A truly fascinating account of the Orono Conference Mairead.

I was talking to Mary at the weekend. She was married to a painter, now
lives with a saxophanist. She's been life drawing for years. Her latest
classes have been run by one the the region's leading painters (a male).
'Life drawing' fascinates me, as does having a 'chair' among a group of
four. Students, model, artist. The artist poses the model and the students
draw the pose, directed by the artist's 'knowledge.' Form, technique and the
correct pressure applied to one's pencil. Mary's leaving because it is as if
the artist wants to hold and control her pencil with his mind, his weight of
status. And of course the innuendo is all the other way round regarding
pencils.

I asked where Mary's endless 'life drawing' was leading. She didn't know
except that, to be an artist one had to practice drawing. The thing she
wants 'breaks' her but the 'broken' ones are those who try to make her
'broken.'

Earlier this week 14 year old Becky (variously abused and oppressed, and now
on the 'edge') created a really great work of art. She'd missed a session,
so worked frantically for three hours to create her own 'dream room.' She
worked painstakingly on the tiled chessboard floor but began to run out of
time. She seized the moment and threw paint at the other walls. One wall is
just mud but there is a heart made out of bubble-wrap in the mud sinking
into the tiled floor. On the other two walls are ribbon fragments flecked
with paint and lines painted with utter conviction. The ceiling is a huge
and very messy yellow flower. In her rush, she'd used too much paint and the
structure began to bow. Her teacher (a wonderful woman) said she'd been too
impatient. Becky flew into 'one' - half tantrum, half tears.

Becky's 'dream room' says everything about her life - order and disorder -
but everything: she was happy when earlier her family were living next to a
'muddy old place.' And the ordered floor? For her age, she is one of the
county's best female footballers. Could go all the way but of course there
is 'no way.' After the first world war women's football was very popular in
the UK. Teams attracted big followings but the government decided football
was too 'strenuous' for the 'fairer' sex. What's fair? Becky wants to join
the army now.

Not forgetting that the young people I'm working with have variously been
abused, some of the boys' work is technically astounding. But in this
sublime project something strange strikes me: in the even more vulnerable
children I cannot see any division between the sexes. Things are 'broken'
out there, at the top and from on high how knowledge's authority turns so
many of us into candy-floss around their stick. The stick is perhaps the
problem.

Mairead, I don't think you're harping back to feminist concerns from the
1970s. They're still the same. And way before. Trained in sculpture, I once
thought Henry Moore's work was it: those human-female-boney-bovine
constructs. All that reclining and lumbering. Giacometti was far more
interesting in his 'standing' figures: his women move, embrace space, 'do;'
his men are passive, are more gnarled by decay and do not move BUT occupy
space.

However, I do think there are possibilities in poetry and art via
collaborative work which can challenge the ultimate false divide of sexism.
And much else. In the end (I really mean this moment) it's about Becky (her
brilliant teachers don't quite take in how her hands are her heart and
mind). It's about Mary too - and all men and women - and it's about breaking
the artist's pencil

"I can't draw" is the plea and the excuse not to 'do' - because of the
weight imposed. For me, I can't teach drawing but want to lift the weight.
Probably sounds crass but when one works in the breakage yard I begin to
understand what's really broken.

Best, Rupert