27/02/2009 by James.

With my new studio as a base to work from, I have been re-exploring the role that making plays in my practice, and how I can connect my everyday experience and my studio work in a direct way.

I have always valued the experience of handling and manipulating materials as an extension of my interaction with my local environment. After all, it is through the senses that we experience our environment and can develop a sense of self through relationship with it.

But a lot of contemporary art seems to dismiss making or crafts as a lesser form of creative practice, less thoughtful somehow. I am interested in how we have come to deny our own sensory consciousness as the source of our knowledge and come to rely on or react against existing theories and concepts instead.

As ‘fine art’ has become more conceptual, and society has continued to limit the role of the artist to some kind of conceptually reactionary genius, we have ended up with a system where art cuts itself off from a direct sensory appreciation of relevance to most people’s lives, and a wider society that cuts its people off from the benefits that such a creative experience could offer each of us.

I want to continue to use my sensory interaction with my local environment to learn about my place in the world and to reflect on those experiences through making, testing the knowledge that I have been given, and developing a new more direct awareness of the reality of my existence.

I know through my socially engaged work that I can support others to ‘reclaim’ their creativity and explore ways of learning that are based on direct subjective experience, but I still think that artists have an important role to play through the making and sharing of objects, offering a route to empathising with their own sensory experience.

So, for me, I continue to walk, write, take photos, pick up materials, make and think… then share my experience and support others to do the same in ways that are right for them.

I value dialogical ways of working but I don’t ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’. I make artworks that are drawn directly from my own experience, but I do it as an example and as a provocation, not presenting them as the right or only way to see the world. The object arises out of a dialogue between myself and my environment, and any meaning attached to it arises out of its relationship to the viewer.

Hand made art objects are valuable evidence of the interconnected nature of people and the material world, and the importance of a system of learning that is based on everyday creative sensory experience.

Artist, environment, materials, objects, participants and processes all combine together to play a role in encouraging the development of more creative, sustainable societies.

What is Craft ? Craft is remembering that art is seen, felt and heard as well as understood, knowing that not all ideas start with words, thinking with hands as well as head. ( Mark Jones - Director, Victoria & Albert Museum)

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25/02/2009 by James.

Its been a strange but positive time recently for me and my work, I have been taking time to reflect and to plan. I moved into my new studio this week which is based in Marlborough and which will give me the space I need to surround myself with inspiring imagery and materials. It’s also within walking distance of Savernake Forest, which is a definite plus point for me!

I have started to gather together my recent map based pieces to make one larger work (image from phone below), and have made some major changes to the Creative Ecology website… so if you haven’t been there yet, have a look and let me know what you think - www.creative-ecology.co.uk

I hope its a bit more user friendly but still manages to emphasise my focus on the importance of dialogical art practice as a means of ecological learning.

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19/02/2009 by James.

A couple of a series of images exploring natural history and landscape…. Layering animal toys, maps, found objects, old book illustrations etc, exploring and connecting the ways that we define, interpret and perceive the world around us though popular culture.

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16/02/2009 by James.

I have been doing a lot of thinking recently about the value of making more political artwork, relating especially to disability arts. This has partly been triggered by discussions with Alicia Grace, a dramaturg and Kaleido board member based in Totnes, with whom I have been sharing some really interesting discussions on Art, Disability and Ecology.

I won’t try to sum up Alicia’s work in case I misrepresent her, but she will shortly be writing an article on the Alias Arts website, so keep an eye out for that - www.aliasarts.org

I value what Disability Arts has to offer those who chose to take part and those they aim to represent; the way that limiting models of reality can altered or deconstructed. From time to time I choose to make work which is explicitly informed by my experience of disability, but on the whole, I tend to focus on work which explores and shares my whole experience as an individual, learning through the interaction between my physical environment and sensing body, and then reflecting on my place within it.

I have been reading some of the blog of Philip Patson today (” I am a comedian, consultant and social entrepreneur. Sometimes I describe myself as a creative philanthropist…”) and I thought it might be interesting to add some of his thoughts here too….

‘…if we want to create a world where that uniqueness can be valued as much as common experience, we need to start changing language. When we call ourselves disabled artists, what are we thinking about ourselves? What are we putting out to the world and what is coming back to us from the world? What if we used different language, like the ‘art of unique experience’ or ‘art of experiential diversity’? I don’t know exactly what the language should be, but let’s start thinking about it so that we can move forward.’

www.philippatson.com

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10/02/2009 by James.

Today I paid a return visit to Savernake Forest…combining the text written on earlier walks there with images of my body and the tracks that I made in the snow, the local landscape, and an old map of the area from a local junk shop…

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09/02/2009 by James.

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09/02/2009 by James.

It’s been a while since I had the space to do much making of my own…. and in a couple of weeks I’ll be in a new studio, ready to go again!

I value the act of physically exploring materials as a way of reflecting on and sharing my experiences and my learning, setting up a similar kind of dialogue between my body and its material environment as that between myself and the participants in socially engaged work. It is at the point where my body and my physical environment meet and touch that I learn about who I am, where I am and what I am part of, through my senses.

While I have been without a dedicated work-space I have mainly been focusing on socially engaged work, and on documenting my own walks/travels and conversations using text, photos, and collages of found and gathered materials and imagery.

I see these stages of exploring and making as key to my practice as an artist exploring ecology and relationship… I move through the landscape and I reach out and touch, I stop and listen, I collect, and then after I find ways to construct objects that act as evidence of these interconnecting experiences.

The scale and the means of the interaction between myself and a place, a person, or an object may be different, but the intentions are the same…. to explore through dialogue and to learn and develop through that experience… to blur boundaries and to promote an awareness of self and environment based on interconnection.

Hopefully the objects that remain afterwards help to communicate some of that to others… to act as evidence of my experiences and to invite new ones between them and the people with whom they are shared.

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03/02/2009 by James.

Blackbirds tracks in the fresh flat snow yesterday morning….

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01/02/2009 by James.

I’ve been reflecting on my past work and future direction recently, and hope that it is helpful to share my thoughts….

The more that I discuss the point of art and the potential for it to act as a means of social change and ecological renewal, the more I realise the value, honesty and integrity of work I made as a student 10 to 15 years ago.

At the time I was trying to create work that was about the primacy of direct sensory experience and the importance of dialogue between an individual and their physical environment, through exploring, recording and making.

The bundles of found materials, the text taken from journals and diaries of my walks, and the body spaces that I wove and constructed from local materials, seem now to embody this kind of approach best of all. I wanted to engage with an audience, to draw them in and leave room for their own response; a physical and a metaphorical or poetic space for them to bring their own creativity, ideas and experience, to empathise with my experiences but leave room for consideration of their own.

At the time I was impressionable, and was told it had all been done before; that it was craft and not art, that it was too beautiful and needed to be more shocking. Apparently I was being naive.

Now, after 10 or 12 years of working in the arts and watching the emphasis grow from shock and spectacle towards engagement and interaction, I feel like the (academic) art world is slowly catching up with the needs of society and of our natural environment. The power of working methods that explore dialogue between people, and between those people and the environment within which they are embedded, is slowly becoming recognised as a permanent need.

I know there have been movements that have sought to champion the rights of ‘the other’ and these have been vital, and still play an important role. Land Art, Feminist, Queer, and Disability Arts were all created for a reason, but what comes next and alongside them?

It feels to me that there is a growing recognition of the need for creative investigation and reflection on our individual experience, rather than models of art and education that subsribe to or react against established ways of being; and subsequently for dialogue between individuals and disciplines, as a means of creating a social ecology of connection and inclusion.

Language and working methods across disciplines are starting to be shared, echoed and re-inforced in a more integrated and interconnected way. Art and educational practices that explore the relationship between body, site, dialogue and process are championing the right for us to be individuals AND an integral part of a positively functioning whole at the same time, in a way that earlier artistic and political movements made way for but couldn’t quite allow.

SO…. I am revisiting that earlier work that explores the world around me and uses making to reflect on my experiences, which sets up a dialogue with the places and materials of my surrounding ecosystems. And I am continuing to initiate projects and conversations that support others to do the same.

And maybe, bit by bit we can create a world between us that values difference AND recognises what we share; that sees the world through a model of reality based on the interconnection of different subjective experiences, rather than one which reinforces the dualities of ‘us and them’, ‘man and nature’, ‘disabled and normal‘

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