Spiderwoman had quite a few messages for me over the last couple of weeks.. I've just got back from a working retreat in Tuscany, and I've had a lot of food for thought whilst I was there..

These spiders I believe belong to the family Pholcidae and they apparently eat most insects, even other spiders. They make very untidy webs everywhere, and if disturbed, vibrate like mad. Often the webs don't show up until the sun really streams in, whereupon it's suddenly apparent that most of the house is festooned like a set from a Hammer horror.

Casa Rosa was full of them when I arrived - it takes no time at all for the creatures to realise the house is empty of humans and take over. It is one of the reasons I decided last year that I had to get to the bottom of my arachnophobia. It's no good having a house in the countryside and then being freaked out by the wildlife.

So when I started my MA at Northumbria Uni last year, and I really had no idea where to begin to get my studio practice back, I decided that my theme had to be facing my fears, fear of not being able to make art after a long break from personal studio practice, fear of forgetting how to fire a kiln, fear of getting old and decrepit after a scary time of being ill and experiencing my energy and strength drain away,  fear of being poverty stricken having no longer the benefit of a salaried job... fear of being seen as self indulgent for wanting to be an artist -you get the picture?

I've been arachnophobic for many many years, I have a collection of spider stories, memorable encounters with spiders have often signalled a life change of some description, and so I developed a morbid fascination. By developing coping strategies along the way, I've tried really hard not to pass my fear on.. and even made valiant attempts to like them, given the mythological significance of them and the fact that with a bit of detachment I could see how amazing spiders are.  My personal arachnophobia I decided, could become a metaphor for all the other fears. By making a study of spiders, maybe I could de-sensitise myself. By making art I could maybe transform the fear. It was quite a journey, and maybe I'll write more about it later.

Anyway,  there you have it, back in Casa Rosa, I'm noticing just how effective that strategy was. I usually evict them all forthwith, but this time I just left every single one where it was, although I swept their abandoned webs out. (This incarnation of Spiderwoman is no fool - when her web's too mucky she just moves out and spins another, no housework for her) I did clean them all out though, just before I left to return to the UK, and then only because I knew my niece wouldn't be too happy when she arrives in a few days to spend her 21st birthday Mums-and-daughters sojourn in the Tuscan Mountains if she has to contend with them all herself.

I also took some amazing photos of the greenest spider I've ever seen, which I unfortunately damaged by strimming her leg off as I attempted to deal with the over-the-head level grass that had sprung up as it does every spring. ... but that's another story

I realise that many people find spiders a bit grim, but I'd like fellow phobes to keep reading  (''In Western societies as many as 55% of females and 18% of males are estimated to experience arachnophobia'' according to Wikipedia) so I'm not posting photos, just artwork, which is bad enough when a year ago, catching a corner of the eye view of a tomato stalk was enough to make the  hair on the back of my neck stand on end..

As Spiderwoman knows , there's much to be gained by facing your fears. Including, in my case the manifestation of a Tuscan Dream...

Silk Oozing Feet

I've not been blogging, I've had a busy week or two, and been feeling really felt stretched by life's various challenges... in the midst of which we've been appointing a new administrator to my brother's business Charles Newmarch French Polishing Ltd (http://www.charlesnewmarch.com) And not a moment too soon.!  I've been been rather out of my comfort zone for many months (long story)  as instead of getting on with the website and marketing,  I've  grappled with vat and hmrc and p whatevers and a range of procedures that challenge my finally acknowledged (at least to myself) dyscalculia. Give me a telephone number and I'll give you back a wrong one..... It's been another of life's learning curves. 


For years I've run businesses, worked in creative people jobs, co-ordinated complex and large scale events and projects, mostly pretty well, only to fall at the same metaphorical hurdles: keeping track of forms, time sheets, returns, bookkeeping etc, at which point time seems to shift to another dimension where a minute becomes four hours and I also seem to revert back to the intimidated school girl who's bullying (male) maths teacher told her told her he couldn't be bothered to explain twice if I was too lazy and stupid to listen him properly the first time...(how old am I for goodness sake!?)  ***


Some years later, when I was managing a youth cafe, and stressing over the accounts, a colleague suggested I probably had dyscalculia, like she had. But the thing is,  I've learned to manage it on a day to day basis, although under stress it's a different matter.. so it's literally taken till tonight, until I started writing this blog, to actually look it up on the internet. This is what I just read..


Being dyscalculic is not a recognised disability, so you won’t even get a car sticker allowing you park in otherwise forbidden places.  
However it is argued that some people find it very satisfying to discover the origins of their problems – to be able to put a name to an issue that has plagued them for years.  In short, it helps them to be able to say “I’m not stupid or lazy – there is a genetic reason why I cannot add up well.... http://www.dyscalculia.me.uk/


So there you go.. this illuminating article also includes a list of other indicators.. like not getting those 'a man walks at 3 miles an hour up a hill, but his dog comes back at half past two, so how many dog biscuits can he eat in an afternoon?' kind of questions, and the fact that team games make no sense to me because I can never remember the rules (and not just the offside one..) 


I recommend everyone to check out this website - if it doesn't apply to you personally, it might at least make you a little more understanding of those of us who are very entertaining company at a birthday do in a restaurant, but can't for life us us work out how much change everyone should have if you insist on splitting the bill 'fairly'.. or why some of us are not into football and it's not because we're girls....


Anyway - back to the office, and there I was,  short listing the other day and contemplating the irony of one of my recurring life themes.  For someone so uncomfortable with financial stuff, I seem to regularly attract it - it's the aspect of my entrepreneurial tendency that always leaves me feeling crap and short of time. I can do the big picture stuff, I understand it all, but really I'm not a bookkeeper. (does Richard Branson do his own books? I don't think so..) Here I was again, up against deadlines, time running out, working long hours, not enjoying my work, feeling too heavy to move, and desperate to get out into the studio, but too tired.  'OK Universe,' I said to myself, 'This one again! I hear you.. but show me which path to take this time... ' So many paths in this Labyrinth of LIfe seem to lead me back to this same spot! 

Now this is going to sound like I made it up: - but, honestly, as I thought this - a tiny spider, the same size as carspider, but dark brown, ran across the wall next to me, over the calender (on which the helpful legend 'Use time or time will use you' was emblazoned)  and quickly disappeared. Spiderwoman as money spider. 'Time is money' I took her  to be saying. 'You're on the right track - don't hang about in here doing something you find de-skilling, when someone else will love to do it and needs a job' 

So last Friday ( the lucky 13th) We appointed a new lovely person who's good at numbers, and my kiln was connected up to the mains, making my studio now into a functioning ceramics workshop. Hurrah!

and a couple of days later......

Silk-Oozing Feet Give Tarantulas a Gravity-Defying Grip | Wired Science | Wired.com

Who'd have thought Tarantula spiders, one of the most ancient of creatures,  technically too fat and heavy to grip a vertical glass surface, would have a solution to climbing that no-one except Peter Parker had noticed till now?? (There's a few arachno-images on this site, you have been warned)

My daily horoscope has given me this for the last few days ''Mantra: I will find new solutions to old problems.''  Good idea , I'm working on that  with my own life coach.. But I also say, sometimes the oldest solutions are just as valid... just ask Tarantulaspiderwoman

'Carol - go do something you love and everyone will be happier and better off..  find a new team member. Employ a good accountant. Get on with being an artist and a coach and stop feeling like it's not 'real' work just because you love it! Yes you can hang on in there against the odds, but you know you can use that silk better!'

So here I am a week later - having spent the day in conference with a client, working on images  and contemplating my first sculpture commission; having suggested an ongoing Facebook Group consultation process as I work on it (how very modern of me) I'm determined to  learn how to spin silk from wherever it makes itself available! 

PS>>> the image is electron microscope traces of spider foot silk

***PPS the female maths teacher I'd had the previous year at school was so good at her job that I 'got' everything and was top of my class. I can't remember the positive things and encouragement she must have given me. Why do we hear more readily, and internalise for years, the negatives? And isn't being a good teacher a wonderful and often underrated skill when even I can be good at maths given the right conditions? I might not be good at percentages or geometry, but leaving Mr Sarcastic behind, I went on to my get GCE 'Commercial' maths after all.. Stupid indeed!

spidery drawings

'ruffle those tail feathers'
CN 7.05.11

Yesterday I set out to go to a drawing event and found that Carspider had rebuilt her web, but across the passenger seat this time, so I left her where she was. Couldn't have done that not so long ago, aracnophobia would have prevailed...but I focussed on seeing her as an attractor of abundance as I drove into town, a bit late as I often am, having succumbed to extra cuddles from my beautiful granddaughter as I attempted to get out of the door on time. Arriving in the car park, I realised I'd left all my drawing materials, except the paper, at home, distracted as I was. Should I go back for them? Abort altogether and get on the road to Lancaster as was my original plan? Give up drawing altogether and take a couple of Valium and a book keeping course?


But rifling for parking change, while I asked these profound questions, I found I had a miniature pack of keep-em-quiet wax crayons in my handbag  from the foray to Morrisons' cafe last week... so I thought oh well, I can use those at least, and decided keep going and to trust spiderwoman to provide. 

For a long couple of minutes, the parking meter kept spitting my money back at me to give me enough time for a lovely couple to come by and give me their unsolicited all day ticket that it had generously supplied them with earlier.. nicely covering the deficit from my failure to be organised enough to buy an cheaper advanced event ticket for. . .        Dr Sketchy's Burlesque & life drawing event in Uncle Alberts'. http://www.drsketchy.com


Drawing Burlesque artistes is not something I had anticipated I'd be doing this weekend, but the atmosphere was fun, the bar was open, and it's great to see people incorporating participatory art into a socialising context. I was kindly lent some colour pencils by off-duty Thursday night life drawing class teacher Jackie, but my drawings weren't great, I was a bit discombobulated by the lack of my own kit, paper too big, pencils too small, not knowing what to expect,  and sitting on an uncomfortable stool in a position where people kept brushing past me - and I'm still reflecting now on where my feminist politics stand in the middle of it all... is it  women in their wildish power, doing their own thing? What's the difference between a Burlesque Artiste and a Stripper? 


However, the Headline Honeys Headline Honeys Middlesbrough (14) were quite fabulous, with their feathers and wings, their performances polished, the audience mixed gender, but with the whole front row full of women focussed on drawing and all having a jolly afternoon with the artistes awarding prizes for the best sketches... the MC doing his his thing in 'Cabaret' style top hat and painted face....   good enough for Toulouse Lautrec, I thought, and eventually I sorted myself, cut the paper down, accepted the loan of a bit of pastel and got a grip. My efforts may not reflect Middlesbrough's answer to the Moulin Rouge as well as they might have done, but hey, at least I only hid in the ladies for the first set of judging...

Even mainstream prime time Britain's Got Talent had a Graphic Designer performing as Burlesque dancer Talulah Blue and commanding an amazing amount of attention last week - (yes I do watch BGT, it makes me laugh every time, and rather proud to be a citizen of a country that produces such a wacky selection of people prepared own their wackiness with such abandon.) catch it on You Tube and peruse the range of comments she inspired... only time will tell if The Queen will eventually get to see her performance.

It must be synchronistic theme of the week because 'Is it porn or is it art?' was the subject of an interesting programme on TV this week, I forget which channel, featuring a pop up gallery showing a range of fine art works by well known artists and asking members of the general public to come in, view the exhibition, and answer this very question.. as well as posing others, such what motivated people to stand in the nude on top of the 4th Plinth in Trafalgar Square and what does it feel like to be life model if really you're a celebrity footballer or a television presenter?

All this does lead me back to pondering about the Toulouse Lautrec exhibition at MIMA  last autumn (High Kicks and Low Life: A British Museum Touring exhibition, now at National Museum, Cardiff)  particularly a print entitled 'Alone' (when obviously she wasn't 'cos she had a bloke sketching her..) It is a great exhibition of Henri's prints "described by a contemporary critic as, ‘the quintessential chronicler of Paris’. The work of the artist (1864-1901) immediately evokes the decadent atmosphere of fin-de siècle Paris." (The Times; 5th January 2011) 


I don't aspire to becoming the quintissential chronicler of Middlesbrough, but how fortunate am I to return to live in my home town in the North East at a time in history when I don't necessarily need to go to Paris, but can catch all these things virtually on my own doorstep? 






,

Anyway, I'm not sure that this kind of tool is my strength really, but it was a good exercise in not putting the housework in front of my art.

"I've seen women work long, long hours at jobs they despise in order to buy very expensive items for their houses, mates, or children, and putting their considerable talents on the back burner. I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write...and you know, it's a funny thing about house cleaning . . . it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman.

A woman must be careful to stop overresponsibility (or overrespectibility) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs and raptures. She must simply put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she 'should' be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only" Clarissa Pinkola Estes: Women Who Run With the Wolves

 Even though I know it, (and you know it) I still forget - and not only do our inner artists suffer, if we overrule our bodies with our heads for too long our bodies cry Enough! Over the bank holiday last weekend I slowly got more and more ill until I just had to withdraw to my room and my bed.So frustrating! All the things I want to do, need to do, should be doing!

But it was dark moon, a time for withdrawing and turning inward (my migraine made sure I did) and then,  as I recovered, I found myself reading avidly, and years after I first bought and read a copy of 'Women Who Run With the Wolves' I read it again and was re-inspired. Sometimes, I find, a good book will speak to different selves at different times. And I always synchronistically find the right book waiting for me at whatever cross road I've come to, ready to point me along the right path....

This year, finally, after 7 years of working towards it, and 7 years of challenges at every turn,  I plan to make an actual start on the courses I've wanted to offer in Tuscany. Clarissa has reminded me that I need to re contact my own 'Wildish' side and let her lead the way.

This year, after many years of travelling other paths, I am returning to my roots, which grow deep into the earth, and this week I got my hands into the muck in my new studio. (It's not finished yet, I still have no functioning kiln, but all that is scheduled in..)

This year I am weaving together the strands of my life into another new web that stretches across Europe

So to all of you out there on Arachne's most modern web, I encourage you to dream your wildest dreams and  
this year - make them happen!

And by the next morning....

When I woke, Carspider was still at it.. this time she drew me into using a drawing tool I have on my pc... never used that before either. All I was planning to do was take a quick look at my Facebook site while I waited for the kettle to boil.

I'm a reluctant IT artist.. but the blog seems to be about documenting the curious thread I am following back to creativity.

In the Beginning....

In the beginning, according to Pueblo mythology, Spider Woman or Grandmother Spider spun her silken threads from North to South and from East to West and so created the world. Her other name is Thinking Woman because merely by her thinking them, things came  into existence or they manifested when she spoke or sang her thoughts. Spider Woman took from the earth red, yellow, white and black clays and set about creating people..


This evening, leaving the office after a day of payroll systems and online p.whatevers, as I opened my car door I found a tiny spider, red yellow and black had spun a web across my drivers seat, which I had to gently remove in order to get in and get to my drawing class in time. Spiders are traditionally associated with the attraction of  money and killing them with the loss of wealth. Carspider reminded me that it was time to pick up the threads of my studio practice from where I left them in the Autumn as well as those of my Tuscan Dream....


I had no intention of creating a blog this evening. I didn't even know how to. But somehow, whilst searching in picasa editing for a way to enlarge an image, my curser hovered over the blog icon and before I even knew what it was....one thing led to another and here I am. Welcome to my blog!