MA Week 79 – The End is Nigh

 

Reflection on the past week, 31st July 2017

Printmaking

I spent Thursday in the print room – sad to think it will be one of my final sessions in there. I printed the final stage of the Royal Park aquatint. It needed a little bit more definition in the foreground, just to pull the foreground forward a bit more, so I drypointed some more vegetation into it, on the basis that both the plate and my patience were wearing thin after the repeated etchings. I also brasso’ed the sky and it printed quite nicely. The drypoint gave a much lighter, fuzzier mark than the etching and this has set me off with the idea of a drypoint into metal, but that will be post-MA.

 

Aquatint plate - final state

I don’t think I mentioned that I had been trying out different papers – I tried Fabriano Unica white, Canaletto, which is a creamy colour and Somerset velvet white. I think I got the best prints on the Somerset paper, but all the papers worked well, and I would use them all again. In particular, the Canaletto is fine for everyday work. Having made detailed notes on soaking times etc, the trick with the Somerset seems to be to give it a really good blotting. There is much more at play here, such as press pressure and the type of blankets, on the press, but there’s little point in further experimentation as I’ll be leaving this print facility soon. I am hoping to move my printing practice to Leeds Print Workshop from September. At this point I will experiment to try to get a stable process as hopefully I will be there for a while.

I produced three prints of the plate at each stage and on each paper, and currently I am flattening them in batches under boards at home – I need my floor space back

As I mentioned last week, I will submit these prints a series, a metaphor for the MA journey. However, the journey doesn’t end there, so at some point I will need to do something that demonstrates this. I would like to somehow creatively destroy the plate but I don’t think I will get time to do it this side of the MA deadline.

 

Scarborough!

On Thursday I also tried brasso on the little Scarborough plate and printed that, too – the polishing seemed to help. I’ve also heard that my prints of this were accepted at Woodend Gallery in Scarborough for their Summer postcard show. So a trip to Scarborough is on the cards post MA, as if an excuse were needed!

 

Writing up

Most of the time since my last blogpost has been spent writing up. I’ve finally finished the deep reflection on the “Troubling Time” conference and I comb-bound it today. This should form a great resource for ideas and new research possibilities post-MA.

A different kind of map; how my practice has worked out this year

 

For my creative journal, I identified 10 themes, all interrelated, with a view to writing a holistic reflection on each theme. I’m finding it really interesting to look back over the whole module. I’m identifying lots of new possibilities and am generating lists of future ideas. Some of these were already in my mind; others have appeared as I’ve been writing. Again, this should form a resource for to kick-start what comes post-MA, whatever that may be. It’s also raising the question of how I will write things up once course is over. I think it will probably be in a workshop notebook plus annotated examples of print experiments taped into sketchbooks. It seems important to keep notes of processes to act as a reference.

I have to say that the writing up seems endless. I’ve written up 6 themes, with extensive reflection, but Etching is the next theme – wish me luck! As so often, I am reminded of my panel at Troubling Time. Bob discussed the idea of artists in their bunkers, and Jo discussed the idea of slow periods followed by periods of frantic activity. The current phase is definitely in the latter category.

 

 

MA Week 33 - Holbeck urban wandering : End of Days

Holbeck Urban Wandering – 23^rd June 2016

An urban wandering to find some more Northern shapes, inspired by the view from the train leaving Leeds.

 

Transcript: 

23.06.2016, en plein air, Granary Wharf 

I didn’t do the wander I’d anticipated. In the end the bus I got only went to the Bus Station, not City Square, so I got off there & wandered via Call Lane. I returned to my old haunt of the path by the canal near Brasserie Blanc. It was great to be doing an art project while the skirts and suits were in their offices. Then I walked down Water Lane to Tower Works. Very gentrified now; offices and open spaces, but a very peaceful and welcoming space. I ate my sandwich and sketched the shape of the towers, nearby offices and Bridgewater Place. You can get out onto the canal there, too, which I never knew. Lots of railway signal gantries as that’s where the main line to London leaves the city. I’d intended to go look at Temple Works but I walked by the canal a little way instead, and photographed the reflections. I was thinking about this idea of how much of an actor you are in an artwork? How much of an actor are you in a generative wandering? If you let yourself deviate from your intended path, have you lost control or gained the point of wandering? You can always go somewhere else another day. Wandering heightens your sense of place and your perception of shape. I thought it would be difficult to wander somewhere I didn’t know, but you just have to open yourself to the experience.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tower Works

I’d taken a rubbing of a door at Tower Works and wrote the above transcribed text onto that, although it was really a bit dark to write into. It was written at the end of my wander, sitting on a bit of grass, surrounded by bars with office workers eating and drinking al fresco. By chance I had wandered into the world of others at their lunchtime. I felt a bit like I was moving amongst them as an interloper, a ghost. I hadn’t realised how many offices there were nearby, and there were many workers taking the chance to walk in the warm sunshine – it was about 22 degrees – and to have a cheeky drink with their colleagues. I began to wonder about their stories. There was a group of six women who strode out as I sat sketching, chatting twenty to the dozen. They were on the way back when I strolled further up the towpath, and I guessed they did this most days, come rain or shine.  What did all these office dwellers do? Who was in with the in crowd and who was out? Did they even notice me sitting sketching and writing? Were they all as cheesed off with their jobs and daily grind as I was when I worked in Finance in the city centre?

 

Leeds Minster, 23.06.2016

It was a gorgeous sunny day, a day when it’s really good to be alive. Oh how different life felt the next morning. I took over a hundred photos, including Leeds Minster in use as a Polling Station. Without intending to, I had recorded the quotidian in image, sketch and text on the day of the EU Referendum.

In some ways I can hardly bear to look back on the photos as they seem to represent the last day that things were (vaguely) sane, but at the same time they present compelling evidence to support my ever-growing belief that each day is gently laying down the heritage of the future. That day certainly did.