebook again...

The eggs are fairly obvious and are a recurring theme in my work, along with pebbles. I've been working on a piece for a long time now called "baby blanket' which is about fertility and motherhood, and another called 'Design A Baby' which is about genetics and eugenics. 

The leaves have become a bit of an obsession (that's not like me!) and I'm looking into the cost involved in getting some screens made of some of my images,  but what about the eyes of bees?

Bees apparently have 5 eyes. The two big ones, which are compound eyes, and then three little ones in the top of their heads, called 'ocelli'. These are simple eyes, meaning they have one single lens (like ours) and they are designed to recognise light and dark, so helping the bees to navigate into and out of the hive.

I saw a microscope slide preparation from the 1860's of the ocelli of a hive bee: it was for sale on eBay. The pattern of the preparation could easily have inspired a 1950's fabric designer . . .  

During the slide preparation the ocelli themselves are destroyed to leave the three holes in the epidermis. The pointy end of the triangle would have been towards the front of the head. I was really sad not to be the highest bidder for this microscope slide, but it was obviously quite sought after.