MA Week 78 – Curation as Disruption, the pains of aquatint and endless writing up

Reflection on the past week, 24^th July 2017

 Curation as Disruption

The early part of the week was taken up with the “Curation as Disruption” exhibition. My pieces were hung on Monday morning, so on Monday lunchtime I went over to college to stick some of the small acetate squares on the wall, as Sharon had agreed the previous week.

I then ended up cutting more squares in the evening as I’d more or less run out, and I nipped back into college on Tuesday dinnertime to sprinkle these on the floor. The show opened that evening.

Almost 20 artists had responded to Sharon’s call out for work, resulting in a real mix of pieces on display. Textile pieces, a massive oil painting, a single photograph, a sound installation – all of these were there. Some artists had sent existing pieces, and others had responded directly to Sharon’s call out. The curation was also a mix. Some pieces had been hung in the classic way – in rows at eye level – and others were displayed in more disruptive ways, such as a photograph stuck on the floor, some ceramic pieces on a windowsill, and of course my own acetate fragments down the wall and onto the floor. The pieces were united by the relatively small group that had received the call out and their desire to support Sharon’s venture. There was a lot of visual interest due to the disparate nature of the work – areas of visual rhythm punctuated by areas of visual discord.

With my pieces - the top two and the bottom one

I had agreed with Sharon how my pieces would be hung. By chance I’d put the square and rectangular framed pieces next to each other on the kitchen table when I’d just framed them, and they seemed to work well immediately next to each other. My idea had been for the poem to hang underneath them. I’d envisaged them to be on a section of wall on their own, but Sharon suggested incorporating them with the other artists’ pieces. This then started a narrative with the neighbouring pieces, which contained a lot of greens, yellows and browns. I’d therefore tried to stick acetate squares of these colours nearby, to form a link with the other artists’ work. The hanging of the poem piece very low meant people had to stoop to see it, which was subversive, but perhaps not inclusive for less mobile people, which I hadn’t thought of.

View down into the exhibition space, showing my three pieces in a narrative with other artists' work

As a thank you, everyone received a badge – curator, disruptor, warrior, professor, artist. I took “disruptor” because I felt this was the most disruptive I’d ever dared to be with my art. I thought my pieces worked well, linked as they were by the acetate fragments. Each piece was strengthened by the presence of the others, and by the fragments. It was a departure for me and something that gives me food for thought. By sticking the fragments to the wall and scattering them on the floor, three fairly unremarkable pieces became an installation, something more to look at, something that stood out. . Food for thought. What else could become an installation? What wouldn't this technique work with?

Fragments of my practice

It was a lovely evening. I knew many of the people there and it was great to have a catch up and a drink. It was a celebration for Sharon, too, her last exhibition before she leaves. I am so pleased I made the effort to contribute.

 

Printing: aquatint

I’ve pressed on with the new version of the Royal Park plate and it is now more or less at its final state. The aquatint was frustrating. Having done the test strip, I had decided to do a second aquatint bite for 7 minutes. However, the result wasn’t nearly as dark as I expected. I’d had real trouble spraying the aquatint solution onto the plate and it seems I might have sprayed too much, effectively blocking the plate from biting. I’d found it really difficult to get an even spray, although the test sprays onto paper seemed fine. I took several prints from the plate not withstanding this, then stopped it out again. I had intended to do a final bite for another 10 minutes, but I decided to go for 7 again. I re-bit some of the areas that should have gone darker at the previous stage, plus some new areas. Again, I had difficulty spraying – I got half way down the plate and the airbrush suddenly stopped working. I think the nozzle had become blocked with the solution. I switched to another airbrush and managed to get a full layer on, though it took me quite a while to convince myself that there was a layer on. When I bit it this time, it went much darker than the previous time, and much darker than I expected (or desired, really).

 

First print from the plate after the second 7-minute bite

The final stage was to apply another liquid ground and etch some detail into the foreground. This didn’t work quite as well as I’d hoped and really the foreground needs more detail still. I also got quite a bit of foul bite in the sky, despite cleaning the plate well beforehand. I now suspect that the plate needs to be cleaned with Cif or similar before applying another ground if it has already been printed many times. I am toying with the idea of drypointing some more detail as I don’t think the plate will take much more biting.

This piece will form the last part of my final submission. It shows a journey from a relatively simple line etching to a more visually complex version. In some ways it is a metaphor for the MA journey, as I have grown in confidence in the techniques I’m using.

Writing Up

Less than three weeks now until hand-in, so the weekend was spent blogging and writing up. The writing up still seems endless even though I am approaching it differently! I’ve also now caught up four further blogposts:

Week 72 – Selling at the Art Market and looking ahead to hand in

Week 73 – Monoprinting with Movement!

Week 74 – Submissions, Submissions

Weeks 76 & 77 – Preparing Submissions, and time management to the fore

 

 

 

MA Weeks 76 & 77 – Preparing submissions, and time management to the fore

 

More reflections on the past two weeks - Monday 17th July 2017

The movement exhibition wasn’t the only activity this week – it’s been a really busy week, and there was also a lot going on the previous week, which I’ll catch up here.

 

Curation as Disruption

As I mentioned in this week 74 blogpost , my tutor, Sharon, is putting on an exhibition at college called “Curation as Disruption”. I’ve been making some pieces for that. I’ve gone back to the idea that I mentioned, namely that of cutting up acetate photocopies of the Manchester Metropolitan University paintings into squares, supplemented by squares from the photograph of the City of Mabgate inn from the walk last November . These pieces had been well-received on social media, so I thought there must be some mileage in them!

 

I’d intuitively thought that these pieces would work well on a yellow background and a couple of weeks back I tested them on a pale yellow monoprint from the “Movement” series. They looked quite good, so I did a few more yellow and have spent lots of time since then cutting up small acetate squares. I’d envisaged a “path” and a “square” , as per my ideas in April, but as the exhibition’s title is about “disruption”, I decided to disrupt the path and fragment it as it moved across the work. This then seemed to give rise to the idea of sticking squares onto the mount, and onto the frame itself. These times when the work directs itself are the best – the creativity takes over. The cutting and placing developed organically as did the squares spreading out to the mount and frame.

Experimenting with the acetate squares spreading out from the collage itself

I’d also had a poem brewing in my mind from the outset regarding the effect this invitation had had on me. When I’d seen it, I’d just thought that I didn’t have anything to put into it, but the invitation wouldn’t go away. It seemed an opportunity too good to miss. I called my poem “The Bunker Breached”, a reference to Bob Dickinson’s talk at the Troubling Time conference on 1st June  which continues to resonate. My own print room bunker seemed very much breached by this invitation.

 

I delivered them to Sharon during my tutorial on Tuesday 11th July, and we agreed where they would be positioned within the exhibition. Sharon also agreed with another idea, that of sticking some of the small acetate squares on the wall. The pieces are now called Vacuus – Via – Vox. Vacuus, the square framed piece, because the centre square is the building numberplate of the City of Mabgate pub, which is standing empty. Via, because the rectangular framed piece started out as a path. Vox, because the poem gives an almost literal voice to the work.

 

Postcards from Woodend

Also at the start of the week, I cut the prints of the small etchings to postcard size and sent these off to the Woodend Gallery in Scarborough for their annual “Postcards from Woodend” Exhibition. I’m still awaiting hearing from them.

 

Other work

My tutorial confirmed what I’ll submit for this module. I also discussed with Sharon a different way of writing up my creative journal. Previous ones have tended to re-write some of these blogposts, but in more detail, and I’ve wondered why I’m doing it that way.I’m going to write holistic reflections on each topic (e.g. drypoint etching), which will go into more detail than the blogposts and serve as reference material post-MA. Hopefully writing up by topic will be more useful and less onerous than writing week-by-week information.

I’m having to put quite a bit of effort into sequencing, planning and prioritising my work at the moment. My overall plan has rather been abandoned in favour of detailed to-do lists! There just seem to have been so many opportunities come at once. It’s a good job I have decent time management skills! For example, alongside preparing the above two submissions, I also cut up some of the rejected prints from the “Royal/Library” series to make business cards ready for the Movement opening on the Wednesday. In the end I hardly used these as I didn’t have as much interaction as I’d expected with other attendees.

I’ve also made a lot of headway with the deep reflection on the Troubling Time conference, and I’ve published a blogpost about that event here.

 Finally, on Sunday I also picked up my prints from Left Bank, then I went on to the Kirkstall Art Trail where both Mel and Michelle were exhibiting – a busy week indeed.

 

 

 

 

MA Week 71 - Troubling Time

Reflection on the past week, 5^th June 2017

 

Preparation

Wednesday was spent finalising the paper for the "Troubling Time" conference on Thursday, 1^st June. I reused some of the slides from the "Grim up North" paper last September, and took my dissertation as my academic source material. The ideas was to do a talk of about 5 minutes then ask the participants to produce a visual work, based on the organisers' encouragement of contributions which “engage practically with their duration, with the aim of fostering methodological diversity”. In the end the talk lasted 7 minutes, and I felt that 10 minutes would be a reasonable amount of time to be able to produce the artwork and that this would work within my 20-minute slot.

 

The day itself

The conference itself was a fantastic day and I am writing a very deep reflection on it to hand in as part of my final submission. The speakers included PGR students and lecturers, many of whom are practising artists. They introduced me to concepts of temporality that I hadn't realised existed. In particular, there was discussion of capitalist notions of time; the regimented working day, driven by society. Contrasted with this were notions of doing less to achieve more, awareness of differing temporal rhythms, and the joy of the dérive. The reflection I’m producing will form a rich source of research material for me to develop once the MA is finished.

 

My Panel

My own panel, “Walking and Space”, was shared with two particularly excellent speakers, Bob Dickinson and Jo Lee. Bob is a PGR at Manchester Metropolitan University as well as being an established art writer and former BBC radio journalist. Jo is a Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at Sheffield Hallam University. Bob's talk, “ART BUNKERS”, started by describing artworks being displayed in an underground bunker in Konjic (in Bosnia-Herzegovina) and ranged through many concepts of “bunkers”, including the way that artists bunker themselves in studios in old mills and the like in the more run-down parts of town. These then become gentrified and the artists have to move out. This made me think, somehow, of me bunkering myself away in the print room, forgetting to drink water or eat my lunch, completely focused on the artistic task in hand.

 Jo's talk, “Essaying time: photography, artistic knowledge and meaning in movement”, covered concepts of how artists work - very slow periods followed by bursts of intense activity - plus the idea of going backwards to move forwards, constantly repurposing and seeing anew. She showed a mesmerising slide show of triptychs of her photographs of the now-defunct Spode porcelain works. So many surfaces, marks that were just crying out to be made, a palimpsest of life. Interesting concepts around surfaces, what’s underneath, does it need to be revealed.

Jo had helped calm my pre-talk nerves and in the end things went well. After explaining my practice and my methods of layering and the way I use colours, I invited the participants to produce a piece of visual work that said something about that day. I'd taken along a selection of pens and pencils, some blank paper, an old road atlas - a nod to psychogeography - and pairs of scissors. I'd done a couple of quick sketches in the train in the way over and used this as an example - but none were needed. I'd been prepared for people to ask for further clarification, to do nothing, or even to argue - but none of this happened. Everyone got on with the task in calm, studious silence.

The responses were incredibly varied and complex and in all honesty I am still processing this in my little brain. The responses included a participant from Argentina who used portions of the sea from the road map to depict her first crossing of the Atlantic; a stitching together of various pieces of the road atlas index with a challenge to estimate how long it would take to travel from each place to the next; a clock with no hands; a compartmentalised version of the journey that I'd undertaken that morning, from Leeds to Manchester. I stuck them all in a sheet of A1 paper I'd brought along, rather hurriedly, so aesthetically it wasn't overly pleasing, but time was pressing on.

 

The artwork on display at the conference

The session overran wildly (well, about 5 minutes) but nobody seemed too worried about this. As I mentioned in my week 70 blogpost, I'd made some postcard sized business cards which I offered to participants by way of thank you. These went down really well and were very much taken in the spirit in which they were offered. 

 After the session quite a few participants came up to chat to me. Some were studying, or had studied at Leeds and had enjoyed the images of the city that I'd used. My Argentinian friend commented that she'd never seen this done in a conference before and was really pleased to be able to contribute to the collaboration.

 My initial reaction was to take the collaborative artwork and submit it as part of my MA submission, but I quickly realised I couldn't do this, as it didn't belong to me. It belonged to everyone who had contributed and to that point in space and in time. So with the help of a couple of the others I pinned it up on the wall.

 

Networking

One of the really enjoyable things about the day was the number of international participants. Over lunch I chatted with an Albanian and two German participants, one of whom is a professor in Tokyo.  There were also participants from Universities in Greece, Canada, Hungary and Poland. This international flavour made for very broad view and was quite a contrast with the "Grim up North" paper, which was more localised by the nature of its subject matter. This in turn made me realise how flexible and malleable my practice is, and how the visual arts cover such a wide range of source materials in every piece they produce. This breadth of practice is such a key strength of the visual arts.

 

With Bob at the drinks reception

The day ended with a drinks reception. It was a lovely Summer afternoon and we drank prosecco in a nearby bar. I chatted at some length with Bob, who was a very interesting and equally knowledgeable conversationalist. It rounded off one of the most interesting days I've had during the MA.

 

The next day

The conference itself was actually two days, but I'd only booked for one. I wished I'd booked both. However, it would have been too much of a rush to get back to Manchester for 9am the next morning, plus I needed to get back into the print room to prepare for the art market as I mentioned in last week’s blogpost. I'd connected with a few of my fellow participants on Twitter and one of the first tweets of the day was an image of our collaborative work welcoming the participants to day 2. The excellent conference organisers, Mao Hui Deng and Sophie Stringfellow, also tweeted a picture of themselves in front of the work as a wrap-up to the conference at its close that evening. It seemed the work had become a kind of talisman for the conference, some kind of visual representation of the narrative of the two days. I felt humbled and gratified.

I was very tired that next day but I was aware that the previous day's discussions had left me with a different view of time. So rather than rushing, I decided to relax and enjoy the printing. This was one of those serendipitous moments when theory and practice combine in increased creativity. I'd inked this plate umpteen times before, but the inking suddenly went quite futurist and dynamic, with no input from me at all. I'm not sure how this happened but it was intuitively connected with the previous day's activity.

 

The conference will stay with me for a long time. A real highpoint of the MA.

 

 

MA Week 63 - Psychogeography, printing and collage

Reflection on the past week, 3^rd April 2017

 

Psychogeography

It was good to meet up once more with Zoë and Lynne to talk further about the planned walking event. It’s now scheduled for June 1st, 5-7pm. We’ll do a short walk and take some rubbings and drawings of our environment, then collage these and anything else we find back at “base”. I took along a few rubbings I’d done around the area and both Zoë and Lynne thought they were fine. I’m really looking forward to this event and I just hope it doesn’t rain! It’s such a pleasure to chat with these two people I’ve only recently met and who share some of my quirky interests! More on this when I have more details. 

Printing

As usual the print room isn’t freely available when I am, but I manged to get in on Thursday afternoon and spent most of the time printing the small copper plate from last week on various papers. At the moment the Canaletto paper seems to give the best results. I did try some Somerset paper too, but I think I left it to soak for too long and I wasn’t as happy as I’d hoped with the results.

I’m also experimenting with how much to polish the plate. I’m forming the opinion that you can polish it quite a lot more than the plastic. Then there’s the issue of the pressure on the press. I was getting quite grey whites, so to speak, but by loosening the pressure slightly I got a cleaner white. Mike put the etching blankets on for me and these really help. So really I think that to get a finished result I would have to experiment with combinations of pressure, polishing and soaking time but use the proper etching blankets.

 

Mabgate plate inked and ready to go

I also printed the Mabgate drypoint again, on Canaletto paper. Thinking back to the demo by Cath Brooke (see this week 50 blogpost ), I remembered her using a similar weight of press on these thinner plastic plates, so I gave it a go and was pleased with the result. A nice definite print, better quality than from the smaller Hawthorn press. It was only afterwards that I realised my memory was false and Cath had used a smaller press! But hey, I got a decent result, and that’s for my fab friend Larissa.

 

Collage

When I’d reflected on the crit last week, I wasn’t sure what I’d got out of it. However, I took the advice and I colour photocopied some parts of the MMU paintings onto acetate and onto paper. I then did a bit of action research, playing around with these and also with some leftover squares from the “tiles”. I did quite a lot of rearranging and overlaying but in the end I cut things up into squares… you knew this would happen… and the two images show the results I liked best. There were just some nice juxtapositions of colour and texture. I put these out on Twitter and was pleasantly surprised with the reaction. A couple of followers retweeted and I got some likes from people I’d not come across before. I took this to be an affirmation that there’s something here for further development.

 

Moans

In the past six weeks I submitted ideas for an exhibition piece and an abstract for a conference paper. I’ve heard nothing. Fine, if my submissions are not what the organisers want – not everything is going to be successful – but in these days of mailmerges and automatic replies, why can’t they have the courtesy to send a “thanks but no thanks” email? Grrr.

 

MA Weeks 57 & 58 - Finalising the Mabgate abstracts

Reflection on the past few days, 20^th February 2017

I had the equivalent of four days, spread over five, to produce the finalised pieces, which experience told me would be adequate, although in the end it was quite a squeeze.

As I mentioned in this Week 56 blogpost , when I looked at the sketches again, it was immediately clear that they were too complex and fractured to work up into finished pieces. The first job was therefore to simplify them. I'd expected this to take a couple of hours but it took all Wednesday afternoon. I had stretched and gessoed the two sheets of paper, so I was working over two separate boards on two mixed-media paintings that should combine to one piece. I decided to risk putting the simplified design straight onto the gessoed paper but hadn't realised how well the paper would take the graphite - in other words, it was more or less impossible to erase. The shapes I produced in the reworked design were not as pleasing as the originals, but given the time constraints and the graphite issue, I had to go with them. In retrospect I should have drawn the new design onto tracing paper in the exact size I wanted. Sketching onto gessoed paper is not an option! A learning point.

Design drawn onto paper on board

 

In contrast, on Thursday afternoon, the first layer of paint went on well. I was impressed how well the paper took the paint. I worked with the acrylics (both System 3 and Liquitex Basics) straight from the tube. I decided to work the earth and red-based colours from top left to bottom right, from light to dark and back. The blue and green-based colours went from top right to bottom left and from dark to light and back. It was (for me) an ambitious experiment in handling colour and balance. I started at the top left with neutral colours and worked from there.

 

First layer of paint

In essence the colours worked out for themselves where they would go, which was unexpected and welcome. I painted quite a lot of the top panel before attempting the bottom panel. This necessitated quite a bit of walking round both panels in an attempt to get some kind of balance and composition. The idea of looking at a piece in 360 degrees was something I learnt when doing the four pylon pieces last Summer.

 

Masked shapes, experimentations with tiles and letters

On Friday I added some shapes in masking fluid and in white acrylic, with a view to overpainting in the second layer. The idea was to add further shapes over the second layer of paint to go under a third layer. However, when I added the second layer on Saturday, the colour took much more deeply than I'd expected and a third layer simply wasn't going to work. I therefore added further shapes and simply scraped some paint over these areas. In the end I decided to paint the roads white. I did toy with the idea of putting some charcoal and/or grey into the final coat but I got to the point where I felt that I was possibly saying, "oh look, I thought of doing this too!" rather than it adding to the piece.

On Friday I also tested the idea of adding some small squares in a kind of “tile” pattern. The “tiles” are cut from a print of the Mabgate office building (see this week 51 blogpost) and a picture of the City of Mabgate pub photocopied onto acetate. They are therefore all monochrome black and white, but show very different tones, and the acetate and paper show different textures.  This all seemed fine and I expected it to take half a day to stick them on. However, when I came to do it on the Sunday, it took most of the day. The curves of the roads were quite difficult to work round. It also became apparent as I applied the tiles that this part of the painting was probably really a work in its own right, despite me testing it. As I was under time pressure, there was little else I could do but persevere.

 

Gluing the tiles to the painting

On Friday I’d also experimented with placing some of the letters that I’d lasercut the previous week onto the paintings. I found it quite inconclusive as I didn’t know whether the manilla or the grey worked better. I’d tried the letters cut from the acetate photocopy of the Mabgate pub, but they didn’t look right. However, once I’d got some pieces of the same image as part of the “tiles” on the Sunday, they seemed to work best so I used these.

 

The pieces in their final state on Sunday night, ready to be cut off the boards

I’m not really sure whether I like the outcomes or not. There are areas where I really like the colour – there is a kind of luminosity – but the tiles really need to be in a piece of their own. I did learn a lot about colour and paint, though. However, there isn’t enough complexity in the layering. I should have used more shapes and more letters. I’m also unsure about the roads being white. But I achieved what I’d set out to do, which was to produce some work based on the methodology I’d developed through my dissertation, of a size and format commensurate with the journey I would have to make over the Pennines and the area I was going to display them in. The ideas have also come a long way since their original concept. I will submit these pieces as part of my portfolio. They are finalised, although not necessarily “finished” – there is a lot of reflection to do about how to develop the ideas from here.

Monday got quite pressed for time too. I ended up having to cut the mounts for the prints by hand (with a lot of help from Nick). Having learnt how to make them in Illustrator, I'd cut them on the laser at college at lunchtime, but they'd burnt. Having tried it on two different cutters, it was clear that someone had been messing with the settings, but both technicians were teaching so I just had to leave it (and waste about £3 in mountboard - grr).

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 19 - Reflection on the week

A slightly better week, although still feeling very much under the weather.

 

Work in Progress presentation

Friday’s session in college was a series of work in progress presentations. I found the whole day dragged and it over-ran to the point where I was practically asleep (not least due to recovering from this bug), which wasn’t very polite to fellow students. We seem to have had a spate of crits, work in progress, etc, and sometimes you just have to do the work. Anyway… I talked about the application of the “heritage” critical perspective, the laser cut images of my face, the solar printing, drypoint etching, the generative wandering and the acrylic pieces on paper. I got mixed feedback. One fellow student felt I needed more structure in my work, like restricting it to one theme e.g. the gasometers of Leeds, or one type of practice, e.g. printmaking. Another fellow student felt the breadth of techniques added interest to the themes. I guess there is always a tension between “freedom” and “system”. It’s true I’ve sometimes felt a bit off down a blind alley this term but I have repeatedly tried to take stock and pull myself back to a narrative that I can explain. Perhaps I need to think about that and learn to explain it better!  

I talked a bit about decay arising from the charred MDF laser cut and another fellow student suggested this could be a theme moving into the “decay of my heritage”. I guess that theme is already there, but not overtly, so that is to think about for the next module. When I talked about the generative wandering I mentioned the people doing their thing in the present as I looked for the past (jogging, baby-walking, Diamond White drinking) and that was reflected back to me in the idea of temporality – another them to explore! From the tutor and fellow students I got some names to look into: Karel Martins (designer), Daniel Eatock (creates responses to something particular), Leeds Surrealist Group, Psychogeography hub on Tate website, Paul Ricoeur, Zygmunt Baumann. So a few to read up on over Easter.

Reading

Speaking of reading: I had a skim over the first couple of chapters of “The Craftsman” by Richard Sennett (2009), which had been recommended by my tutor. It didn’t grab me – clearly not every book will do that. I felt his premise of Pandora’s casket (sic) being equivalent to a culture of man-made things risking continual self-harm (p2) needed more exploration and explanation to convince me. But perhaps that’s because I’m an old programmer, not a Greek scholar. In fact Sennett talks about programmers and business process improvement in chapter 1. I’ve lived through what I need to know about both programming and process improvement. So I’ve paused reading that book. 

Much more relevant to what I’m currently doing, but less snappily titled, is “Exploring Learning, Identity & Power through Life History & Narrative Research”. Again, I’ve only had time to skim the first one and a half chapters, but lots of interesting ideas. Within the first few pages we have the idea of “life histories” – one’s life story in the context of the social and historical conditions prevailing (p2), problems around construction of identities which matter because identities shape people’s practices (p3), and the idea of the tension between the politics of the state and the possibility for social change through the small everyday acts of individuals (p5). In Chapter 2, the ethics of narrative enquiry are explored, including the fact that the researcher will always have a stake in the formation of the written identities of the participants because she or he too is a human being. I have only got to about page 16 and I think there is plenty in here for me to explore and reflect upon. The idea of “life history” is appealing as I think it relates to my idea of “lived experience”; the individual’s experience at that particular point in the space-time continuum. Also, even using myself and my own life history as a source, I am reconstructing my own identity and experience – more clearly? Less clearly? Tilting it to whatever I want to say now? I am hoping I can get time to have a closer read of this book as it seems to complement some of the ideas in Harrison’s book in terms of my own critical perspectives. I think this will also have to be over Easter, the way things are going.

Making

In and amongst all the reading and presenting, I have managed to etch a new plate based on my generative wandering to Armley. I have only done two test prints so I will need to work on it further next week. However, it is taking shape and looking promising.

 

First proof

After the work in progress presentations, I nipped onto the laser cutter and engraved the image of my face into two pieces of corrugated cardboard. I wanted to work on these with mixed media, again based on my Armley wandering. I’ve done a couple of coats of acrylic with a 1-inch house brush. I’m just working freely and intuively with these. They are test/experimental pieces but on a bigger scale than I’d normally do such work – they are about 52 x 39cm each. The colours are based on the colours I saw during the wandering, with the blue layer also possibly representing the sky.

Armley 1 : Corrugated Cardboard Work in Progress

 

MA Week 16 - reflection on the week

A bit of progress over the past 10 days or so. 

I put out in the rain a couple of the gasometer linocuts that I did. I ended up leaving them out for longer than expected and the result was a mix of colours in each one. The three-colour one gave some really vibrant colours, particularly a raised patch of bright rust-orange and some lovely mossy green. However, the colours faded as they dried and the pigment went very chalky in texture and started falling off the paper, presumably because the binder had washed away. But this did gave me the idea of decomposing your composition, and of the decay in industry (society?) in general. They have continued to decay, particularly the three colour one, which is interesting; I have no plans to stop them decaying, just like I couldn’t stop our industry decaying. 

 

Layering in progress

 

I also started piece on paper where I am experimenting with building up layers of different thicknesses using acrylic paint and collaged-in pieces of my printmaking. It is a developmental piece but it is generating ideas. It is also a chance to get to know the Liquitex acrylic paints a bit more. They give much more opaque coverage than the System 3 paints I’d used before so I am having to think more about how the colours appear when layered. I enjoyed doing the work and will finish it next weekend. 

I read some of a book called “Heritage : Critical Approaches” and this finally gave me (one of?) my critical perspectives. This was a good feeling and the academic validation of my approach has given me renewed confidence in my creative outputs. My definition of practice – my message – is becoming clearer through the theory of the “heritage” critical lens. It is emerging from my own lived experience but all of it also forms some part of the lived experience of another person or group of people.  More about this is in this post.

I took all this and more into my tutorial to try to work it through and to understand how I’m progressing. The message reflected back was to use this progress to allow me to select (and to justify the selection of) what tells my story. What images, visuals? What scale? Detail or overview? What kind of marks? What density. So I need to focus a bit more on exactly what I want to produce before Easter and I’ve re-planned for the rest of the term to try to give a time framework and allow prioritisation. 

What media will I use to tell my story? Within my initial proposal, and again emphasised within the work I did in Professional Context 1, I stated I would like to learn more about printmaking. I’ve experimented with this and am particularly interested in the marks I can make using etching. As part of my objectives for this module, I identified laser cutting as another technique of interest and have effectively used this to “draw” lines by cutting them. This idea of the “line” occurs frequently in my work and I need to think about how to develop etching and laser cutting techniques further to depict this. Acrylic is a medium I like and with which I am relatively comfortable from my previous course. By the submission deadline I would hope to have used the laser and etching in some way (separately or combined) to produce something coherent related to the heritage and identity themes.