Catch Up/Love Rat

I'm sorry I haven't been blogging, it means this one will be long and probably incoherent.

I feel pretty refreshed after the Christmas break - 4 weeks. Husband was here for 3 weeks so that was soooo lovely. We went up to Big Sur and stayed in a hotel of little cabins built by a Norwegian in the 1930s, called Deetjens. It was just so restful. We also dog-sat for Kaucyila - a beautiful, placid English Setter called Cricket. We had fun with her and staying at Kaucyila's was ideal for us as she is in a hip area called Silver Lake in LA - we're definitely thinking about living there when we come here for the Autumn Semester. On Christmas day we went to where Alex, a BFA4, was house-sitting in the Hollywood Hills, a very nice place, very fancy. We took brought-from-home Christmas Pudding and ate a lamb roast (me just the veg), with her Australian Jewish family. Not traditional in any sense, but they were great company and Mom had been educated and worked for a bit in Britain, so there was enthusiasm for our Christmas Pud.

Before the end of last semester I had so many deadlines coming at me it was really stressful, but a nice kind of stressful. By that I mean, when its your own stuff, and when its ‘school’, your in control of it, if it goes wrong, its you you let down. But it didn’t go wrong and I got HP in all my classes except Yoga which I got P for – that’s because I skipped 3. CalArts is not into grading, I think the ethos here is more, get the knowledge, not worry about grades. So instead, they have (which is still a form of grading), High Pass, Pass, Low Pass, No Credit (for not doing it), Incomplete – when you still need to submit work to pass and NX but I can’t remember what that is.

By the way, I must warn you. If you are interested in coming to America to study, consider this, it’s not written in any of the prospectuses that I ever looked at. (BTW I never looked at any other prospectuses that CalArts, just successive years, I was very sure I wanted to come here) Knuckle-cracking. Everyone, and I mean everyone, without exception, including most teachers, crack their knuckles. Each class you can hear at least 3 sets and a set is not merely 10, its every joint in the hand, so that can be a minimum of 20 cracks. Unfortunately, knuckle cracking is the only sound that makes me heave. For some, it is chalk on a board, but for me its knuckles. Every time I hear joints being forcibly clicked I recoil and tense. It makes me quince unbearably.

I went to Photo LA last weekend and like Frieze, it is difficult to really gush over the experience. It does what it says on the tin. Galleries get booths, put their best work on the wall, buyers look round, and… buy. Students at CalArts look round desperately trying to see a gallery that may be worthy of them. I approached 3 galleries to find out what their submission policy is. When I have a website again, I will, maybe, email them.

However, I met somebody. That you, English blog readers, will absolutely be impressed/horrified by. But no-one here knows who is, so so far no-one (except Husband via Skype) has been impressed. Impressed is not the right word at all, let me explain. I got into to Photo LA for free because Alexis was working on it, on the front desk, because her friend Sara’s mum works for one of the top commercial galleries in LA. I ended up being there for 2 days, for quite some time, looking at work, at the people there and catching the talks. Taking some time out I sat next to someone in the café area who is a friend of someone in my class. They worked together at A&! – that’s a commercial photo specialist/finishing place. We chatted and I talked to his friends. Then, I bearded man came up – young, about 30, in hip/casual clothes and started to talk to friend of friend, in Estuary English. There was something familiar about him. When he went away I asked who he was. None other than James Gooding, the infamous Kylie Love Rat. Apparently, he has gallery representation in London and LA and does rather well, thank you. He is also a regular photographer for a hip LA magazine. He lives in his girlfriend's place in a fancy pad on Mulholland Drive. For his work that he sells, he travels round America photographing, a la Eggleston, Frank et al. Not bad, eh? Not content with that, or to put it another way, I was caught staring at him a couple of times, when I passed him in the corridor going to the loo, I couldn’t stop myself, I said ‘You’re English aren’t you?’, ‘Yes’, ‘I’m sure I know you don’t I? You’re face is just so familiar’, ‘No sorry, just got one of those faces’.

The day before yesterday I went to a lecture/presentation at REDCAT by Walid Raad/The Atlas Group. He is pretty quiet and soft spoken, but if you get the chance, go to one of his lectures. He’s work is so very well negotiated and what is startling is that it is not the nature of his material that makes him so prominent but his handling of the material. He absolutely knows what art is and how to get the most creatively out of his ideas. I can’t really articulate my opinions on him better than that, for now at least. I’m just very impressed. He is artist as investigator and years ago, that was how I thought of myself. I’ve been getting a bit off track I think since then. I want to go back to my material and compose it thinking a bit more like Raad. Yesterday there was an hour long Q&A session with him at CalArts and I actually asked 2 questions. His answers were very lucid and really spoke to me and my current work. He spoke about an author, who he feels he, in only the sense of being in dialogue with his text, collaborates with, the author is called Jalal, who I know nothing about, but will find out about.