MA Week 20 - reflection on term 2

I've learnt a lot this term. I've carried on with my investigations into heritage and identity. I set myself some objectives in mid-January - here's how I got on: 

Learn more about printmaking

I undertook a lot of action research here.  I experimented with lino cutting, solar plate printing and drypoint etching. The solar plate printing was a totally new technique for me and I got reasonable results . See my Week 15 post. I now have this as a technique in my "toolkit" for future use. The Lino printing didn't yield such good results but this may have been due to the inks I was using. By far my favourite was the drypoint etching. I produced a plate based on my "generative wandering" (see below) and the combination of subject matter and technique really gelled with me. I  like the quality and blackness of lines I can achieve. See my Week 20 post.

Learn more about Laser cutting

Again a good deal of action research. I've used the laser cutter throughout the module. I have concentrated on cutting images of my own face (in keeping with pursuing my investigations into identity) and have developed a much deeper understanding of how to prepare the image and what the laser can and can't do. This is another very versatile technique for my "toolkit". See for example my Taking Stock post. 

 

Generate as many ideas as possible

Use of the laser cutter and print facility, along with the insights gained in the generative wandering,  have generated myriad ideas. I have been able to develop some of them, but I've noted all of them in my creative journal. So they can form a repository for starting points for the next module. 

Do something a bit scary re personal development

I rose to the three-minute-presentation challenge of the University of Leeds's "Heritage Show + Tell" (see https://heritageshowtell.wordpress.com ). I talked about my approach to research by creative practice. See my Week 20 post with more details of how it went. 

Dr.  Tina Richardson, psychogeographer, has offered me the opportunity to write about my generative  wandering in a guest blog post on her website, http://particulations.blogspot.co.uk, so I will definitely be taking her up on that.

Research artists

I wrote a reflection on the exhibition catalogue for "Cloth & Memory" (see my Week 18 post) which encompassed five artists. I haven't undertaken any other formal artist research, but I have begun to follow more artists on Twitter (and some have begun to follow me, which is gratifying). Whilst this is not formal research, it's a really good way to get instant inspiration each day as other people tweet their work in progress or pictures of road markings or brutalist buildings or beautiful landscapes. Me on Twitter : @1962AB. 

Draw for 15 minutes a day at least 3 times a week

I had intended to draw with a pencil in a book but in fact I only did a little of that. I found myself drawing lines with the laser cutter and with etching tools. Overall it probably amounted to 45 minutes a week and more... Honestly!

Do the blog slog every Monday

Through setting this objective I learnt to write more concise blog posts. It didn't always happen on a Monday, but unless there was anything particular to say - like when I read Harrison's book (see my Week 16 post) - this worked much better. I found the blog worked as a kind of overall journal of what I was doing, and allowed me to document and reflect on progress, whereas the creative journal has allowed a much deeper reflection on individual visual outcomes.  

Time management

I have had my usual plans (3 versions) and had to do a lot of juggling about when I went down with flu in mid-February. These has helped me prioritise creative pieces to take forward and ideas that can be documented and "parked" for possible future use.  

 

Overall progress

I continued to work under my "heritage" and "identity" theoretical perspectives and this worked well. Throughout, I have kept a reflective perspective on the work I'm producing and - equally importantly - how I'm progressing and what I'm learning. I've documented mistakes and experiments and solutions, and also when I've chosen to pause an investigation because it is not yielding the results I'm looking for. The latter is important in making judgements about how to progress, both creatively and from the project management viewpoint.

Undoubtedly the breakthrough during this module was reading Harrison's fine book, "Hertiage : Critical Approaches", and undertaking the generative wandering to Armley, both of which happened in the same week. I had been trying to find some underpinning theory whilst remaining true to my beliefs that I was working on identity and heritage narratives arising from my own lived experience. Harrison's book vindicated my approach.  

The combination of the two gave me confidence in applying a theoretical perspective and a research method (the wandering) directly to my work and I went on to produce four acrylics-based pieces which responded directly to the colours and shapes I encountered. I also used laser cutting to help prepare the corrugated cardboard in two of the pieces as an experiment in depicting myself as an integral part of my work and as my identity in the heritage of Leeds. Within these pieces, I worked quite freely, in an unfettered and almost automatic way. This was quite a departure for me as I would usually do a good deal of testing even for a small piece. I enjoyed this freedom and need to allow that to continue.  

There is more to explore from the wandering, such as temporality, decay, boundaries and so on. I am hoping these themes will continue into the next module. At this point, I feel my theoretical perspectives and techniques are really starting to come together. My confidence in my practice - and in myself - is growing as I take these steps in my professional development. I am feeling much more comfortable with my theoretical perspectives of heritage and identity. I still enjoy the mixed media approach to practice and I imagine I will continue to pursue this in the next module. Overall I think it has been a successful term and it should stand me in good stead for the next module, which embeds a closer relationship between theory and practice.

 

 

 

MA Week 20 - reflection on the week

Lots of exciting making this week!

I finished my cardboard pieces. I really liked the colours and textures that emerged. The collaged  laser cut pieces gave the idea of my presence in my creative work. The collaged photos gave a kind of industrial, yesteryear black and white-ness that appealed to me.  The mixed media worked well; the compressed charcoal toned down the acrylic colours and gave a kind of mucky, industrial feel, which was just what I was thinking. I would like to work more with textured grounds and also perhaps with a series of pieces.

Armley 2

 

I also laser cut lots of heads and worked them up into an image of increasing intensity. This was an it that had its roots in something that someone mentioned at the crit. It is a depiction of the increasing intensity of this term on the MA!

Stress levels increase in proportion to proximity to deadline

 

I also spent a day working on my etching plate. It's a simple drawing, but the black etching ink brings out the industrial quality of the subject matter and the inherent dirt. I worked on differential inking of the plate and this gave convincing results. I really liked working with the plate and this is something I would like to do more of.

Thinking about inking

 

Other than that I am up against it for the module deadline and I am on micro-management. The overall plan is booted out in favour of detailed lists that must be achieved for delivery. Time is very tight, so I'd better stop blogging and go get on with my creative journal!

MA Week 20 - Academic Writing

Academic Writing  -  4th March 2016 

 

 

Some theory and some practical tips surrounding academic writing in this useful session. 

Karen talked about academic writing as an integral part of research by practice, referring to it as a "thinking tool" and a "reflective tool". There is a tendency amongst students of visual art to see writing as an add-on, and as I've mentioned I often find it a stress as I juggle and struggle to get visual work finished. However, Karen did say you have to get it into its place, and by doing shorter and more focused blog posts, I think I'm starting to get the hang of that. That said, once I get into something that really interests me, I can spend hours reading - even skimming - and thinking and writing a reflection. I suppose this is the use of writing as the "tools" that Karen referred to. It seems logical that a reflection on a piece of visual work would go hand-in-hand with creating that work. This is fine, as long as I acknowledge the time that needs to be allocated to it. 

Academic writing needs to reference knowledge, discourses, practices etc other than your own, but it must acknowledge that I am the author, with my own viewpoint, which hopefully will be well-argued and backed up by references. You need to consider what you will write and how you will write it before you start out. Fair comment. To this end, Karen suggested thinking of a title for a piece of longer work then unpicking that to identify different themes. Each theme can then have its own "research folder" of whatever kind and this can help reduce the confusion, although we agreed you "have to have the confusion before the clarity" and this applies to both visual and written work.  

Karen also provided some "grids" for building up bibliographies. One could be in each of the above research folders, along with a list of quotes. A literature review is also useful - a few sentences about each book you’ve identified and how it will be helpful. A book can be reviewed for this by reading the back cover and contents and having a skim through. For my own part, I did try using grids before but put the quotes in them, not just book details, so they got unwieldy more or less immediately. I went back to writing by hand.  I am pretty strict with myself about writing down book references and page numbers when making notes and I think this works OK for me on the scale I'm currently working.  

Any written piece needs to have boundaries. Reading that you’ve done that goes wider than this can be summed up in a few sentences so the reader can understand the writer has a breadth of knowledge. Also think about the reader. What information do they need in order to understand the context? A further consideration is whether to write in the first person or third person. I don't fully understand this debate ( it wasn't possible to go into it in detail) so I think I will need to ask or find out more about it later on. 

Karen also provided some further info about quoting, paraphrasing, referencing etc. This will be of use. It was really good to get some concrete practical support material to help with writing, although I don’t feel that I’ve had too many problems with it to date, other than the time factor.

MA Week 20 - "It had gone beyond what I could explain"

Reflection on taught session, Friday 4th March 2016

Creative Practitioner Presentation - Sheila Gaffney

 

 

Unfortunately I was only able to attend the first half of Sheila's talk, which was a shame, as I think it was one of the more interesting ones. Sheila is head of Fine Art and is a sculptor. She described sculpture as a "cultural practice for thinking about the world", although why that would just apply to sculpture and not to other visual arts, I don't know.

One of Sheila's first works involved turning a room into an immersive space and using the furniture as part of the work; take the space to the work, and the work to the space. This involved painting bodies onto the tables and adding waxed strings over them, along with leaves, cast first in wax and then in bronze. I liked the layering and the complexity of this. It reminded me somehow, vaguely, of Helen Chadwick. But I liked Sheila's quote even more; "I could not explain the work. It had gone beyond what I could explain". The subsequent session, that afternoon, was on academic writing alongside this one, and reflecting on the two sessions together, I think her statement is ironic. I can't disagree with it and I felt really pleased to hear someone actually prioritising the visual statement over the need for a written statement.

Sheila had made a lot of work in wax, not least for practical reasons; she could cast wax herself without needing specialist help. She was clear that you should work in a way that works for you. However, wax also represents vulnerability for her, and she made a community based piece of many hands that was a commission for the University of Bradford. For this piece, she generated  radio and newspaper coverage to reach out to the public to ask them to lend a hand in all ways; to have their hands cast, to cast the wax hands, to follow the process. Although she said she was inspired by Ann Hamilton, her talk showed her to be very much ploughing her own furrow. She spoke about practice for your own purpose and also about the female voice being left out of the history of sculpture, and of her desire to produce oddly female gendered pieces to start to repair this.

Throughout her talk I had a feeling of her single-mindedness but mixed with deep thinking. I liked the idea of daring to have your practice on your own terms and on working with materials you can manage, without having to answer to other people's opinions. It was empowering to hear thoughts like that being articulated by a senior member of Staff at an at school.

MA Week 20 - Heritage Show + Tell Presentation

Heritage Show + Tell Presentation - 1st March 2016 

Well, how DID I get here?

My submission for the University of Leeds's "Heritage Show + Tell" was accepted and I was pleased to be able to present my research and practice to their audience. The Heritage Show + Tell exists to showcase aspects of heritage in Yorkshire, particularly research, learning and outreach. The idea is that you talk for three minutes with three slides. There are 5 or 6 speakers and afterwards everyone mingles and chats over wine and twiglets (yes, really). 

I spoke on the theme "How did I get here? Using heritage for creative practice". I explained the three strands of research by creative practice: 

• Research through practice - producing visual outcomes. I mentioned my twin narratives of identity and industry and showed visual pieces relating to these. 
• Research into practice - articulating the theory that underpins your practice. Here I mentioned Harrison's theory that heritage is based on people, places and objects, and how I have these three things: myself, my foremothers and forefathers; my place in Leeds and Yorkshire; and my manufactured industrial objects. Therefore my practice is underpinned by a theoretical perspective of heritage.  
• Research for practice - I showed images of my generative wandering to Armley and talked through these. I went past my birthplace, "found" a mill which brought into play textile heritage, saw used and derelict factories, photographed the Armley gasometer and spent time considering the railway which brought power and prosperity to Leeds.

Third slide

On my third slide, I showed some of my responses to the wandering and invited people to chat to me afterwards.

 

I said most of what I wanted to say, but was hit by a technical hitch partway through the second slide. The animation of my 5 images started ok and 3 appeared, but the other 2 didn't. A bit of clicking backwards  and forwards brought up the full 5 images, but a similar problem beset the final slide. This threw me although I tried not to let it show. I essence I had broken my cardinal rule; never present without first running through the slides on the kit you're going to present on. I just hadn't been able to do that.  The Show + Tell was talking place in a new venue and the organisers were having problems even getting the presentations onto the kit. It was a "smart screen" so the control was through the "projector screen" on which the presentation was running, so there wasn't even a PC to get to, to take the animation off. A lesson learned - don't put animation into slides unless you know the venue you'll be presenting at!

The audience for this particular evening was a bit different to previous audiences. There were not so many students - there are often a lot of MA students from the University of Leeds - and more members of the public. I had a good chat afterwards with Elaine Evans, another of the presenters, who teaches Fashion at the University of Leeds. We were talking about the longevity of clothes from the 1960s and 1970s and the throwaway culture of today. I also talked to another lady from Leeds City Council who likes trains and architecture and she showed me some fab pictures of Budapest bus station that she'd taken recently - brutalism and yellow buses! She also said she thought my image would weave up into a nice teatowel. That gave us all a laugh.

This was a good experience for me. It moved me away from my work persona and placed me as an art student. Another presenter kindly videoed me on my phone and I have reflected on the event. It was a first step back on the way to public speaking and as such I think it was positive. I can learn not to put animation into my slides (which is something I always do, to try to keep audience interest). I would like to be able to present a poster or short paper next, so I need to keep any eye out for opportunities to do this. I really enjoy the Show + Tell. It's always a really interesting and entertaining night and I was glad to give something back to it.