Great day in last class of term at The Granary

Today was art class at the Granary.  Vanda had told us to bring brushes or tools that we had made ourselves from things pertinent to our subject matter.  Karin brought her shoes, as she walks in the landscape; Seonaid brought in leaves from her landscape; Lori created papers from rubbings from the farmyard then drew through the rat hole in the Granary door to create a hole in her paper.  I had been thinking about what my cleaners have to clean up, and brought my toilet brush, but also brought tampons and pads as tools.

I started by mark making using tampons.  Actually when used with printing ink, tampons give very delicate texture, when rolled along paper.  The applicators gave circular marks, end on, and interesting stripes when rolled.   I also printed some Carefree pads.  I spent most of the morning playing with printing ink, but by the end of the morning, just did not feel quite right about it.

Tampax wrapper

Rolled applicator

Rolled applicator, tampon and top of applictor

Over lunch, I had a think about why this seemed not quite on track.  I concluded that it had all become quite Essentialist - which is a form of feminist art that does not really do it for me.  Yes, I'd used tampons and pads, and there was some interesting texture .... but so what?    Vanda prompted me with the question 'Why are you using them?'.  Because the cleaners have to clean up all sorts of mess.  And women leave different mess to men.  Men might expose themselves to the cleaners, and leave urine mess, but women leave mess with blood.  I had restrained myself from using red ink (too essentialist!) but my work was still about bodily functions, rather than cleaning!  So Vanda suggested I clean the marks I had made!  (Me? .... Do cleaning?!).  What a gem!

I cut out some of my marks, shot down the stairs, and flushed some of them down the toilet.  This felt fantastic!  The printing ink ran, smudged and diluted.  Quite astonishing!  It made the detail of the print unintelligible, but left a dirty mark.  Just what I was after!  Some I flushed several times.  Then I went back upstairs, and tried printing, using tampons in Quink ink. I tried bleaching and soaping some of these marks.  Bleaching was ok, but soaping was a bit naff.  However,  I'll try this a bit more at home, maybe scrubbing marks with bleach on a nailbrush.

Amazing texture, but quite revolting!

Rolled applicator

Amazing detail but quite horrible

Ink circles from end of tampon applicator - bleached

Tampon applicator tube print - flushed

Ink tampon print - flushed

I found this to be a very hard day's work and was exhausted by the end of it.  It was a very profitable day for the amount of thinking I did, and how the activity reinforced my dislike of feminist artwork that is essentialist, rather than commenting on the social influences on women.

A further thought that occurred to me while driving home, was that I REALLY dislike abject art, and what I had been working on - was abject!   Which fits exactly with why I felt uncomfortable with it.  I spent too much time with abject stuff when my Dad had Alzheimers/mental illness, and loathe art made from the abject.  I have spent FAR TOO much time dealing with bodily detritus!  But, given this is the substance of a toilet cleaner's job, working with the theme reinforces my respect for their work, as they clean up the mess from a 'supposedly civilised' society.  YAY - LIGHTBULB MOMENT!

Great day.  Thanks Vanda.  See you next term.