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 Week 10 - Christmas already??

It’s hard to believe that it is already the end of the first term, and with it, the hand-in deadline looming. I’ve learnt quite a bit this term. I’ve gained a deeper understanding of my practice and have related it to some current artists. I’ve understood that I’m starting out professionally, and that means taking small but definite steps. I’ve documented all this in my 2000 word critical evaluation, but here are a few more informal thoughts.

Learning points:

• I need to manage my time and energy a bit better. The project plan worked well, but my contingency got eaten up by various unwanted life events (and, truth be told, a couple of “morning afters” that lasted all day). This sometimes meant I was having to work when I really didn’t have the energy/wherewithal.
• I need to understand a bit more about how blogger works as I seem to keep getting formatting and line breaks where I haven’t put any.
• I need to read more journals and articles, not just books and websites.
• I need to do a bit more artist research – but that will come naturally, if past experience is anything to go by.
• I need to not be afraid to draw, even if what I draw is cr*p.

Highlights:

• Joining a supportive cohort of like-minded people and making new friends. Thank you, everyone!
• Getting back into the college library and finding out I can borrow 25 books at once.
• Getting my Linder article published on FCK LDN’s website.

What next?

Christmas, my birthday, then back to College to do some printing and laser cutting!

MA Week 3 - Heritage, Memory and all sorts of interesting stuff

Reflection on taught session, Friday 16th October 2015

Creative Practitioner Presentation

Today it was Sharon’s turn to take the first session. I found more in common with her practice than with Annabeth’s from last week. Sharon is a milliner, which I’ll never be, but she is very interested in textiles, and with that, the “heritage” or “memory” aspect. Sharon also has a background which encompasses subjects other than art, and she described how she had sometimes felt “on the outside”, which I’ve felt a few times already during this course (but am working to overcome).

Sharon introduced the idea of using archives and museum resources to investigate narratives from the past. She illustrated that different views (lives) can give rise to different narratives, e.g. millworker vs millowner. This highlighted to me the difference between my narrative of de-industrialisation and Simon Fujiwara’s narrative for his “Aspire” piece produced this year (on display outside the new University library). According to the information board in the University Art Gallery, he views the de-industrialisation as a positive move, moving Leeds away from its dirty past into the “new, post-globalised urbanism”.

Sharon also indicated the importance of considering how your practice relates to that of any given institution – or indeed, how you make it relate – and how that could give rise to opportunities for collaboration. She presented information about students going into a mill, and how eventually students and millworkers began to educate and inform each other. The collaboration helped both groups. Again I need to let this play over in my mind. If I am producing pieces that relate to heritage, is there some opportunity here?

We viewed a film about the pioneering art educator, Tom Hudson, who went to Brazil where he tried to help people express themselves through art when they were suffering from the repression of the political situation there in the 1970s. The film was made by his estranged son using archive material from the NAEA – so once again an illustration of different narratives.

I hadn’t thought of accessing archives (e.g. Yorkshire Archive Service perhaps?) as part of my project, as I feel my own lived experience keeps providing me with enough source material to keep me going, but now I need to let the question of expanding my practice into enquiring into others’ lives play over in my mind. This also raised the ongoing issue of the narrative of your own memory. If you create works from your own past, whether from objects or simply from your own memories, does this start to create another narrative as you re-examine your memories? I think it probably does, and on top of that there is going to be plenty of potential for other narratives if people view and react/respond to your work.

Finally we examined some museum artefacts that had come from the Whitworth Museum in Manchester. They had come without any documentation as to their provenance. We examined some babies’ bonnets and a beautiful embroidered scarf and tried to identify any clues about where/why/for whom they might have been made. The idea of different narratives was underlined when I said I thought the exotic church, birds and houses on the scarf might indicate it was (from? a representation of?) Mexico, and my classmate thought it was from Turkey. We are, I suppose, constantly reimagining our past, and probably our present too. We assign new perspectives to old objects. We look at ads from the 1970s and think they are ridiculously outdated in their portrayal of women. We watch old 1970s comedies and can’t believe how politically incorrect they are. But life wasn’t bad then. Did we just take ourselves less seriously? Perhaps a little of that, although I know I have a feminist streak from growing up at that time and the dominance of the male world-view.

The more I write here, the more interested I am in all this about memory and reimagining and narratives. I think it already appears in my practice and probably will do so more strongly in future (if I ever stop writing and do something creative).