Apr 172014
 

PAGE 50

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I go to the bus station and find out the cheapest journey to any seaside place. And so arrive in Filey.

In the rain.

This is not exactly a B&B, not exactly a hostel. There’s a chilly shared kitchenette at the end of a poky corridor. It has a microwave, a kettle and a Baby Belling stove. It is desolately clean. The bedroom has a single bed with a slippy nylon quilt (purple), a crappy old wardrobe with a door that swings open, a modern cheap wash basin in a shell-shape, a miniscule soap-bar in waxed paper. The view is of a back yard with wheely bins and another guest-house’s back yard with wheely bins and a sliver of grey sea visible over the roof. The divisions of rooms into smaller rooms using cheap partitioning means the house is claustrophobic, and it is smelly. Sweet, synthetic smells: fabric conditioner, air freshener, toilet deodorant. Like childhood.

And over the bed is one of those fat female nudes by Renoir. Whale-like, greenish-hued, on a watery background.

I’ve brought hardly anything: my folding bicycle and my netbook and dongle – those three things just out of habit. And two pairs of knickers (I’ve told the owner two days but have only paid for the first night). And my three-quarters of a bottle of whisky and three blister packs of aspirin, about sixty tablets. Enough?


This week’s topic

50. …for Art’s sake, stupid!
Well? Do you do art for the money?

I think I just heard a hollow laugh…

Click on the above to add your thoughts.
And see here for the full list of discussions on life-drawing and Life to be found on my blog.

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Noticeboard

There were only going to be two more episodes of A SMALL LIFE after this one.
But because of what happens, I need to tell it in fifty-three episodes, not fifty-two.

1. Stay in Suki’s spare room – it’s better than that Filey B&B!
Have a holiday in friendly Bradford (UK). See full details on Air B&B. Sleeps up to 6 if you have a caravan mentality. View Bel‘s movie, set in Suki’s Life Room, here. Interested in a ‘caretaker’ rate for a longer stay? Email me: admin@sukithelifemodel.co.uk

2. Come to a POETRY READING with Suki, Sue Vickerman and Jennifer Copley!
Friday 25th April 2014, 7.30pm at The Folly in picturesque holiday-town Settle, North Yorkshire (UK). £6. More info here. Come for a drink with us afterwards!

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Artist of the week

JANEY WALKLIN makes movies. See From A to D – it is a few minutes long and it is haunting and a delight. Once on Vimeo you’ll find three more of her film shorts. Janey trained in the UK at Beckenham Art School and at the University of Leeds Fine Art Department. She is a film editor, painter and printmaker (etching and relief printmaking) – latterly at Leeds College of Art, Vernon Street print room – and has been life drawing since the seventies.

Janey has attended life-drawing groups at the HEART Arts Centre (click and scroll down to Leeds), UK, and at SUKI’S LIFE ROOM in Bradford. See Bel‘s fabby audio-visual piece about this life-room here, and for further details (times, prices etc) see here.

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