a science of qualities

For much of today I've been thinking about scientific process, following my last post on wax temperature. I have been making batik since 1990, so that's nineteen years (wow! is it really that long!). For much of this time I've had a good feeling for when the wax is not hot enough, when the room/ambient temperature is not warm enough, when the wax has crossed the threshold of 'good', and so on. The same with dyes, colour mixing, in fact everything to do with the batik process. Some I learnt from my early tutors Jin and Latif in Malaysia, but most "knowing" has been gained intuitively, through practice and observation and awareness... and over time. For instance I've never needed a thermometer to know if the room was warm enough for batikking - I came to realise I just had to consider what I was wearing. Anything more than a t-shirt and sweatshirt meant it was too cold.

My experiment last Monday in wax temperatures at different Tixor Malam settings was generalised/experimental. It was not set up to be controlled and perfectly measured, because I was more focused on the artwork I was doing. My thinking today was that if it had been a perfectly measured and controlled experiment (when it would be hard to also focus on artwork) , then that would give me precise results for only those variables (eg that wax mix). Another experiment would be needed for each variable. How maddening is that?

But more than maddening, I feel such a method takes away knowledge and understanding rather than giving it. If I heat the waxpot from calculations based on test results rather than on an innate awareness of what is necessary, garnered from experience, have I lost something fundamental?

Which led me to thinking about A Science of Qualities. I first heard about this from Brian Goodwin, I think at a talk he was giving at the University of Plymouth a few years ago. It is akin to Goethean science, and draws on impressions, intuition, sensory perception and sensory imagination, context, history, seeing in beholding, appropriate response, dialogue and consensus, and evaluation. It was so exciting when I first heard of this approach - inside me was singing 'that's what I do!, that's what I do!', meaning it's how I approach working on a painting or design. Or visiting a place, seeing a new phenomena, travelling, whatever. I don't do it in such a structured coordinated way nor with an ability to add headings to each element of my process, but what I do resonates with the pattern.

The Science of Qualities allows both the essence and the bigger connections to be expressed, through seeing the whole rather than the parts (holistic versus reductionist). But somehow I don't think it is appropriate to demonstrate wax temperatures - but now I think: why not? Isn't it easier to tell someone that from experience I found if I am wearing more than a sweatshirt the room's too cool for successful batikking than to say from experimentation I found that the thermometer must be above a particular temperature? Although it's easier for them to measure their room with a thermometer than to get me to stand there with or without sweatshirt or more... the idea for them to learn their own clothing level is much better, as their space may have variables I have not accounted for (drafts, higher ceiling, different humidity etc).

I think why I've gone the reductionist route on much of my sustainability research is that, supposedly, there's more cred to the results. I can say x y z with certainty rather than 'in my experience' which anyone could dismiss as artist waffle. Sadly.

I dug out a few articles about A Science of Qualities - this one I've read before, it's long but page 3 has a few appropriate paras. There's also this and this. Page 5 here (scroll down) describes a newish book by Brian Goodwin which is now on my reading list.

UN international year of natural fibres

The UN's International Year of Natural Fibres is launched today. Its objectives are to:

- Raise awareness and stimulate demand for natural fibres;
- Promote the efficiency and sustainability of the natural fibres industries;
- Encourage appropriate policy responses from governments to the problems faced by natural fibre industries;
- Foster an effective and enduring international partnership among the various natural fibres industries.

Lots of events around the world are planned for this year, including in Britain an International Conference in London in December (though it seems more directed to industry than artistry) and an international textile conference in Leeds in September.



Another exciting conference:

Making Futures - the crafts in the context of emerging global sustainability agendas.

Organised by Plymouth College of Art and Design (PCAD), it is taking place in September 2009 at Mount Edgcumbe House, near Saltash in Cornwall. I hope to be there!



And, because some things come in threes, the next issue of Selvedge magazine is themes around 'Frugal'. I was asked if I'd like to advertise but as well as not knowing what I'd be advertising I feel it goes against the essence of what I'm trying to do. The magazine is beautifully produced with gorgeous photography, and even the adverts are a pleasure to look at, but it has a large readership and global circulation. Being just a humble artist I want to get on with things quietly and minimally and appropriately and... frugally. Self-promotion there seems arrogant and loud and wrong, for me, in this context. But I am looking forward to seeing the next issue.

textiles now

Last Saturday this lovely book arrived in the post - Textiles Now by Drusilla Cole. I got so excited when I picked it up, thinking 'I can feel it! I can feel it!' and running my fingers across the textures while staring blankly into space. I'm not going to tell you any more about that so you can have the delight too if you get the book yourself or decide to hunt it out it in a bookshop or library. I do have a habit of feeling textures with the tips of my fingers. Sometimes it worries people! But texture is just wonderful, and touch/feeling an under-appreciated sense.

Textiles Now has around 250 pages of contemporary textile art. Gorgeous colour, form and texture in sections - 1 Constructed, 2 Dyed, printed and painted, and 3 Mixed media and stitched.

A couple of my river batiks are in the second section - Source of the Penpont and one with a long title that was abbreviated to De Lank Camel which will mean little to many but confuse North Cornwall folk who'll know it's the name of two major rivers (and yes, I am a little annoyed about the amendment). The full title is De Lank near the Confluence with the Camel. See them on my website here and here, but not here right now as the colours don't fit with those of the cover.

There are also batiks by Isabella Whitworth, Pat Hodson, Dorothy 'Bunny' Bowen, and Betsy Sterling Benjamin, and dyed felt pictures by Helen Melvin amongst other artists work or names I admire or recognise.

The book is not oriented to artists working sustainably or towards sustainability, but there are some included. For instance Helen Melvin's and India Flint's work is with natural dyes and Bunny Bowen has researched soy wax as substitute for paraffin wax in batik. At a stretch my river batiks also fall into the sustainable approach category by utilising whatever was around to apply wax for resist or, as I usually describe it, using scrap, found and home made tools.

It seems right to combine sustainable-approach art alongside - how to describe it? other art that hasn't deliberately incorporated such methods or materials, rather than keep 'eco-art' in an elitist niche. I know organic farmers who think this way... their approach is that it is just a different way of farming (though they obviously think it the better way!). By keeping in with the mainstream those others won't see organic as elitist so shouldn't feel 'threatened' or 'looked down on', and are more likely to be open-minded as to the benefits of organic and negatives of their own practice (and vice versa?). These farmers are good role models for me...

'Textiles Now' is published by Laurence King, where you can also view some pages. But you don't get to feel the cover!

art, environment, politics

A few weeks ago I gave a slide-talk to a lovely art group in St Agnes (mid Cornwall) about my batik and inspiration. Hopefully they were inspired enough for a workshop next year!

While running through and updating 'the talk' beforehand, two slides in particular made me think. 'For Antarctica' was made in 1991 when I was back in England for a few months for family reasons. I had been living away, working and travelling, for over three years by then, including in Australia. In 1989, to show my support for the World Park Antarctica movement then in full swing in Australia, I handed in my letter to prime minister Bob Hawke on the afternoon I cycled into Canberra. To my surprise, the very next morning he announced that Australia would join with France and sign the Antarctica treaty. Of course it's unlikely it was my letter that had swayed it, but the timing made me feel good and that taking action brings results!

Two years later in Shropshire I was astounded, dismayed, aghast... British environmental groups were only just gearing up for the Antarctica campaign here! Feeling very emotional and energetic about the matter, I absolutely had to make a batik - my contribution to the campaign.

I've just remembered... I also made a second Antarctica batik using the same words as in the Hawke letter ("the purse may lose but the penguins will be happy") and sent it to the then British prime minister. I can't recall who that was off hand - Major I think. But it didn't have the same effect, there was no next day announcement. I'll see if I can dig a photo of the batik out and post it later.

The second batik is 'Pacific Revenge', made in 1996. It was a response to the latest French nuclear testing in the Pacific, something that made me really angry yet feel so helpless that the only way I could express the anger constructively was through art.

I have a deeper connection with the issue of nuclear testing in the Pacific: in 1985 I was staying in France with a former French neighbour when the Rainbow Warrior was blown up in New Zealand. My friend was a member of Greenpeace in France (as was I in Britain) - she was distressed but unwilling to translate the newspaper front pages for me. Of course I didn't understand until I got back home and learned the French government was responsible.

In late 1987 I arrived in New Zealand and heard that the Rainbow Warrior was soon to be towed out to sea to be sunk to form a living reef (and memorial). I paid my respects in Auckland harbour beforehand, an emotional time (even all these years later).

So, by the mid-90s, the last thing I and many others expected was the French to carry out more nuclear tests in the Pacific. I kind of thought nations had grown up, beyond all that aggressive stuff, things they'd never use anyway (after Hiroshima). So this symbolic batik emerged: it's a shield bug on a french bean. The bug has been genetically modified by Pacific Islanders* and is now indestructible... and so that's it for the bean crop.

GM was another environmental issue of the day (and still is sadly) and like nuclear a technology that can be put to evil as well as good purposes. As much Pacific art stems from family, ancestry, generations etc, it seemed appropriate to bring this into the art.

Anyway, back to my thoughts of a few weeks ago when looking through the slides. Over the last few months a lot of my time has been spent analysing the Environmental Statement (ES) for a local windfarm proposal. I am without doubt a supporter of wind energy, but not at the cost of nature and ecosystems. This site is renowned for various species, including wintering golden plover. Several years ago I'd assisted the RSPB with a new survey of these birds and so I knew of the importance of the site. I had expected only to spend a few days getting a response together but the ES was so big and complex that it just went on and on... other than woad processing I have got very little proper work done in this time.

The windfarm response went off last Monday, and I have learned my lesson: don't take on stuff that's above my abilities! And, if I again feel that emotionally strongly about something, make a batik instead! Art is what I do!

*not to suggest that Pacific Islanders were thinking of doing this, but I wouldn't have blamed them if they had.

spirit of mystery

In the past (and hopefully again soon) I have given school batik workshops – they are hard work (preparation) but always good fun. Onesuch was with Kea School, as shown in these photos, for a Sense of Place project. The theme was 'The Voyage of the Mystery', and the batik style/approach was Aboriginal Art.

The Mystery was a Cornish lugger, a traditional small fishing boat, that in 1854 sailed with seven Cornishmen from Newlyn bound for sunny Australia. The journey to Melbourne took 115 days. Indeed it seems a miracle it even arrived – the boat was only 33 feet long (about 10 metres) with a beam of 11 foot 6 (3.5 metres). It wasn't meant to be ocean-going, and indeed most men on board had never been out of sight of land! At the time, the Mystery was the smallest boat on record to have made such a long voyage. Read more about the voyage of the Mystery here.

Now, in 2008, the Spirit of Mystery rides the waves. Pete Goss has built a new lugger to the same specifications, and along with several family members is re-creating the journey made by those Cornish fishermen 154 years ago. They are using the same navigational tools and technology as then – no modern gizmos. Other than communication tools that is, so they can update their blog (and stay in 'instant' touch with family). They already have had ups and downs (in wind and seas) but the boat is running as well as the original Mystery.

So where is the connection with Sustainable Batik (other than through school workshops)? For starters, a quote from today's entry is a good one for natural dye growers to remember: "Mother Nature rules out here and you just have to make the best of what you have."

There is something more, that I'm not sure I can explain well in this blog. It is something about pride and community, pride that Goss has taken this on, has recognised our forefathers did something quite immense as well as brave, and is re-living it for us, bringing part of our history alive.

It's my hope that my own experiences from living in Australia in the 1980s and introducing Aboriginal Art (as far as I am able to understand it - another blog!) into schools also brings something more meaningful and substantial than just playing with wax and dye.

irony and purpose

Next month the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation comes into force requiring biofuel to be included in 2.5% of petrol and diesel. It is now widely known (see here and here) that most biofuels are now discredited for being more damaging than the fossil fuel they are meant to replace. Not just for increasing greenhouse gas emissions but for putting up global food prices and destruction of pristine habitats such as rainforest.

The irony of a fuel designed to reduce greenhouse emissions but that actually increases it is not lost on me with my predicament over the direction, future, purpose of my art. My batiks reflect and interpret the natural world and/or environmental issues in the hope of inspiring or enlightening others to appreciate and live more respectfully with nature. But until recently I had minimal consideration for the consequences of their actual existence... not just the materials and processes used but the fact yet another "object" had been created and added to the world of consumerism.

edited 7 April

art before art

"Before there were art galleries, art was a song of the soul..."

Read the full article by Paul Devereux, in Resurgence 246.

environment, heritage and the arts

I do not think the measure of a civilisation is
how tall its buildings of concrete are, but rather how well its people
have learned to relate to their environment and fellow man.

Sun Bear, Chippewa, USA

This is one of those profound but obvious statements that I was glad to stumble across again recently (in the Survival International catalogue). It sums up well the awareness that grew on me when travelling in Australia in the late 1980s. Today I'm so happy to read that Peter Garrett (of Midnight Oil) has become Australia's new Environment Minister. More than that his ministry covers Environment, Heritage and the Arts. These three aspects of life are so interlinked in traditional ways of thinking that I am smilingly thrilled for that nation's First Peoples, I hope it works out for them. Also I have real hope for the future if this cultural attitude leads Australia to become once more a (the?) leading player for the environment and our planetary future (I think back to Bob Hawke's signing of the Antarctic World Park Treaty, two full years before campaigning even began in Britain).

Yet here in England, Environment comes under the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, signifying environment as a place outside of urban and suburban contexts; while Culture (which I think is meant as a catchall for Heritage and Arts) is lumped into a Culture, Media and Sports grouping. Within the DCMS, Culture is joined up with creative industries and tourism.

Culture to me means the way of life of a group of people, even a nation - and not a packagable, brandable, competitive, marketable commodity. The arts are not an industry, surely? They are about our soul, our situation and our sagacity. Aren't they?

What hope is there for our nation, for our children, for our planetary survival no less - if at ministerial level the majority of our citizens are disconnected from the environment?

Australia, show us the way...

dilemma

Over the winter of 1998 and 1999 I was in Isan, better known as North-East Thailand, mostly in a small village called Sang Khom on the banks of the Mekong. I had been there eight years before and had always wanted to return. The Mekong is a huge lumbering and beautiful river forming the border between Thailand and Laos, and Isan, being little affected by tourism, seemed full of traditional character and "place". As everywhere, globalisation was making inroads, but hadn't overrun. I travelled around the region and also into Laos, to another small village Vang Vieng.

Back in 1999 I also had been pondering my creative direction, unsure whether there really was a future for me in batik, in Britain at least. The medium struggles to be accepted by the establishment as "fine art" (despite employing drawing, painting and printmaking skills let alone design and colour theory ones). I have never felt comfortable calling myself a textile artist, as my sewing skills are such to make my mother weep with shame. Yet I wanted to belong... somewhere, and if that meant change then change it would be.

So alongside this three-month holiday I intended to practise working in acrylics. Why I settled on them I'm not sure, maybe because of the strong colours, maybe because other people's work in acrylic inspired me to think it was for me. But I struggled... the paint dried up so quickly! The heat! The heat.

The peaceful surroundings of river, horticultural activity on its banks, distant hill and forest views, rice padi and banana plantations, butterflies, spiders and lizards, Buddhist monastery gong rings, and village life ticking over was astoundingly inspiring. Ideas for batik kept leaping forth, I scribbled them down, making sketches and taking photos for reference. Within a few days I knew: I am a batik artist, it's how I think, it's how my work evolves, it's what I do, it's what I was meant to do. I am a batikker, and will have to make it work, somehow.

I resolved to forget acrylics, and concentrate on initiating a series of batiks inspired by Mekong culture, agriculture and wildlife. It would have been great to have started the batiks there (if workspace and sourcing all materials and equipment were possible) but I knew I couldn't make enough in the three months. And besides, it was also a holiday!

Once back in Cornwall I was completely fired up and began the batiks straightaway. But somehow I got sidetracked into furthering the water movement series I'd started before I left, inspired by streams and rivers here on the moor. I managed to work the two projects side by side for some years, concluding the rivers work with an exhibition in the Indian King in Camelford in 2003. This show was an eye-opener for me, indicating that the way forward definitely was (though I hate the commerciality of the phrase) themed exhibitions. More than that, exhibitions themed around rivers. And I was halfway with the next, the Mekong...

But in 2004 I found myself starting a part-time PGCE (post-graduate certificate in education, post-16 education). Although an existing artist-PGCE student advised I should forget about getting any art made during the course, I foolishly felt I would be able to keep some batik going. But in the first term I was throwing away so much dye - not being able to get back to it before it 'went off' – that I consciously stopped batikking. The PGCE ended in 2006. And my headspace was elsewhere. So elsewhere that I haven't been able to pick up the Mekong thread from where I left off. I have tried several times to re-inspire myself... well I am inspired to do it but the art would be coming from completely the wrong place. It would no longer be emerging from within but would be created from a detached, external, emotionless place. And I just can't do that, I need to feel, breathe, live my work not do it as something like a mathematical equation.

So my dilemma: I have half an exhibition made, and the chance to show the whole caboodle in a good wildlife gallery in 2009. Should I force myself to complete it – maybe even going back to Mekong country to get re-invigorated - or should I just admit defeat, that time and circumstance has lost me that opportunity and just as my practice is evolving all new work should also reflect that I have moved on.

I do know what I want to do next, it has been hanging around ever since the moorland streams exhibition, just waiting for Mekong to complete.

I know the answer. I just don't want to feel I'm letting down the wonderful people of Sang Khom. Not that they are expecting anything, but the exhibition would be my gesture at giving something back. A recognition and respect for what they have and who they are.

art - 'want' or 'need'?

Is Seasalt clothing "fashion" or "clothing" (see my last post)? What makes the difference? Does my "want"/"need" attitude play a part or is the designer/manufacturer solely responsible?

I believe that if the clothes are well made and of a style that will not look ridiculous within the item's lifetime (ridiculous because it incorporated a short-lived trend) then it is valued. And as such, is clothing. But if I had umpteen vests to choose from to wear, then their value is diminished in proportion... making them "throwaway" items and not "clothes" but "fashion".

So it's a two way responsibility. How does this fit with art production and selling? When someone buys one of my batiks is it as a "want" or as a "need"? Outwardly it would very much be as a "want", I ashamedly am sure. But if it's "well made and of a style that will not look ridiculous within the item's natural lifetime (ridiculous because it incorporated a short-lived trend) then it is valued." But if the painting was displayed in rotation with other works and spent much time in storage then its intrinsic value diminishes in proportion.

Inwardly, art - true art - touches the soul. It's a "need" just as a vest has a practical purpose (spiritual too, maybe?). If the batik is in storage or otherwise unappreciated (unneeded), then it has no higher purpose. It's a throwaway.

So... my batiks must be of the highest quality and not be faddish. They must strive to be of a nature that someone would want to keep on their wall, not grow tired of. But no, this still isn't quite right. It cannot be possible to strive for spirituality! Spirituality can only emerge from an inner stillness... as does art. This art is the art that – hopefully – will reach into a viewer's soul, will touch them on a level deeper than "that's nice" or "that's pretty" or especially "I want that!".

This makes me reconsider my thought that art needs to be regularly seen to have intrinsic value. One viewing only might be enough to uplift a person's soul... But then the work would need to be in a publicly accessible place to reach many people. So my thought about works in storage being without value holds.

I've just re-read Kandinsky's first chapter (Part I About General Aesthetic, I Introduction) in "Concerning the Spiritual in Art" and find yet again he explains what I feel so much better! So now I will spend the rest of the day pondering:

"Every work of art is the child of its age and, in many cases, the mother of our emotions."

He later describes two kinds of art. One is short-lived although also being of the moment, because it had no depth, no meaning, beyond being available for sale. Tourist art falls into this category, I think.

"Such an art can only create an artistic feeling which is already clearly felt. This art, which has no power for the future, which is only a child of the age and cannot become a mother of the future, is a barren art. She is transitory and to all intent dies the moment the atmosphere alters which nourished her.

The other art, that which is capable of educating further, springs equally from contemporary feeling, but is at the same time not only echo and mirror of it, but also has a deep and powerful prophetic strength."

sustainability of clothing

"Clothing and textiles is a high impact product category, accounting for 5-10 per cent of all environmental impacts within the EU-25."

Says DEFRA (Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). They go on to highlight environmental, social and ethical impacts of the textiles/clothing industry in the UK:

"Environmental Impacts

• 1.5 - 2 million tonnes of waste generated
• 3.1 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent emitted
• 70 million tonnes of waste water generated
  

Social impacts predominately occur in developing countries:

• child labour
• poor working conditions
• low wages
• health and safety risks

Ethical Impacts

• animal welfare issues
• inequitable trade"

And not before time...

"...representatives from the fashion, clothing and textile industries along with environmental and ethical groups are meeting to look at how they can work with government to improve the sustainability of clothing throughout its life cycle."

They met on 5 September 2007 and one welcome outcome will be a sustainable clothing roadmap coordinated by Defra that "examines all stages of clothing’s life cycle (from raw materials to end of life), charts the environmental and social impacts arising at each stage, and proposes ways of limiting those impacts where most effective."


Although I don't work in fashion or clothing (or interior textiles) I will be following this research, direction and action closely. And that's not just because of the relevance of the 'raw materials' findings for my own practice but because I believe the concept of fashion is in direct conflict with sustainability. This is not to oppose change or good design for they can bring improvements, but because the fashion world thrives in a self-promoted culture of throwaway and need for new for the sake of it. The only benefits are financial for the industry.

Fashion isn't limited to clothing, of course, it exists in the art world too. And Cornwall isn't exempt - many commercial coastal town galleries show what I call tourist art. Art created for a self-created market rather than a higher purpose... All us artists have to make a living somehow of course, but I wonder where tourist art fits in with sustainability...

world weather impacts

A few days ago an email came from my Ghanaian friend Antoinette Ablordey, a former student. She had dropped by my blog and emailed to say hello and that she liked the idea of indigo and organic cotton. Here's my reply:

Hi Antoinette

Yeah, I'm fine - how are you? Are you still batikking - have you taken a
textiles or design course now?

Glad you found my blog and research interesting... as you'll be aware the
consumerist West has to make massive lifestyle and cultural changes in the
light of climate change. George Monbiot and Mark Lynas amongst others
predict we have to cut back by more than 90%, and soon. Of course it's
possible to live at that kind of consumption, many already do in the world
and I experienced it too, partially, when I was travelling and living in
other countries. But to live at that level in our existing culture (even in
Cornwall) is infinitely harder at the moment - it's still necessary to earn
money to pay local tax, building repairs, health care and dentist, and
unless you can put time into growing all your own food, to buy food. In the
west we all have to power down together... and this then impacts globally in
other countries with a lower consumerist (but more sustainable) lifestyle,
in connection with their exports to us of crops such as cotton, coffee,
cocoa, which traditionally have been traded for centuries and we can't grow
here. How will this change?

Where does this leave art? What role for batik in this new
soon-to-emerge-culture? Should art/batik lead, should it follow? Where art
has become elitist, and clothing is dominated by throwaway fashion, how can
the new art and the new batik reach out and be part of culture?

These are fascinating questions for me...What is the view from Ghana?

Cheers for now

Robin


The view from Ghana came yesterday not from Antoinette but from the BBC – floods across Africa.

Ghana is hit especially hard with around 400,000 made homeless in the north – the equivalent of 80% of Cornwall's population. The north is even more of an agricultural area than here and loss of crops and livestock will affect the whole country's supply... and doesn't everything in life revolve around food?

I often check the Met Office website for the local weather forecast. On the right hand side it has a section "World Weather Impacts" that highlights, well, exactly what it says. Storms, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, droughts, blizzards, lightning strikes, heatwaves, wild fires (due to...), power cuts (due to...), landslides, avalanches, earthquakes, sandstorms and so on. Is it gloomy reading? errr... no. It's sobering. Very sobering. The Met Office don't describe these happenings as climate change related, but the flavour left in your mouth is that they must be. I mean, can this many people be made homeless, destitute, starving by floods (or whatever) every year? I don't think so.

I read them because it otherwise is so easy to ignore natural disasters happening elsewhere, to live entirely isolated from them, safe in this cocoon called Cornwall. It is so easy to let go of the knowledge that we share a planet and her resources. That we need to share. Which in the West means having, doing, taking less (and giving, caring, being more).

I asked Antoinette, as I ask many others, what is art's role in – or for? – the new culture that will emerge to survive climate change. I sound people out because I am searching for the new direction for my own work. It needs a new meaningfulness, something beyond just observation of nature, or culture, or personal impression – or environmental statement.

I wonder whether, in the hour or so I've been writing this post, I have started to find it...


PS Northern India has had floods and landslides recently too. I have wondered whether this affected the organic cotton growers... I will find out.

talk talk

I feel bad for not posting more pictures. It's difficult when I don't have relevant ones – I didn't take my camera away with me. Nor my sketchbook. I decided not to as I was travelling light. But... here is the invitation to the Batik Transitions exhibition at the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath – bit crumpled after being in my pocket for the day. Great exhibition - stunning traditional and contemporary batik.

Where I had an interesting conversation too. A lady whose passion in life was doves had found my postcard "Tradition of February 14th" (see Robin, another opportunity for a pic) and, after hearing I was in the museum, found me and asked why it didn't include doves. Apparently her late husband, another fanatic, had written books about them. She continued his work through involvement with a newsletter for a society devoted to doves (memory bit hazy). She was always on the lookout for pictures to include, so if I ever did make one...

Had I been driving (=rushing), I'd have left the museum already and we wouldn't have met. Or if we had I would have felt rushed and not able to linger over such a conversation.

Which leads nicely in to the second conversation referred to in my previous post. Wandering around Bath choosing where to have breakfast I settled for a coffee shop chain selling fairtrade coffee with tables outside. The coffee was welcome but the croissant cold. A man sat at the next table and began talking. The manner of conversation sticks in mind as much as our conversation itself.... it was straight out of a Graham Greene novel. He was a journalist. I imagined him stopping there each morning with a cuppa, watching the world going by, greeting and sometimes chatting with passing locals. Waiting for a lead into the next story. And I was a new face, so worth enquiring about. I wondered if I'd pinched 'his' table.

What did we talk about? The media's influence over people (he had recently not-renewed-contract with the local paper because of its increasing reliance on headlining negative non-news to increase sales), merits of museum trends towards interpretation over simple display and label of many more items, positive life without television and childhoods outdoors mucking around in nature, similarities between all political parties these days and equivalent lack of democratic respect, and the local council's disregard for its residents and their much-loved public building it was demolishing. It is always encouraging to find similar thinking elsewhere in person and not just 'anonymously' through the internet or campaign groups. It may not be a revolution that's coming, but change in the next few decades surely will be revolutionary, and it is comforting to know others are stepping outside 'the system' to seek positive change... especially someone with the influential skills of a journo!

It surprised me to hear a businessman acknowledge the changes we are facing over the next twenty years will be greater than any he has seen in his lifetime (of 50+ years, at a guess). This was on the train back to Plymouth, a Saltash businessman absorbed in his laptop with mouse at arms length across the table. We began chatting at Exeter. You know how sometimes conversations lead to you saying something that makes you jump aside and look amazedly at your statement wondering where it came from, whilst also recognising it's what you knew all along. I proclaimed:

"the only thing that matters from now on is knowing how to live off the land".

I think those without this knowledge and the ways of nature won't survive. I'm not in the survivors camp... yet.

Our statements emerged during discussions of the nature of art, its role in the future uncertain world – with some unexpected parallels to our earlier London Olympics logo conversation.

While considering the merits or not of the logo, the media's influence again popped up – how it will have shaped many people's opinions even before seeing the logo. Our conclusion was to have more faith in Wolff Olins (a highly respected design group even when I was a minnow design student), that over five years the logo might well evolve into something (in my opinion) more appropriate. But I didn't and don't believe that just an intellectual approach (ie rationalisation of what, why, when, who, where etc) is enough - if it doesn't feel right. Feelings and instinct should have more respect and be listened to.

As I see it, art's intrinsic value is lost today because of the disconnection most people have with art. The oblivion to it. Yet music on the radio is accessible to everyone despite different tastes (sometimes too accessible, thinking about thumpity thump car stereos). But which came first, the loss of purpose or the disconnectedness?

The Saltash businessman feels it is partly because other media have taken art's place (eg television) but it's also about education, that young people these days don't learn to retain knowledge or facts because they are otherwise so easily accessible eg through the internet. At a simple level, you could compare learning times tables with use of a calculator, and certainly I was one of the last generations to learn maths without calculators.

But I feel the cause of disconnectedness from art is deeper-rooted and longer-lived, not just a young person thing but a whole society thing. In traditional societies designs had meaning and spiritual significance, and were respected as part of everyday life and culture. Perhaps they were the media of the day, influencing people in the way modern media does now. But traditional art wasn't and isn't about sensationalism, fashion and sales but about customs, values and knowledge, how society should be, how the natural world is, and spiritual interaction with the natural world. Knowledge gleaned through generations and handed down in art form. Yet traditional art has evolved over time without losing its meaning. So what happened to ours?

Has the written and read word replaced this former visual language? Much more information can be given and taken through reading than could be incorporated into a design (I think!). But is knowledge understood and retained in the same way as it might with a familiar design or pattern? Can the read and written word initiate physical, emotional responses like art can?* In the same way calculator use has obscured mental arithmetic, has reading and writing obscured visual ability? If this is true, the Saltash businessman would be right in blaming education – whether the traditional 3r's (reading writing 'rithmetic) or current literacy and numeracy policy initiatives.

Art has a societal role... it is community art. But community art in Britain is close to commodified. Sometimes government policies are being delivered or targets met – varying from year to year and government to government. Sometimes community art is just a means for artists to earn a living through projects instigated and funded by agencies outside the very communities. Sometimes community art is brilliant but it still doesn't have the reach of traditional art. Art for the community surely is more attitude than career...

I still haven't found the answers, but both conversations opened up new ways of looking at the dilemma. And reminded me of the value of slow travel, slow life – the value of having time for other people and other places, of time to contemplate. Does slow art have these same values, is slow art akin to traditional art?


*Not confusing the read/written word with the spoken/sung word, or wanting to upset poets!