Introduction to Ina
This week, I decided to launch myself a bit more seriously, in preparation for the finished Boris pieces, which I think are the start of a more revealing art period. Several of the sites would like me to write a regular blog, and so here is your handy introduction to Ina Disguise.
My father, also an artist, always advised me to do anything but art, since producing artwork for money is not the happiest of experiences if you like to express anything. Therefore, his reasoning was avoid art in order to produce better art. This led to my becoming a habitual over worker, as I took him at his word and worked every hour I could to avoid doing any artwork for many years.
Ina Disguise came about as a result of my inability to have a conversation with David Wolfe, a natural health promoter that I wanted to talk to about some academic work I was doing on eco-economics, marketing and behavioural economics. I managed to connect with him briefly on a few websites, but he only seemed to want to talk trash and pretend to himself that he is very clever. I am not sure why he does this, because apart from his lousy writing and a murky past, he actually is very clever.
As my family were trying to use abusing me as an excuse to rob their own mother, this came as the last straw and I became very unhappy, despite having just lost about 160lb and looking unusually hot that year. Therefore, after spending several months fighting off the urge to eat myself into oblivion, I started sewing, which is a habit I had previously formed whilst avoiding horrible and hurtful people and recovering from failed love affairs. If you cannot have the relationship, you might as well have a nice carpet out of your misdirected emotions.
Since he had blocked me from actually speaking to him, after it transpired that I was unusual in seeing through his many disguises online, I then wrote Best Scandal Ever in an effort to appease and inform him why I was buttering him up in the first place. Best Romance Ever followed, and, since I am of the opinion that keeping one’s brain balanced is rather important, I spent the time that I was not writing doing a lot more stitching.
I had previously amassed art materials with every spare penny from every job I had had since being told that I had to give up everything for my parents as nobody else in the family would ever be willing to do it. Currently two of them are sitting idle with pensions whilst I am unable to earn my own.
Anyway, within a year of putting my work out in public, GQ had got in touch, which has been an enormous encouragement, and my work has now been in Tatler several times, and last month I realised an early ambition and managed to get a spot in World of Interiors. I cannot tell you how much the girls from these magazines have helped me at what has been a very rough and ego bashing time.
So now I work in batches, usually five or six pieces at a time, and I have released several batches over the last four years, with varying results. Some of the pieces are more popular with other people than me, but my experiments have taught me a lot. Scale is a great tutor, as is ensuring that you are spoilt for stock volume in raw materials. As with writing, the ideas you would like to have only come when you have indulged the ideas you initially think are merely basic.
Wolfe taught me a lot about marketing, allowing yourself to express even the most rudimentary ideas, on the basis that most people cannot manage that and will show some interest anyway. There is simply no point in waiting until you are good enough, because if you don’t practise and attempt things, you don’t develop the stamina, skill and confidence to get to the good stuff. One of my pieces, Raw Sex Object, took seven years to complete, and I am not even interested in selling it because it is really a giant sampler.
Anyway, Wolfe has never understood that I am not trying to kill his career, and I cannot be bothered explaining it to him, so I have now embarked on the Boris adventure, as I perceive Boris to be a far more settled and confident person who might actually appreciate my amusing coded communication skills. I shall lavish attention on poor Boris until I presumably focus on a very serious person, such as the Pope. In the meantime, enjoy the artwork.
Ina