New titles & significant birthdays

Lockdown Sketchmind by Fifi Colston

It’s been a little over a month since my last post and the world has continued to be COVID, crazy and confusing. But here in New Zealand life seems quite normal again, and almost hard to remember the days of lockdown, though we are mindful that it’s ever present outside our borders.

Inside my expanding bubble, publishing things are happening.

Firstly, my Lockdown Diary can now be pre ordered here at Cuba Press and we are just about to send it to print. We have had heaps of orders already and it’s a limited print run, so if you were thinking you’d like one, then get in quick! There is space for you to write your own thoughts and observations on this extraordinary year too. It’s your diary, as well as mine. Perhaps the whole family can add a line or two in response to the entries that mark the time we spent in Lockdown. A 5-year olds perspective can be quite different from a 50 year olds one.

Secondly, ‘The Little Yellow Digger Saves Christmas’ is out in October, published by Scholastic NZ. Written by Peter Gilderdale and illustrated by me, we have paid homage to his famous parents, Betty and Alan Gilderdale who created the series. I studied Alan’s illustration style in depth and replicated some of his favorite characters with my own twist. It was like he was standing, hand on my shoulder, saying ‘You can do it, you CAN draw a digger!’ And digger I have drawn, and some quarantined reindeer!

Thirdly, I was finally able to spend 2 weeks at the Michael KingWriters Centre and take up my postponed residency. There I worked on my graphic novel ‘Ampersand’ and whilst there met with my publishers Penguin Random House to sign the contract for ‘Masher’ the middle grade novel I wrote whilst in Dunedin last year, during my time as Otago University Creative New Zealand Children’s Writerin Residence. Masher is about art, craft, puppets, bull terriers and boys who don’t fit in. It’s comedic and sweet and I’m enormously proud of myself for writing it, and hugely happy that Penguin Random House are publishing it. Many thanks to Vicki Marsdon at High Spot Literary Agency for making that happen!

After my residency, I ran a ‘Draw Like an Artist’ camp for 8-12 year olds at Southwell School in Hamilton in the holidays. 18 of us had enormous creative fun and felt very lucky to be in Aotearoa where we can do these things again, thanks to clear leadership and the team of five million!

Well Hung

Lastly, my entry for the 2020 Parkin Drawing Prize was shortlisted as a finalist and I deliver that to the gallery today. 

Artist Statement:

In 2019 I was the recipient of 6 months writer’s residency at The Robert Lord Cottage in Dunedin.
The cottage remains as the playwright left it and a famous feature is his indulgently deep ‘shub’. My daily focus always came back to the simple shower caddy, modest and hung on a simple screw in the wooden baton on the shower surround, casting layered shadows. Fading and unfinished, like Lord at his end aged 46. The hair in the soap is my own. I think he’d find the humour in that.

Oh...and I turned 60 in amongst all of this and writer, Michele Powles made me this amazing cake. I am pretty lucky to have such wonderful creative, generous friends in my life! Six decades of love :)

Of Sketchbooks and Statues

Level 1 achievement!

Funny old time isn’t it? Well not funny at all for many.

We have, in New Zealand, managed to lockdown, quarantine and in the famous words of Sir Edmund Hillary ‘knocked the bastard off’ and are now enjoying a life in Level 1 with few restrictions other than the border closures to the rest of the world. I have no doubt that as soon as we open up again, COVID-19 will reappear, but hopefully we have some semblance of awareness over how we deal with it. Of course there has been the sadly inevitable business closures and unemployment that follows a country shutting down for 2 months. My own work in my portfolio career has been cancelled for the year, and as I have been the sole breadwinner in the house for the last 15 months, that leaves room for concern.

However, our government has been helpful with subsidies, and in lockdown we had nothing to spend money on except food and the basic living expenses, that didn’t include takeout coffees, going to the cinema or bars or shopping. Over the 50 days, I walked, baked and in the evenings drew my thoughts about life in the times of COVID-19 in a sketchbook. I was vaguely concerned that I wasn’t doing enough creative work and I really could have thrashed out an entire novel. The time slid past peacefully and at the end of it, I found that I had indeed written a book of sorts.

My Sketchmind Diary has secured a publishing contract with The Cuba Press and help from Creative New Zealand to produce it. I'm so happy about this!

Watch this space as they say, for a link on where to pre-order. If we sell all 400 copies, we will not lose money and we can circulate it back into the system on the great money go round that is the economy. I’ll do it mostly with Pinot Gris…

Life and my creative career will go on, I always find a way not to have to commute to an office in the darkest of times. I have, in my fantasies imagined me on a pedestal (put up there by myself) and lauded for my tenacity in the arts. But you need to be careful who you put up on plinths and why. 

The recent demise of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol, had people asking, ‘any relation?’ I can tell you now that the slave trader never married or had children. Of course, he might have had ‘issue’, but none recognised. So Colston’s Girl’s School were fairly safe in their offer of 50% off school fees if you could prove an ancestral link, when we sent our daughter there in the 2 years we lived in Bristol.

Colston presiding over his success, talk about a guilded lily.

I always thought that it was poor taste to have a public monument to a slave trader, however philanthropic he was, erected in the city. He funded institutions that benefitted a great many white people, all off the backs of black slaves. It is worthwhile noting that he died in 1721, The Abolition of Slavery Act was passed in 1833 and that statue was put up in 1895. This is what is called, 'a dick move'. There’s a good article here about Britain’s view of its own history. Well worth a read.

So, now, people seem to be either in the ‘tear down all statues’ or ‘leave them there, what’s past is past’ camp. I’m in the ‘let's look and learn something here’ camp.

Edward was torn down as a response to #BlackLivesMatter. But also nobody much liked that posturing bronze with his fancy shoes anyway. It’s always been a slap in the face and after so many slaps, well, you just turn around and say ‘enough’ and slap back. I cheered seeing him thrown off the Arnolfini Bridge into the none too clean water of the Bristol Harbour.

He's been fished out now, and is safely tucked away, graffitied and with a hole in his bum, along with the placards from the protest- and suprising find of an 1881 newspaper tucked into his cavity. This will be included in an exhibition of our current history; Edward Colston, the profiteer of misery, overthrown because people had had enough. This is how we learn and hopefully become more human. 

World leaders should bear that in mind.

Entry F (for Fifi) the Hnry Awards

Update!
I won second runner up! Congratulations also to the amazing winning entries by Tim Hamilton (in collaboration with Casey) and Julia Palm.
Many many thanks to the judges, everyone who voted for me and of course Hnry- and especially Ben who was such a fabulous correspondent with us artists. Thanks so much!
You can read all about why we did what we did and what we are going to do now HERE

Yesterday I found out that a concept sketch I did for the Hnry Awards is one of 10 finalists!
This was a beacon of hope in a wierd week. You can vote for it here! Entry F for Fifi.
If I win by popular vote, the money will feed our household and pay all the bills, and be channeled into my creative work. I'm not one to squander cash on cosmetic surgery and designer clothing.

I did the sketch in the midst of a huge black hole I had gone down. I had plenty of work lined up, but as always exhausting to think about it- I'm part of the gig economy and I rush from one workshop, presentation, commission and event to the next. Do the hustle...
None of it makes me any kind of fortune. It IS the arts after all. With no time or money to holiday around the world sightseeing I was all FOMO. I couldn't bear how hopelessly inept a Boomer I am! I surely should have three properties, rental incomes, a bach, a boat and a share portfolio by now? Yet, because I'm more of a socialist by inclination, none of that would sit with me comfortably at all. Yet I still felt like a failure. I'm not of course, but measuring success by financial wealth is fundamentally flawed and dispiriting as f*ck.

Well how the world has changed in such a short period of time. You couldn't drag me onto a cruise ship or a long haul flight to the UK now if you paid me. The world economy is in freefall and it appears that COVID-19 is no discriminator. You can get it even if you are Prince Charles or Boris Johnson. Also, billionaires need to wash their hands as well, but not of people.

I feel curiously joyful in this lockdown. My happy place is right here, with the quiet and the stillness of a world gone mad, to a world gone home. The birds are chirping and tweeting (as are we online) my family are as safe as they can be, art is my solace and I'm massively proud that I helped to vote in the leader of our country, Jacinda Ardern who is compassionate, credible, courageous and clear about what we need to do.

She is the mother of our nation, and an inspiration for our times.

You can see the rest of my Lockdown Diary sketches in my facebook portfolio here.