Warning! May contain traces of elephant

A conceptually ambiguous blog post title, for a conceptually ambiguous art exhibition! 

In writing about Hestercombe’s latest exhibition, ‘Materiality:Provisional States’ I felt it would be legitimately wrong to document my thoughts without first addressing the all-important, but seldom overlooked, elephant in the room. That is, I was taught by one of the artists in this exhibition, Sarah Bennett, during my Masters in Fine Art with Plymouth University and have had the pleasure of knowing, another artist in the show, Megan Calver. There is an element of bias, that whilst one would try analyse the work objectively, I cannot to some extent ignore that my opinions are influenced by those relationships. It is a scenario that I had never previously given much heed to in any of my writing, how the possible impact of knowing or not knowing the artist has on my personal interpretation of their work. Where does the writer's responsibility lie, to the integrity of themselves, the artists whose work they write about or that of the reader who possibly deserves the most honest opinion. I think part of the problem is there aren't enough people writing about these sorts of exhibitions so that readers have much choice!

This also relates to a book I have been recently reading, “What it Means to Write About Art” that documents a series of interviews with art writers/critics on the practice of art writing/art criticism. It has been fascinating to learn of different writers’ thoughts on how they address this same scenario,

“It’s hard. When I write about somebody I don’t know. I almost try to imagine them. And when I write about somebody I do know, I try to forget them…When I started out, I didn’t know if nay of it mattered – I couldn’t imagine that I actually had an audience -so felt completely free to say whatever I wanted. When you first start writing, you don’t know if people are reading, and you don’t know if anybody is going to care. And then, after a while, you realise people do care…Basically, I’ve always felt my job as a critic is to try and be me and figure out who I am…It’s those basic, immediate reactions that fuel your thinking and your writing…There’s a danger of over complicating things.” -Jed Pearl in an interview with Jarrett Earnest “What it means to Write About Art”

Philippa Lawrence - Trace (2018)

I have tried to keep some of those sentiments in mind when writing this. It gets even worse if one considers that I was also taught by the curator and know some of the technicians that also helped install the show, but that’s Somerset for you! There is, however, an artist I definitely do not know in the exhibition, Philippa Lawrence and it is her work with which we are first greeted at the top of the stairs in the form of an uprooted tree stump. The top of the stump, where it was sliced, has been polished to an irresistibly tempting-to touch by hand, high-sheen. The contrast between the roughness and brutal-act of sawing presented against the considered care with which the act of polishing wood has associated with craft or objects intended for consideration/keeping. An idea Lawrence continues in a similar piece in the form of a log pile, titled ‘Shift’ also exhibited. Initially we see a pile of logs associated with the practical connotations of being a resource for fuel and on closer inspection their polished spec, where each log has been cut makes them objects of consideration or an implied sense of preciousness. Lawrence has worked alongside the woodland management team, as have each of the artists in this exhibition, engaging with the site of Hestercombe House/Gardens, its history and the different skilled people who manage it today. In ‘Trace’ brightly coloured enamel profiles off the tops of tree stumps from around Hestercombe are displayed together on the (appropriately wooden) floor of one of the gallery spaces. It is visually quite minimal and could not be more clinically detached in its man-made fabrication from the original tree from which it was formed (a statement in itself). Each stump becoming an island or fingerprint-like replica of the original tree and the trace of the action which led to its current form.

Sarah Bennett - Cultivatar (2018) 35mm slides of 21 silverpoint drawings, slide viewers

Another artist who likes capturing traces of human encounters and actions within her work is Sarah Bennett, who for Hestercombe has created a series of responses, the majority of which are linked in using the material of silver. Multiple reflection points inspired by Bampfylde’s pear pond are drawn with photography and silver nitrate, in ‘Cultivatar’ (2018) silverpoint is used to recreate meticulous drawings of seeds presented in viewfinders strategically placed to great effect in the windows overlooking the gardens themselves (so that seed and plant can be seen simultaneously) and again in embellishing a row of handheld garden tools.  Now partially rendered in silver the tools are in affect useless for their original purpose but take on a preserved sense of status that the quality of silver brings elevating the tools from their more humble connotations in being originally used for the maintenance of the estate. The cheeky part of me cannot omit that I take some small nugget of narcissistic delight in that my own tool-related work may have had some influence on the use of tools here?! Whilst I have long accepted that I clearly cannot monopolise the use of tools in anyone’s art, I equally in this instance cannot deny myself a wry smile of amusement. If Hestercombe ever wants a more expressive response to gardening tools then you know where to find me! 

Sarah Bennett -Siolfur (2018) Silver plating on found tools

Continuing with ideas she first started exploring in 2015’s exhibition, ‘Second Site’ Megan Calver works with notions of taste in particular to, one of Hestercombe’s founding gardeners, Gertrude Jekyll’s ‘exacting attitude towards colour and language’ presented through scans of scorched blooms (flowers grown at Hestercombe, picked and pressed by an image-scanner) viewed on tables from above like botanical specimens. The invigilators of the exhibition having the licence to routinely edit which ones are seen and not but covering them, their own ‘tastes’ becoming a part of the work. The use of language and description of colour, in particular to fire/flame links well to a previous work by Calver about Salvia seeds described on their packaging as ‘Blaze of Fire’ (and incidentally loathed by Jekyll if we are to relate it back to ideas of ‘taste’). Calver’s other interventions such as additions to the light-box signage in the house's former fire brigade control-room and coals in the fireplaces in each of the galleries are subtle enough to go unnoticed by many but are quiet statements in keeping with ideas around fire and the context that Hestercombe House was formally the call-centre to the fire brigade. It is rewarding when one spots them and for want of a better phrase, ‘gets it’ but I am unsure how hard many visitors may be willing to work to reach that point.

For me it really highlights my reservation with the exhibition as a whole, that it feels a bit too cerebral. When one compares it to what one reads about each artist having individually undergone very investigative inquiries in talking to people, looking through archives and working on site around Hestercombe; a process which I imagine as being very 'warm', human, interactive and enriching  to then each produce work which is largely quite detached from the reality of those experiences/engagement and make work that is by comparison cold and sterile to the point of being so considered and laboured in its though processes that something of those original encounters with which we as the audience can identify with is lost. In example, I do not personally get a sense of the encounter of reflections on a pond in Bennett's 'Pear Pond 1' from what appears to be an overly process-engineered oval photograph, for me it does not offer anything different that I would not better obtain from looking at the real thing or offer a different insight that photography can allow. There is a point to be made here perhaps about how close or far does an artist’s relation to their original subject/source matter in how the work is received and understood by their audience? I expect it is subjective. For the purposes of this exhibition however, I would have liked to have seen some more emotive/expressive responses to counterbalance the largely conceptual nature of the show. I am often concerned that as artists we tend to over-think or complicate things, so ideas become so refined and detached from where they originally started that we loose the sense of what it actually is to be a embodied, thinking, feeling human responding to a subject and have yet to see an exhibition by a contemporary artist at Hestercombe that really celebrates that. Addressing the elephant in the room, what it says on the tin -in my opinion stating the obvious isn't always a bad thing.

‘Materiality: provisional states’ is on until 24^th February 2019

https://www.hestercombe.com/event/exhibition-materiality-provisional-states/

Word Gets Around -Celebrating five years of A Spanner in the Workz

This November marks the fifth anniversary of sticking a Spanner in the Workz of the art world as Natalie Parsley reviews and analyses contemporary art and exhibitions throughout the UK and across the globe!

Thank you to anyone who reads these posts! The blog has been posting regularly since 2012 and has covered 150 exhibitions and art projects including the Liverpool Biennial and Venice Biennale. A third of those are either national or local with another thirteen being international. I began blogging in 2010 during an internship with Somerset Art Works when the idea was first mentioned that I create a blog that provided an anecdotal reflection but also critical writing platform to report and analyse art events that may be of interest to SAW members and the public. I established and wrote for the SAW blog for two years slowly gaining the confidence and passion for venturing into writing for myself. The SAW blog continues to this day with Davina Jelley posting on SAW related projects and events. 

The purpose for creating a Spanner in the Workz is to provide a context for my writing and link to my visual art practice and artist CV. In it I reflect on visual art exhibitions, talks, projects and events that I have either visited in person or am in some way directly participating in. The writing motivates me to see more exhibitions and the more exhibitions I see, the more I want to write about them!

The blog’s title taken from my Fine art degree critical commentary, is a reference to both my own work which features tools (including spanners) and the process of analysing something by way of unsettling or questioning something. In other words, putting a spanner in the works. I was obsessed then with double-meanings of things, the treachery and illusion of representation; how something can be and not be a pipe all at the same time [Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe]! To some extent I still am, as both an Artist, Blogger and Bookseller (not always necessarily in that order) I, like many people I know, live a life with multiple roles but all of which share common interests. This too is reflected in my writing as I write to both understand something better and (hopefully) make it sound appealing or of interest to others. The bigger ambition that art writing and reading can lead to a greater sense of art appreciation is something I am very passionate in. Perhaps also, but more subtly it also acts to criticise and question the art world and establishment; by being independent I am free to write my thoughts and opinions more unedited so I hope that in some way, if they take the time to read it, my comments may make artists, art venues and organisations think and scrutinise what they are doing. With all that in mind here’s to many more posts in the coming years about art, here’s to throwing more spanners in the workz!

To commemorate my interest in puns, wordplay and double-meanings of things I have collated a list of blog posts whose titles are taken or reference songs, books or films. Not a lot of people know that! Simply click on the title to reveal what each one is about. 

Enjoy!

Songs

Everything to Everyone – Everclear

Viva Venezia -Viva Las Vegas, Elvis

Everything You’ve Come To Expect – The Last Shadow Puppets

Anything but Ordinary -Ordinary, Train

Can’t You Hear it in the Silence? – Red Earth and Pouring Rain, Bear’s Den

We Can Work It Out – The Beatles

Hollow Talk – Choir of Young Believers

You Could Be Lifted – Lifted, Lighthouse Family

These Streets -Paolo Nutini

I Always Believed in Futures -Futures, Jimmy Eat World

In the Middle -The Middle by Jimmy Eat World

Playing Videogames -Videogames, Lana Del Rey

What’s the Word? – We Are Scientisits

Another Brick in the Bookcase -Another Brick in the Wall, Pink Floyd

Livin’ for the Weekend -Living for the Weekend, Hard-Fi

I’m Lost For Words – Redundant, Green Day

On a Magic Carpet Ride – A Whole New World, Disney’s Aladdin

The answer is blowin’ in the wind -Blowin in the Wind, Bob Dylan

I’m Looking In -Outside, Staind

BV Open Studios, I am the Walrus – The Beatles

Can the Can! -Suzi Quatro 

Books

Into the Wild -Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

The Unbelievable Weightiness of Air -The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

Of Mutability- Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott

Fantastic Artists and Where to Find Them – Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J K Rowling

Dust Interrupted -Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

You’re in For a Big Surprise -The Teddy Bears’ Picnic

Let the Light One In -Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindvqvist

The City and the City -The City and The City by China Mieville

Silver Linings Sketch Book – Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

“Life is easy to chronicle but bewildering to practice!” – A Room with a View by E M Forster

Something(s) Wicked This Way Comes -Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

Here are my Bees -The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy

Look if you like but you will have to leap -Leap Before you Look by Auden

Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad -Animal Farm by George Orwell

Films
Easy Glider – Easy Rider

Jurassic World – Jurassic World

If you could say it in words...

What is the collective noun for a group of writers?

What is the collective noun for a group of art writers?

Art Writers Group collective met with interested writers, curators and artists at The Hestercombe Assembly in the afternoon of Wednesday 7^th December 2016.

Created by Josephine Lanyon and Peter Stiles The Art Writers Group aims to raise the profile of arts writing in the South West and discuss with other writers, artists, curators and the general public ‘what art writing’ means in 2016, what the future of arts writing could be as well as ideas of; authorship, context and publicity surrounding the area of, you guessed it, arts writing. The Hestercombe Assembly featured six speakers made up of authors, editors and/or curators to discuss, “how texts can be produced, programmed and disseminated to create knowledgeable enjoyment of contemporary art”.

As a non-published, bookselling, artist come blogger what on earth was I doing there?

The answer to that question should be self-evident though highly worth mentioning that to me, this meeting presented an opportunity similar to that of the monthly book group meetings I host at Waterstones, to talk with other people interested in art, writing and reading. What a wonderful discovery to not be alone in this interest and passion of mine that I have embarked on over the last seven years. This was Art Writing in the broadest sense of the word, so included talks from editors, online writers, magazine writers, critical art writing (journalistic and subjective approaches) and art writing that posed itself more as performance art, poetry and in a narrative style more akin to that of fiction. I thought this event was going to involve much ‘clicking of tongues and stroking of beards’ as highly academic people pontificated on the merits of writing as a discourse and its significance to the visual arts themselves. Thankfully it had none of that pretention and became the ultimate fusion of the two worlds I have occupied during my career so far; that of the visual arts and the world of reading and writing learnt in my ten years working in a bookshop.

The following is a list of points I have taken away from listening to the speakers at the event and will consider in my future writing:

·         Art Writing, as a means of ‘capturing presence of the work’ –the function of art writing as a means of describing, explaining what it feels like to see/experience works of art as to a literal description of it.

·         Syntax –where the writing sits in time (past, present, future)

·         Art Writing becomes a way of talking about other subjects –science, environment, archaeology etc. etc. Looking for ways to make art more interesting or accessible to different audiences. As artists we are more familiar in working in ways similar to historians, archivists, scientists and other disciplines but as writers about art we should also consider applying the same. Interestingly not all of the speakers came from art backgrounds but creative writing or curatorial ones raising the position I hold within my own writing, as both an ‘artist who writes about art’ rather than ‘a writer who writes about art’ an interesting one. How can I bring my own experiences into my writing more?   

·         Art writing and subjectivity writing in embodied ways- similar to the first point, but writing about art becomes similar to that of poetry or fiction in that it follows a less academic tone and structure and the voice of the author is more distinctive and present in the work. The writing style has as much to say about the work it is describing as the work itself i.e. fluidity of writing matches fluidity of paint/brush-marks in a painting. The description of artworks becomes less and more about the bodily or lived experience of encountering the work. i.e. scale, weight, texture, sound, smell, context, emotion.

·         What can art writing offer to the reader that the viewing of art work cannot? Does it have to offer clarity or explanation or can it raise new ideas or alternative ways in interpreting work.

·         The lie of art writing? Is art writing a lie/deception of language? ‘art is a lie that reveals the truth’

·         What is the function of the writing? i.e. publicity, critique, opinion, experience and where is there flexibility for these to cross-over...

·         Who is doing the writing? Who is doing the reading? –authorship, readership and how context plays a part in both.

Stephen Smith at Hestercombe Gallery 2016.

After a few hours in to this event spent listening to a myriad of wise words whizzing around the room (somewhat rebelliously at all this talk of writing) I was craving something physically visual, ever thankful that just outside the room we were in at Hestercombe House was the gallery that lay home to Stephen Smith’s paintings –a welcome reminder of the importance of the symbiotic relationship between the actual art and art writing. A few speakers chose not to include images in their talks, opting for the language and our imaginations to conjure up our own images of the art works being captured in words. This was an interesting exercise, but for me only reaffirmed where I stand in being between two camps of being an artist who creates physical images in drawings and print and being a writer who attempts to understand those visual experiences in words. Lizzie Lloyd was one speaker who did this and whose writing on Peter Doig’s ‘Figures in Red Boat’ was as equally creative as the art it spoke of and offered new ways into writing about art that are intelligently observant but personable so that they can be imagined more easily by the reader. Edward Hopper’s “..if you could say it in words there’d be no reason to paint” highlights the  difficulty faced when writing about something whose mere existence is incomprehensible in words but of course that challenge is also part of its appeal. Art writing is like being a translator for visual language though the writer and the artist may not always be trying to say the same thing.

 

Stephen Smith 'Red Forest'

For my love of reading and writing, I still feel as though words alone, read or spoken plainly, are not enough in themselves and offer less of an alternative to experiencing art and more of an addition to enhance the experiencing of art. Reading about art makes me want to experience it and experiencing art makes me want to write about it. What was fascinating and reassuring is that many of the curators and artists I spoke to at the event agreed that there was a place for both within exhibitions and that the relationship between the two was generally a positive and pro-active one at encouraging art appreciation. A possible difficulty to art writing for artists/curators of ‘visual arts’ and one that I feel is evident in the Stephen Smith exhibition at Hestercombe, is that the writing about the art can become more powerful or convey meaning more succinctly than the art itself. This statement warrants more explanation than what I have time to give it here, but essentially I feel Lizzie Lloyd’s writing of the Stephen Smith exhibition attempts to rationalise Smith’s work or compensate for the lack of meaning or substance to the context of Hestercombe that I personally perceived in his paintings. The writing wasn’t so much offering an alternative way into Smith’s work as it was almost justifying it. When it works well the text compliments the art work rather than ‘doing the job’ of the artwork as I felt here which is more a criticism of Smith’s paintings than Lloyd’s writing.

The writers that did chose to show images within their talks such as Mary Patterson created another approach to the context of art writing that became more performative with the rhythm of walking or thinking aloud, the importance of how the piece was spoken evident as well as the potential it had to reach alternative audiences and convey ideas in a framework that was unlike a conventional approach to writing. Here writing becomes an art form in itself.

Much was covered throughout the three hour session that could have had more audience interaction and dialogue than unfortunately what the time would have allowed. Though the biggest missed opportunity, I feel was, whilst Art Writers Group had, what I am sure were many applications from writers of mixed ability and experience, was to do something brave and use it as an opportunity find someone new by picking at least one speaker who, maybe was at the very start of their career and so were less established, unpublished or completely un-paid and independent. The speakers who spoke were all interesting, engaging and relevant in their own ways and I think it important to have people with their experience to bring authority and a certain amount of credibility to such an event HOWEVER, I think representation of an enthusiastic, unpolished, committed to art and arts writing individual with only their own motivation and ambition to support them would have been an inspiring call-to-arms and act as an advocate of the possibility that art writing can and should be accessible to all. It is worth noting here, that I was able to attend this event because I applied for and was awarded a free place to attend so feel grateful but also obligated to stress my thoughts here. There were several other people I met on the day in the same position as me, though I feel instead of piecemeal, Art Writers Group should use its authority to represent or give that experience to someone like myself or those I met in the audience that day. Instead it was disappointing that too frequently those with quantifiable or ‘institutionally recognised experience’ were chosen when there was an opportunity to offer a glimmer of hope amidst the unobtainable and futile nature of progressing into a paid career in writing that only those already practicing or within the industry were represented.

Despite some of my anarchic (but hopefully constructive) views, the day was still, overall very enlightening and I have felt inspired in meeting other people with shared interests in art writing. It has proved that despite its adversities and lack of opportunities, like all aspects of the arts themselves, remains worth doing. I am keen to develop my own writing based on some of the ideas mentioned here, learnt from the speakers on the day, and still have ambition that a legacy from this event, in the form of a peer-led art writing group could form (or gain more awareness, if such a thing exists in the South West please let me know) so that more opportunities to those outside our cities and in our rural areas have access to art appreciation, discussion, writing and reading.

I still do not know the noun for a collective group of arts writers but I sincerely hope it is not a rarity.

 

If you attended the event and/or would like to contact me regarding any of the above then I would very much like to hear from you. Please contact me at: natalieparsley@yahoo.co.uk

Must try harder!

There was a fair amount of online chatter last week regarding a comment made by the newly appointed Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, who at a campaign to promote science, technology, engineering and maths warned young people that choosing to study arts subjects at school could “hold them back for the rest of their lives”.

Pretty dramatic stuff!

‘Morgan said the idea that choosing arts or humanities subjects can keep pupils’ career choices open “couldn’t be further from the truth”.

To those who know me and to readers of this blog it will come as no surprise to learn where my own personal stance on this is, which to briefly outline encase you didn’t already guess, is that I completely, unequivocally disagree with what Mrs Morgan has to say as I aim to prove (amongst other things) in this post. However the starting catalyst for my post this week was not triggered from Nicky Morgan’s ill-founded comments but more from how we (as artists) respond to opinions such as hers and how we talk about the value/benefits of an art education in general.

Leonardo Da Vinci's sketchbooks 'Muscles of the Shoulder' (1509-1510)

I heard the news of this story, like perhaps many people, through social media in the form of a blogger’s response to the story online. I was hoping to be in agreement with the blogger who expressed an incredibly well written opinion drawn from their personal experiences of both undertaking a business course which she consequently left in favour of an archaeology and poetry/arts administration career. In truth, however, I found myself disheartened by the quality of the argument for the arts in this and other posts I read online in which the defence for ‘why the arts/humanities are as important as the sciences’ were spoken about in such lofty, sentimental terms with the over-riding tone being that art ‘gave something to live for’ and offered a ‘wealth’ in the wellbeing sense of the word. None of which really spoke of how art made manifest in the real world. Forgive me for my own grandiose, 'loftiness' but I actually think art, ‘the arts’ are MUCH more important than ‘something to live for’. What could be more important than living you ask? They have practical, functional, monetary, real-life, earthly uses nor should they be lumped into a governed thinking that art is some form of secondary response to a real piece of research that exists independently; when in fact, art is the research, the product, the subject all at once or in no particular order.

 I’m not saying an emotive opinion in defence of the arts is incorrect, when the time calls I am the first to make an impassioned plea, gushing sentiment or dramatic speech for how important the arts are in the holistic, soul searching and life enhancing sense. My criticism is that when ‘preaching to the converted’ so to speak, that kind of tone makes sense. Consequently I think that when trying to convince a member of Government, who has just been incredibly negative and rather ignorant regarding the value and use of the arts, a ‘heart’ over ‘head’ approach isn’t the most perception altering way to do it. Rather it reaffirms her argument that implies the arts are not as deep-thinking as the sciences and therefore offer a limited career skill set. Categorically this is not the case, but it is possible that we, the art community, need to get better at how we talk about the arts to those who maybe don’t understand it, find it difficult, pretentious, a waste of time or valueless. That is probably quite harsh of me, but raises a point that, broadly speaking, we often choose to ignore the talking/writing about art, the critical aspect and although the arts are visual, kinetic and audio forms of communication; creative people/those who work within the arts shouldn’t have to be good with words, but increasingly have had to become so in order to survive in the real world. What's wrong with words anyway? Equally I feel slightly that audiences are partly to blame for encouraging an attitude of  general passivity in online reading, where text is skimmed and not often understood, "this person is ‘for’ art so their opinion must be a correct one" without necessarily considering what is actually being said and whether it really is helpful or not. This is why I think that the better defence for the arts in this instance is an informed one rather than an emotive one.

And so, with slight trepidation so as to dampen any heightened expectation I may have already generated, I am going to attempt to write my own response to this argument here...

Page from Charles Darwin's notebooks depicting the  'Tree of life' (1837) 

There is a sort of myth, a mystique that often surrounds the role of the artist which can hinder more than it helps. I put Nicky Morgan’s recent comments down to a lack of understanding on her part, as to what art and art education actually is. Although instead of blaming her I wonder if more could be done by the arts community to demystify the misconceptions of art and artists (although the challenge would be to do so without stifling creativity). The light-hearted, romantic or idealised view of producing art; of pondering, talking walks, leisurely painting and drawing in sketchbooks especially now that many artists create a whole career without almost ever touching a pencil (not for me, but each to their own!) is no longer a given stereotype. In reality, the artists I know don't lead a particularly leisurely existence and seem to spend most of their time writing applications for funding, filing tax returns and updating their web presence online. All of that in addition to actually having to make work and find somewhere to exhibit it! Perhaps what Mrs Morgan fails to realise is that most successful artists are also successfully business minded. If you are someone from outside the art world or even someone beginning to embark in arts education there is much curiosity, doubt and uncertainty, I believe, to the perception vs. the reality of what it means to be an artist in the 21^st Century. Yet, thankfully it seems many are still willing to try. Therefore I speculate that if we are uncertain what the role or use of an artist is then equally we can expect that will be uncertainty on how the education system promotes and nourishes art subjects. 

From my own experience of studying art, during my MA one of the most deep-seated things I learnt was that art does have a ‘use’ outside being merely a thing for ‘looking at’, or that the process of looking is also a valid ‘use’ in itself. This seems awfully silly to admit that it took me my whole art education from when I first laid crayon to paper to primary school, GCSE, A-level and even throughout my BA degree to reach this, fairly basic realisation, that ‘art is useful’. Maybe, it is something lots of people struggle with and if it took me that long to learn that art can be equal to that of science in terms of the skill-set it teaches maybe it would take others that long? If so, could we then be doing more to promote .....? True I wouldn’t want an artist to perform brain surgery on me, but brain surgery wouldn’t be where it is today without the inquisitive mind’s of looking, investigation, diligence and patience that share its stem with that of art skills. Engineers may require an understanding of maths more than their drawing ability but needs both, along with a problem-solving, creative, questioning mind that is obtained from arts education, in order to apply them into a working design. If that is the case then maybe my experience is shared with what many people struggle to understand; how the arts are relevant and have a value in being aesthetic objects as much as being research, experiential, interactive or social pieces.

Audubon's Arctic Tern (1827-1839) 

When I made the commitment to studying the arts full-time I was aware that the job prospects after weren’t necessarily going to be plentiful or great, which being brought-up in an education system that is designed to teach you that your career matters as though it is the principal thing that defines your whole being, which sort of hung over me like a black cloud throughout the entirety of my studies and some days still does. For reasons that I hold the arts in such high esteem, I've stuck with them and whilst it in some ways they haven't perhaps yet defined my career in an obvious or particular profitable way, it has most definitely defined who I am, what motivates me and how I respond to the world. And yes, I am a bookseller with a masters degree in Fine Art chipping away at the marble monolith that is the art world one blog post at a time. Some of my peers have already and continue to forge their own careers within the arts which is again one of the benefits of an art education it teaches you resilience. Of which I am still inspired by a quote I found in a book about creativity I read years ago which talks about graduates from the New Orleans Centre of Creative Arts;

‘Most NOCCA graduates won’t become professional artists. Nevertheless, these students will still leave the school with an essential talent, which is the ability to develop his or her own talent. Because they spend five hours a day working on their own creations, they learn what it takes to get good at something, to struggle and fail and try again. They figure out how to dissect difficult problems and cope with criticism. The students will learn how to manage their own time and persevere in the face of difficulty.’

I think the problem with how art is perceived as a subject in education is that it has been attempted to be compartmentalised into a system that operates on regulation and attainment. I’m not even sure that this is even a good way to teach maths or science? This is all purely my opinion but in essence I think there are many aspects of art which are not too dissimilar to that of science/maths, and educators, when looking at skill-sets and opportunities subjects offer, should be looking for the connections between the humanities and sciences rather than the distinctions between them. Skills such as, knowledge building, inquiry, logic, critical thinking, discovery, independence, application and realisation along with the numerous theoretical overlaps with philosophy, psychology, feminism, linguistics etc.

Sue Austin http://www.trishwheatley.co.uk/suehome.html

When I dusted off some old notes from my MA days, in an attempt to find something to support my own opinion, I came across my notes on Pragmatism. I remembered in particular that a lot of what John Dewey has to say in 'Art as Experience' makes so much sense in relation to some aspects of education/learning, 

‘In insisting that hard thought was as important to art as to science.....Indeed he was eager to underline the deep similarities of art and science as forms of ordering and coping with experience, noting that they are hardly distinguished in ancient and primitive cultures.’

If separating the distinctions between the arts/humanities and sciences are too prescriptive then you are limiting what both subjects have the potential to be. In college I can remember being really surprised when I saw my dentist on an evening sculpting course (Until then I actually thought he went into a cupboard at the surgery and switched off at the end of the day) but when I thought about it it made sense that someone who was interested in a career that involved drilling holes and filling them may also be interested in the malleable, form shaping properties of sculpting?! When I began looking there were countless examples in science and art where there where the boundaries became blurred, Charles Darwin’s drawings/diagrams in his notebooks, the work of Leonardo Da Vinci, Joseph Beuys’s ’social sculpture’, numerous environmental artists, artists who contributed to social change amongst others whose work connects/tells is more about our psychological, expressive or spiritual needs to contemporary practitioners such as Sue Austin’s free-wheeling under- water wheelchair, Peter Butcher’s embroidered surgical implants, Rosemarie Trockel and the Wellcome Collection who have long supported collaborations between artists and scientists.

Embroidered Surgical Implant -Peter Butcher (2005)

In referring to Charles Darwin as a scientist we may be limited to a set of defining criteria of ‘what a scientist is’ and similarly could categorise what an artist is in the same way. When in fact what the scientist, what the artist is actually doing, what they are concerned with, what they are trying to find out, might be exactly the same thing! In this, “classification sets limits to perception” and so with the definitions more permeable in reality education should mirror this to be more open-minded, more cross-disciplinary with more validation to different approaches of research. I think this could be achieved without either subject losing its uniqueness or special characteristics, which are still important it just seems that at the moment the balance is more in favour of the divisions rather than similarities.

I’m not saying this is a universal guideline of how it should be all of the time, if you’re training to be a doctor, clearly there are many practical things and knowledge you need to acquire which you’re not going to get from just making drawings from the human form (arguably) but there needs to be more understanding from those in government about the potential benefits from all subjects, equally and not this current hierarchal system. Promoting science, technology and engineering is great but it should be done so in the recognition that the arts are equally entrepreneurial, enterprising and society contributing as hopefully some of my earlier examples demonstrated. I can list more if need be! 

Going back to Nicky Morgan’s implication that arts humanities subjects potentially close career prospects, somewhat reluctantly, she is possibly right but that isn’t so much a failing of the way in which arts or humanities are taught or what they teach, but I hypothesize due to a failing of how they are invested in by education authorities that promotes a lack of confidence and uncertainty of what arts/humanities graduates can offer from employers. That and the fact that there aren't many arts jobs going due to cuts made....but that's probably best left till another day.

And what would I know; I am but a humble bookseller. ;)