Jessica Elizabeth Baines: Ideas and several small rants

After a sorrowfully unproductive day yesterday feeling woefully under the weather I have managed, yet again, to successfully emulate the sleeping pattern of those on the other side of the equator.

Not having a phone, again, is hideous. I never know what time it is, I don’t get the vital opportunities to set 45 alarms to wake me up in the correct hours for GMT. It’s very disorientating.

My fist project back at university is due in next week and although the research is done; the practical side is not even touched upon. This project is exclusively about paint and I (embarrassing to admit) don’t have any left after last semester. I am beyond infuriated and fed up by Student Finance still having not paid me half of my money.

This course has been an utter struggle in the way of finances thus far and it’s nearly over. To do an art course when you were on benefits prior and haven’t even been paid enough by SFE to cover your rent is near impossible. All the ideas I have are just not feasible without even some tiny current of money.

Perhaps more hilariously my Debit Card has ceased working and the little money I have after paying a large portion, but not all, of my rent arrears upon receipt of my loan is locked away, leaving me with the splatters of my remaining birthday money after I paid for the faulty washing machine. Oh life. You can never be easy, can you?

Unconsciously though I have seemingly had the clever discussion about what is more important: the education I have desperately wanted since childhood and that is costing me 8k or eating palatable items, and I seemingly decided the latter wasn’t so necessary. So I have restrained myself from buying food, and am living off a healthy diet of peanut butter on toast and am having to talk myself into spending a large portion of all the money I have for basic survival and travel on equipment, including an easel.

I find it equally despicable and amusing when people don’t grasp when one exclaims poverty- I have found myself in many situations throughout my years clawing at survival where I had, quite literally, pennies to my name, not even enough to get a bus or a loaf of bread. When I have no money, that is quite literally what I mean. I guess it would be lovely to think ‘no money’ means not going abroad this year or cutting back on luxury purchases, rather than shit I can’t eat and I can’t afford tampons this month.

Anyway, I digress. In the kitchen for my breakfast (at half past three, it turns out) I was thinking about all the people who have taken the same steps as me in this house over the years. I adore this house, and the area, mostly due to the irony that it is seen as one of the largely impoverished areas of the whole of Britain yet it was built as an exclusively wealthy area for civil servants and members of the judiciary. The houses ooze with a magnificent Victorian splendour, with a grimy coat of modern poverty. The juxtaposition of old affluence and contemporary paucity fills me with a melancholic thrill. I have always adored looking at photos of places I know 'then and now' and the more I see the more I hunger for it. I have spent days lost looking at old photos of the cities I have lived in and the streets I have walked.

Belmont Road, 1900

Belmont Drive, 1905

One of the many boarded up houses in the same area

The difference in state is mind blowing

A house in my road, one of the many boarded up

My house is an old council flat, now owned by a housing association, in a beautiful Victorian manor. It has been structurally altered to accommodate two separate dwellings, one flat down stairs and our maisonette which spans across three floors. Thankfully, the house has retained many of its architectural features inside and hasn’t been overly butchered by so many years of grim council house greying-cream fixtures. I often sit and picture what rooms would have looked like in the years gone by- what they would have been purposed for. How much has it changed? Who lived here before? This week my curiosity has been elated by the discovery of two new rooms that have been boarded up in the loft level where my bedroom is.

A road in my area in the 1900s and 2015

Judges Row, Newsham 1900. Built for the wealthy.

I wondered if it would be possible to get the records of the previous tenants throughout the years and contact their families and ask if they would like to come and have a look where they/their ancestors spent at least a portion of their lives and ask if they had any photos of what it looked like during their time period. (I for one would love to go into all the houses I have lived over the years and see what they look like now).

The idea to take a photographic portrait of these families/persons and paint them in the styling’s of either the most revolutionary practitioner or just in the general style and clothing etc. of the time came about, and somehow that developed into doing a Pointillist piece using prints of all their hands to make a picture of the front of the house.

That then got me thinking about forensics (I, too, have been swept up in the Steven Avery case) and how many finger prints there would be if one could see it using forensic equipment over the centuries.

In turn, that got me to thinking about the blue tones of forensic lighting, which made Damien Hirst (I actually am not a fan of Hirst nor the 'Young British Artists' scene altogether, however it was the colours and eerie toning that I thought would be suitable to study for this purpose) and Francis Bacon explode into my head.

I am excited by this idea. It is definitely something I would love to work on. As an interior-obsessed history-possessed artist it would be incredibly fitting.