MA Week 25 - Crits

Crits – 29^th April 2016 

Today’s taught session was a Socratic crit and it was good to get some different input into my work. I showed some of the work I’d done last term, as mentioned in my week 20 reflection.  

I talked a bit about my theories of heritage and identity and how I had been exploring printing and laser cutting. My classmate Callum kindly made notes and I added into them later. His “X” diagram is interesting; I am becoming more and more interested in this shape but I had not really seen it as a metaphor for journeys in different directions or for me trying to pull things (ideas, techniques, pieces of work) together. If my work is concerned with the decay of industry, do the cross-braces still need to be at 90 degrees to each other? Should they be decaying too? Should they be strong and distinct or rather more faint?  

Crit : salient points

 

I was asked if I identified the laser cutting as an industrial process and whether this tied in with my theory. It wasn’t the question I expected – I felt that my etching experiences were nearer to the industrial somehow. My classmates were more interested than I expected in my laser cut images of myself. In my thinking of further exploration of drawing and printing, I’d rather sidelined the idea of laser cutting but there were suggestions to bring it back in, such as laser cutting some of my drawings and prints. I later thought I could use the laser cut faces as a resist in monoprinting (though I haven’t tried this yet). Another suggestion was to use the multi-colours that I’d done with the laser cut faces on a print of some kind.  

The suggestion also came to use portions of the face images as a repeat pattern. I’d really resisted the idea of doing repeat patterns as it’s a technique I’ve fallen back on so many times when I don’t know what to do next. But later, in the group discussion, we talked about how we can easily dismiss ideas and that we should be open to considering an idea – however basic a technique it is, however many times it’s been used before – and dismiss it only with reason in this particular circumstance, not just completely out of hand.  

The ideas that came out most strongly were around degradation and about not dismissing the laser cutting. I am still trying to pursue my print making and drawing but I will try to let these themes come into the “mix” as needed.