Sally Booth - Semi-Structured Interview. Transcript January 20 2020

Interview Transcription.

Artist participant: Sally Booth

Interviewer: Andrea McSwan

Date: Jan 20 2020

Location: Sally Booth’s Studio. The Potting Sheds, Cannizzaro Park, Wimbledon, London

Audio recordings: R07-0004 & R07-0005

Transcript timecode start time: [00:00:09.28]

[00:00:09.28] Sally Booth: So, I've been doing a series of London Underground drawings and they're all done on a concertina sketch book, in fact they're only about 9 inches tall but I take them out on the tube and draw on the tube. So, each line is coloured according to the tube line; dark blue for Piccadilly, silver for Jubilee and black and white for Northern and red for Central. So, before I set off I paint whole books of one colour. If I think I am going on the Piccadilly, I will come in here and do a whole book of blue wash in acrylic, so I can draw straight on. And I have to draw very fast as I don't know what's happening, or what's going to happen. So, I go at all different times of day, so at rush hour when it's packed or sometimes when it's empty. Sometimes I draw people and sometimes I draw the architecture, you know, the escalators and the stairs and the entrances and erm...style of stairs, the outside of it the inside of the tube, the rounded arches, that kind of thing.

[00:01:41.16] Interviewer: Yeah, yeah.

[00:01:41.16] Sally Booth: So, I have to use, I use all different sorts of pens. So it actually tends to be whatever I've got on me at the time. So I use these thick paint brush type, black pens. So rather than having than having a dipping pen, which is what I like to do when I am out and about or in the studio, so that's not very practical when I'm on the underground. So I use more of a fibre one, so you can sort of get a quick, thick line. So for example, there was a day when it was so packed at Piccadilly Circus, that I just sort of got off the train and sat on the seat to wait and then the next train came in and there were just all these feet that went past me. You know, so sort of in a scramble, queue but in a scramble, so just drew them...I just drew the legs.

[00:02:43.29] Interviewer: So, this is what I can see here?

[00:02:46.08] Sally Booth: Yes, there all going in that direction. So that sort of thing happened. And err, the same...each tube has got it's own flavour

[00:02:58.00] Interviewer: Oooh

 [00:02:58.17] Sally Booth: I don't mean a flavour by taste, I mean it's got it's own sort of mood, because of what places it goes through. So the Piccadilly goes off to Heathrow, so there are always people getting on at Green Parkk, or wherever, and they've got these cases and it's quite packed and everyone's got too many bags and they're all in a hurry about getting their plane and all that and that kind of thing. And the intersection at Oxford Circus, and you get a number of tubes coming together, so there's this criss-crossing. I like it because it's almost like a city underground, it's a mirror of the map above but in a different way

[00:03:54.08] Interviewer: Yes

[00:03:54.08] Sally Booth: And we've all got these rules, but we don't say what they are, but everyone tries to abide by those rules. So even if it's crowded and you're scrunched up against each other, but you're trying to keep your own personal space and all that sort of stuff. And I started just by drawing people's feet, because I wanted to have a project that I could do by myself, that I could do at any time and err, I suppose that sort of distance for my vision, five feet away-ish, I wanted to draw people, but I was a bit worried about erm, worried about being intrusive and also I am not trying to do a likeness, I'm not trying to do a portrait and actually I don't get enough definition myself to do a facial likeness. You know, someone sitting across from me anyway. I am just trying more to get people's gait. How people move. Their behaviour. And something that I quite like about London, in a way, is the anonymit of it and there's so many people and it's so anonymous, that in a way on the tube, it's like that too. So, I'm not drawing portraits, I'm drawing people, but they're not really individuals, they're just what it's like. So, there might be someone who's nodding off and you don't know how long someone's going to be there for and you're not having a conversation, so  I was just drawing people's feet, because that's really anonymous and I can have my head down and I've got these little tiny books and nobody needs to know what I'm doing anyway. And no-ones going to be offended if I'm drawing somebody's feet. But then I realised that people don't take a blind bit of notice. They're all on their phones, they're all on their devices. It used to be that they read the paper or smoked. You know, people always had to do something with their hands and their mouth. Almost an anxiety. And now it's not the newspaper and the fag, then it was the kindle and now it's the phone. And people have now got their head down and they're not even doing that uncomfortable thing, which was people staring ahead, not wanting to have eye contact with the person on the tube. I mean this is a particular London thing. If you go on the tube in Glasgow it's not like that at all. It's a London thing, but actually it's worked to my advantage in a way. So I gradually got a bit more confident and started working and going up the body.

[00:07:20.23] Interviewer: Okay

[00:07:20.23] Sally Booth: So they're not just feet and legs now, they sometimes...I sometimes do a whole person. But they're still anonymised. I might see people and think 'ooh, they're good' those two people with headphones, or in their own world next to each other. They look very similar but probably don't know each other and then I'll just try and remember it and get off and draw it...

[00:07:50.06] Interviewer: Oh, okay

[00:07:50.06] Sally Booth: Draw it how it's in my head. So a mixture of that.

[00:07:57.20] Interviewer: Yes. I was just looking at that one there 'Headphone on the night train' and this one

[00:08:00.26] Sally Booth: Yes, yes.

[00:08:00.26] Interviewer: And this one. Enormous sets of headphones

(ACTIVITY) Laughter

[00:08:05.09] Interviewer: Two of them next to each other

[00:08:05.09] Sally Booth: So you do see...things just happen. So I have a book in my bag all of the time, because I'm on the tube a lot. So I try to have a book in my bag, in case something might happen. Or I'll go out and I'll say 'today I'm doing the central line' and I'll do the whole of the central line and I'll get out at the other end and have a walk. Epping Forrest is a prize!

[00:08:39.02] Interviewer: Oh this one? Epping? End of the Line?

(Laughter)

[00:08:37.25] Sally Booth: Yes. Or I'll get out at Uxbridge, you know the other way and have a wander about. So you try to get the flavour of where, something about where you're going to. So they're places I wouldn't usually go to erm, like Central Line goes off to Hainault and it's got a branch bit and there wouldn't be any reason to go, unless you...

[00:09:05.04] Interviewer: You can't go via it?

[00:09:05.04] Sally Booth: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And at other times I'll just actually stand outside the station and do the architecture. Because I do really love the architecture of the underground and the signage and the circular motif; the roundness of it. And all this 1920's and 1930's lighting. I think it's a really amazing design so I'm interested in that as well. So, some of them, like drawings on the escalator, you can't...it's dangerous to draw on the escaltor. So that's more of a memory.

[00:09:50.29] Interviewer: Okay

[00:09:50.29] Sally Booth: You know, or you just clock something and just think 'right, I've just got to get the feeling of that' going down into the abyss. Or these uprights or something

[00:10:02.04] Interviewer: These colours are incredible.

[00:10:05.15] Sally Booth: So those two there are the Glasgow underground. The clockwork orange

[00:10:12.26] Interviewer:  Oh how wierd! I mean these really struck me. So bright chrome yellow, brilliant orange and dark brown.

[00:10:18.24] Sally Booth: So drawing on the Glasgow underground was very intimidating

(ACTIVITY) Laughter

[00:10:26.26] Sally Booth: Because it's very round and very tiny and you're actually closer than you are...that little bit closer...

[00:10:38.05] Interviewer: Not as anonymous?

[00:10:38.05] Sally Booth: Not anonymous. And also people are more naturally inquisitive and will ask you what the heck you are doing! So there'll be much more coming from the person in front of you. So I found that harder, drawing there, just to get on with it. But I did really the whole orange thing of the clockwork orange. It's really garish lighting there. And that was an up and a down.

[00:11:19.06] Interviewer: The perspective, stood at the top of the escalator, because it's curvy like that art deco.

[00:11:26.08] Sally Booth: Yes, yes

[00:11:26.08] Interviewer: It's interesting what you were talking about the Glasgow one, compared to the London one with what we were talking about earlier.

[00:11:37.15] Sally Booth: Yes, about who approaches you and anonymity.

[00:11:39.28] Interviewer: Yes, human connection. Because, I found that in Scotland. People were straight in and asking. It's interesting, I love it.

[00:11:45.29] Sally Booth: So in a way, yes it's a very different experience there because in a way the London underground is three million people you know, going about their business, going to work and it's not silent, but people are not talking. They're just needing to get to where they're getting to. And there's this inbulit map that we have in our head, that we go down this escalator, then we turn right down to that tunnel, then we go down those stairs and then get on the northbound and we need a certain one that goes to there, not to there and we've got to try and get a seat and you've got to go and get on the right bit of the platform to get a seat. So it's all in-built map in your head.

[00:12:42.28] Interviewer: And timed?

[00:12:43.08] Interviewer:  Yes and a timed route

[00:12:46.03] Interviewer: Precise?

[00:12:46.03] Sally Booth: Exactly. But it's not about...it's silent it's non-verbal communication. You're all going like ants and we're trying to not crash into anybody and anybody who causes an obstruction, causes a delay to the group and all that sort of stuff. So the anonymity of it, I like. And, err..and yet you'll get somebody who, you'll get three guys on the Central Line who clearly all know each other, because they're all sat close together and echoing each other in the way they sit. You don't know anything about them but you get an idea of them, so I try to capture something about that in five minutes, two minutes, whatever that might be, in line.  Yes, so sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes you're so squashed that you just see different bits of people, between sort of suits. You see this little tired head in between, two strap hanging people.

(Laughter)

[00:14:11.25] Interviewer: It is exactly like that. I love those pictures. I remember taking my daughter to London. She was five. And afterwards I said 'what do you think?' and she said 'it's so quiet'. And I was quite taken aback and I said 'what do you mean', exactly what you've just said, she said 'oh, no-one was talking to each other'.

[00:14:29.26] Sally Booth: Yes, yes. It's partly the architecture as well. When people are face to face...the only time I've had people talking to me was on the Bakerloo line where the seats are designed differently. Some of the coaches are side by side and some are two seats together.

[00:14:53.29] Interviewer: Okay

[00:14:53.29] Sally Booth: In front of another two seats together and much closer. So the way the architecture is, sort of defines the behaviour.

[00:15:06.17] Interviewer: Yes

[00:15:06.17] Sally Booth: Well, has an influence on the behaviour. And just seems to make it more informal somehow.

[00:15:17.04] Interviewer: Yes, I suppose it will group maybe four people together, rather than a whole bank facing each other either side.

[00:15:23.15] Sally Booth: Yes, exactly

[00:15:24.17] Interviewer: I think it was Australia, and the seats were as you described, where you could flip the backs so they could face one way or the other, so you could change the groupings. Yes, that was designed to really encourage social interaction and grouping on the change.

[00:15:49.19] Sally Booth: So the materials I am using are things that I can use very quick that aren't too  messy. So I might even just have felt tip or sharpie pens, permanent pens and the ones that I work on, some I work on when I get back so I might use Indian ink, so they're more worked into. Like the ones I am using out are whatever you can put in your rucksack that isn't going to make a mess. That you can get out quickly and put away quickly.

[00:16:33.27] Interviewer: So when you were saying about the concertina book....the background colours that I can see, is that ink or acrylic?

[00:16:38.06] Sally Booth: Acrylic. So, a wash in acrylic so that you can draw on top of it, so that, if later, I want to add ink or something it's not going to run.

[00:16:51.13] Interviewer: Okay

[00:16:51.13] Sally Booth: So they have to be light enough to still see the image over the top when you draw. I've tried some of them and they've been a bit too dark and I've had to make them a bit paler, so that you can tell what's going on. And, also for me, for drawing it as well. But I kind of like the urgency of the project. I have to gear up to do it, like sometimes I won't go on the tube for a while and then I just feel quite nervous about starting a drawing. Sort of like warming up for exercises. Your hands being supple and knowing that if you're self-conscious, you don't do a good drawing. So I need to get past that so, often I have quite a lot of rubbishy drawings and then I just have to get over my nerves and then it's ok. Sometimes, you'll go out and you'll see absolutely nothing and do a hopeless drawing and then other times, one after the other after the other..

[00:18:10.00] Interviewer: And it will flow?

[00:18:10.00] Sally Booth: Yes, fantastic. You have whole feeling of a day.

[00:18:15.19] Interviewer: When I was first taught life drawing, this was at school at an after school club and we were given some felt tips and then a different type of felt-tip that would remove the ink from the first and we had to draw people running round the room. And that was my first experience of life drawing. They would just keep running so it was just a series of quick little lines and circles and it reminds me, as you're talking about these legs here, you've got to be fast.

[00:18:46.02] Sally Booth: Yes, fast. And I do like life drawing as well. I think knowing the body does help. A 10 minute situation, where you've got to get something done...

[00:19:06.12] Interviewer: Yes, the key lines

[00:19:06.12] Sally Booth: Yes. So I think it does help me, even though it's can be a struggle at the time, it's still helpful. I'm trying to pair things down as well. So part of that suits me, because if you've got difficulty with central vision, the things you will miss, will be the details, the eyes, the features, shoe-laces. I can't really see the shoe-laces but I know what shoe-laces are like. So actually, just trying to get the essence of something, that you see. So,  that if I am sat a Paddington and I just watch people getting off the tube and rushing for the trains, so there's that trying to get the movement and everyone carrying those wheelies that crash into people, you know the angle of those and the rushing and that sort of half walking half running thing. I saw a chap who was elderly. And he was in amongst all this rushing. And he seemed so crinkly and crumpled that he was almost like a crumpled paper bag (laughter) so that's how I drew him. So he almost looked like he might disintegrate at any moment, in amongst all this rushing. So to try to get somebody's gait, their posture, how they move around, that kind of thing. And yet, it's not a person you know. If it was your grandad, you might...'oh yes, that's how grandad stands' but you wouldn't know...it's not a person. It's an archetype in a way.

[00:21:26.20] Interviewer: Yes, yes. They're lovely. Loads of movement

[00:21:26.20] Sally Booth: Movement is something I'm interested in really. And then, here we've just walked through the park. It's warmer outside than it is inside, as you may have gathered (laughter). So, I'll put these up (moving lightboxes into postion) and I'm experimenting with how to display these, because it's a tricky one.

Those I've been doing at night. When in the winter and I don't know what to do, I think I'll just go and draw some trees down the lane and also the other thing about, when it's cold, it affects your drawing. So you have to draw faster, because you know you're going to get cold in a minute. So, I've moved away from using pencil, because of my vision. Because pencil is just too delicate and fine and grey and it's not enough contrast for me and also when I take the pencil off the paper, it's hard to find exactly where I was. So I've moved from that to darker drawing utensils. But also with that, you have to learn more skills if you're...so I'm going to ink, not pencil. And with ink, I love ink, but there's jeopardy that comes with it (laughter) because you can do a lovely drawing and then at the last minute you can end up with this splodge. So there's that kind of anxiety aswell with ink, so trying to master...you're trying to get down something that's in front of you, you're also trying to master the medium and not fight against the medium, but let it do it's thing. But you're also the one that has to be in charge. So, these ones....so I've been drawing trees in winter, because you can see how they're made better. It's harder to see with leaves and things, but in winter the skeleton is left and often you'll have, up here we've got lime trees that are pollarded, so they're very stunted and knarled and quite interesting. So I just go up and do those, so for however long I can last. I kind of naturally work sketch book size, which is up to A3. And these ones are sort of, they're not A2, they're more squarish. Working outdoors gets more challenging when it's big. So I have to do them A2 maxium or in a roll and it works like that. Also, this thing about not being able to see to put the pencil back on the paper, lead me to drawing on acetate, which is actually a really lovely smooth material, especially to draw on with permanent pen. Really nice. Although it's a plasticky substance, I actually find it very...I really like the fluidity that you can get. So I've developed this way of working into a continuous line, so not taking the pen off the paper, so instead of doing this looking up looking down, I might still be looking up looking down but I haven't moved my hand. With ink you can get a sort of dot-to-dot, inadvertently dot-to-dot, type effect where you've got a splodge appearing as you've left your pen on the paper, but I've found with acetate that it flows really nicely.

[00:26:46.10] Interviewer: I've found that and there's a real delicacy to drawing on acetate

[00:26:49.08] Sally Booth: Yes. Well you have to err...yes, a mixture. It's a hard one to master, to get delicacy, because the permanent pens are not delicate in themselves.

[00:26:59.14] Interviewer: There's not really a line variation

[00:27:01.00] Sally Booth: Yes, there's a medium, bold or fine, or super-fine at best, you know, so there's not much choice there. These are drawings that I did on the bus in Liverpool, when I was on residency. Same sort of idea. So I'd go out drawing and then I'd come back on the bus and so that I was doing these in acetate and they kind of make a layering idea. They are done individually but can be seen together.

[00:27:53.21] Interviewer: Yes. Similar to the layers that you would get in compositing in animation or old...

[00:27:58.10] Sally Booth: Yes, like the cells

[00:28:03.09] Interviewer: Yes, an old rostrum camera

[00:28:03.24] Sally Booth: Old fashioned animation, where you're drawing on the cells

[00:28:07.08] Interviewer: Yes. And quite often if I'm talking to students about visual effects I will talk about transparent layers, one on top of the other.

[00:28:19.04] Sally Booth: So, I've done quite a lot of drawings, looking at this idea of layers and transparency.

[00:28:36.14] Interviewer:  I love the observations and just how fluid the lines are it reminds me a bit of Shirley Hughes, just some touches here and there. All those backs of head in perspective.

[00:28:50.11] Sally Booth: Again they're kind of anonymous.

[00:29:01.23] Interviewer: Wow it's quite something when you see them layered together. That must have been thirty layers or something.

[00:29:06.10] Sally Booth: Yes, I guess so. I was there for three months, so just did whatever, one a day or something. So, I've done quite a lot of drawing with the idea of transparency. I'll explain that with these (arranging lightboxes), I'm just going to turn the lights off so you can see them better.

[00:29:50.15] Sally Booth: This is erm...so I did a project quite some time ago which was the first time I've ever really done anything explicit about my vision. I think usually people don't talk about their vision, just sort of get on with your work and you find a way of doing it. Sitting closer or finding a good pair of binoculars (laughing) you know, just there are ways of making things a bit easier. But I wanted to do something that (turns on lightbox)...I was partially sighted from birth although nobody would have said it was that at the time. And I didn't see it as that at the time. But then when I was twenty-five, twenty-six I got a cateract in, what was my good eye at the time. So I was gradually losing my vision in that eye and also what I didn't realise was that I was losing the colours one by one.

[00:31:31.20] Interviewer: Wow. So which colour went first?

[00:31:33.17] Sally Booth: Violet. So when I was cooking my dinner I realised that I couldn't see the gas. I could see the yellow flecks but not the purple, it was invisible. Obviously, I knew it was there and that was never something that was discussed at the hospital or anything, they're just interested in how far you can...how many letters you can see on the board.

[00:32:05.16] Interviewer: That acuity?

[00:32:05.16] Sally Booth: Yes. But for me sight is not about getting from A to B or..yes, it was difficult not being able to see the road sign at the end of my road, you know obviously, but they're functional things. But for me it was a sensory thing, so it was violets, blues, greens through to yellows and reds at the end. So I could see yellows and reds and then finally that went and it was just a grey static. So, I made some work kind of based on that, quite some years afterwards, the sort of experience of that. It was like looking through a dirty window or looking through fog, looking through a veil.

[00:33:07.29] Interviewer: So this was the good eye with the cateract?

[00:33:07.29] Sally Booth: Yes. And then it became not my good eye. So, I've always painted still life, so I thought I like to try and make something about that experience, using still life. And in my window I've always had these glass bottles that were all different colours because the light comes through them really beautifully and I had a blue blind and I noticed that if I had the blind down, you could see different effects through...you could still see the bottles through the blind but they were obscured. They were more foggy or they were degraded and I thought this is quite like what happened to me! It's quite like looking through a screen and things being changed and more fuzzy. Or more silhouetty. So I just took pictures, lots and lots of pictures, just snaps really and they were on a film and I chose the ones that seemed to more evoke what I felt was more to the type of situations of my vision. So the bottles have got the violets and the colours that I was talking about. And because I've enlarged them, I used to like old slides. You know the luminosity of them like stained glass windows. Often I preferred them than my real work, they are sometimes more jewel like than the reproductions, than your actual work. And then when you...a bit like projection now, digitally, you know if you project, you can project huge and it really changes the scale that you see something, it really changes it. I made them on film and I just enlarged them so that the grain of the blind, evoked this static quality that I was seeing. So some of them are about the fuzziness of losing clarity and then others about looking into the light and seeing people or things as silhouettes. And also about detail disappearing so things becoming just shapes, rather than what's in the shape. Things becoming more abstracted as well.

[00:36:02.16] Interviewer: So these are light boxes?

[00:36:02.16] Sally Booth: Yes.

[00:36:02.16] Interviewer: They're really stunning. So when you did these, did anybody help with the cateract?

[00:36:07.21] Sally Booth: I had surgery, yes. But it was always going to be a very complicated surgery because of the anatomy of my eye. So it wasn't...I had to have it done but it was only after that, that I went down the road of...you know, once you can no longer read your post...you know, you've moved into a different area. Before it had been an invisible disability that you could find a way round. But it came a point where I had to say no. I need help with all my reading, I need to arrange my job that I could do, if I am going to make art I need to change art. So, everything changed as a result.

[00:37:11.04] Interviewer: And did the colour ever come back?

[00:37:12.05] Sally Booth: Well, some colour came back. The first time you have a cateract operation it's amazing, it's a bit like being on acid (laughter), well if you knew what that's like? Not that I do. But it the colours were so clean and bright. Almost painful, but that dissipates after time. So now, I wouldn't say I see true colour now, out of that eye. I can see a little bit but not much. So I am using the other one as my colour....I see colour totally differently out of each eye. And I see distance totally differently out of each eye. And one eye's got bits missing and the other eye's got other bits missing, so it's a constant...it's as much to do with the brain working out what you can see and what that actually is. So they're not stereoscopic at all. I've always seen quite shallow space, I think, which in a way makes it quite natural to do 2D drawing and painting, because you see things quite flat anyway because everthing is quite flatenned. So, I was hopeless at sculpture, I couldn't understand it. I couldn't understand even needlework....you know like making things from 2D. I didn't understand how these shapes made a jacket (laughter) I just couldn't understand it. I only see things flat, or shallow in space. So, in a way, that's already done for you, isn't it? If you're doing drawing.

[00:39:34.07] Interviewer: Yes. I think these are gorgeous. The blind, where you've scaled it up looks like white noise.

[00:39:38.09] Sally Booth: Yes, it is exactly. Yes, because that's exactly what it looked like..

[00:39:44.18] Interviewer: Like an old TV if it goes out of tune?

[00:39:44.02] Sally Booth: Yes, yes. And it was also....people have this idea that blindness is 'black' and it just, maybe for a very few people.

[00:39:57.24] Interviewer: Yes, you were saying something like maybe four percent?

[00:39:59.02] Sally Booth: Only four percent of people who are sight impaired, can't see anything at all. So I was seeing a grey. It was an opaque, grey fog, nothing. Literally no light was getting through. But it had this kind of texture

[00:40:25.05] Interviewer: Yes, that pattern I can recognise from an old TV

[00:40:30.09] Sally Booth: Yes, exactly. That's exactly what it felt like

[00:40:36.10] Interviewer: I used to have dreams when I was young, and I would hear the sound of white noise and see it in the dream.

[00:40:44.07] Sally Booth: Oh that's interesting. Because since I was about four I had visual dreams of this static. And I always used to find them really disturbing

[00:40:53.16] Interviewer: Yes, me too

[00:40:55.14] Sally Booth: And I couldn't really explain it to my parents, that I found it fearful

[00:41:01.00] Interviewer: Yes, me too

[00:41:02.23] Sally Booth: And, erm...I don't think it's a premonition or anything, but I always was...it was something about vision that used to make me feel fearful. This sort of black and white texture.

[00:41:19.06] Interviewer: Absolutely. It's exactly what you've got there. And that's what I saw, but it was moving

[00:41:18.12] Sally Booth: Yes.

[00:41:23.19] Interviewer: And the kind of (hissing) noise that went with it and it was very claustrophobic and I couldn't wait to get out of that dream

[00:41:30.02] Sally Booth: I've had it ocassionally even now, when you get out of bed in the night. And I think maybe there' isn't enough oxygen getting to the brain, I don't know what the reason is, but I sometimes just see it in the floor, when I come to the bathroom, this black and white thingamy again and I think 'ugh', so maybe actually it's physiological type of thing that we don't understand, but erm, yes I always found it disturbing. So to actually have it happen to me in real life later, was....I mean I was pleased it wasn't black (laughter) I don't know why, so it wasn't 'nothing' but it was still quite disturbing.

[00:42:19.25] Interviewer: How you describe it is exactly how I felt in the dream and I didn't really talk about it to anybody at the time. I think I might have mentioned it since I've been an adult, but certainly didn't mention it to parents. I wouldn't have know what to articulate aged five anyway

[00:42:34.27] Sally Booth: No, it's hard to explain isn't it. I thought I was the only person who had that!

[00:42:39.02] Interviewer: Nope! Welcome! (laughter) I had it too and that's what I can see in that picture, these light boxes and the colours and also the traces of the light in the bottles. Incredible and quite ethereal.

[00:42:57.12] Sally Booth: Because, also those colours are very beautiful, you know glass. They're almost pure colour, coloured glass...light coming through coloured glass.

[00:43:12.09] Interviewer: Absolutely and that's one of my favourite things, back-lit glass or flowers or dew drops. All of those things and just how you described an old colour transparency of a slide as a jewel, that's it. And it's the same to me, the jewel colours that you got there and in the tube drawings, and these ones, the Glasgow ones, to me it's that jewel element. And yes, sunlight, I mean a lot of my work has this. And this circular...most of my design work, whatever it's been 3D, buildings, set design, there will usually be a circle in there, a sphere or something and some kind of light, transparency, glass, back-lit. And I only became aware of that last year really, beginning to see that I'm really drawn to that.

[00:44:11.10] Sally Booth: So for me, I'm interested...obviously, I'm obsessed with light for obvious reasons err...because it's not something I can take for granted. You know, everyday I get up I've got to decide whether or not I'm going to wear sunglasses or not. How are the eyes today? And that sort of thing. It's not an involantry thing like it is for most people 'seeing', it's something that I'm aware of all the time. So, walking down a street I will see quite well and then if I turn right and I'm into the sun then I can't see anything. And it's just that ninety degree turn and the light conditions have completely changed. So I'm aware of it all the time and yet I've always drawn in line, so I've got this thing about light and line (laughter and turns off light boxes).

[00:45:31.10] Interviewer: Interesting, similar themes that we're both really interested in.

[00:45:37.03] Sally Booth: So this idea of drawing through a screen, or seeing through a screen or film, so I starting drawing using voile

[00:46:00.10] Interviewer: Oh yes

[00:46:00.29] Sally Booth: Which is a semi-transparent...you've probably come across it in your theatre

[00:46:04.24] Interviewer: I have

[00:46:07.02] Sally Booth: Used a lot in the theatre. So, I've been using voile and stretching it like a canvas. Because that softens everything that it's infront of, so it kind of makes it more difficult to see. I've been building these drawing installations that I'm inside. Drawing outside. And they're site spefiic. I've done one in Hastings, this one's outside the National Theatre, Paine (?) Gallery, Trafalgar Square. So, I've either done them as participative working with families and things or I've done my own work. So the one I've got here, I worked with a sculptor called Tim, who's nextdoor studio to me. And he built them for me, so this one echoes the brutalist architecture of the National Theatre, that one you can see a bit better where we were. Erm...and they were...so it's cut so it makes it panoramic

[00:47:24.07] Interviewer: Like 360?

[00:47:27.28] Sally Booth: 360 degrees. So, I was drawing on the inside looking out, so depending on the time of day I was having to move around because, sometimes the sun's streaming in and you can't see a thing, so you have to go the other side.

[00:47:44.11] Interviewer:  So will you be almost tracing what you can see?

[00:47:47.11] Sally Booth: Yes, it's a type of tracing. But you have to keep your head really still because it's site-size, not life-size, so it's thing about...it's this weird thing about when you see the moon and it's really big and then when you get closer it's gone small...why would it get small if you were closer? (laughter) that thing like you'll see a view from inside this structure and you move closer to draw it and it's gone smaller. So you have to keep your head really really still and draw from a certain distance.

[00:48:31.11] Interviewer: So you can keep the scale the same?

[00:48:31.11] Sally Booth: Yes, yes. Err...so for that one I did some ones that took a bit longer, to prepare for it and the rest of them I did live over a day. That was another one that we did at Brighton Pavillion Gardens, so each place reflects the architecture of where we were.

[00:48:59.11] Interviewer: Wow, it's so theatrical

[00:49:04.26] Sally Booth: They're performative in a way, yes. Because you are literally in a bubble

[00:49:08.02] Interviewer: So thinking about what we were talking about earlier and anonymity on the tube, where you've got this I can see the general public almost just standing on the other side of the gauze. Do they talk to you?

[00:49:21.02] Sally Booth: Yes. They can come in aswell, there is a door. I always make them sort of accessible, so there's an open door way so they can come in and talk or just stare (laughter) or whatever they want to do. So, err...yes, that does have a performative element because you are part of the object, in a way. Whereas, on a tube I'm not performative, I'm trying to be as discreet as possible, but that could be you know...

[00:50:00.11] Interviewer: Yes. Wow, they're absolutely gorgeous.

[00:50:08.19] Sally Booth: So there's this 360 theme, although we're talking about things being flat, but I do like the idea of the 360 things sort of doing bit by bit, so you actually go all the way round

[00:50:32.02] Interviewer: Panoramic.

(SALLY BOOTH SETS OUT HER CONCERTINA SKETCH BOOK)

[00:50:38.10] Interviewer: Oh, so this is your concertina style sketch book?

[00:50:36.17] Sally Booth: Yes, I'll show you a long one. This one's a bit earlier. This is one of the first panoramic ones that I did in Japan. So these are calligraphy books that captures your writing, but they're really nice to draw on. I went to Kyoto and I drew the tea houses and zen gardens. It's autumn, and I started off with the tea bushes in the middle and a tea-house and I tried to go all the way round. So I did a little bit every day. So I did the ink first. This is Sumi ink which is a nice Japanese black, very lovely black

[00:51:51.13] Interviewer: And do you use like nib? A nibbed pen?

[00:51:53.15] Sally Booth: Yes or a brush. Yes, that one's got a nib I think. So that's the view from the tea-house which is always very art directed.

[00:52:08.02] Interviewer: Yes, yes

[00:52:08.02] Sally Booth: And then this is of the autumn

[00:52:10.15] Interviewer: Wow, look at the colours! It's the same jewel

[00:52:14.27] Sally Booth: So it's changed. So it sort of gets more and more abstract, florid and abundant (FOLDING OUT CONCERTINA BOOK). So that would take you all around. So although I'm working flat I do like this idea of space. And yet with virtual-reality things I find them difficult. That thing where you're going.... they always do this thing where you're going through, becuase they can

[00:53:09.29] Interviewer: Yes, they kind of fly the camera

[00:53:12.00] Sally Booth: And it makes me feel sick

[00:53:15.25] Interviewer: Yes, you can get motion sickness

[00:53:17.11] Sally Booth: (laughter) That is not how I see things as planes or...and going into the distance is flattened out a little

for me. So I find it difficult to connect with that. And even the going round...

[00:53:38.12] Interviewer: The 360?

[00:53:42.07] Sally Booth: The 360, I just don't....mostly because the drawings just really bad (laughter) and I think 'don't believe it!' like CGI 'don't believe it' (laughter) not interested because I don't believe it! So even there was one of the Titanic and people getting in the Titanic and I don't know if you've seen that one? The Titanic is sinking and you are in a life boat and watching the Titanic and with these other people who are being rescued and they're not screaming enough! (laughter)

[00:54:30.12] Interviewer: So do you see the huge scale of the Titanic?

[00:54:32.01] Sally Booth: You do. But it's so...yeah, and? So that's the difficulty I have. Maybe the artwork isn't good enough yet. I think because I don't see as 3D as other people, like I can't see, if I look though binoculars I just have to use one eye. They don't work together. So, maybe I'm really missing something? The same as seeing a 3D film, it doesn't do anything for me. It just makes me feel sick. So, there's a physiological, you know there's a medical thing there I guess, but also it's disengaging...that bit of it isn't engaging. I'm more interested in the potential of making a drawing look 3D.

[00:55:38.05] Interviewer: yes

[00:55:40.05] Sally Booth: You know. Like did you see the Gormley exhibition.

[00:55:40.21] Interviewer: I have seen some, I haven't seen any recent ones.

[00:55:45.12] Sally Booth: The one he had at the Royal Academy, this year, there was one room which was all wire and it took up the whole room, the sculpture, and you could step into it. So, it was like being inside a scribble drawing, like being inside a drawing. And I found that really exciting. That although it was a sculpture, for me, I related to it like being in a line drawing.

[00:56:22.25] Interviewer:  Yes. I had a similar experience last year using tilt-brush, which is essentially a paint pallette in a virtual-reality environment. So you're essentially stood in a big dome that's dark. And in one hand you can see a paint pallette and in the other hand you've got a device that can pick the colour and the pen. And I drew just some scribble lines of figure drawings that I've done forever. And what was so surprising was I could walk round them. So it was exactly that thing...being in my own drawing. I mean it really did blow my mind.

[00:56:59.23] Sally Booth: Yes. The other thing with VR where I'd...that other thing where sometimes with VR you've got these pretend hands, haven't you? That are out here that are supposed to help you navigate around, or find something you have to click on to go round. But I'm more interested in that being the drawing hand.

[00:57:23.00] Interviewer: Yes

[00:57:24.13] Sally Booth: That that's the hand that draws. You know, so when you're drawing it's hand to eye to brain, hand to eye to brain subject. This sort of....that relationship isn't it. That the actual movement of the hand, I think that's interesting. I'm not so...so these pretend hands that were on the VR, I wasn't quite so interested in having to find something written on a menu to click, I thought that could be the bit that you draw with.

[00:58:05.19] Interviewer: Yes, and that's what this particular software 'tilt brush', it was called. I mean, I could draw as I actually draw in real life, only I was drawing in light and fire and I could walk underneath it and round. I mean it was literally just a scribble and then you save it as a little film, or you can save it in the actual environment and somebody else can go in and be in your drawing.

[00:58:30.25] Sally Booth: And that can be seen in VR or flat, can it?

[00:58:33.19] Interviewer: yes

[00:58:28.21] Sally Booth: sounds interesting

[00:58:36.15] Interviewer: So what I was seeing through the visor and I was in the VR world, my supervisor was watching it on a monitor, so she was looking at a flat screen. And I was able to save that as a little movie and put that on another monitor or a blog, or whatever. So people could see the 2D flat version, or put the visor on and go into the actual drawing. I've never been inside my own drawing before.

[00:59:03.18] Sally Booth: That excites me. To do something like that

[00:59:06.16] Interviewer: ok

[00:59:08.07] Sally Booth: I'd be interested in trying something like that out.

[00:59:08.17] Interviewer: Presumably, if you can draw in light, that would be more visible. I mean it's against a dark background

[00:59:18.17] Sally Booth: Yes it has to be against something, yes there has to be contrast really, in the same way. And also, like I've found drawing on an ipad, so far, I mean I haven't had expensive packages or anything, I find it was a bit sterile erm...I like the physicality of the paper and the ink. So to draw...it would need to be...you know like these sort of brush pens, they've got something about them

[00:59:54.28] Interviewer: Yes, a texture to them

[00:59:55.06] Sally Booth: Yes, so there's something...to try to get something that still feels physical that is in a VR world. That's something I'd be interested in finding something that suits, you know

[01:00:11.13] Interviewer: yes. There was one brush that I selected and it came out almost like toothpaste and I just did a cupcake in it.

[01:00:23.01] Sally Booth: Yes. So like these....I mean I go to Cornwall a lot, so these are...just very red earth in Cornwall and down where I go it's all iron oxide. But, so there's something about the physicalness about doing the drawing outside, in the place where you're at and trying to get something down quickly. We talked about the jeopardy of ink didn't we? But also it has mistakes. So this is scrap pile in Cornwall, right on the coast and it's Geevor Tin mine, which is now a museum. And so they've just dumped all their iron and bits of old machinery in this heap, outside. All getting rusty and the earth was all red rust anyway. So I sat in the middle of this scrap pile and sort of drew the whole thing. It took me three days and I had to run in and out when it started raining and it was in pen, so I had to 'oh gosh' (laughter) it was, oh it was so nerve wracking. So they're just sort of outlines of buildings and things and these strange machines, that I didn't know what they were for, they were just like abstract shapes all in a heap. And then I met this chap that works there and he said 'oh that's a thickening cone' or 'that's a mucker bucket' and 'those are floatation cells', so they all have beautiful names, these things. But he also told me what they were for, so I said 'I've got to take you for a cup of tea' (laughter), so I did my drawing and I took him for a cup of tea (laughter) and I said 'right what's that building for? what's that? what's that?' so he helped me name them. So this is in brown ink, but you get the splodges that are accidental, they're somehow part of the thing.

[01:03:26.18] Interviewer: yes

[01:03:28.05] Sally Booth: Bits of machinery like rigs, so again that's made a panorama up to the head gear at Geevor, which is no longer working. So it's sort of like an abstract panorama really. The ink is what I like working with.

[01:03:58.25] Interviewer: wonderful. Wow, a lot of common themes

[01:04:03.02] Sally Booth: There are.

[01:04:08.11] Interviewer: Your things and also the things I've done too. The style

[01:04:17.03] Sally Booth: These are balsa wood and kind of filmic. They're from walks on the docs in winter and cold like this. So I found this balsa wood in a bargain bin in an artshop and I thought, that'll be fantastic for landscape. Because you can just take a bundle of it in a rubber band and it wouldn't blow away and it was a lovely kind of buff colour and it wasn't too bright and also it's got this lovely tooth, so when you draw on it there's something...

[01:05:03.14] Interviewer: yes, it's because it's so soft, that's what I found, drawing with pen on it, the pen will sink into it.

[01:05:09.02] Sally Booth: yes, so I really enjoy working using that material on those. So, these are just buildings on the docks, quite similar in a way. Strange structures. These are Napoleonic kind of gateways, Napoleonic wars

[01:05:26.03] Interviewer: Clarence Dry Docks

[01:05:29.06] Sally Booth: Yes, lots of cranes and old cafes that have been closed for ages, sort of chimneys that you don't know what they would've been for and then you get...one thing I love about Liverpool is that you get these vistas, that you get there aswell. Being aware of the sky all the time and space. Which you get, you get wide streets there and lots of space.

[01:06:09.14] Interviewer: Wonderful. That's tons of stuff.

[01:06:11.05] Sally Booth: Is that enough information?

[01:06:12.12] Interviewer: Oh that's just brilliant

[01:06:12.29] Sally Booth: I'll put the fire on now! (laughter)       

Continued….

Interview-transcription – R07-0005

[00:00:01.12] Sally Booth: (looking a photographs of Sally's Liverpool studio and window shadows). Then come back on the bus and do the acetate ones. And then I'd come back in the evening and open the studio door and there'd be this reflection happening. You know, and I thought 'ooh, I'll start taking photos of these' this is interesting because it would be different every day and I was there from Februrary and I realised that it was like a sundial going round and I was going to be there three months. It's like going to the cinema (laughter) you didn't know what it was going to do everyday, so they were different. It's all sort of going round. I made some of those into light boxes as well. That's a few in the studio. So I was doing these acetate drawings

[00:00:55.29] Interviewer: Beautiful. I love it with the map pin through it! Stunning. We have lovely sunlight in our home. It's south facing, over-looking the river, so the back of the house is just flooded with sunlight, but just seeing the low sun in winter. I didn't realise as well, it was only when I was on the plane coming over, just then and I think we were over Manchester and I thought 'the sun's quite high in the sky' and it struck me and I realised being five hundred miles north, the sun's not coming up above the horizon as high. And so you've got this blinding sunlight, almost at eve-level, every day, straight in the back of the house, or when you're driving.

[00:01:45.01] Sally Booth:Yes, it's very different where you live, isn't it.

[00:01:49.25] Interviewer: Yes, but just saying to my husband, oh this will be fascintating whilst we're here, how the sun changes around the house.

[00:01:59.14] Sally Booth:Yes. Is that ok there? (places a cup of tea)

[00:02:04.26] Interviewer: Perfect. Lovely, thank you very much. Oh' that's Hollyrood, the Scottish Parliament.

[00:02:10.20] Sally Booth: It is, yes. I had a show there.

[00:02:12.16] Interviewer: Did you?

[00:02:14.02] Sally Booth: Yes. We did...this is the project that I did with the poet and we went to Shetland and Cornwall. It Shetland we met fish processors and knitters and people from the fishing industry and then Cornwall we met the mining and tin mining industry. We had an exhibition and called it People, Places and Industry, so we had a touring exhibition. So, I did the artwork and Evelyn did the poetry. So these kind of things are from there.

[00:03:03.18] Interviewer: These are the panoramic landscapes

[00:03:07.00] Sally Booth: Panoramic landscapes of Geevor and then that line drawing is inside the locker room.

[00:03:15.12] Interviewer: Oh yes

[00:03:15.12] Sally Booth: But, yes, so we had a show at the Scottish Parliament, the place where the big stairs are, we had a show and a performance there and then we had one in Shetland museum and also one at the Tate Modern.

[00:03:45.03] Interviewer: So when was that?

[00:03:47.19] Sally Booth: Well, we went to Shetland in 2012, Cornwall in 2013 and we went back to make work again. So the shows were from 2014 to 2105 onwards. You can have those (brochures) I'll give you one of those.

[00:04:20.24] Interviewer: Oh thank you

[00:04:27.00] Sally Booth: Yes, so I've got cups from where I've done my exhibitions. I don't know where my tin mine one's gone.

[00:05:05.22] Interviewer: Thanks for your time Sally.