Creative Collective and the 'Life of Art'

When the Crew left the country for the Continent in May, they were off to travel...and of course being the Crew, what should they do but find - completely by chance, Patrick Dougherty the renowned Land Artist, in Brittany engaged in one of his European projects? He was looking for people to work on the project - another of his architectural willow constructions - and so the Crew (i.e. Melina and Wayne of the Collective) got involved. Apparently he said that a ball on top of a pillar was the hardest thing to do...and then was so impressed with their ability that he just let them get on with it! It being the centrepiece of the work. He also ended up giving them a free signed copy of his expensive new art book, writing in it that he couldn't have done it without them, and promising them a corking reference should they ever need it... So in addition to studying with Serena de la Hey of M5 Willow Man giant Millennium sculpture and many others fame, they have now worked on a large project in France with Patrick Dougherty. Time surely that Melina Hubbard Design Associates (as 'Whistling Willow' used to be called) was requested to embark on another major project! In fact, just having returned from Cornwall, and having gone to see her project at Longrock again, and seeing the living willow of the tunnels and dens was growing well, I was struck again by how gifted she and they are. The whole structure is like a maze, but one you won't get lost in and really does that have that 'element of surprise and delight so essential to art' to paraphrase Michael Alexander.

   Also in Cornwall, last Saturday was Lafrowda Festival day in St. Just, the most westerly town in Britain, and Liz Tyrrell (of 'MerryMaker') another member of the Cartwheels Collective, was accompanying one of her giant carnival floats in the big parade. The town was packed, a field on the outskirts commandeered as a car park, stewards and closed roads, the whole centre pedestrianized with stalls, food, music and acrobats, and an amazingly colourful carnival parade! Including a red warrior with turning head and menacing sword, lovely peacock (put together by a local school), elephant highly decorated and ejecting water and confetti, and of course Liz's tall dancing figure, like a Brazilian carnival puppet. Deor donned the Widsith and Deor top hat, complete with roses, and helped animate the figure by taking the pole for one of its arms, and off they went, me taking video and trying to do justice to its sheer size and clever dancing movement. Liz has done some amazing things including a beautiful dual carnival float of two playing card queens in 3D, a huge Spanish style flamenco dancer, and was working on the Lafrowda float (plus community workshops) inbetween her work for the Golowan Festival involving record-breaking numbers of folks dressed up as pirates! and making giant pirates, and soon she'll be off to Cardiff, decorating festivities for the Cardiff Carnival.

    The Collective might not always work in the same place at the same time or even on the same projects, but we keep in touch and up to speed with what the others are doing, and it's delightful that they're always so impressive!
   Closer to home, on returning to HQ, there are two artists/musicians living upstairs, and (while not members of the Collective - folks usually join if they're going to after they've left/cemented things) the drummer and toymaker/wood and ceramicist asked us storytellers to dinner! Along with the painter/keyboard player/guitarist also upstairs. And a merry meal was had by all. The former we hadn't talked with a great deal, as he works opposite hours and so we often don't see him. So it was news to me when he said he'd made a huge dog figure with moveable nose and ears for the Phoenix for a Quirk Theatre production! As well as, (in his native Slovakia) having sold his wonderful toys in markets until the ridiculous hike in stall space rental drove him out of business there. Interested in the carnival float footage, we discussed moveable and mechanical art for theatre and carnivals/festivals, and he was even more gifted than we had thought! (As well as gratifyingly appreciative of Wayne's welding and other skills.) But, like the painter, what he really needed was affordable workshop/studio space... It made me very sad, when I think of the many things Liz has made and had to destroy because there's nowhere to keep them, and that the same thing happened to the giant puppet made for Quirk Theatre! And that really talented people are being hamstrung and having to work in low paid jobs not as stop gaps or top-ups (if the employer is honourable and the work decently paid, stacking shelves or cleaning are not beneath folks' dignity) but as a replacement to the arts and skills they should be doing and being paid for! And that IS a crime. Likewise the Crew talking of fruit picking work - after what they've just done? I wish I could wave a magic wand give the amazing artists I know studio and workshop space, and contacts with the those whom I KNOW must be out there who want to commission their fabulous skills! 'A life of art'? to use Burne-Jones and Morris's phrase. It's easier when you've got Kelmscott Manor at your back... Thank God for HQ, but even with it and masks and props everywhere, and earlier in the year Wayne welding in the shed and Mel weaving willow in the garden, and the many folks who have made and mixed music and sound and painted and made things here, there's still only so much it can do... An idea for a website called 'Undiscovered Genius' should perhaps be built on - where one nominates amazing folks in various disciplines who haven't had the recognition they yet deserve? Well, it's an idea anyway...


Patrick Dougherty's artist website;
http://www.stickwork.net/

Nice to be wanted

Strange to think of the events we can't do or have had to turn down this season... the Leamington Peace Festival wanted us to perform, as did Strawberry Fayre in Cambridge (my first ever festival as a student!) and the Acoustic Festival of Great Britain. Exmouth Festival hosted the wondrous Edge of Chaos improvisational/experimental event that I love so much in May, but I couldn't go... the Dumnonni Chronicle's Outlore big LARP Dark Age bash and battle in early May in Okehampton...and typically enough they had the marvellous Daughters of Elvin playing! Groans all round to miss that! And had an army issuing out a tunnel no less...sounded amazing. (Although on the other side of the coin, we were offered the Buddhafield Festival again this year, but after last year sort of swore never again!)

   Every season has it's clashes, as the Exeter Respect Festival on the Saturday meant we had to leave the Hay-on-Wye philosophy festival just after the Friday evening gig! And Glastonbury was so hot on the heels of the N.Devon Festival's Summer Science Day, we nearly didn't make the latter... And we've just had confirmations of the Nozstock and Big Chill Festivals...one after the other, and also the Beautiful Days (which always clashes with the Sunrise OffGrid). But this season it's crazy. We were accepted for the Exeter Fringe, but then couldn't do it because it was right over Glastonbury! Argh! For the first time since doing it, we can't make National Play Day at Playplus in Dorchester because it's between Nozstock and the Big Chill, and we'll be in Herefordshire all week... What is going on?

   The only way in the end to choose, is to pick the ones that you can make or move things for, that offers the best commissions and/or for the most money. But still you have to turn down some well paid gigs or gigs on which your heart hangs, and with folks with whom you have built up a mutual loyalty...hard choices. But summer is only three or four months long, and every weekend there are dozens (nationwide hundreds) of events clashing with each other. I guess the only good thing is that more people seem to want us at their event. And more wanting us for performing and not (much as it's wonderful to have and transfer practical skills) craft workshops. So perhaps (despite the being drawn between the pillar and the post, and the heartache of missing things you'd like or disappointing nice organizers - though thank goodness for being part of a Collective which means you can find replacement workshop hosts at least!) we're kind of going in the right direction...?

The Astrolabe and the Heart

The new season is well underway now, though blogs and other things have been being neglected whilst two members of the Collective turned up and parked outside HQ for months! From late in January on and off until this week, they have been around, coming in and going out, making things, offering things, mending things, weeding the garden and painting their big purple truck, making it ready for serious travel (rather than a large, comfortable, but rather stationary affair), bestowing on it a motorbike rack, welding, creating, chopping wood and generally being the hive of activity they usually are. It's been strange having them around again for so long. The Collective was born (as I'm sure has been said in previous posts) of various people/artists living together in the same space, either at the same time or sequentially, and knowing one another through that, and coming together to form an artist's collective on the strength of - if you live together, then perhaps you can work together. The original eight members were all folks who lived at HQ (including ourselves the storytellers - writer/poet/actor/collage artist and philosopher/maker/historical cook respectively) and six of us kind of at the same time, which provided the initial impetus for forming the group. Sadly, two of these core members moved to New Zealand a while back, the jewellery and clothes maker, and the roundhouse/eco-builder/wood sculptor/musical instrument maker. Known collectively as 'The Crew', those four all went to Bicton College and met during the now-legendary Environmental Arts and Crafts course, save one, who went to Dartington and was partner of one of the three.
   Since then, the Collective has expanded into friends-of-friends, as the two remaining of the original 'Crew' introduced two of their fellow students from Bicton, or rather one, (cob/wood/willow artist) and his partner (costumes/textiles/banners/rugs/weaving), an artist they met from one of their own projects (carnival floats/public art textiles/large scale banners) and another from their circus days (juggling/fire juggling). Meanwhile two of the early members have fallen away - the issues that evolve over time after having lived together sometimes straining as well as cementing bonds! So music is now under-represented.
   However, incredibly, what with two of the original members moving to NZ, it still meant that we had eight active members, who worked together and in combinations at festivals and events! Quite an achievement, we felt, given the potentials for trouble, what with friendship / housemates / couples / singles / money / relationships / art / egos / work / stress / weather! and heaven knows what else, all mixed up in a heady cocktail. Others with whom the Collective are allied and sometimes work are a pair of stilt walkers (also from Bicton) and an environmental artist (Bicton).
   So for the last three months or more, to live with two folks with whom you have lived twice before, with whom you have done so many workshops and festivals, whom you have been with in good weather and bad, for whom you have cooked and who have cooked for you, who have given you many things and whom you have given many things, with whom you've gone to dinner at dodgy beach bars and danced the night away at parties in questionable venues...with whom you have been through and done so much, and who have brought you through bad times, and find themselves doing it yet again: With whom you have lived in a seemingly endless gift and favour exchange economy where one always needs what the other has to give, storage space for some plastering, willow for electricity...with whom you have unwittingly forged and fashioned something uncomfortably close to a family. Who treats you like a hotel, but in the nicest possible way. With whom you have the ease of ideal flatmates, work colleagues, helpmeets, fellows in some cause...good friends. - Has been strange. Strange because you think that eventually you must get sick of the sight of each other! And yet it doesn't happen, despite the fact that you all have edges or points of non-contact, and come up against them from time to time. Despite (from my own perspective) the endless mug-finding, mug-rinsing, floor-sweeping, the lack of parking outside, the fur on the carpet, folks around getting in the way of admin. and work and making one late...but none of it matters, ultimately. What price the always-chirpy greeting, the friendly smile, the ever-readiness to help, suggest, be positive, cheer up, the know-how to draw upon, have pleasantries with...folks you can get drunk with, without worrying if you'll make a fool of yourself in their eyes.
   And of course, why they were here for so long was to get everything sorted and ready to go to the Continent - perhaps for good. They will stay Collective members. Just as if someone offered thousands of pounds of work to build a house, the eco-builder might return from NZ for a time, so they could perhaps post some of the smaller items which they make, and so will stay with their projects online. But it does mean that in effect, and for now, we storytellers are the only original members of the Collective available for work and working collaboratively now. And that IS strange. The Collective was five years old. Is this the end of an era? Who knows.
   But as of yesterday, they caught their ferry and have gone, having spent from January's end until Easter, then meeting in Easter in London in glorious summery weather and going boating, them surfing behind on the river, and other crowded scenes, almost adolescent in their colourful intensity, and then parting there, only to have them return a week ago...
    And so all this explains why the recent Spoken/Written editions have been late, why e-mails arrived after they were meant to (although there have been server issues too!), and why this blog has been neglected for a while. This wasn't what I intended to write, but perhaps it's only once written, that the business of this blog or online journal can commence.
   Although the Crew and Collective are of course or have been intertwined inextricably with work - until now.....................

   On a lighter note, HQ has been somewhat transformed, with new licks of plaster and paint, much weed and bramble cut away, impetus to get me tiling (an intention which had never yet materialized into action!), thrown away rubbish and junk left by many upstairs, and inspiration to sort spaces that had turned into lumber piles...and perhaps most startlingly of all, their parting artistic tributes to the Collective. A heart shaped hurdle fence with a chandelier crystal set in the centre, and a huge metre and a half high astrolabe sculpture made from cast iron rings...I won't forget this last three months. Bon Voyage, mes amis.

National Play Day

Another Play Day - our fourth for the play association based in Dorchester. Having done willow wings and swords, leaf mobiles, harvest crowns, leather wristbands and gauntlets, this time we were doing mobiles, head dresses, willow rattles/corndollies, dragonflies and building a Viking boat! And of course, storytelling.
Leaving really early, to set up the Pavilion by 9.30 for a 10am start...after coming back from Cornwall on Sunday, was not ideal...but we were all ready to go on time, and offered dragonflies, mobiles and helping build a willow boat sculpture. The boat turned out beautifully - it was made of willow panels, with a mast, rudder, figurehead of the unicorn carnival head, and peopled with masks like the green goblin and grey wolf. It looked splendid, and by the end had arches set in the decks...
The mobiles and head dresses were popular, and I was pleased to see that folks of all ages and genders were interested, and the mobile I made to set the ball rolling drew much praise. (Still a kick, having only been any kind of maker relatively recently.) As ever, some smaller folk decided to make the willow rings themselves, while some teenagers and adults bottled out and requested to have pre-made ones or us to make them - never predictable who chooses to or not. Some made wonderful trailing head dresses, and others fairy crowns. Some from organza fabric, and others from curling ribbon. As ever also, by three o'clock, I felt I had been cutting up fabric forever... However much stuff ready cut up you go with, people always tear through it, and as fast as you make more, they vacuum it up, like (as said in a previous blog) guests at an endless feast, some calling for beer, and some for cake, and all for cheese and biscuits...(again, to use the same book as analogy as in a previous blog -) like Bilbo in 'The Hobbit' when the dwarves come visiting...
Willow rattles/dollies/torches or whatever one wants to call them went down well in the afternoon, small children to adults taking up the challenge, but for the faint hearted of every age, we still offered mobiles and crowns, and got a couple of people wanting wings. And of course a few desperate for swords, again, as always.
Perhaps we should, as Wayne pointed out, review offering an interactive boat sculpture however, as every time we've done it so far, the weather has tipped it down! The weather was distinctly changeable - luckily dry when we set up, and sunny on taking down and clearing up! but grey and misty during parts of the day, and pouring with rain twice. The Pavilion of course was packed, and Deor performed the Inca flood myth as the rain pelted down. We also did Bulgarian and Swedish tales which made everyone laugh, and then Deor finished with a dark but haunting and beautiful tale of 'when King Hal shall ride again'.
I didn't even have time to stop for lunch, as folks came in wanting to make things as I took my first bite of the burgers being handed out to those working there, and didn't stop till after every other attraction had finished either, as folks kept wanting more! The very last being a couple making a mobile to hang in their baby's nursery...

We all lay about on the grass dazed and in my case confused as well, after the last bits of fabric and willow were gone, the camera's charge exhausted and the Pavilion packed away...and were paid promptly (always pleasant!) and praised a great deal - 'we think you're wonderful' said the organizers, 'so flexible!' They loved how popular we were, how we offer things both simple and complex for every age and competency/confidence range, the sheer number of things we offer, how we entertain folks when the weather's foul, and generally how we always think of something. At one point it rained hard enough that only two things were still going on! Of which we were one. They were pleased and impressed with us as usual, and said things like 'another reason you're amazing is -' which always goes down well!
Tired but pleased to be appreciated and glad to see some of the wonderful rattles and crowns and mobiles folks had made, as well as marvelling at the lovely boat, we all trundled back to Devon to have supper at a pub we knew, before the others made their way back to Cornwall, and ourselves to the city, and me to bed!

The last thing that was REALLY nice was that Ann of PlayPlus, who had bought a copy of 'Porlock the Warlock' last time, had read it and so said 'I loved your book' and had also lent it to her daughter who also liked it a lot - it's always so great to hear when people have enjoyed it.

BIG Thanks to Ann, Carol and Sarah of PlayPlus for booking us and all involved in setting up the event!

Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts

I - Setting Up and Taking Down / Performances & Workshops

Strange to be back at the computer, indoors, and with a faint buzzing in my hearing that everyone else assures me they can't hear...also not to be covered in dust.

Five of us went up in a convoy of two vans, and after various unavoidable detours and delays, we arrived at last on site last Tuesday (a week ago now, incredibly) to try and pitch a 16ft. high tipi (which none of us had ever done before). So we were already tired by Wednesday lunchtime... We had brought far too much stuff, and Wednesday was spent sorting the camping gear from the storytelling bodymasks, the carnival heads, and all the props and visuals that go with the shows, from the willow workshop stuff from the leather workshop stuff from the cooking gear from the book stall.....then getting the vehicle to the off site car park that had only a short stay pass, making wings and swords for the next day's workshop, and generally being really grateful it wasn't raining or cold, as there was so much to do! (It reminded me why I love doing gigs at indoor venues, because the body masks are great at tearing holes in cushions and sleeping bags, and add a tipi including huge poles on the roof rack, step ladder and lanterns to decorate the venue and you have inevitably got damage. It's so nice when promoters invite you to do an indoor gig and put you up as well...so much less stuff to take.) But this was Glastonbury, and, as the biggest performing arts festival in the country, we wanted to do things properly.

The next day we held a willow workshop and did storytelling at the same time, and in the evening we did a special adult storytelling set (as none of the bigger stages had anything on yet, so it seemed a very good time). We also were lucky, because as well as the four of us and two other members of the Collective who had come working for other areas, Clive Pig the Storyfella was also performing there! and so we hooked up, and invited him as our special guest star to the evening show (which we had been invited to do by the Daylight Studio opposite, very kindly). It was a great success, Clive doing an amazing tale involving accepting people's quirks, and being grateful for what you have, as a useless man swapped places with a buzzard, and soon was replaced when the buzzard married his wife! And we did two of our trademarks tales, ending with a literal bang as Lady Mary let off her blunderbus! In the following days, we held a longer willow workshop, programmed for the Ancient Futures marquee, making swords, headdresses and some folks made amazing wings! and a leather workshop involving friendship wristbands, small gauntlets, and eyemasks. Our performances included a set in the Permaculture Garden adjacent to the Tipi Field, and a walkabout as a Goblin and Troll stalked about and then sat and hobnobbed by the fire discussing the best ways to cook humans... Plenty of folks took pictures of our new unicorn and company (four carnival poles of unicorn, bear, giant bird head and horse's skull) and the two biggest bodymasks, especially the big green Great Dragon Kraa. We were delighted, as it wasn't as if there weren't a hundred other amazing things to look at and photograph! on the site, so we were chuffed to say the least. And we got plenty of kind praise for both the performances and the workshops. By Sunday we were distinctly dazed and confused, as were many if not most other people, in the heat and dust (and fermenting toilets) as it had really got a lot warmer on Friday morning and then built up from there... Everyone smelt and everything was either dusty or positively rancid! But Deor gathered the energy for a stirring closing tale at the central fire/gathering area of a Native American story called the Flying Head, which went down extremely well. Monday morning and we took down everything, dismantling camp, and packing it all up again...

II - Bookstalls Now and Then

And of course between workshops, up to forty minute round trips to the lav, performances, trying to keep any kind of order to know where anything was when based at three sites (tipi and two vans), longer suppers when we all came together to cook and debriefed afterwards, AND meeting up with the other two members of the Collective working at other areas, (never mind going out from 9 till 2 every night trying to see and experience as much as possible of a site the size of Bath) of course I had neglected to bring any kind of outdoor display unit for the books (a table on top of the rest of the pack had seemed like madness, and so it never made it). So much for hoping to knock something up on site... How stupid did that feel? With all those potential customers going past... In my defence I can only say that it's very stressful putting up a large structure never before tackled (the old tipi belonged to one of our members who now lives in NZ, and only one of us had ever tried to pitch it with her! and that years ago), and also - well, it had been some years since I had been there last.

The last time I went to Glastonbury was under the auspices of the late, great, poetry pioneer PVT West, founder and then organizer of the Poetry&Words Tent; the first year I went as a performer, and the second year she had asked three other poets to put together different quarters of the Tent's programme, of which I was one. The poets I asked worked really well together as they were a great variety of different approaches, and we called our sets 'The Lords of Misrule'. 'The Lords' being Matt Harvey (currently Wimbledon Tennis championships poet-in-residence) Nii Parkes (British Council UK writer-in-residence), Farren Gainer (of One Minute Theatre from Canada) Marie Stanbury (a soulful singer who half sings poetry, with her own band) Re;Leaf (a DJ poet/activist/sampler/mixing duo since disbanded) and myself. And the book stall was all ready and set up, where we all took turns to staff it.

III - The End - Thank You & Goodnight!

All in all, it was worth all the dust and heat, stress and shifting stuff miles. The workshops went well, Widsith and Deor Storytelling sets garnered some very favourable remarks, and it was a wonderful coincidence that the two other members whom we would have liked to bring (if we had had a team of six instead of four) had come working for other areas! Liz (textiles/flags/signs/carnival floats of www.merrymaker.co.uk) working in the Kidz Field doing flags etc. workshops and Ben (juggling/fire juggling/hexagonal marquee) in the Circus area. It was really good to be with them all, and to meet up with Clive Pig there too - all dedicated, gifted professionals whom it's always a pleasure to work with.

And then of course, there were all the amazing things to see and do...(but those are in the Performance blog). Huge thanks to Tara of Hearthworks for booking us, to The Daylight Studio for hosting our adult set, Clive Pig for performing with us, and all our lovely neighbours in the Tipi Field! And indeed everyone who performed, curated, created, organized, invented and made possible the marvellous acts and spectacles there to combine in a magical City of Wonders for four days. It was great to be part of it.