Joe Back's Weight 2009

Another picture of the most successful and unexpected of these new works.
The arm is copper thread couched over a wire and mohair cloth arm. The cuff is detached buttonhole lace and the hand with wired fingers is lifting to a tiny iron. The wooden block has printed linen with Joe's dream jungle on it, he's building muscle with the downstairs iron whilst seeing where he'd rather be.

More from Joe Back: 31/05/09

Well, not what I expected but carrying on from my last post re.Joe Back some new stuff has emerged. After doing a lot more paperwork I decided that although printed textiles of mine might end up within the embroidery that prints and drawings remain just so. But there has been a return to the imagined animals theme 1st explored some years ago.

Small sculptures have been the result so far (max.3"sq) with more planned. As they are still fresh I'd only like to say that Joe Back is trying to get on with life but his work duties lead him to dreaming - the exotic being found in the humdrum. By the way he's taken up boxing and his weight lifting is doing his own ironing.

I'd like to thank Lesley and Steve, Matt and Iain for their gentle encouragement.

"Joe Back" the Odd Man

I've decided to work on paper for a site specific project about a real Victorian man called Joe Back.
He was the Odd Man, nowadays called an odd job man, who was employed at Preston Manor during Victorian & Edwardian times in Brighton.

He was rarely allowed above the servants areas below stairs but gradually gained status within the Manor's staff to become Estate manager. In this work he dreams of adventure and personal satisfaction and of forbidden love.

The works on paper (some of which are illustrated here) are evidenced by illustrated stories of expeditions of the time - which Joe was able to sneak view when left alone upstairs.

Joe was unable to read and as such the dreams of longing and sexual fullfilment are spaced over jumbled continents.

I hope to print these images and hand embroider small details in high colour on them. They may take the form of handkerchiefs, which have the sweated dreams on them, that will have been dropped when he went out to do his work again. We'll see.
I choose to work in collage to utilise the many wrecked books I've found in the second hand bookshops in Brighton.

These I am hoping are works about longing and his quiet loyalty and the firmly rooted class structure of the time in which he lived.

Extreme Crafts

I've been thinking about the notion of craft and making.
This is something I've avoided since college days when it was considered obsolete or absolute. Over intellectualised enough to induce a coma (and usually by those who talk but rarely if ever make), it's neither and it is both..I think.
The reason for my reconsideration is due to a ongoing discussion with other artists on this topic. To "craft" is important as in to make, whether it's made well is a notion I've now disregarded. What's more valuable is to exercise as much skill as possible in choice of marks/materials and in the honing my intentions. Extreme intentions that are well crafted?
So to craft or make to the extreme is appealing, I do seek to stir up or agitate myself when I'm making my work and certainly some past work has been publicly viewed as overt.
Extreme intentions appeal but so does the notion of quietness and calm. Extremely quiet crafts? Subversion is always a must though.
We will see, but I am glad that I have been prompted to explore this again as an adult. Now I can disregard any rationale based on self-justification in the art versus craft debate.
The writer Jeanette Winterson said that there is no such thing as good art or bad art, it is either art or it is not. I wholeheartedly agree.
I think that how something is crafted must contribute to an object creating that status for itself.