MA Week 72 – selling work at the Art Market and looking ahead to hand in

Reflection on the past week, 12^th June 2017

 The Art Market

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (see this week 70 blogpost) ), the College holds an Art Market as part of the end of year show and I had decided to submit some work. It was quite exciting preparing for this. I took the best 5 prints of the gentrified office building (now titled 'Gentrification'), plus I decided to take the prints I did for the Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) PGR conference back in February (see this week 58 blogpost) . I wrapped them in cellophane and they looked pretty professional. I decided to price the work for that particular market, especially as the College were not taking a percentage.

 

Prints packed and ready to go to the Art Market

 

Friday was the opening night of the show and of the Art Market. As mention below, I met Michelle beforehand and the Art Market was in full swing by the time we got there and met some of my fellow students. I was thrilled when the sister of one of my classmates bought a 'Gentrification' print plus one of the MMU prints. It made all that time in the print room seem worthwhile. 

On Saturday morning it was my turn to do a stint on the till at the Art Market and I was joined in this task by a student I didn't know but who was very pleasant and easy to work with. I'd not been there long when my lovely tutor, Sharon, appeared. She also bought a print of 'Gentrification' and I was secretly very pleased although I pretended to be tut at her! It was really interesting to see what people were buying - a real mix of stuff, it wasn't the case that one particular genre or medium was flying off the shelves. 

 

View of the Art Market - my prints are the green ones above where the girl is standing

 

I had a quick look when I went in for my tutorial today (more on this below) and could only find one 'Gentrification' and two of the MMU prints left – looking quite exciting!

Printing

After dropping off the prints at the Art Market on Thursday, I went back into the Print Room, and I was in there on Friday too. I’ve been doing some further work on the Burley drypoint (see this week 69 blogpost ). I worked further into the plate, to try to get some lighter and darker marks. Then I tried it drypoint with a painted monoprint on top. I experimented with mixing the coloured ink (cobalt blue) with a transparent ink extender to give a lighter background. This worked OK, as did variable inking of the background. However, most of my efforts at the painted monoprint were rather too indefinite, and the drypoint seemed to come too far to the foreground in the print.  On Friday I tried the transparent ink again, this time with a very high proportion of it, but it got quite sticky and difficult to work with. It did give slightly better results than the previous day, but I’m not sure if these are really two separate prints that I'm trying to put together. I don’t know where, if anywhere, this is going to go next. A possibility might be another drypoint plate as the foreground, or perhaps trying a different colour foreground or mixing some transparent ink into the black so the two layers might “equalise”.

Experimenting with inking the Burley drypoint

I also took the first prints of the aquatint of Royal Park that I was working on a couple of weeks ago (see this week 70 blogpost). There were supposed to be three tones within the print – it had been bitten three times after applying the aquatint solution - but it seems that all the tones had rather collapsed into one. After discussing with Mike, I put another liquid ground onto the plate and worked back into it to try to get some darker contrast into it. However, the result now looks rather too dark – I haven’t been able to get a satisfactory print and basically the plate looks over-worked. I was disappointed with myself but I can learn from this. Really I need to do a test strip beforehand for the aquatint and possibly print it at each stage, although the thought of all that stopping out fills me with dread.

 

The aquatint before I worked into it again - should've left it there!

Catching up 

As I mentioned above, I met Michelle beforehand to catch up with what's happening in her practice. As always it was a good conversation and we discussed opportunities. She had previously encouraged me to submit some of the work based on our dérive for the group show at Left Bank on the theme of 'Movement'. I showed her some of the work I’ve mentioned above and we talked about whether these would be suitable and how I could develop them.

Another catch up was with my tutor, Sharon, at my tutorial on 12th June. As ever, there was lots of food for thought. A large part of the discussion was around what I will submit, as the deadline is now only two months away. There was also a lot of discussion around the idea of the Royal Park aquatint as a journey. Further ideas were around embossing the paper on the Burley monoprint instead of having two layers of print. Much to do!

MA Week 70 - Professional Development, Printing and Conference paper

Reflection on the past week, 30th May 2017

I broke up from work for about 10 days on Wednesday 24^th May – this was partly to do with my working days, with bank holidays, plus a couple of days off for the “Troubling Time” conference. My intention was to focus as much as I could on my practice in all its different aspects. I started even before I broke up – on Tuesday I sketched one of the photos from the mini-derive, which was made all the easier by my sketching the subject directly the previous day (see this week 69 blogpost) and etched it into a plate prepared with hard ground. I didn’t put too much detail into it as I didn’t want to waste time if it didn’t work – I was still wondering about my technique after the soft ground issues of the last couple of weeks. I zipped into the print room to etch it on Wednesday dinnertime and it seemed to etch OK, which was a relief.

Professional Development

I was straight back into college after work on Wednesday for an event about “Exhibiting your work”, led by Bryony Bond, the Creative Director of The Tetley in Leeds. Bryony gave a 10-point plan to holding a good exhibition. It was good to have the information presented in this way, and pleasing to realise that I probably would have thought of most of it anyway eventually, after years of working in business and organising events. As always, though, there were a few really good points to think about. One was Bryony’s assertion that you shouldn’t be afraid to invite big names from the local art scene (or indeed, the art scene further afield). Curators always want to see new, interesting art. Another was to go to every opening you can, get yourself known, and make as many connections as possible. Also – put on shows yourself and make them events, with artists’ talks and the like.

Another professional development event followed on Thursday morning, “The Art of Communicating”, an event by the Cultural Institute at the University of Leeds. This was led by Kerry Harker, the founder of the Tetley, now a freelance curator. I found Kerry’s style both engaging and accessible. As with the previous evening, I’d already discovered quite a lot of what Kerry talked about in dribs and drabs, but it was good to hear it presented consistently and with a strong message. And again, as with the previous evening, there were a few really important points. A particularly good one was to own, drive and manage your own practice and not compare it to the practice of others. As Kerry pointed out, you might wish you had another’s practice, but you don’t. So take your own practice seriously and move it forward.

There were also two other speakers who had graduated fairly recently and who talked about setting up collectives and starting to make art happen in the city. They gave some tips for getting funding and an insight into difficulties they’d faced. I’d already heard of some of the work of both of them and it was interesting to hear their side of things and also that they spoke honestly.

As always, I have quite detailed handwritten notes from both these events, and blogging about them makes me realise I should go back and undertake some of the actions that I promised myself I’d do immediately.

Printing

The thankless task of stopping out

After the morning’s event, I was straight over into the Print Room to start working into my latest etching. After taking a few prints, Mike helped me to spray a mixture on it that would allow it to aquatint, and I set to work with the endless task of stopping it out and biting it, which is still in progress.

I also had another go with the soft ground conundrum. I stripped back one of the plates that hadn’t worked last week and applied another soft ground, then drew onto it through greaseproof paper. I etched it for much less time than previously and I actually got something out of it – by no means perfect, but enough to give me more to go on.

Small steps forward, or going round in circles?

The plate hadn’t bitten deeply enough to give a proper print, but it did yield a couple of clues. There was a lot of foul bite on the surface, which I took to be where I had rested the circle stencil and my ruler onto the paper on top of the plate. The ground was also starting to come off in one corner of the plate, akin to what had happened the last couple of weeks. When I looked more closely, I realised this was where I’d handled it (even though I’d been really careful). So I concluded that the ground is much more fragile than I’d realised. Again, more experimentation needed, but a step forward.

Today, along with the endless stopping out, I’ve been pulling prints of the gentrified office building to put in the “Art Market” at the end of year show towards the end of next week. The idea is to do a variable edition of 10 and put 5 into the market.

Troubling Time Paper

The other main activity has been firming up the paper for the “Troubling Time” conference in Manchester, which is slowly taking shape. I was really struggling with getting it together earlier today and I knew that I needed to go for a walk, so I took half an hour and walked mindfully. This helped free up my thoughts considerably. I’ve always found a half-hour walk from work at lunchtime really beneficial for, quite literally, clearing my thoughts. I’d never realised it was so integral to my wellbeing, despite a lot of my art practice being walking-based.

Bank holiday weekend work!

Also for the conference, I have used some of my old monoprints to make postcard-sized business cards to hand out to other participants, particularly those who will (hopefully) create the visual work with me in my session. The cards look quite good cut up and in a pile on the table!

 

MA Week 69 - Pressing on with printmaking and Frances Morris talk

Reflection on the past week, 23rd May 2017

Pressing on with printmaking and Frances Morris talk

Developing the drypoint

I’ve developed my drypoint following the circles I etched with the dividers last week. As well as the dividers, I'd bought a circle stencil which proved ideal for drawing the circular shapes both on paper and ultimately on the plate. I sketched out a series of shapes from the mini-dérive, working to relate the shapes to each other and to balance the sketch with a variety of shapes and sizes. I also experimented with textures and shading, and was quite pleased with the result. I then flip-photocopied it and drypoint etched it into Perspex.  As always I found curved shapes difficult to draw - seems the trick is to move the plate rather than the needle.  The idea of this is to form an underneath layer of a two or three layer drypoint of the walk. It gave a reasonable result but I will probably work further into it to try to get a bit more variation in depth, following on from last week’s results. I printed it in blue (process cyan) as I wanted to take one of the colours of the walk, namely that of the railings outside the former Burley Library.

 

The shapes of the overlooked urban environment

Yesterday I went out at lunchtime and did a couple of very quick sketches which might act as a “top layer” to this plate. I’d drawn outdoors previously but taken quite a bit of time over each sketch. These were done quickly, and I was amazed at the amount of visual information you can get down within 5 minutes.

 

Houses; visual note
 

More soft ground troubles.

Following on from last week's experiment, I tried again with pressing plant materials into a soft ground. Last week I used an old plate that I'd acquired and stripped back. This week I used a similar plate plus a brand new one. I sanded them both back equally and cleaned them to within an inch of their life following my hunch of last week. However... still no joy. The ground still came away. So it isn't the plate, given I’d used an old and a new one, and it can’t be the cleaning either. It must be something to do with the preparation and/or the etching. More investigations needed.

 

“Troubling Time” conference paper

I've started to write the paper for the "Troubling Time" conference in Manchester on 1st June. I am going to introduce my research and my practice, then invite the participants to produce a visual work which "troubles time". This is based on the organisers' encouragement of contributions which “engage practically with their duration, with the aim of fostering methodological diversity”. I don’t know if people will engage with it, and it’s already pushing me out of my comfort zone, but that’s probably a good thing.

On a related note, I've just heard that the walking event scheduled for 1st June has been postponed for a couple of reasons. This is a shame but it does mean that I will be able to attend the whole day at the conference which will be good.

Frances Morris talk

Finally I went to an excellent talk by Frances Morris, director of Tate Modern, last night. She is a very engaging, interesting speaker and I learnt a lot about "behind the scenes at museums" from her Talk. I've summarised the points most salient to my own practice in this blogpage.

 

 

MA Week 27 - pylons and printing

Reflection on the past few days – 13^th May 2016

 

The week unexpectedly turned out really positive. I managed to get into the print room for an hour after work on Tuesday and pulled the first prints from the pylon plate. OK, it’s not the best drypoint ever, but it is certainly the best one I’ve done and the marks really worked for me. The blackness is good quality. I felt really happy when I peeled the first print off the plate. It’s visually communicating what I want to communicate. It’s also the first one I’ve done with the new etching needles and it was great to get off to such a good start with them.

 

Pylon print one

Today (Friday) I went back into the print room and worked into the plate a little bit more, to add a bit more detail. I then decided to try printing it in red. This linked back to the writing in red ink that I did last weekend, and this question of whether the red marks might be really black marks but in a different colour. I experimented a bit with double-printing, too. My conclusion is that the black works better. The red seems too light for the fairly light weight of the lines. The red isn’t really saying what’s inside me, either. So back to black, for now at least.

Pylon : red

Pylon : double print, red and black

 

Then I had a really insightful tutorial with my personal tutor, Sharon. I had become quite aware that my subject matter seemed to be hopping around a bit (buildings, cranes, pylons…) and wasn’t sure why this was, nor whether this necessitated further theoretical perpectives. After discussion I concluded that I am inspired by the industrial landscape (as opposed to the natural landscape) and these items are all part of that landscape. We also discussed the fact that I’ve taken photos of factories, pylons etc whilst on a journey, in those cases a car journey, but that this is not all that different to the Armley generative wandering. It is a response to interesting things whilst on the move. 

This may bring in theories of place. I’d looked briefly at phenomenology during the week and wondered if this might be the theory I needed – exploring lived experience?? But the discussion turned to the fact that we are shoehorning visual practice into theories used for other subjects, other areas of enquiry. I suggested we need theories of our own as creative practitioners. Quite what my theory would be, I’m not sure, but it would be something about black mark-making.

Sharon also challenged me to think about working with other people’s histories. Could I do this? I don’t know. What if their marks weren’t black? Should I be thinking about written and/or oral histories? Diaries? Soooo very much to think about.  

Sharon also encouraged me to continue to write reflections, whether on post-its or whatever, so that I don’t lose the sense of the moment and place and time of creating whatever I’m doing. So I’ve come home and started immediate blogging!

 

The advent of the pylons - time, place, lunch!

I took some photos of pylons on another car journey. This car was being driven by an old school friend, Fran, and contained another old school friend, Clare, in the back. Fran is a musician, amongst other talents, and we’d been discussing the creative process whilst en route to Clare’s house. I was telling her about drawing industrial infrastructure and that I fancied creating some work about pylons. So she encouraged me to photograph any pylons I saw. There was a monster one at the motorway junction for Clare’s place and this is the one featured above. Our destination was lunch with another old school friend, Moira. By the time we met up with Moira the other two had also become pylon spotters and were pointing out particularly picturesque pylons on the return journey. A creative by product of a lovely lunchtime!  

 

MA Week 5 - Thinking about printmaking

Creative thoughts!

Although there is little time left over from all the theoretical research to do anything creative, I’ve managed to fit in a little bit of printmaking. I’ve reflected on it in my creative journal but thought it deserved a mention here, too, since it constitutes research of a kind.

I had a go at linocutting earlier in the month and really enjoyed it. I like the way you kind of have to “think backwards” and work up from light to dark. My technique leaves a lot to be desired but I am going to get some cheap linocutting gear and have a go at home. This experimenting can be a form of action research.

Bricks & Brambles

I also wanted to have another go at drypoint so I treated myself to a half-day course at the West Yorkshire Print Workshop (WYPW). Again, the quality of what I produced left a lot to be desired, but I could immediately see how I could improve. The images show my reflection in my creative journal and the third proof (referred to as (3) in the reflection).

I set myself the professional goal of learning more about printmaking as part of this term’s objectives. Since the WYPW session I’ve had another go at drypoint in college. I can think of ways I could develop it – for example, printing the same image on top of each other in different colours, to represent the kind of distortion of normality that seems to be ever present in my life these days; obscuring part of the print – again a distortion; trying chine collé of some kind; printing non-related images over each other. I think these kind of ideas tie in with my generally “layered” approach to producing artwork. I suspect I will end up carrying forward my “printmaking” objective into the next module.