Now my studio is looking like a studio, I have begun to collect clutter in earnest.  I am no longer just somebody who trawls the charity shops and so forth for bric-a-brac, in an abstract meaningless way –  I am an artist.  I have method to my searching, I have vision, I have an ineffable and driven purpose.  Except I don’t.  The things I make are always suggested to me by the materials and I only have the vaguest of ideas what I’m up to.  It feels somehow as if an invisible blueprint is in my head, and I have to carry on going, finding objects and moving them round till the blueprint appears in the flesh, so to speak.

What I know for certain is that I have got to get hold of some old jewelery boxes or similar receptacles, in order to create space- frames or mini-theatres.  Then I will see what the space thinks it wants.  I really can’t work until I know what the boundaries are.  This is similar to when I am writing a poem – I am thinking in terms of the shape and size of the page, and also the amount of ink introduced to the page in terms of density and the empty space within the frame.

I’ve been putting flat-pack cupboards together of late (my fingers are bloodied as I type) and thinking a lot about order and chaos.  I am sure it’s not the most original of thoughts, but it occurred to me that many (all?) human endeavors involve trying to keep order and make sense of the sheer variousness of life.  Cupboards do this, poems do this, and once I find all the little empty theatres, I will set about solving some more  puzzles.