FAR more than, “What is art?”, the question I struggle with is, “Why do art?”
For better or for worse, our society most values the answer, “Because it makes me money”.
The number of artists making a fortune though has always been small and the ones who can make any kind of a living, not that much more numerous.
The answer then for the rest of us must be, because it is what I love.
It may not be much in the general scheme of things but it brings happiness and meaning to my life.
Which was why I made these copper jellyfish.
Too big to be jewellery, too small to be sculpture, nevertheless, I really enjoyed thinking up ways of moving the copper around, texturing them, hammering them and assembling them.
I am sure there will be many who would wonder why I bother but I don’t understand football or computer games and all sorts of other passtimes. We have one life so my advice would be to find what makes you happy and just do it, and don’t spend a second worrying about what other people are doing to make themselves happy.
EMBARRASSMENT is a funny thing and one I must say I am pretty good at.
I can hoard a memory for years and then up it pops, to make be squirm again afresh.
This gives me an acute need to dress appropriately, behave appropriately, not step out of my little box…you know…to be English.
Inspite of this, over the years I have loved going to Goth clubs, belly dancing, re-enactments and now, steampunk.
Of course, all these have one thing in common, an opportunity to dress up in a way that nevertheless fits into a neat little mould.
Even so, after a couple of years of comfortable lockdown clothes combined with working in a place that is very much come-as-you-are, I am a bit out of the habit of dressing up to go out.
So for this year’s Lincoln Asylum Steampunk festival I hit on the brilliant idea of going masked.
This would have the double benefit of allowing me to continue wearing a mask over my mouth and would save me any possible embarrassment of being in a public place wearing weird clothes.
You would have thought.
Unfortunately it turns out that my difficult and irrational brain is quite capable of getting embarrassed even if no one can see who I am…and thus is was that a giant moth, shuffled round Lincoln on Sunday, seeking out dark corners and feeling rather foolish.
Which was a pity because it’s a really good mask!
I have not worked on shaping leather before and turning a kitchen sieve into insect eyes was incredibly difficult and fiddly and resulted in the living room carpet being filled with shreds of steel wire not unlike pine needles.
The whole thing was spray painted in shades of dark brown with copper highlights and the ostrich feather antennae were inserted in copper tubes soldered to base plates.
The tongue was a simple coil of copper brake pipe which is beautifully annealed and malleable stuff.
Completed at 9pm the night before the event, I just had time to make the simplest of simple cloaks and I was ready to go.
I almost left it in the car but Dave persuaded me that after putting in so much time, I needed to show it off and you know what, embarrassment aside, I’m glad I did.
Several small children waved at me and a very shy teenager, who had also come in a mask, asked for a photograph together…and just those small moments made it worthwhile.
At its best, Steampunk is a coming together of crafty, artistic people who appreciate the work that has gone into the costumes and are accepting of one another’s quirks. It’s about dressing splendidly and being excellent to others.
For next year I will hand paint a set of silk moth wings to go with the mask and perhaps I will hide my shyness by arming Dave with a giant mothball gun (pingpong ball guns patterns for laser cutters are available) and we can be utterly silly together.
Erica Madelin 