Cost Of Living Crisis

 

As an #ExcludedUK artist and carer, the cost of living crisis caused by austerity has been documented in this blog, with my lost wages calculator going up every year.

This year, the energy crisis has now extended to everyone else.

Over the past few years, I've variously had some issues with energy bills, and now, it's Bulb who I'm in a sort of The Sandman / Morpheus-like battle of minds with.

Of course, Bulb have gone bust, so are in no place to demand any money at all.

Once they put my bill up to £261 for a small 3 bedroom terrace house, and some support I was previously getting from City Of Lincoln Council ended in 2021, I cancelled my direct debit.

I'm still recovering financially from my youngest son's destitution in 2019, so this would bankrupt me.

The "debt" is currently -£1882.33

I'm not personally responsible for wholesale energy prices, so it isn't mine to pay.

Anyway, as the Don't Pay campaign is encouraging everyone to get together to take mass action to cancel direct debits to stop them from making ridiculous profits, here's what happens.

I pay Bulb a lower amount every month by request. They send me a link to pay, and I am still paying the bill, and every month I tell them I will reinstate the direct debit when it's at a realistic level.

I have sought help from numerous charities, none of whom have been able to help, and I've told them this.

I've also complained to Lincolnshire County Council for using carer's charities who do not actually provide any charity. The email was blocked.

Unless artists are simply paid wages, and carers are paid #wagesnotclaps, it's not realistic to demand a direct debit for £261 per month.

If my income was high enough to pay that, and if I lived in an actual mansion, then it would be no problem, but the fact is that it isn't.

If they wanted to take me to court, I'd argue this case with legal support.

So this is what you must do.

This is what everyone must do. 

On 1st October, cancel your energy direct debit.

If you're someone who can afford to pay your energy bills, and are in receipt of the £400 government grant, but don't require it, you are very welcome to commission or buy artwork from me.

You can also buy the materials on my Amazon Wishlist - I'm in the process of a series of 3 new paintings based on a trip to Monaco in 1995, so I have 3 large canvases, which were a nightmare to get home on my bike!

Thanks for your support!

I'm currently in the process of transferring my website to a new domain. This domain will include pricing packages and direct sales of work.

It will contain a blog, so this blog will transfer over there. Access to content will depend on income level, and will not be automatically free, to cover the cost of running the website, broadband internet, and other fixed costs. Here's an insight into the pricing strategy:

A tale of two sculpture parks

 

Back in March, I still had respite funds, so I decided to visit Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which sits on the river Dearne, the river from which my family name comes from. My great Grandad Dearnley moved to Lincolnshire from Yorkshire originally.

So technically, YSP is my own sculpture park.

YSP were kind enough to waive any ticket fees, and let me have a free ticket, although this was the first time I've visited YSP by public transport, and it was an adventure! A train delay meant I would have to wait too long to get a bus, so I ended up paying more for taxis :-s

So it wasn't ideal!

I was keen to see Robert Indiana, and his particular use of recycled material seems like a method I could use with no materials budget, but I don't live near an abandoned shipyard... although I do live near a marina...

This piece stood out in particular to my own work as a woman artist... Mansplaining.

More mansplaining here from Damien Hirst! Maybe one day I will be allowed to make sculpture about my own experiences as a teenage mother!

I really wanted to see Rachel Kneebone's work in the chapel

Here I photoshopped The Best Thing in a couple of locations at YSP, to imagine if it was a fully realised sculpture exhibited there.

I noticed that Bretton Hall is being renovated into a hotel; I do not know who these people are who have laid claims to the mansion but I do know that as an illustrator, I made a zine titled Ms Blackbird's Home For Peculiar People, which reimagines the abandoned Johnson Hospital as being the HQ for Ms Blackbird, ymbryne of the Lincoln loop, in a spin off of Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children.

 So I emailed Yorkshire Sculpture Park to find out if I could possibly run some wellbeing workshops there once it reopens as a hotel, so I could come and stay at my own sculpture park, and do artist talks etc.

I had a reply from the curators to say that it was all booked up with artists, some gatekeeping info... but they were kind enough to say that if I ever want to visit, I can email them, and I can have a free ticket whenever I want, and they'll keep my info on file for any future opportunities.

It's the very LEAST they could do.

So contrast with Doddington Hall Sculpture Exhibition just outside Lincoln. 

I can get there very easily by bicycle along the Georgie Twigg track, so I emailed Doddington Hall to ask if they could off a free ticket for an #ExcludedUK artist and carer, but got no reply.

I had my first COVID in July, which was absolutely terrible, and self isolated until I was well again, and after weeks of cloudy weather, I decided to go for a ride out to Doddington Hall anyway, because I needed the vitamin D.

A few years ago, I was invited to the private view for the sculpture exhibition, probably when I was running Lincoln Artist's Network, so I have visited it before.

Doddington Hall rely on volunteers, but still request an entry fee to visit the gardens where you can see the work. 

Of course, as an artist, there are no labour laws in the land that mean I should pay to look at art to do my job, so I had a look around to see what I could see without paying to do my job.

At the back of the hall there was this massive car bonnet logo...

    

This kinetic sculpture that resembles a washing line / wind farm

I did not bother to look for the artist info, as I'm not paid enough...

There is a long vista that is visible from the gardens at Doddington Hall, with a pyramid at the bottom, so I decided to go for a walk down to the pyramid.

This view is looking back at the hall from the pyramid

The pyramid is a folly built from materials on the estate, and not a tomb.

However, I did summon the ancient forces of Mumm-Ra, the Ever Living, and it does resemble a mummy's outside toilet!

Inside, there was no mummy, nor a mausoleum, it is an empty tomb... 

However, it would be an excellent location for a video or sound art piece - I wonder what the acoustics are like?

My experience as a sculpture is only as one of Anthony Gormley's plinthers for the Fourth Plinth, but no Anthony Gormley was seen at either location. 

The lovely Rosanne Robertson has some work in the Summer Of Love LGBTQ exhibition at YSP, which happened after I visited, but I've seen work online.

I guess that if there's a private view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, I may be able to make it, but I would also hope that one day it will be MY private view!!

Peace Paintings

Back in July 2021, my son kindly bought me three canvases for my birthday, so I have been producing some peace paintings on them with an aim to exhibit and sell them somewhere such as the Nobel Peace Center.

They follow on from the Photoshop juxtapositions, so the above is from a photo I took in Ekebergparken, but the golden tree at the top is from South Common, and our Cathedral is visible on the horizon.

The doves are based on my Grandad's prize winning racing pigeons, which were sort of similar to German Beauty Homers (if you're a pigeon breeder) as far as I know, but they really were a rare breed, so don't actually know.

One is a white dove, the other is a melanistic dove, and both have been fixed with kintsugi, to follow the theme that peace repaired with gold is more beautiful.

As part of And Our Heroes Have Misplaced Their Map, I have taken a Syrian girl from a photo from Aleppo, and placed her in Ekebergparken. She is not screaming, nor is the sky screaming, as Edvard Munch painted it. 

 

The second is from a bike ride to Holton-Cum-Beckering, of Lincolnshire fields, and Lincolnshire sky. The sky has no military ruining it. Only doves.

The woman is an Afghan refugee from a photograph where she is sewing facemasks during the current global pandemic. She is sewing with a golden thread.

The third painting is a field of white poppies - Papaver Somniferum - grown in fields in Lincolnshire for the pharmaceutical industry, juxtaposed with Lincolnshire skies being inhabited by two Syrian boys feeding a flock of doves. 

All three are acrylic on canvas.

40 x 50cm

£1000 where sold.

Lost Dreams

I've taken the opportunity to use the Business Revival Grant to make some video art for Lost Dreams tracks. 

I have Adobe Creative Suite to use until it expires in August, and at the rate of commissions and the ongoing cultural assault on #ExcludedUK artists, it's unlikely I'll be able to afford to renew it when it expires. So this means that I need to make use of it while I have it.

Lost Dreams needed some videos for potential exhibition, either as standalone artwork, or for imagery if I ever perform the tracks at a music festival, for instance.

Recently, two new tracks were produced from found audio that sounds very similar to the existing sound art tracks: Elvis Clones and The Blackbird Of Chernobyl.

"Elvis Clones" is based on a small clip of an American DJ talking about Elvis Clones. 

For the associated video, my son has taught me how to use modded Minecraft to make Elvis Clones...

In April, I became mayor of Memphis, apparently, and some diabolical researchers transformed a Minecraft mansion into Graceland populated by Elvis Clones.

All the Elvis Clones are programmed to repeat quotes the the DJ was making in jest.

Concept video stills from Elvis Clones 

In modded Minecraft, there are various persons that you can delegate tasks to, so all of the building work is done for you, along with the welfare of the inhabitants, who live alongside the Elvis Clones within the world.

For instance, there is a plague doctor, who apparently cures illnesses musically with a potato and carrot!
All of these random occurrences form part of the new videos, which are uploaded to Youtube, but are currently not visible to the public.

The Blackbird Of Chernobyl has a different creative process, where I have layered digital footage produced with programming, to match the found sounds.

Image stills from the concept video art the Blackbird of Chernobyl

The Blackbird Of Chernobyl is also the title of a game due for release soon, but this is not related to that.

#IWD #IWD2022 Sleep Piece For Yoko Ono

The #inspirationalwomenartists exhibition and auction ended on Tuesday evening #IWD #IWD2022

You can have a virtual look at Sleep Piece For Yoko Ono in the exhibition here

Sleep Piece For Yoko Ono sold to one lucky owner, which is great news!

The exhibition was in a great space!

The #NFT version is now available here.

"Voice has moved away from the type of business model that exploits artists’ NFTs for personal gain. Instead, it ensures that creators and their works are at the forefront of the platform’s success."

New business branding and NFTs!

Rebranding - use of Photoshop has enabled some rebranding.

Like many other artists, I've made good use of the Business Revival Grant funding to mint some NFTs before my current Creative Cloud subscription runs out in June this year. 

Where my work has not generated an income elsewhere, it gets minted on what is described as the most environmentally friendly carbon neutral blockchain, Voicehq.

No gas fees, either, so all I need now is for someone to invest in my work!

That's where you all come in. 

That's why I share my work online - to source clients and buyers, not just for attention, or because I have some sort of strange need to share my work for free. It's not free.

The reserve price is quite high - that's because the less money I have in the bank, the more I need to recover in losses from people claiming to be artists grifting for arts orgs causing rejection fatigue.

Anyway, you can add yourself as a friend to my Discord server here, which I also hope will be useful :-) 

Where I use my artist's theme, or for specific sound art projects, this logo applies.

The following pricing applies for any commissioned work, and includes admin time. So if you're an arts org requesting artists to provide information, the example is not given to have the chance to "win" £100. 

It's not a lottery. My energy bill is not a lottery.

For ten minutes to fill out a survey, this works out at £6.60 for my admin time, which must be paid. If your budget is £100, that works out at approximately 15 artists paid this amount (others may have less experience).

For information, I received a Community Life Survey from the government. It took me approx ten minutes to fill out, and for this time, they have provided a £10 shopping voucher. This is more worthy of my time.

Sleep Piece For Yoko Ono

 

Sleep Piece is a new piece I have submitted to A Space Arts' Open Call for International Women's Day

It's part of Lost Dreams, and will be available for auction unframed.

The instructions are for Yoko Ono to repeat the experiment in Lost Dreams.

Follow this link for the exhibition info launching Friday 25th February - Tuesday 8th March 2022.

More information here

So, the outcome of my son's ESA assessment was that they have decided that he is no longer "eligible".

They have cut off all his income, and are forcing him to apply for the hated Universal Credit.

In my logical mind, it would make sense to continue to pay it until he has this in place, but they are evil.

So now my time is wasted making sure they don't fuck this up, and dealing with the fallout. 

I was hoping that by now, we would have a proper prime minister, and an end to this nightmare, but still it goes on.

I didn't get the Peace Painting funding. 

However, I do have a couple of commissions in the pipeline, and some positive feedback from a client last year, with some posters I illustrated due to appear around the city, which I hope will generate more commissions.

I'm still trying to recover some stolen income through NFTs. 

I'm not interested in criticism of NFTs, as it's a new thing for artists, as Jerry Saltz states, like any art form, there are bound to be bad NFTs, but I'd rather be the one earning any income from them than someone stealing my work to mint and the income once again going elsewhere. It's high time artists DO earn a living for digital art!

So if this may also become an NFT, to generate more income following the auction.