Discovery Through Art
By nature I always saw myself as more scientist than artist. Geology and chemistry were my chosen subjects at school. Later I was a journalist, a snooper who always had a question ready. Art was not part of the deal. In my work I mixed closely with photographers, picture editors and graphic designers, collaborations that gave me a type of visual literacy. But art was for other people, inward looking people not outward-looking explorers of life such as myself. So the idea of being part of an art studio, practising that thing I always saw as indulgent and self-centred, made me feel a bit creepy, like I was wearing someone else's clothes. Until one day Submit to Love studio head Michelle asked me to do a bit of sign writing. Great, I thought, something I can actually do. And isn’t that how James Rosenquist started? In big black letters, using the Headway house font originally drawn by Paul Wright as my template. I painted the words she wanted...
…and it instantly felt like some sort of homecoming.
As soon as you walk through the sprung doors of Submit to Love Studios you know you are in a special place. Immediately to your left is a corner full of bubble-wrapped mosaic sculptures. On your right is a toilet, a crazy sculpture made from what looks like bits of a car engine and a kitchenette area infested with art materials waiting for a good wash. In front of you is a shangri-la in the form of a cave spilling over with visual treasure. In 2019, Submit to Love started working on collaborative projects with London's Autograph Gallery. One of them uncovered in our artists a previously hidden natural talent for needlework and textiles. Soon the studio was groaning with patchwork portraits based on Autograph's Black Chronicles archive. I happily joined this orgy of originality and started scouring Amazon for needles, threads and thimbles.
Needlework brought me peace of mind during the lockdown days of the lengthy global pandemic that followed. The exhibition we had ready to open at Autograph was put on ice. Instead I carried on threading and renewed my appetite for travel by stitching maps onto tote bags.
My stitchwork journeys so far include "trips" to Italy, South America, India and Australia. I have toured the UK and explored each of London's 33 boroughs, including my adopted home in the old City of London. I get my patterns from Google Earth.
Discovery is the best description of what I am doing with this work. And it is the best description of my Submit to Love experience. For that reason, the studio's motto is a constant reminder of what I have grown into. I am an artist.
By Billy Mann