MANY ARE CALLED BUT FEW GET UP:

 

First year at art school went progressively down hill. 

Entering as a star in my head, it started well & lost momentum until 

I was hauled up before a tribunal that read me the last rights. 

With the band at home over, it was bleak, a ‘stalled’ feeling was 

spreading like weeds through my teenage life. It was looking like the 

boy from the Midlands was on his way out, when one loyal tutor 

intervened to buy me time to prove I deserved to keep my place. 

Perhaps it was the twee little installation I finally built, or just 

the support of that one tutor, but I managed to scrape through to 

2nd year. 

Everything changed that summer, the penny dropped & I started 

building artworks out’ve industrial waste like my life depended on it. 

Year two, this new found drive & direction landed me a prime spot in 

the sculpture department along with my drinking buddies, under the 

sceptical watch of sculpture tutors who couldn’t believe they’d 

let this weirdo into their manly fraternity – welding, casting, 

drilling, hauling heavy stuff. 

I set about building man-traps, broken glass, shards of wood, corridors 

& mazes, nightmare spaces. This evolved into Zen gardens, containing 

ceremonially executed stick figures, the study of ceremonial rituals 

& shamanic figures as used by the tribes of Africa & North America. 

I built a hut with a floor of deep sand with a japanese paper sky & 

set about burning things. The Dean paid a visit to praise my work, but 

ask if I would consider ‘not’ starting fires indoors- I was flying. 

Vidid dreams were transformed into realties every day, I started to 

work with early Video, black & white ghost images, creating 

installations with quadraphonic sound, building ceremonial pits that 

incorporated sawdust, candles, crudely daubed red & yellow painted 

scraps, sound systems & video monitors. 

I wrapped myself in bandages, painted myself red & yellow, pinned on 

button hole carnations, built chapels for the marriage of tiny bones 

in ham cloth, begged unused bandages from hospitals, wrapped animal 

bones in delicate coloured wires & wedding rings. I wrapped myself in 

plastic, wrote stories about imaginary ceremonies & filled glass cases 

with fictitious ceremonial artefacts. The speed at which I was producing 

art was limited only by the speed at which I could work, everything was 

possible, it was an exhilarating feeling – flying.

 

And then she left me, 

I ground to a halt, 

downed-tools, 

devastated.  

 

(K)