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. 

My new obsession - decomposing leaves

                               

                                           

                                 

                         

                              

                               

                              

                         

                           

   

                                      

Red Arrows in Scarborough

                                        

 

                                          

                                             

       

        

       

       

                                             

                                       

                                                    

      

      

A beautiful day

Saturday 29th June 2013