Since I began my path as an artist at 18 by enrolling onto a fine art foundation course, along side I have in one way or another worked in a paid job that serves people. Firstly food retail & now High street retail. These jobs, especially my current job which is heavily based on the very best customer service, outstanding brand knowledge & staff supervision have taught me everything I need to know in order to navigate through various communities as an artist. Working hard within a creative retail business I have been fortunate enough to experience working in several areas of the company mainly as a visual merchandiser & sign writer. Roles that have taken me to places around the country & have provided several high pressure tasks & assignments over the years that have fed into my operation as a motivated artist. Even on smaller low key projects for my own practice there is always an element of relying on someone else or needing something in some form that another has to provide. My work in retail as a Sales Assistant, Supervisor, Visual Merchandiser & former Sign Writer have forced me to work independently & closely with people as a team. I have learned the fine art of communication which may seem easy but is in fact something I believe to be hard work that needs perfecting over time. I have also learned that this task does not need to be performed as formally as one might have been told in school with, ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ or ‘Yours Sincerely’ adorning every aspect of written communication. What I have found important is a certain level of professionalism that does not take out who I am. Id like to think all of the skills I have learned over the years & the person I have become when communicating face to face in the moment can still be felt in written communication.

Communication has moved on a lot even in my 32 years. As a young boy I would write letters to celebrities to ask for their signed photos & each year on my birthday I would telephone everyone who sent me a card or gave me a gift to thank them personally. As email & ‘chat’ became more popular I would spend hours as a teen chatting online with my friends in the evenings & emailing companies that I thought had used too much packaging on their food products only to be paid off with coupons. Moving towards the social media age, communication became less formal but sticking mainly with email & now Twitter & Instagram it is easy to connect with most anyone.

As an artist certain platforms are important to portray & share visual messages that fill in the gaps of all of my creative thinking, really acting as a digital public sketch book. New constraints on these platforms include not sharing too much in order to keep the element of excitement for a gallery experience alive. Although nothing will ever replace the feeling of being in a space with art & the experience of going to a show & seeing a work of art that you have always wanted to see. Entering into that moment when you see art & it shocks you to silence because it is more than you could have ever know without seeing it in the flesh. Feeling goosebumps take over your body as you get a lump in your throat & begin brimming with tears or take a gasp that you can not hold in when you stand before great art is unrivalled. However, spoilers can alter this experience for better or worse & it can be a fine line.

The right kind of social output however can start a conversation or illuminate new ideas & potential collaborators. With my current project I have reached out to several businesses & a local school in order to begin a relationship where I can use their unwanted waste materials such as dumpy bags & sheeting. Emails, phone calls & tweeting have been my methods of communication with email & Twitter providing the successful results for me. Email has been great for the more traditional institution (a Local Primary School) as I have been able to fully explain my intent & begin dialogue with the people who are willing to take part in my project. This method of contact has not been so successful for modern businesses for what ever reason. For them contacting their public pages seems to work. Whether its because they want to be seen to be helping & doing the right thing, in this case donating waste material for reuse, which is positive or whether they physically check this platform more often im not sure.

I guess the point Im trying to make here is on these platforms I am able to be myself. I am able to put to good use the confidence I have built over the years to talk to people & ask them for stuff. These are busy people who dont need me to come in to their daily work & change things but they do. For what ever reason after professional, friendly & personal dialogue these people enter into my practice. They may not even know it but they are a part of the culture that I have entered into as an artist. For the provider of the scaffolding sheet, I have taken certain amounts of inspiration from the work they do on the city skyline, the nature of their business interest me & informs my artistic practice. Many other similar companies that didn’t get back to me or just stopped replying to emails fed into my determination to sustain a relationship with another company. This process has become one of those situations where it doesn’t feel like I’ve done a lot of work but somehow have lots of free material to work with. But looking back there is a trail of tweets & emails, months of asking & negotiating, honing a motive language & developing my own artistic language in order to justify why they should help me.

Two years ago after attending an artist talk by international artist Sinta Tantra I was lucky enough to have a tutorial with her. At the time there wasn’t much to show her as my project had not gotten started but one thing that came through was her ability to work with other groups that were able to help her realise her work. Sinta stressed the importance of being able to communicate with them. At the time it wasn’t relevant to me as I was able to everything myself but as the project grew this advice began to be useful. Being mindful of Sinta’s advice, progress has been made & I have a certain degree of professional relationships within this project.