MA Term 2 - Taking Stock (2)

So where now?

I make no apologies for trying out new techniques at this stage in the MA. It is a delight and a privilege to be able to do so. What I do need to do is pull these together towards the end of this module, identify which one(s) I would like to continue with, and understand how I will take this forward into the next module, where the work will need to become more directed and finalised.

Unplanning?

 

After typing up yesterday’s post, I went back and wrote all over my plan (above) and felt lots better for it. I realised I needed to refine the “drivers” and to re-write them as objectives that might not be “SMART” but were “SMARTer”. This could then give a little bit more focus to my experimentation.

Learn more about printmaking

Try as many techniques as possible/sensible. Which one(s) do I enjoy? Identify how these can contribute to my practice to date of layered mixed media work.

Learn more about Laser cutting

Find out more about preparing images. Concentrate on one or two images and refine these. Identify how laser cutting could be used as a “tool” to help development of experimental and interesting pieces

Generate as many ideas as possible

Document all of them, even though most (all?) of them will probably need to be parked at the moment.

Do something a bit scary re personal development

Submit something to Show & Tell. Identify threads that could be used for abstracts to submit to student journals (likely to be ongoing – will likely need more practical experience before I can write something )

Research artists

Choose one or two and get a couple of references to write up a blogpost.

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

Probably won’t do this every week (any week?), but not letting myself off the hook with this one.

Do the blog slog every Monday

This is only achievable if I learn to summarise the taught sessions more concisely. Otherwise I am just going to get behind. It’s a shame, because there is so much of interest to reflect on every week. I think I will have to try just picking out the most pertinent points and discussing how they relate to my own practice.

Time management

Practical work always takes ages. I need to admit this to myself. So I need to cut off with experimentation with new techniques mid-February and hopefully produce some pieces of creative and written work that pull things together.

Something else I need to think about is ongoing work to identify my own theoretical perspectives. This is very slowly taking shape through the research methods sessions. I am not yet totally sure how to write about it in terms of my practice but I should bear my practice uppermost in my mind when writing up those sessions. That should help.

MA Term 2 - Taking Stock (1)

Predictably, I started out with a plan for this term’s work. Few things get done in my life without a plan, or at least a few lists. This plan was a bit different, though. As the module this term is about practice, I intended to have a couple of weeks of planning and thinking before starting with a vengeance. I was also aware that I couldn’t plan to the nth degree, because I don’t know where my experimentation will take me. However I soon decided that a better approach would be to jump in with some of the techniques I want to learn, then stand back and see where I’ve got to. I intend this to be an iterative process, so after about 3 weeks of term, it’s time to reflect and see where I am. 

At the top of my plan, as overall drivers, I documented the following:

• Learn more about printmaking
• Learn more about Laser cutting
• Do something a bit scary re personal development
• Play and experiment lots
• Research artists – new and old favourites
• Draw for 15 minutes a day at least 3 times a week
• Do the blog slog every Monday

So far I’ve been doing lots of experimentation (action research) with laser cutting and printmaking. I’m a novice in both of these, but these were areas I identified right at the outset as having the potential to add to my preferred technique of layering images. The results have been mixed, as one might expect. The detailed reflections are beginning to appear in my creative journal, where I find it easier to annotate, but a flavour is given here.

Printmaking

I finally wrote up the work I’d done before Christmas, when I did some etching which produced encouraging results for a first unsupervised go. I want to do some more etching but it takes such a long time… I have had a go at lino cutting at home, but this hasn’t produced such good results. I have had difficulty inking the lino and the colours haven’t mixed optically in the way I expected. My cut lines leave a lot to be desired but I guess that’s a matter of practice. The design didn’t turn out as I’d hoped – I wanted it to be kind of like a Soviet propaganda poster, with the sun rising over an industrial scene – but I always find you learn lots the first time you do anything. The image is from testing the blue ink. It’s blotchy, but it’s a lot cleaner image than the 3-colour reduction I was attempting.

Blotchy gasometer : work to be done

I have also made two solar plates with a lot of help from Lyndon, the Print technician. The first one is a lot better than the second, because I over-developed the second and part of the detail has washed out. I’ve not yet had chance to print these but I will hopefully do that this week.

So a “tick” for that category.

Laser cutting

I’ve tried three main images. The first, of some bricks, I rastered into some MDF in the hope of giving a bit of texture to the board, but it didn’t work so well as the incision wasn’t as deep as I’d hoped. I might put some acrylic paint onto it anyway to see what happens. But then I need to think if I need gesso and if that will just negate the texturing.

 

Yorkshire Rose

The rose worked quite well as a starter idea. It was an experiment to see what kind of curves and lines would work in the petals and in the leaves. It needs further work but I can see potential. I would like to make this into a leaving card for a colleague who has been a good friend and who is leaving Yorkshire next month.

 

Pensive... perhaps thinking how much is still to do...?

The self-image is a typical piece of my work. The pensive image is a “mood” I’ve used before. I’ve cut this in paper and in card, setting the cutter alight with the latter. I finally found out that I haven’t prepared the image quite correctly so I will need to seek further help with this from IT. 

A “tick” for this category too.

 

Do something a bit scary re personal development

Got some ideas but not yet done anything on this one.

Play and experiment lots

This is really what I’ve been doing with the printmaking and laser cutting, and in retrospect I don’t think it is a separate driver

Research artists – new and old favourites

Just not had the time to do this. It would be good to choose one artist and look at them in a bit more detail.

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

Mixed success. I have drawn more but not 3 times a week. I’ve also found that putting a 15 minute limit on it makes me rush. But even if I draw for half an hour once a week it is better than nothing.

Do the blog slog every Monday

Ummmm……..

MA Weeks 13 & 14 - Theoretical Perspectives

Reflection on taught sessions, 15.01.2016 and 22.01.2016

Theoretical perspectives

 

Theoretical perspectives are considered important in art practice in terms of communicating across disciplines and other boundaries. A theoretical perspective is a set of "truths" , according to a quote used from Anderson and Herr. The choice of the word "truths" seems odd to me. Isn't it rather a set of opinions, which hopefully are rigorously explored and argued?  Theoretical perspectives can help us to look at what we're doing (creating, making, writing). Practice can develop knowledge and equally, academic research can develop knowledge. Theoretical perspectives can allow us to analyse and articulate this knowledge. 

Some examples of theoretical perspectives:

• Feminist
• Marxist
• Socially critical
• Interpretivist
• Post modernist
• Post structuralist
• Deconstructivist 

Some elements of a theory may resonate but others may not. You may need to pick and choose, which is acceptable, but must be justified. 

Theoretical perspectives usually divide into quantitative and qualitative. Quantitative perspectives are positivist and assume one truth. Examples given were science, religion, politics, philosophy. Do each of these have one truth? I don't think they do, or if they do, it is only at a very general level. 

Characteristics of qualitative perspectives include multiple "truths" , discursive, reflexive. They are more concerned with an individual than a group and do not view a situation as static. This type includes theoretical perspectives such as narrative theory and phenomenology. The latter concerns how we experience the world vs what physically makes up the world, and one fellow student gave a good example of this; the scientific universal truth of a glass of water vs the experience of drinking that glass of water. and narrative theory. I could grasp that. 

As researchers and practitioners we do not exist in a vacuum, but rather in a community of some sort, with shared techniques, theories and problems. The shared matters form a paradigm (a framework, a world view, a general set of beliefs) that can guide our research or practice. So as an MA cohort we are a community with different practices but within the paradigm of the MA. I also exist as an artist within a very loose Twitter community of artists with whose work I identify in some way. They are all very different - printmakers, fine artists, ceramicists - but I find something in common with their work and I enjoy seeing their working processes when they are kind enough to share work in progress.  

I am not sure I totally understand the concept of a paradigm and I need to look at this further when (if) I ever get the time. I understand the concept of a framework of beliefs but there seemed to be an implication within this session that the paradigm is prioritised and that any occurrence that tests the paradigm needs to be bent into line so that it fits in with the paradigm. Everyone has beliefs but they change with time and experience. I still have strongly held beliefs that I've held since childhood but they are not now so absolute as life experience has, inevitably, introduced grey areas. 

Some definitions that were offered:

Epistemology is the theory of knowledge and is concerned with validity and scope of knowledge and the distinction between justified belief and opinion. This is of interest to me as in a past life I worked on project business cases and this taught me the rigour of justifying an argument. It's a skill which transfers into academic research although the approach is different. I now find myself justifying my argument with citations of others of the same opinion who've managed to get it published!  

Ontology is concerned with the nature and relations of being. It recognises the sentience of our being and that we give and receive knowledge and understanding to each other. An interesting example that was thrown in here is the beliefs of the Middle Ages (as we perceive them now, note) based on religion. Today's world view is difference; secular or many religions. This didn't receive a lot of discussion and although I can understand it as an example, I'm not sure it is a wholly valid one as the "beliefs of the Middle Ages" seemed to equate to the Western Art canon when the comment was made. 

Interpretivist theory is concerned with the role of the individual within the collective social group. It looks at what drivers are making that person behave in that way. Life stories and narrative histories with a particular viewpoint ("lens") are part of this tradition. Socially critical perspective is similar. It looks at levels of power within society and works to develop social change through changing individual and group consciousness. These both sound interesting although I suppose I am commenting on social change rather than causing it. 

From a very different viewpoint, there was an acknowledgement that art research by practice is often motivated by deeply personal concerns. It's therefore based on "local" (personal) knowledge as well as theorised knowledge. This logic may often be lost when writing up. We need to recognise that art may be bringing new theories and realities. This is important to me because I think the voice of the visual needs to be prioritised and this is best done by creating visual work which is then opened up to others for them to comment if they wish.   

A few points from the discussion in class on 22nd January:  

Does language allow you to pull in the viewer or does it alienate them? Are the artist's intention and the viewer's intention equally valid? A recurring theme is that of language as emotive. All words are loaded with a meaning other than the dictionary definition, depending on the context in which they are used. There was an opinion that art can actually be seen as a non-elitist expression. Someone quoted Billy Childish - site yourself on the fringes, do what you want, what's inside you. In other words, don't worry about writing about it or what others are going to write about it. 

We concern ourselves with "how" and "why" artists have done things. But do we need to know why? Can't we have our own opinion on that? Personally I find it helps if I know something of the context of an artwork. I am big on context, though, in all aspects of my professional life. I think some knowledge of the artist or their situation at that point in time gives you a way into the work. What you find next is up to you. Another classmate gave a good quote:  "your art should speak for itself and your words should only enhance it". I think that is probably a validation of my idea of having a little bit of context.  

Another thought was that successful art should resonate with others. In my opinion most art resonates with at least some others in different ways. No one piece of art is ever going to resonate with everybody! 

Well, after two weeks of talking about theoretical perspectives, I think I am more confused than ever. I definitely have some element of feminist perspective but it is not over-riding and neither is it backed up by extensive reading - it's just from growing up in the 1970s. The introductions to what I would consider the more nebulous theories mentioned above seem to need backing up by more extensive reading, but until I can find some theoretical perspective in which to anchor my work, I don't know if I even need to do that reading- and time, as always, is of the essence. During the discussion someone mentioned nihilism as a theory of having no theories and to be honest this sounds attractive at this point in time. It's associated with atheism, though, which is definitely not me. 

I would have liked more detailed sessions in theoretical perspectives, perhaps with a bit more information about some of the main theories. Feminism and Marxism always seem to be the main ones peddled out, but surely there are theories to do with lived experience? Perhaps I just haven't found them yet, although I have been looking.

 

 

 

 

 

MA Week 14 - Writing as practice

Reflection on taught session, Friday 22nd January 2016

Creative Practitioner Presentation

A talk with a difference today as Karen’s practice is creative writing. Her research focuses on “stories from an art institution; the writing lives of students with dyslexia”. She has three main threads: 

Dyslexia teaching and research

Karen is telling the stories of the lives of dyslexic students; a longitudinal (= over time) narrative enquiry. She talked about how she engages with dyslexic students. Here I found less in common with her practice than the other two strands. 

Creative Fiction Writing

Karen writes short stories and she read one aloud to us. As she was reading I could get an idea of her choosing words carefully, and also of creating enough of a character for each person that appeared in her short (4-page) narrative. I like to hear the author read their work; I think you get much more from it in their vocal inflection. I found the same when the poet, Helen Mort, read her poem about the public artwork “Aspire” (see Simon Fujiwara post for more details of the artwork). I also think, from listening to both Karen’s and Helen’s commentary on their work, that there is a lot of the creative process in common with art practice; research ; testing, choice and justification; refining the finished product; reflection and improvement; but using words and written constructs rather than paint, ground and so on. 

Journal writing

Karen contributes to the discourse around writing in an art institution. She has also written narratives of other people’s research. I flashed back to Sam’s talk in the first week of this term and questions arose in my mind:

• How much of academic papers are fiction, arising inadvertently or deliberately from the researcher or their subject?
• How much is gently embroidered into the narrative enquiry by the researcher’s desire to fulfil their research purpose ?
• Are fact and fiction ever really separated,in life as well as in research?
• What part does opinion play?

I don’t suppose anyone knows the answers to the above. Ethics comes into play. I try to write honestly but perhaps sometimes I should be more guarded. Hmm. Karen quoted someone called Richardson (I didn’t get a reference for this) : “The question is not if we will write the lives of others but how and for whom”. For me, I can substitute “depict” for “write” and apply this to my own practice. 

Karen mentioned a journal called “Journal of Arts Writing by Students” (JAWS). This is definitely something for me to have a look at. Much though I find it hard work, I do like the rigour and challenge of academic writing. 

She listed a number of terms which, for her, cover the role of writing in art. I list these here as a kind of reference for my own writing:

• Explicatory
• Democractic
• Inclusive
• Exclusive
• Word play
• Metaphor
• Dyslexia
• Can contribute to the ethical considerations of art

Via this blog I am trying to be explicatory about my practice. I am also trying to be reflective, which is a word I would add into the list above.

 

MA Week 13 - sustainable printing, and research vs. making

Reflection on taught session, Friday 15^th January 2016

Creative Practitioner Presentation

This was a really interesting talk in which Amber spoke about graphic design and about her current research question, “How can the principles of sustainable practice be applied to graphic design printmaking?”

Amber described her research journey. To get to her current research question, she has taken quite a circuitous journey. At the start, graphic design – her specialism - is client-led and there is always a push to sell the client something else, to make more money. The driver is economic, rather than aesthetic or sustainable. She had been influenced by the manifesto “First Things First” by the graphic designer Ken Garland (1963 – published 1964 in the Guardian). Garland and the other designers who were signatories to this argued for the removal of the fast pace and triviliased production of graphic designs due to the “saturation of consumer selling” (hard to believe they thought that 50 years ago. It would be interesting to see what they thought of advertising these days!) They felt that graphic design could be used for the betterment of society, such as signs, manuals, education and publication, rather than being associated exclusively with branding, as we often perceive it to be.

Via her love of printing she became involved in “slow” printing – manual letterpress for print festivals and the like – but realised she was wasting paper and using oil-based inks which were not recyclable. From this she sought to understand how printing could be sustainable and yet still aesthetically pleasing. She looked for ways to move away from the need for speed and the level of waste that surrounds graphic design.

This led her to consideration of the “Slow” movement, which originated with “slow” food (organic food that’s in season and is definitely not “fast food”). High Street stores subscribe to the idea of “fast fashion”, with garments that have a 6-week life cycle in the store and that are poorly made, not designed to last and probably not ethically sourced. “Slow fashion” considers where a garment is made, what it’s made from, what design inputs it had, how long it will last and so on (so like in the olden days… made in Britain!).However things are expensive – but they’re exclusive. In both cases it is a case of supply and demand.

Prompted by discovering that paper pulping is the 3^rd most-polluting industry, she decided to start out making her own paper. Although professionally she works digitally, she decided to go back to sustainable manual processes. She worked in her kitchen, as in a cottage industry, and started to make her own dyes using very old recipes. She collected rain water in pots in her garden so that her demand on the environment was minimised. Eventually she made some paper she was happy with! Eventually Amber arrived at her research question. How could these principles be applied to printing? It leads to the wider economic question, can these principles be applied to a commercially successful practice? As she had previously mentioned, there is often a tension between economic considerations on the one hand and the aesthetic and creative will of the artist on the other.

Amber acknowledged she felt a conflict between research and making. I have certainly felt that. Sometimes I’ve felt a scramble to find an artist that I can claim has influenced me or who has some other thing in common with my work. Other times I have felt the urge to continue reading and researching on a theme that seems to be emerging, but some creative pieces need to be done or written up in the creative journal. Again and again I wonder if it’s possible to marry research and practice fully, or if one always has to be minimised at the expense of the other.

She mentioned she had used grounded theory to develop a structure for what she was doing and collecting. She identified “codes” such as “cottage industry”, “slow fashion”, and was able to group them. This began to show her how research and practice come together. I found this quite exciting as this is what I did last term (see week 3 post). As with Sam’s presentation last week, Amber needed to make a coherent case out of her practice and her interests. This really resonates with me. The pieces I am producing through my creative experimentation might seem disconnected but they all make sense to me. The challenge is to make them make sense to someone else, particularly in the academic sense.

Amber had displayed her paper samples as an artwork, pinned up on a board, but then put them in a book to show her PhD supervisors. This raises the question : who are you collating this for? My classmate Carol had brought in a book with plastic pockets to show us some of her work for a crit. The work could be removed and displayed some other way. So a question for me: Does everything have to be in a sketchbook/creative journal? Are there other, better ways to collate my work and submit it? Amber also pointed out your work forms an archive. Via the way you collate it, it might be chronological, or you might have sorted it some other way to show some other narrative. What are my archives? What are my narratives? Do I need to revisit my archives – or even the small amount of work I’ve done this year – to check my narratives are what I think?

I was really gratified that Amber was willing to share her research journey. I could find a lot of resonance with the issues she was describing. It also raised a lot of interesting questions and other angles to consider. It helped me see that some of the issues I’m grappling with may not be due to my lack of experience, but that they are common to many practitioners who choose to undertake an academic investigation of their practice.

MA Week 13 - Bowie's Performance of Death : a personal view

I was never a full-on fan of Bowie, but him and his music have somehow always been there – I remember the older girls at Grammar School discussing the lyrics to Life of Mars and me wondering what it all meant (I may well have not been the only one). In the past few years, through studying art, I’ve realised how Bowie and his Glam Rock compatriots started to break down the taboo surrounding homosexuality and how they played out gender fluidity on Top of the Pops years before anyone else realised it existed. This particularly struck me when visiting the exhibition “Glam : the performance of Style” at Tate Liverpool in April 2013.

Part of the purpose of music and art, in my opinion, is to challenge taboos. Bowie’s performance of his own death via the song and video “Lazarus” – which I viewed on YouTube after his death along with most of the Western World -  might hopefully start to challenge our attitude to death, which seems to me to be one of the last taboos. I’m not trying to suggest we should spend all our time contemplating our last breath, but this is going to happen to all of us and we should get the most out of today – every day. None of us know how much time we have left. We need to acknowledge that, we need to acknowledge that we’ll deteriorate as we approach old age (if we get there), and we need as a society to perhaps think about things such as how we deal with ill people, introduction of bereavement leave and how we treat colleagues who’ve  lost someone. Death is the norm, yet we pussyfoot around it like nothing else.

In the catalogue for the “Glam” exhibition, there is a photograph of Candy Darling (who “shaved her legs then he was a she” in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”) evidently on her deathbed, wig askew, full make-up, a rose thrown across the bed (Hujar, 1973). It was the first, and only other, time I’ve seen death performed in this way. The arts give us the power to deal with challenges creatively. Bowie’s tender and artistic depiction of his own forthcoming demise should be an eye-opener and a wake-up call for us all.

MA Week 12 - non-traditional students

Reflection on taught session, Friday 8th January 2016

Creative Practitioner Presentation

 

Our course leader, Sam, presented to us to kick off the new term. She started by talking about her own practice, embroidery. She was attracted to this by Rozika Parker's "Subversive Stitch" alongside her growing teenage awareness of, and interest in, feminism. At the same time, she was questioning why traditionally female pursuits such as embroidery, baking, knitting etc are not seen as worthy art forms.. I could relate to what she was saying, having grown up in a broadly similar tine with similar nascent views. 

Sam had exhibited her embroidery firstly in 1992 and included the embroidery hoop as she thought it had the same value as the canvas stretcher. I liked this parallel that she drew.  Her interest in feminism led her to set up a community arts business to help teach disadvantaged groups. This led her into teaching and she has always championed the non-traditional student.  

Sam wanted to improve educators who are educating older people. Through her own experience, she knew that adult learners and return-to-learners could not be shoehorned into the homogenous groups that some studies indicated, and she set about refuting this. She believes that some studies contain element of fiction in their narrative enquiries, seeking truths that are not really present. She contrasted academic studies with the film "Educating Rita" and argued that truth and fiction are present in both.  Her PhD therefore centred on education, social justice and art and design. Her methodologies were practitioner research, narrative enquiry using a longitudinal study of 9 Access to HE students.  She commented that mature students often perceive themselves as “different” rather than mature and work harder than traditional students in order to justify themselves. 

I really enjoyed hearing about Sam's practice. I didn't know she was an embroiderer even though I have known her professionally for 3.5 years. I also really enjoyed her passion for non-traditional learners and her determination to give them (us!) a voice not only through championing courses for us, but also in the academic sphere through her PhD thesis. One lovely moment for me was when her presentation showed a picture of me receiving a prize from Certa, the Access awarding body, when I was a student on her access course. I felt really vindicated with my studies for the New Year.

MA Term 2 - Here we go!

Well, Christmas has been and gone and Term 2 is here. This term should bring more opportunity to do creative work, which is really welcome. I’ve really enjoyed taking a break from both College and work, and now I’ve got lots of ideas about what I’d like to do. Somehow I’m going to have to shake these down into some kind of plan as I’m not going to be able to do all of them!

Here are some things I might do:

• have more of a go with printing and laser cutting
• work out how printing and laser cutting relate to what I’ve done before (mixed media)
• continue with this idea of leaving your energy where you’ve lived – a kind of spirit/built environment interface somehow
• do a bit of a mini-project on the gasometer (it’s “the” gasometer because it’s visible from my house and was visible from where I lived as a kid… actually it’s “t’gasometer”, no “the”)
• do an investigation of Woodhouse Moor – it has such lovely trees and has been a green escape for me for so long… or I could do the same for Temple Newsam
• investigate these deep black marks that I make in everything creative, even when I try not to
• collaborate again with Christina
• investigate my close friends’ stories (but this could take me the rest of my life… and I’ve no idea whether they’d want to do it!)