Spend all day trying to get away to draw. Phone rings again. Gorgeous is feeling faint and the school says I have to collect her. I am suspicious and deliver her some paracetamol.
Eventually I get to Shepherd Market meeting with MW to discuss the show. The gentlemen artist who is currently exhibiting in the gallery and has shown there on three separate occasions says there has been interest in my fliers and people agree with him that interesting as the petition is, it should be displayed in the back room as it is a discrete back room subject which may not be well received in this neighbourhood. He said, “This really isn’t a red light district anymore, its very respectable.” MW and I weigh the pros and cons of his argument. He has a point, and I may have shot myself in the foot in terms of gaining commissions for family portraiture but there is no changing direction now. I resolve to give the 2 best walls of the gallery and the window to The Drawn Petition.
After, I draw an Algerian restaurant manager and two of his staff and then a couple who are romancing under a tree in the courtyard. They offer me Champaign. They laugh when I tell them about the artist who said this was not a red light district, and they direct me to the ads in the phone box. I draw them together, they work for a law firm and say they will invite people, but I cannot get a card from them. I tell them that I had the intention of going into the walk-ups but it is too late now. They say do it, but do not show your letter.
The entrances to the walk-ups have red lights as do the windows of the flats but no sign at all that is visible from the door way. In the daytime it is easy to miss them. Further up the stairs are hand written posters for ‘lovely new girl’ etc ‘NO Rush’ is emphasized. There are also more coloured lights. It is truly seedy; cheap and neglected.
I show my letter with its Red Umbrella logo and the flier. I get:
1. An interested reception at the first door opened by late thirties Russian lady who speaks good English and takes the material for consideration.
2. Recognition from the next old lady who says that she has a Thai girl who has a leaflet and wants be drawn, come back during the week.
3. Head shaking from an old croan who acts as if she does not speak English.
4. Suspicion from an elderly Caribbean lady who takes the papers form behind the security gate.
5. A lovely warm welcome into the sitting room by a soft, well-spoken English woman with a kind smiling face.
Shortly after, she bustles me into a small kitchen/store room and sends in EP. EP is 28, she comes from a small village in Hispanic Europe and lives in a small town in Scotland where she works in a nail bar. She has come down to help out a friend who has had to take time off. She sits as any other sitter would on a pile of boxes and I crouch against the sink. The main thing is that like so many of my sitters, she has not been drawn before and is curious and happy to oblige. The drawing is very sweet and certainly reminiscent of 19th century French drawing, but EP does not look wan or pitiful. Come to think of it, neither do a lot of the girls captured by artists of 19th century Parisian nightlife.
After, the Maid comes in for a chat. We agree she should be called IQ. She speaks in a hushed confiding tone. She is a pensioner from West London; She has never been a prostitute and comes in to earn a little cash to feed her five rescued cats. She says the job keeps her in Flea powder. I have now met 10 maids. I now know enough older, poor working class women to say that none of them are getting rich on the back of immoral earnings. She tells me that last year, the police put up denigrating posters in the square referring to the presence of sex workers. Then, when it was not her shift, there was a raid. It was brutal, and terrified the girl and the Maid. Their surveillance cameras on the stairs were smashed and money removed. When this was raised in court, the police denied it. Nothing was found to incriminate the girl or the Maid.
We thanked each other. I went off to the pub and the sultry Latvian barman asked why I had not come earlier. He had distributed the flyers at the bus stop; perhaps this is how the Thai girl got it. My fur hat draws much attention from men. And I easily got my first sitter, a handsome young property developer from Berkley Square. He decided to bare his chest and undid his shirt. Cool. I was starving and went to get a sandwich. When I got back, I noticed that he had changed his shirt. It was now blue. It turned out this was a twin brother. When they were 14, they had to go and stay for an entire fortnight with the artist who painted portraits their entire family. They said it was absolutely grim.
I caught the eye of an attractive black lady at the bar. She works in a private sports club but is studying reporting, she asks if she can do an article on the show. This is two good things that RL bar man has brought to me.
I cycle onto Soho. Its horrible and daunting. Go into a book shop and look at art house porn by photographers such as Rankin. Prefer a book from thirties Paris. The pubic hair looks quaint. Go home.
Tuesday, 9 March 2010
Wednesday 3rd March 2010. 25 new drawings!
In Shepherd Market, I start to visit shops and the response is quite good. The Latvian/Russian barman in one of the pub models quite seriously for me. He gives me a drink and takes flyers. I look at the entrance to a walk up. I do not have the time to go in and am waiting to find out whether the English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) will read my letter of introduction and endorse The Drawn Petition. But this is going to take time. Every member of the Collective has to agree.
Westminster Council attempted to evict the sex workers of Shepherd Market on the grounds that they were using residential property for commercial purposes. The ECP helped the sex workers of Shepherd Market defend their right to remain in the flats in a Court case. The Judge found in their favour, there had been no change of use in ten years. Talk of David and Goliath. It is this story that eventually led to the Drawn Petition.
So I do not go into the walk ups, but rush north, collect Bright Eyes from playcentre, throw dinner his way and rush off to a rally outside Holloway Prison in support of the Yarlswood hunger-strikers which the ECP lady told me about. It’s bloody freezing. 25 drawings done in about and hour and a half.
Westminster Council attempted to evict the sex workers of Shepherd Market on the grounds that they were using residential property for commercial purposes. The ECP helped the sex workers of Shepherd Market defend their right to remain in the flats in a Court case. The Judge found in their favour, there had been no change of use in ten years. Talk of David and Goliath. It is this story that eventually led to the Drawn Petition.
So I do not go into the walk ups, but rush north, collect Bright Eyes from playcentre, throw dinner his way and rush off to a rally outside Holloway Prison in support of the Yarlswood hunger-strikers which the ECP lady told me about. It’s bloody freezing. 25 drawings done in about and hour and a half.
Tuesday 2nd March 2010
I have to go the hospital to get some medicine. I tell the nurse and the consultant about The Drawn Petition. He says I can come and draw the whole department next week, she says she will tell a journalist she is meeting. As I had been to the ECP the day before, I say that so many involved are simply mums, she cuts across me. “Nurses! Nurses.” She repeats “And students.”
“Now take this wipe and clean from front to back, then part your labia and urinate mid stream into the bottle.”
“Now take this wipe and clean from front to back, then part your labia and urinate mid stream into the bottle.”
Sunday 28th February 2010
Pump tyres, back wheel valve is jammed and all the air squirts out. Catch a lift with RS down to Camden and walk up High Street toward the Market. It’s grim, why do people want to come here? The only people standing around are community cops, everyone else is on the move. Case the Market, developers have wrecked it, there are almost no Londoners to speak of. I aim to draw UK residents only, legal or otherwise, this is a petition to the UK Government. So draw stallholders, all men and they lead me one to another, they are very surprised but modestly amenable. One says he occasionally goes to prostitutes and he is always open about this. He also said that he doesn’t particularly like it, it’s just a thing he does. He went to Amsterdam and thought it was a good set up. He is French, the kind of person you could happily have a thoughtful conversation with. His neighbour was a burley Scot, I love the drawing of him, it is very delicate. “Shepherd Market he said, Ah yes, I used to go there meself. Thirty years ago, half the houses parliament were down there of a night.’
Camden Market has become a shit hole and I doubt I’ll go again. Gorgeous (my daughter) has moved on to more interesting pastures. I am freezing and hungry. On the main road draw a female banker (cooperative, she says defensively) and her friend. Then go into The Oxford Arms. It is full of blokes. Most are watching the match, I go up to a guy sitting alone who is not watching TV and ask him if I can…I am disrupted by a voice from behind the bar, a woman, perhaps 28. There is no broaching her ‘Not in my pub you don’t’ she says. The pub opposite is nicer, but I cannot see whom to ask.
On the next Corner in an anomalous mock timber framed building surrounded by ominous modernism is ‘The Hobgoblin.’ This is a haunt of bikers and Goths, affiliates of the dark. It’s like stepping into the ‘Leaky Cauldron’. Real London drains away. I go to the bar to ask the bar maid whether I may draw. She wears black. Her hair is very dark, her skin, very pale. She has elfin eyes, arched brows and full, agile lips. She is from Transylvania! She says many girls from Hungary come over to work as prostitutes, she doesn’t know any personally but it is not unusual.
I join a girl at a table, she wears black, she has come down from County Durham in search of work. She is perhaps 19. She just wants to get some work. She is a good worker. She has GCSE’s including English and Maths and went to college but could not afford to continue. An Arab man has let her a room in his house at a reduced rent and she will help his son with English in return. She was attacked by a group of men back home, simply for being different: wearing black clothes and dark make up. It led to depression. Her mother tried to sabotage her flight south out of concern; she knows no one in London. She was at least in a warm and friendly place in this pub. The guy opposite her was cool to be drawn for the cause and I draw him asleep.
I return to the bar and talk with an even more striking bar maid. She has a strong, confident presence. She agrees to be drawn and tells me that she had a friend who worked in a Soho brothel for two years from the age of fourteen (she looked older). I ask whether this friend was an addict. “Yeah” she said. “An addict to Christian Dior, not drugs.” She said she had been very concerned for this friend and therefore accompanied her when she worked on the streets. They had been beaten up; it was scary. The experience had made her a racist for a while. She had been caught by the police holding her friends bag with all the condoms and the lube, she was terrified, she spoke truthfully to the police giving her name and address, but her friend had lied and she felt her liberty was in the balance. The police decided to let them off. She distanced herself from this friend and moved on in her life. She was self assured and clear about the issues. She said she would not do sex work herself for emotional reasons; boundaries, it was not for her.
Back at the bar I ask another man who turns out to be a singer songwriter whether I can draw him. He says he used to be in the Liberal camp on the issue but following a programme on Women’s Hour last November, he changed his mind. However, he agreed to be drawn because what I am doing is good, opening up the subject for debate through art. He cautioned me that as an artist I should stand back and remain a detached observer. My friend EW said the same in an earlier discussion. But I am not only an artist. I am a wife, a parent and live in society, all of which compels me to take a stand. Is it the role of art or artists to simply observe from a position on a fence?
Next I draw a strongly built man (in black) with long gingery hair and an imposing beard. He is wearing mirrored glasses that keep the light out his eyes. He did not like light. I drew him in charcoal on a larger piece of paper, when he took off his glasses, I suddenly realized he was ten years younger, not ten years older than me!
The final couple invite me to their table and ask how much I charge to draw a couple together? He is wearing black. She is wearing some green. She is a designer and has worked for a number of sex-workers, including a French lady (size 14) who now in her mid forties sees her six former clients (one for each day of the week) as friends as they too are older now. She lives in Mayfair where one of them bought her a four-story house.
Camden Market has become a shit hole and I doubt I’ll go again. Gorgeous (my daughter) has moved on to more interesting pastures. I am freezing and hungry. On the main road draw a female banker (cooperative, she says defensively) and her friend. Then go into The Oxford Arms. It is full of blokes. Most are watching the match, I go up to a guy sitting alone who is not watching TV and ask him if I can…I am disrupted by a voice from behind the bar, a woman, perhaps 28. There is no broaching her ‘Not in my pub you don’t’ she says. The pub opposite is nicer, but I cannot see whom to ask.
On the next Corner in an anomalous mock timber framed building surrounded by ominous modernism is ‘The Hobgoblin.’ This is a haunt of bikers and Goths, affiliates of the dark. It’s like stepping into the ‘Leaky Cauldron’. Real London drains away. I go to the bar to ask the bar maid whether I may draw. She wears black. Her hair is very dark, her skin, very pale. She has elfin eyes, arched brows and full, agile lips. She is from Transylvania! She says many girls from Hungary come over to work as prostitutes, she doesn’t know any personally but it is not unusual.
I join a girl at a table, she wears black, she has come down from County Durham in search of work. She is perhaps 19. She just wants to get some work. She is a good worker. She has GCSE’s including English and Maths and went to college but could not afford to continue. An Arab man has let her a room in his house at a reduced rent and she will help his son with English in return. She was attacked by a group of men back home, simply for being different: wearing black clothes and dark make up. It led to depression. Her mother tried to sabotage her flight south out of concern; she knows no one in London. She was at least in a warm and friendly place in this pub. The guy opposite her was cool to be drawn for the cause and I draw him asleep.
I return to the bar and talk with an even more striking bar maid. She has a strong, confident presence. She agrees to be drawn and tells me that she had a friend who worked in a Soho brothel for two years from the age of fourteen (she looked older). I ask whether this friend was an addict. “Yeah” she said. “An addict to Christian Dior, not drugs.” She said she had been very concerned for this friend and therefore accompanied her when she worked on the streets. They had been beaten up; it was scary. The experience had made her a racist for a while. She had been caught by the police holding her friends bag with all the condoms and the lube, she was terrified, she spoke truthfully to the police giving her name and address, but her friend had lied and she felt her liberty was in the balance. The police decided to let them off. She distanced herself from this friend and moved on in her life. She was self assured and clear about the issues. She said she would not do sex work herself for emotional reasons; boundaries, it was not for her.
Back at the bar I ask another man who turns out to be a singer songwriter whether I can draw him. He says he used to be in the Liberal camp on the issue but following a programme on Women’s Hour last November, he changed his mind. However, he agreed to be drawn because what I am doing is good, opening up the subject for debate through art. He cautioned me that as an artist I should stand back and remain a detached observer. My friend EW said the same in an earlier discussion. But I am not only an artist. I am a wife, a parent and live in society, all of which compels me to take a stand. Is it the role of art or artists to simply observe from a position on a fence?
Next I draw a strongly built man (in black) with long gingery hair and an imposing beard. He is wearing mirrored glasses that keep the light out his eyes. He did not like light. I drew him in charcoal on a larger piece of paper, when he took off his glasses, I suddenly realized he was ten years younger, not ten years older than me!
The final couple invite me to their table and ask how much I charge to draw a couple together? He is wearing black. She is wearing some green. She is a designer and has worked for a number of sex-workers, including a French lady (size 14) who now in her mid forties sees her six former clients (one for each day of the week) as friends as they too are older now. She lives in Mayfair where one of them bought her a four-story house.
Sat 27 February 2010
We are invited for dinner. There is a HoD from a London college, I tell him about the project and he seems to concur with the decriminalization debate: safety, health etc. But then he tightens, he says he would be against anything that would further normalise the idea of prostitution as something acceptable. He would not want his daughter to do it and anything that would make it easier for girls to go into sex work was to be avoided. I felt as though I was talking in appropriately in polite society, but I am over sensitive. I thought it odd that a senior university teacher did know how common it already is for students to do sex work on the side and given this, was surprised that his primary concern was for prevention rather than safety.
Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Friday 26th February 2010. 21 new heads drawn!
Stuck behind computer all day inching the project on, getting into a panic about the overwhelming workload. At 9.45am MI comes down tell me that she and PG have to move out within a fortnight. Have heart attack. Am now likely to be without rent for three weeks and this income was the contingency for the project, some of it already earmarked.
Can’t find bloody front torch. Find among toys. Batteries dead. Change. The bracket for this torch was nicked. Leave for pub on bicycle at 10.30, about two hours late. Roll down hill with torch in mouth.
Friends of The Noodle welcoming and positive about being drawn by their mate’s Mum for radical good cause. The Noodle not yet there. He has known one of these friends since he was eight and the rest since he was eleven. It is lovely to see them like this in their world. I cease feeling grey haired and part from the group to start asking strangers for portraits. There is a group of Architects, pro drawers, decides to level with me, he is flirting. We call it a “draw”.
I always explain the reasoning behind ‘decriminalization.’ Most support it on principle, a few are not clear . One man is very clear that he likes prostitution and has had offers of money for sex and thinks it is good. He is showing off. He agrees to be drawn but only from the back. A pretty woman agrees to be drawn but not to give a contact as she is known in her field. The Noodle points out a friend and says ‘he supports Labour’. They have discussed the issue and his friend clearly disagrees that there should be any liberalization of sex work. I admire him for sticking to his principles. His opinion was deeply rooted.
I keep a sharpener in my pocket, spare pencils and a rubber in my left hand, (even though I working with a pen). I drop 2 pen lids by mistake and cannot see them in the darkness. Ferret around the last drinkers and find one, only to discover I am missing another. My lids are important. Hmph.
Whilst unlocking bicycle I figure out how to save £250. Build telephone box for the exhibition from polystyrene! Budget back on course.
Cycle home at 00.55 after drawing at pub in Camden. No new emails, thank God.
Can’t find bloody front torch. Find among toys. Batteries dead. Change. The bracket for this torch was nicked. Leave for pub on bicycle at 10.30, about two hours late. Roll down hill with torch in mouth.
Friends of The Noodle welcoming and positive about being drawn by their mate’s Mum for radical good cause. The Noodle not yet there. He has known one of these friends since he was eight and the rest since he was eleven. It is lovely to see them like this in their world. I cease feeling grey haired and part from the group to start asking strangers for portraits. There is a group of Architects, pro drawers, decides to level with me, he is flirting. We call it a “draw”.
I always explain the reasoning behind ‘decriminalization.’ Most support it on principle, a few are not clear . One man is very clear that he likes prostitution and has had offers of money for sex and thinks it is good. He is showing off. He agrees to be drawn but only from the back. A pretty woman agrees to be drawn but not to give a contact as she is known in her field. The Noodle points out a friend and says ‘he supports Labour’. They have discussed the issue and his friend clearly disagrees that there should be any liberalization of sex work. I admire him for sticking to his principles. His opinion was deeply rooted.
I keep a sharpener in my pocket, spare pencils and a rubber in my left hand, (even though I working with a pen). I drop 2 pen lids by mistake and cannot see them in the darkness. Ferret around the last drinkers and find one, only to discover I am missing another. My lids are important. Hmph.
Whilst unlocking bicycle I figure out how to save £250. Build telephone box for the exhibition from polystyrene! Budget back on course.
Cycle home at 00.55 after drawing at pub in Camden. No new emails, thank God.
Thur 25th February 2010
Work out that I can sell the drawings of The Drawn Petition as branded original fine art souvenirs, in the “Gallery Shop”. Small pics £24.99 (unframed) two £40. Not sure about VAT. This means I do not have to share the gallery space.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)