Pip Woolf

Today I read an article written by Diana Melly, wife of the late, larger than life, George Melly.The last days of George Melly

What struck me most was her description of both the love and hate that manifest itself. Hate of both George and herself as well as all the love. Of missing both as we are more than one set of emotions but somehow social behaviour seems to sanitise our lives to cut out anything that might be unpleasant.

Perhaps this is self evident, but somehow once again the living with dementia experience seems to be throwing  light on corners of behaviour that all too often slink into the shadows.

Layers of relationship

So trying to organise myself I thought I would sort out just one mailbox in my emails and found this response to the first visit I made to a dementia friendly cafe.

Love and affection, sadness, madness, noisy, hard of hearing, taking
my hearing aids out as they produce so much background noise.
they probably think I am mad/ bad at drawing, what are you doing? have
you made a picture? lonely gets me out, somewhere to go, can’t do it
anymore, he’s got Altzeimhers
performance, privacy, patronage
who are these people? where do they come from? why are they here? what
do they hope for, dream about? Is it fear of unknown places that
brings us here?
I’ve had a heavy weekend, lots of friends so not sure I can do this.
Eva won the dominoes and received a posy of flowers, someone brought
these lovely flowers from the allotment, banana cake, nut cake, lemon
and chocolate cake. would you like another cup of tea/ would you like
another cup of tea? I ‘ve be instructed to ask would you like another
cup of tea?
Were you embarrassed or irritated by me?
I danced, or sort of , having asked to waltz but failing to do it or
even follow the instructions, one, two , three, one , two three, I’ll
teach you, one two, three left, one two, three right
What the hell does it mean-one,two,three what? aggravated by the left
and right confusion but all good hearted
I was a senior civil servant, but what did you do? everything, create
policies
He has a lovely voice, yes she does like to sing, no I meant you, but
you (she) are a dancer, ( coy) oh not really, but she was
You did not come to put the chairs away, did that help, are you still
inspired
No invitation to come again, no curiousity, I felt an outsider, a
strange beast
Conversation about collecting at Hay festival, even though we are not
a registered charity, but we do have a constitution, we will need? or
he’s good at that sort of thing

NO idea what to say, but will talk to you later or tomorrow

A friend sent me this. Picasso It chimes with the thoughts I found whilst reading the extract below.  I struggled with the language with the dictionary ever present but found myself thinking that there is a nugget of gold hidden in these words.

They come from:

The Meanings of late Neolithic Stamp Seals in North Mesopotamia

A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities, 2013 by Simon Denham

Personhood is what it is to be a person in a society and derives from the recognition that the bounded, closed ‘individual’ is a product of western modernity and is 218

not indiscriminately appropriate to past cultures (Fowler 2004). Fowler introduced a contrasting concept of dividual identity. Dividual identity is “a state of being in which the person is recognised as composite and multiply-authored. People are composed of social relations with others to the degree that they owe parts of themselves to others” (Fowler 2004: 8). The theory relates to how people perceive their identity within any social context. This makes identifying identities on the individual to dividual spectrum difficult as the theory relates to internalised semantic perception. The over-arching point is very important however, as it recognises that the ‘western’ individual is a product of modernity and is not equivalent to an agent. Persons have agency in a doxic relationship with structure regardless of if they are individuals or dividuals.

Within personhood theory objects can be important. Fowler identifies a type of dividual identity he calls partibility where it is suggested that parts of a person “can be extracted and given to another person to whom it is owed” (Fowler 2004: 9) in the form of objects. This type of relational personhood is closely associated with the notion of inalienability. An inalienable object is one which has been “imbued with affective qualities that are expressions of the value an object has when it is kept by its owners and inherited within the same family or descent group” (Weiner 1985: 210). More generally the theory illustrates that aspects of one’s personhood can originate outside of the person providing an arena for objects to be efficacious, without merely passively reflecting imposed meanings. Objects, places, smells, persons, communities, etc. can all be givers and receivers of aspects of personhood in different social contexts. The very ambiguity of this theory provides a notion or frame of how society functions that partly circumvents our lack of understanding of late Neolithic society.

Then I got sent this the thinking of others

A neighbour who came to our Friday discussion in the SPace left the comments below.  Plagued by the inconsistency of BT and technological demand of getting oaths blog, she suggested that I might post her comments. I do so because I find it both interesting and exciting how other people make their own sense of work that I have been deeply engrossed it. It acts to remind me of how we each have our own viewpoints and ways of processing the world.

I keep thinking about your w.i.p. Pip and how exciting I found it to look at, and how the notions of identity, along with the visual impact of the piece, keep popping up in my mind in different ways. Such as:

… the melding, in the way I saw it, of fragility and sense of passage/transience right along with the rooted quality of the big folds clinging to the floor below the swaying paper. I loved that juxtaposition of delicacy and shape-shifting and impermanence along with images being simultaneously evoked of trees/monoliths/linear strengths and explorations.

… I loved the idea of the cuneiform lasting “marks” of identity imbedded in a surface that stretches and twists and fades and flutters. As a metaphor for human progress and digress through a life it works  powerfully.

… sitting and looking at those long parallel strips twisting a little in the warm air I suddenly found myself thinking about DNA and the double helix. And isn’t THAT about identity!

… then there was the colour progression – the cool and the warm somehow mirroring the contrasts in the texture, again making me think about what a mixture of subtle elements one’s identity must be, and how closely and rigorously one has to look at oneself in order to understand that and be honest or realistic about it.

… then there was the simple fact that I found it beautiful

Swansea Printworkshop  http://www.swanseaprintworkshop.org.uk member Rose Davies http://scribblah.co.ukhas been the powerhouse behind securing the SPace, a premises owned by Coastal Housing in Swansea http://www.coastalhousing.co.ukand on the High Street.

Together with 12 others the SPace has been a temporary art space in which to make and show work, meet people and exchange ideas. Last Wednesday I  created a piece of work by covering everything in the gallery with tissue paper with an invitation to visitors to lift the cover and reveal the identity of the work. Alongside this and using the SPace as a testbed I installed a new piece of my studio work that also explores identity.

On Friday evening we had about 20 people come and join us to discuss both my work and that of others who have used the paper to explore a sense of identity in relation to experiences of changes in our own identity and that of others near to us.

My marks have used the earliest form of writing, Sumerian cuneiform as a starting point that now leads me off to consider a wider sense of human identity.

So on Monday we visited the British Museum, inspired by Neil Macgregor’s final lecture back in December we booked to hear Grayson Perry talking about ‘ Finding myself in the Museum’.

Was it sub-conscious that the talk focussed on identity, or is this a perennial preoccupation of all of us? Coupled with a wonderful chance to talk with Jonathan Taylor, a curator in the Department of the MiddleEast about the origins writing, it was an inspirational day.

Today found me delighted by the ease of writing Sumerian glyphs when actually using the materials that they were created with. Interesting because they are much harder to draw with a pencil on a flat surface when in fact they were mostly made using a stylus pressed into river clay!

So exploring a sense of identity I am working with both clay and a very difficult paper.

The clay came about when I discovered Sumerian glyphs, the earliest recorded writing, created by pressing a stylus into clay. Handling clay took me to thumb pots, made simply by pressing into clay with my fingers, leaving traces of my hand in the bumpy resultant pot. Amongst the many thoughts that went through my mind was one about the birthplace of intense creativity that once helped us understand the world around us and how now once again it also holds our attention and challenges our thinking.

Just as consideration of dementia challenges me.

My paper throws up more challenge. It is a thin tissue that, when wet tears at any opportunity and yet creates a wonderful surface to hold a mark.

This morning I played some Tai Chi, movements focussed from a central place.

I worked with a group of 7 year old children yesterday. We drew in peaceable silence, not asked for but established by the joy of concentrating on discovery.

The day before I took 3 older people ( older than that is, in their seventies) into Crickhowell. We sang, liberated from the mundane and purely social discourse that might have taken place in a car containing four adults who know one another to a variety of degrees.

Movement, mark and sound each a chance for creativity.

Today is new year’s eve and despite the fact that its ‘just’ another date it gives me pause to consider the work in process. Hours of logistical fiddling with wire, string, paper clips and little brass rings following hot on the heels of even more time spent sourcing paper and colours. So many small decisions, things thrown aside for both practical and conceptual reasons. Moments too of extreme excitement after a series of mishaps, I long to record some of the sights that pass my eyes as they speak volumes all on their own and then they are gone.

So why this impossibly fragile  paper, when its wet it will tear alone its own. Identity is fragile but can also sometimes be strong.

Decisions about colour and marks are complex too. I have not settled on the marks entirely, a matter of scale that needs experimentation. Colour on the other hand has become simple, vine black, madder red inks, both unstable in light with oil based white as the persistent mark.