Self-care in Creativity & Wellbeing Week 2022

The Self-care Learning Curve.

Self-care is often understood as a support package that we manage and construct for ourselves. When it's treated as a luxury, we may reward ourselves for our hard work by spending money on ourselves with a meal out, an expensive treat or a holiday. At least, that's how I viewed it until my world changed with three events that redefined my life. 

Fallen tree, 2020. (Black ink on paper)

Firstly, my part-time job with a local charity came to an end, due to funding cuts. As I'd been using that role to pay my bills, whilst I figured out a way to support myself from arts work and plan flexible breaks to support my health, that was disappointing. Most part-time jobs appeared to be mainly geared around working parents, which wasn't the arrangement I was hoping for, so I wasn't feeling optimistic about finding a replacement easily. 

Soon after, I became an unpaid carer when it became apparent that my mum needed help to look after herself. That, in itself, is a long story for another time. As a result I started to look for support for carers and ways to maintain my mental health as I adjusted to my new role. Locally I registered with Carers MK and went to Age UK Milton Keynes for legal advice. At this point I was still hopeful that I could learn how to balance a care role with some freelance arts work, though I wasn't clear how to make that happen.

Finally, the COVID19 pandemic hit the UK, just as my most recent sketchbooks went on display in the MK Calling 2020 exhibition at MK Gallery. The increased risk to my health and upheaval, together with a lack of funding support for freelancers, upset all my plans for urban sketching and community events, as we collectively locked down and readjusted to pandemic life. Whilst some people threw themselves into home baking, I started an occasional sketch journal over on Instagram.

Two years of learning how to live in a changed world. personally and professionally, have given me a new perspective on self-care. This includes day to day support and a new attitude to paid and unpaid work commitments. Here are my revised top tips for self-care ...

My top 4 tips for self-care:

1. Self-care is an essential, not a luxury. If you pass up early opportunities to care for yourself when you have minor health or welfare concerns, they will eventually grow into major problems. At its most basic, it can be as simple as remembering to give yourself breaks, drink some more water and have an early night. At the networking level, it could involve seeking out help and information from charities, support groups and professionals.
2. Ask for help. No-one is going to know you need support if you struggle on in silence. If you leave it until you're in a major crisis before you speak up then you may not get the help in time. Ask for help from friends, family, support groups or services. For example, carers (especially live-in carers) are advised to plan 'respite breaks' - these can be anything from a couple of hours to see a friend and relax away from their caring role, or it may be a week away, if they can get the support for that long. 
3. It takes a village. The saying "It takes a village to raise a child" also applies to public avenues for support - in the community, from your employers/collaborators and from public bodies. If you're trying to carry the whole world on your shoulders, continuous work without a break will drain you until you make yourself ill. Better to learn to spread the load early on and say 'no' a few people or situations that no longer support your aims, than collapse suddenly from the strain of trying to please everyone all of the time. 
4. Know your worth. Potential clients or employers may want you to work for a lower price, more hours or for exposure but you need to value yourself more highly. You have unique skills, experience and perspectives. If you are still learning how to negotiate and market yourself, look on social media for tips and active support groups. There's lots of free advice that's tailored to freelancers and artists, just take the time to find the best fit for your situation. E.g. art opps on Instagram - I share some in my Stories

Creative Respite?

This week I was reminded that it's "Creativity & Wellbeing Week 2022" when my request to join a related Facebook group was approved. If you're looking for creative events or ideas for activities in the UK, this may be a good place to start. If you can't make any of these activities, it's still worth using them as inspiration for days out or breaks when you've more time to spare.

The week's theme, according to their website - 

"Creativity and Wellbeing week is a partnership between London Arts in Health Forum and the Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance. It is an open festival where we encourage anyone who wants to host an event focused on culture, arts and wellbeing to join us in the programme."

Creativity & Wellbeing project events web page: https://creativityandwellbeing.org.uk/all-events/ 
Search on Twitter for #CreativityandWellbeingWeek

See more of my art on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/srfirehorseart/

March 2021

 A Brave New World

Installation view of the 'Garfield Weston' gallery,
 MK Calling 2020, with the vitrine my art was displayed in (right)
Picture credit: MK Gallery. 

Contemporary Drama

MK Calling 2020 is the longest-running exhibition I've been in so far. This group exhibition, at MK Gallery, opened in February 2020, temporarily closed for lockdown late in March and finally re-opened with an extension until November 2020. In all that time, I managed just two visits in person, as I've being at home every since the first lockdown. 

Of course, like many other people, I was hoping the COVID-19 pandemic would be over quickly and wondering when, or if, we would get back to 'normal' life. Initially I was optimistic that I'd catch up with my reading, make art, maybe start designing an online arts course. The reality was that my productivity ground to a halt. Instead of breaking new ground online, my broadband struggled as everyone around me logged on at home. Eventually my creative outlook re-emerged to focus on drawing nearer to home, as I've done in the past.

Installation view during MK Calling 2020,
including the vitrine with my art display
Picture credit: MK Gallery. 

Creating New Pathways

However, I was heartened to see lots of other people launch online art clubs and events, making the most of people's extra spare time as they worked from home and spent less time travelling. The availability of events, using Zoom and other online resources, has hopefully squashed a lot of arguments against flexible access, where travelling distance, time and costs have meant that some events have been inaccessible to many. The ability to screen and record events for sharing online, engage with communities via social media, run live interactive events on various platforms and even set up 'stalls' and promote work in international online events, mean that a lot of invisible access barriers have been flattened in the last year. If the arts want to support diversity, then this is one step closer to equal access for all.

In 2021, the availability of vaccinations and the natural optimism of Spring, is bringing hope to everyone. Whilst there is a temptation to simply return fixed locations to share art from, I'm hoping that some of the more distance-learning methods of sharing the arts will be here to stay. Here's to a more fluid and flexible access path to arts and crafts in the future.

Artists are always innovating and a more accessible approach to participatory arts and associated funding could be the start of a more connected era in the arts. If our brave new world has learnt some useful tricks from this pandemic, maybe some long-lasting benefit will have come out of it after all.

Installation view of my artwork 
 in the vitrine display of MK Calling 2020.
Picture credit: MK Galley / S. Raymond

MK Calling 2020

The MK Calling 2020 show, opens this weekend at MK Gallery​, with over 130 amazing artists. This exhibition includes two framed drawings of community events and four of my sketchbooks. The sketches on show cover the period from roughly mid-2017 to the present, many featuring scenes in Milton Keynes. These look at public and community spaces, and how they are used. More recently I have started to focus on how these spaces are used to provide peer support.

Saturday 15 February- Sunday 17 May 2020

FREE ENTRY

Gallery blurb:

Featuring over 130 artists across five world class gallery spaces, MK Calling is MK Gallery’s first open call submission exhibition in the majorly developed and extended building that reopened in March 2019. The exhibition will showcase a range of established and up and coming artists, very much celebrating what is happening today in contemporary art.

MK Calling will be showcasing the most dynamic work being made today including work by Royal Academicians, and alumni of The British Art Show, John Moores Painting Prize and New Contemporaries.

The show features numerous pieces that address and challenge many contemporary issues such as the environment and the political climate, as well as a number of playful and performance works. With the exhibition taking place in the new town of Milton Keynes and with a third of artists local to the area, a lot of the work also looks at cities and architecture.

Artists:

Ikran Abdille | Miraj Ahmed | Saint Akua | Giuseppe Alfano & Roisin Callaghan | Chris Alton | Bronya Arcsizewska | Artist I. Relevant | Astrid Baerndal | Bill Balaskas | Bianca Barandun | Pietro Bardini | Charlie Barkus | Namen Basil | Anna Berry | Daniel Blumberg | Boyd & Evans | Eleanor Breeze | Melanie Bush | Lil Cahill | Nathan Caldecott | Ciara Callaghan | Phil Carney | Priya Chohan-Padia | Sarawut Chutiwongpeti | Jonny Clapham | Dovile Dagiene-Doda | Shona Davies | Dave Monaghan & Jon Klein | Charlie Denning | Edward Durdey | Lee Farmer | French & Mottershead | Doug Foster | Archie Franks | Abi Freckleton | Emi Fujisawa | John Garrad | GLRGNYNK | Fiona Grady | Garth Gratrix | Thomas Gray | Lucy Gregory | Habib Hajallie | Emily Hawes | Aaron Head | Rebecca Herbert | Fabienne Hess | Dave Hilliard | Len Hollman | Gareth Horner | Will Hurt | Dawn Iles | Hannah Jean Moulds | Permindar Kaur | Judy Kendrick-Simonsen | Neil Kilby | Adam King | Jane King | Kyle Kirkpatrick | Anna Lann & Jonathan Tritcher | Penthouss | Karolina Lebek | Fei Li | Dasha Loyko | Andrew Macdermott | Henrietta MacPhee | Rachel Magdeburg | Nick Malone | Morag McInnes | Sean Michael Pearce | Verity Millest | Elisabeth Molin | Callum Monteith | Stuart Moore | Nazanin Moradi | Adam Neal | Raymond O'Daly | Kate Parrott | Jam Patel | Sharda Patel | Marion Piper | Lisa-Marie Price | Jonathan Purnell | Paul B Rainey | Suzanna Raymond | Thom Rees | Dorothea Reid | Yande Ren | Graeme Roach | Dave Ronalds | Linnet Panashe Rubaya | Rekha Sameer | Mark Scammell | Abbie Schug | Christina Shelagh Mongelli | Martyn Simpson | Cecilia Sjoholm | Rebecca Smart | Ritu Sood | Stephanie Spindler | Bob Spriggs | Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck | James Tebbutt | Tracing the Pathway | Sebastian Thomas | James Owen Thomas | Elizabeth Tomos | Roxy Topia & Paddy Gould | Anna Townley | Dina Tses | Anna Turner | Miles Umney | Guillaume Vandame | Wai Wai Pang | Vilas | Elizabeth Walker | Lufeianna Wang | Sally Waterman | Emma Wilde | Mark Wilsher | Arianne Wilson | Iain Woods | Josh Wright | Rachel Wright | Cherilyn Yeates | Henry Yeomans

MK Fifty

Pathfinding

A quick post, in case you've wondered what else I've been up to in 2017, the year that Milton Keynes turned fifty years old.

Soon after the MK Calling exhibition at MK Galley, I had a solo exhibition at Stantonbury Gallery, Milton Keynes.

This exhibition at Stantonbury Campus explored the unpredictable nature of the urban landscape and the winding path of the emerging artist. These paths were represented by a series of works created during and after my Fine Art degree. The images look at the contemporary art world and the contemporary urban world, asking you to enquire about the usefulness of endeavour in the face of the temporary nature of success and the variety of ways achievements are absorbed by and re-purposed by the environment they exist in. These vignettes of decisive moments in the paths creative artists tread, mark the progress across unclear boundaries between achievement and failure, death and renewal.

Works on show included photographic prints from my degree final project. As my sketchbooks had been a popular item at MK Calling, I brought a few of those along to share at the private view.

Whilst this was a small event, it at least afforded me a sense of closure about my degree work, as I was able to show more of my final work to the public. This made up for the lack of a final university degree exhibition, a rite of passage which most fine art degree students expect as a matter of course. My final work had been displayed at the University of Northampton for grading by my tutors but unfortunately the university didn't permit me to share this with my friends and the general public at the time.

You can find a couple of photos about the Pathfinder exhibition on Instagram.

A post shared by Suzanna Raymond (@srfirehorseart) on Jul 9, 2017 at 2:56pm PDT

Image: Untitled (Path), a triptych of photographic prints, mounted on board.  Approx. (h. 430cm x w. 230 cm) x 3.

A post shared by Suzanna Raymond (@srfirehorseart) on Jul 11, 2017 at 2:46pm PDT

Installation view of Pathfinder at Stantonbury Gallery. The empty plinths were used to display some of my sketchbooks on the day of the private view but could equally be taken to represent the ephemeral nature of some artworks and artists' careers.

MK Calling 2017

Celebrating the urban landscape of Milton Keynes.

The next MK Calling exhibition at Milton Keynes gallery previews on April 20th. This show was an open call for artists interested in architecture, construction and links to Milton Keynes. I'll be showing my urban sketches as part of this event, which fits in well with my current work. You can read more about my urban sketching in MK on my new page: https://srfirehorseart.blogspot.co.uk/p/gallery.html

MK is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and the gallery is opening the space again for this show before the site is re-developed over the next two years. When the refurbished gallery re-opens it should have more space and facilities like a cafe.

This spring, MK Gallery showcases new and exciting work by over 70 emerging and established artists in MK Calling 2017. This exhibition is designed to celebrate the breadth of creativity around Milton Keynes and will include a wide range of art forms alongside a dynamic programme of events and participatory sessions.

- from the MK Gallery website http://www.mkgallery.org/exhibitions/mk_calling_2017/

It's great to be showing at the gallery again, with a theme that I'm currently exploring. Everyone is invited and MK Gallery are promising music, food and drink (as well as the art of course) at the preview.

The exhibition runs until 27 May 2017.

Tarting About

A post shared by Suzanna Raymond | (@srfirehorseart) on Oct 13, 2016 at 9:49am PDT

T'Art Zine

The T'Art show for International Women's Day 2017 has opened at Bones & Pearl Studios, in London. It's a group exhibition celebrating International Women’s Day with participatory zine making!

Following the Sweet 'Art group on Instagram led to me spotting an opportunity to contribute to the T'Art zine that forms part of this year's event. The page I submitted is the same one that has appeared in Girl Frenzy to Crone Frenzy but it will hopefully get a new audience at this event.

The T'Art show runs 7th - 9th March, with an opening event in the evening on the 8th March. See more about what they do at http://www.wearesweetart.com/

The CAS PostIt Exchange

Following up a link I saw on Facebook, I'm pleased to say I have been selected up to take part in the Chapel Arts Studios Post It Exchange. The CAS project, based in Andover, is about putting together artists to collaborate on items they post to each other. The results will be shared on Instagram with the #CASpostitexchange tag. My Instagram name is @srfirehorseart.

The project has just launched in pilot and they're still open to including more artists. More info on the project is on their website:  http://www.chapelartsstudios.co.uk/events/event/pilot-cas-postit/

Seventy Percent Admin

As has been observed elsewhere, an artist's life is only somewhat about creating wonderful things, the bulk of it is everything else. That means working to pay the bills, filing, submitting your tax return, DBS updates, insurance, networking and so on. After all that you may be able to squeeze the creativity into the last 30% of your time.

Likewise with my own life. So I've just updated my CV and artist's statement and have applied to another MK Calling exhibition at MK Gallery, this time with some of my urban sketches. Wish me luck!

Exhibition - MK Calling at Milton Keynes Gallery

"MK Calling (28 June – 8 September 2013) is the Gallery’s summer programme of exhibitions and performances, featuring 100 artists, musicians and performers from Milton Keynes. This dynamic season of painting, video, dance, music, poetry and much, much more will showcase MK’s finest emerging and established talent."

- See more at: http://www.mkgallery.org/exhibitions/mk_calling

My work Path (2012) was selected for inclusion in the first full open exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery. Nearly 100 creatives were picked from around 300 applicants, to show work at the main gallery and over at Artworks-MK in Great Linford. My artwork will remain on show in the main gallery space for the duration of the programme. There's a full-colour catalogue to accompany the exhibition and these are for sale at the reception desk. Reception also has a price list for the artworks, if you feel inspired to take some home.

Path, 2012. Installation at Milton Keynes Gallery.

Path was created from two of the images used in a triptych (see image below) of A4 inkjet prints, an image which you'll also see with my bio in the catalogue. Path was conceived as an installation piece, with each inkjet print to be hung opposite the other. I'm glad to see that they look just as good hung together on the same wall in the Middle Gallery space. Each print is on semi-matte paper, which makes a feature of the velvety darkness in the images.



Untitled, 2012. Triptych of inkjet prints on paper.

Suzanna Raymond on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sraymond.artworks
MK Calling launch and Summer Party official photos.