I am learning a lot from Jane Friedman’s The Business of Being a Writer. Things my elitist brain thinks are below a creative. They are making me feel settled in myself. Better prepared for sending WALK INTO YOUR MADNESS book proposal to agents and publishers. I’ve blogged about these so far:

Competing book  

I want to be part of the how-to-create genre that uses memoir, formula, 70’s counter-culture values, with a side salad of spirituality. Natalie Goldberg: Writing Down the Bones. Julia Cameron: The Artist’s Way. Anne Lamott: Bird by Bird. 

Platform

I do have a platform. There are some big players and institutions on it. Also, some deep, real relationships. I can do it without social media.  An email list and weekly newsletter. Knowing my content is valuable, they will spread my blog word-of mouth. As long as I am consistent. It’s happened before. https://thereno.live/

Target Audience

Target audience are like me. Phases I have been through. If you haven’t got the internal reference points, you won’t know how to reach these artists: Non-white; Shadow; Closet; Poverty crippled — this one is fed to you through your mother’s milk. The same as entitled and a full fridge is fed to those that think nothing of buying a cappuccino while waiting for the artistic director to talk about the stuff they’ve sent them. As equals. Whereas we wait for the artistic director to spend the £4 and pick apart our offerings. As benefactors.

This week it’s Biog

Mixing it up with CV I can never tell why the fuck you need both and always see it as a waste of time. Till I do a little experiment.

HIAP https://www.hiap.fi/residents/ send me their newsletter with their latest residents. I immediately feel weirdly sick when reading the impenetrable language they use to describe the artist. But, instead of not reading. I do read. And I copy it. And I translate each line into something I’ve done. I’m just gonna show ya.

Tania Candiani (b. 1974, Mexico) is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersections of sound, language, technology, and craft. Through research-based projects, she explores histories of labor, materiality, and non-human communication, often translating archival knowledge into multisensory installations. Her practice spans textiles, sound sculptures, video installations, performance, and site-specific interventions, reflecting on the relationships between humans, ecosystems, and deep time. Candiani has exhibited internationally at major biennials and institutions, including the Venice Biennale, Biennale of Sydney, and the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, among others. Her work is held in major collections, and she has received prestigious awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. (99 words.)

(b. 1959, UK) Linda Brogan’s memoirs explore the caste system’s legacy. Mind-maps focus her lived experience. Stage. Royal Court, publisher Methuen. Arcola, publisher Oberon. Traverse, publisher Nick Hern.  Physical excavation. The Reno, her 1970s cellar club. Half-caste is an honour. Exhibition. The Reno @ Whitworth Art Gallery. 350,000 visitors. Immersive. Factory International. Claiming her white mum’s status Linda declares herself the mistress of her dad’s Jamaican plantation. Performance art. HOME. Linda exorcizes half-caste ghosts in a mind-map forest. Awards include: One of 6 National Lottery Award finalists. 5 Arts Council England Awards. Outstanding Contribution to Manchester Culture Award. (100 words.)

Palazzo Mondi https://palazzomonti.org/ sends me their new residence list. So, I do it again.

Catherine Lowe is an artist from Newcastle upon Tyne. She studied BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths and MA Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2024. She lives and works in London, UK. Her recent shows include ‘Scene V: Pas de Quatre’ with Matt Carey-Williams and ‘Presently Fragmented’ with Hurst Contemporary. Catherine’s practice pulls from an ever-evolving archive to create assemblages: paintings and bodies of paintings that explore texture, form, and volume across figurative landscapes to address a multiplicity of narratives, histories, and perspectives.

 Shifting between subtraction and erasure, mediating between the transient and the permanent, she renders her subjects across a temporal spectrum, establishing a relationship between absence, structure, and materiality within the void of the canvas. In this way, Catherine interrogates the notion of a ‘resolved’ or ‘finished’ work and, by extension, the conception of history and historical memory as cohesive, linear, and teleological. (147 words.)

Linda Brogan is an artist from Manchester UK. Self-taught. Studying the creation of the universe, mind-mapping and associative writing. Over 23 years, evolving into her 8-stations and 12-words techniques. She uses as microscopes to study the elements of the caste system legacy lacing her memoir. Generating award-winning plays, excavation, exhibition; immersive theatre; performance art. The lens polished in 2024 during a year’s collaboration with astrophysicist Soheb Mandhai.

2024. IN THE RUINS OF THE BIG HOUSE. Factory International, UK. Using her white mum’s status, Linda declares herself the mistress of her enslaved dad’s Jamaican plantation. Descending Bette Davis stairs in a £2000 bespoke denim ball gown she greets her 12 guests. Candlelit at a decadently dressed dining table. Each read a vignette of Linda’s memoir. They unpack. Intimate and grand. Healing and haunting. Each gathering unique — made up of the different experiences her guests bring to the table.

2025. MY MUM IS WHITE: EXORCISING HALF-CASTE GHOSTS. Devised with mixed-race psychologist Professor Adam Danquah. Isabel Wilkerson’s 8 Pillars of Caste the basalt. Fraiberg’s et al Ghosts in the Nursery the sediment. Employing her 12-word technique​ — referencing pre-Civil Rights segregated sinks — Linda asks 8 mixed-race creative and cultural practitioners, ‘What does a mixed-race sink look like?’ Releasing 8 memoirs she will transform into 16 x 64 ft square 8-station mind-maps​. ​Drawn directly onto HOME​ gallery walls.​ A forest of ghosts. They will exorcise in an embodied grief ritual​. ​Midnight of the 29th day of the moon’s cycle. ​ 

Current. WALK INTO YOUR MADNESS. A how-to-create book that uses her 8 major art projects to teach 12-words and 8-stations to non-white, closet, shadow or just plain poor money crippled artists of any colour, like her. (275 words.)

Conclusion

I think I sound pretty impressive. I can see the through line. The elegance. With that lovley feeling of a few high-end real paper carrier bags, like Harvey Nicks and a small yellow Selfridges. And not 10 hand scarring red plastic carrier bags from TK Maxx.