Wednesday 29 April 2020
SNU. ASU2. You might wonder why i keep slipping in diary entries into my blog. I am noting them down because i have a mind to make a small book or pamphlet of them at some point, to have on record this moment in time and how it was for me. I see that this is what artists all over are doing. Its an obvious impulse how creative people manage disruption is to meet it with hands open. The virus is what it is. The governments response is what it is. We have little say about the external circumstances we find ourselves in but we do have control over our internal response. One of my other external circumstances is this hand in. It has to be done. It is frustrating because my heart wants to paint and draw but what i have to do is tap tap on a keyboard. Writing out what i had hoped would be seen. And then after i've done this i will likely have to write it out again to save my tutors the bother of reading it all tho i will hand it all in.
But that is as it is. The covid19 diary is a side project but it is also connected because it is happening now and everything is tied to this virus. Our befores and our afters presuming we have an after and don't die. I'm using the royal we i guess we are all in this together but also we are not. Another thread i have come back to over and over again the notion of being in someone else's shoes. It is the capacity to see this that seems to be the crux of the problem with man as a species. We do know it. Babies will cry if another baby cries, empathy seems to be mostly innate but somewhere along the lines it stops to a greater or lesser extent. It ties in with the collaborative project about how homeless people are seen/witnessed/judged. It ties in with the way that i have begun to illustrate the stations of the cross. It ties in with my childhood and my relationship with Jon. Is it just too much effort in a world on sensation overload, is it a thing that we drop to survive, looking away because looking asks us to feel what we would feel if we were in their situation. I had printed some little caterpillar boots because boots and shoes are a bit of a leitmotif for me. The boots were the subject of work i made for a multi-generational series of workshops in 2017. And are the beginning of my masters project which is suspended until lockdown is done. The silver shoes are a memory, another part of my childhood, and i've put up an image because i was hoping to work with them but the lack of time mean they are just part of the picture, the packet of seeds not sprinkled or planted. They connect to the red dolls shoe and the boots and where that story will go is not known and likely will drop to the bottom of the stream to be picked up sometime later along the line.
But that is as it is. The covid19 diary is a side project but it is also connected because it is happening now and everything is tied to this virus. Our befores and our afters presuming we have an after and don't die. I'm using the royal we i guess we are all in this together but also we are not. Another thread i have come back to over and over again the notion of being in someone else's shoes. It is the capacity to see this that seems to be the crux of the problem with man as a species. We do know it. Babies will cry if another baby cries, empathy seems to be mostly innate but somewhere along the lines it stops to a greater or lesser extent. It ties in with the collaborative project about how homeless people are seen/witnessed/judged. It ties in with the way that i have begun to illustrate the stations of the cross. It ties in with my childhood and my relationship with Jon. Is it just too much effort in a world on sensation overload, is it a thing that we drop to survive, looking away because looking asks us to feel what we would feel if we were in their situation. I had printed some little caterpillar boots because boots and shoes are a bit of a leitmotif for me. The boots were the subject of work i made for a multi-generational series of workshops in 2017. And are the beginning of my masters project which is suspended until lockdown is done. The silver shoes are a memory, another part of my childhood, and i've put up an image because i was hoping to work with them but the lack of time mean they are just part of the picture, the packet of seeds not sprinkled or planted. They connect to the red dolls shoe and the boots and where that story will go is not known and likely will drop to the bottom of the stream to be picked up sometime later along the line.
The government are saying they will give 60K pay offs to health and social care workers who die because of covid19 as if money can replace someone you love. I think it is hush money, don't make a fuss money. I don't think this is ok. I'd like to know what health and social care workers and their families think.
Covid19 Diaries
27th April 2020
Covid19 Diaries
27th April 2020
SNU. Very simply a dusky hopping mouse. Because the event was cancelled before i made my shield i did not make my shield but i did draw a dusky hopping mouse. The dusky hopping mouse notomys fuscus lives in the australian desert in burrows in groups of up to five. It does better where the dingos are let be because the dingos stop the introduced predators catching the mice.
SNU. ASU2. Now i am going to pick up some loose ends. Blogging the terms progress has been, along with making the work, a learning process. I know that i will have to write it over again but having started this way of retelling the story i need to make myself get to the end. I am counting down days now to hand in which means i may pass through this sketchily so i have time to document in another way that meets my tutors asks more succinctly. Each way is a retelling. I guess that i came to my MA wanting to learn how to tell stories and this is one way of learning what works and what doesn't.
A part of this terms learning outcome demands was to engage in new and unusual ways with an audience. The brief is as wide as the takers imagination. Most of my previous work exhibited work might be said to have been in unusual contexts and stretching the notion of textiles and sculpture, from temporary site specific pieces (2015, 2016, 2017 & 2019) to dialogical happenings (2017) to my human rights act project (2015). I wanted in many ways to make work that i could sell because selling my ideas is costs, it is great to be exhibited and to have opportunity to offer ideas to an audience but in a world driven by God-money it means that i am always subsidising my work and i need it to pay for itself. I wanted to know how to make smaller pieces that held their integrity but were work i could sell. I have not yet learned how to do this. Even the way i have blogged my whole process this term is giving away free my life story. Isolation ironically is forcing me more into the open.
Before isolation I had already applied to be in exhibition at the Raveningham Sculpture Trail (still happening) and the Bishops Art Prize (postponed) the Self-Love exhibition (accepted then rejected) and to be part of the local XR group's Pilgrimage of the Animals (cancelled).
As part of the Pilgrimage of the Animals i acted as helper to local artist Maria Paveledis when she led a printmaking workshop. It was good to learn from an experienced workshop facilitator and because it was held at St Peter Mancroft Church i also had opportunity to speak after the workshop to the ministers of the church about art, politics and Christianity. The pilgrimage was to have run from the cathedral to the church with stopping points for contemplation and each participant was to make a shield bearing the name and image of an endangered animal. Mine was a dusky hopping mouse. To get to know our creature we were advised to look up our creature in order to know it. This is how to engage, knowing gives insight, and insight understanding.
One of my tutors recommended i go in the direction of dialogical art and i have been researching people who practice this from Yoko Ono to Miranda July. I need to give more time to research it is always hard to strike a balance when studying between thinking and doing. I think i engage in this practise all the time but i have also been a dialogical happening in exhibition before (see above & 2017). It is interesting work but it is a physically and emotionally demanding practice i found. Maybe i need to find a way to practice opening dialogue in which i am less important. To create the space rather than be the focal point. Maybe that is what i hope to learn in the course of this MA. How to open a door or a window that lets people through, in or out but which doesn't demand that i always take that journey with them or if i do it is as a subtler presence.
I ought to know how to do this. It is part of my shiatsu practice. To meet. To witness. To engage and connect, to see, hear, feel, a clients patterns whilst maintaining a border that protects both my client and myself. To touch with weight that is weightless. To make contact without making contact. Maybe my next step of learning in my creative practice is to find a way to make art that is like that. Art that has boundaries that act let the wind though a hedge or a wire between posts rather than a wall. I need to learn what kind of boundary is appropriate for what and for when. Boundary or space. I guess there is an element of this in the learning outcome ask.
I must ask: where does my work belong ? How does it fit ? Can i make it fit ? or is it better to find a place where it fits ? Is it better to be seen in the right place by fewer people or the wrong place by a larger audience ? Who is my audience ? What is it that i am trying to communicate to those who see my work. Do i need an audience ? If i need an audience why do i need an audience ? Its that old chestnut if nobody sees a tree fall does it still fall ?
A part of this terms learning outcome demands was to engage in new and unusual ways with an audience. The brief is as wide as the takers imagination. Most of my previous work exhibited work might be said to have been in unusual contexts and stretching the notion of textiles and sculpture, from temporary site specific pieces (2015, 2016, 2017 & 2019) to dialogical happenings (2017) to my human rights act project (2015). I wanted in many ways to make work that i could sell because selling my ideas is costs, it is great to be exhibited and to have opportunity to offer ideas to an audience but in a world driven by God-money it means that i am always subsidising my work and i need it to pay for itself. I wanted to know how to make smaller pieces that held their integrity but were work i could sell. I have not yet learned how to do this. Even the way i have blogged my whole process this term is giving away free my life story. Isolation ironically is forcing me more into the open.
Before isolation I had already applied to be in exhibition at the Raveningham Sculpture Trail (still happening) and the Bishops Art Prize (postponed) the Self-Love exhibition (accepted then rejected) and to be part of the local XR group's Pilgrimage of the Animals (cancelled).
As part of the Pilgrimage of the Animals i acted as helper to local artist Maria Paveledis when she led a printmaking workshop. It was good to learn from an experienced workshop facilitator and because it was held at St Peter Mancroft Church i also had opportunity to speak after the workshop to the ministers of the church about art, politics and Christianity. The pilgrimage was to have run from the cathedral to the church with stopping points for contemplation and each participant was to make a shield bearing the name and image of an endangered animal. Mine was a dusky hopping mouse. To get to know our creature we were advised to look up our creature in order to know it. This is how to engage, knowing gives insight, and insight understanding.
One of my tutors recommended i go in the direction of dialogical art and i have been researching people who practice this from Yoko Ono to Miranda July. I need to give more time to research it is always hard to strike a balance when studying between thinking and doing. I think i engage in this practise all the time but i have also been a dialogical happening in exhibition before (see above & 2017). It is interesting work but it is a physically and emotionally demanding practice i found. Maybe i need to find a way to practice opening dialogue in which i am less important. To create the space rather than be the focal point. Maybe that is what i hope to learn in the course of this MA. How to open a door or a window that lets people through, in or out but which doesn't demand that i always take that journey with them or if i do it is as a subtler presence.
I ought to know how to do this. It is part of my shiatsu practice. To meet. To witness. To engage and connect, to see, hear, feel, a clients patterns whilst maintaining a border that protects both my client and myself. To touch with weight that is weightless. To make contact without making contact. Maybe my next step of learning in my creative practice is to find a way to make art that is like that. Art that has boundaries that act let the wind though a hedge or a wire between posts rather than a wall. I need to learn what kind of boundary is appropriate for what and for when. Boundary or space. I guess there is an element of this in the learning outcome ask.
I must ask: where does my work belong ? How does it fit ? Can i make it fit ? or is it better to find a place where it fits ? Is it better to be seen in the right place by fewer people or the wrong place by a larger audience ? Who is my audience ? What is it that i am trying to communicate to those who see my work. Do i need an audience ? If i need an audience why do i need an audience ? Its that old chestnut if nobody sees a tree fall does it still fall ?
ASU2. Doodle collagraph plates for Stations of the Cross depicting Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus carry the cross and Jesus meeting this mother. I have changed the viewpoint in this collection of collagraph plates which is not finished but goes to Veronica wipes the face of Jesus. Two plates i have left on my desk at uni i had shellacked them to see how that changed the way the card printed but did not have time to print them. And the others are also not printed, again lack of time. Our viewpoint changes our understanding and this leads into another project connected with shoes and walking in someone else's shoes. I have mentioned this earlier in connection to my SNU project little red shoe. The link between the two projects is understanding, understanding how one is always related to another. Isolation is perhaps a constructed space and our capacity to empathise and relate to another is what breaks both our own and others isolation.
Tuesday 28 April 2020
ASU2. SNU I am in a bit of muddle now because some things physically follow each other but time wise do not. So the casting and visiting of churches to see representations of the stations of the cross overlapped with printmaking for both ASU2 and SNU and how to write that with out going all over the place i don't know. I guess this is why i've been asked to separate the two modules so that my markers are not having to untangle a mass of thread but have a clean line to look at. It is hard.
It seems to make sense to follow the last images with the bronze cups but they didn't come till later as there was a wait, the investing and pouring. And during that wait. I printed some collagraph plates, that were really just doodles but came out quite nicely, for the Stations of the Cross ASU2 project. I had an idea that i wanted to make fourteen plates, at first i thought copper etchings, and then i decided to make them on old train tickets. In fact neither of these things happened as time ran out and covid19 hit. In the last week before lockdown i was able to cut to size (train ticket size) and cover with hard ground fourteen copper plates but i have not worked into them. I thought that i might make the train ticket collagraphs but my concentration was shot in the first few weeks of lockdown so i haven't had the time or mind space. Both these projects will happen but most likely not until next year perhaps in the run up to easter 2021.
The prints that i made from the collagraph doodles were cut from chocolate bar card and printed on an off white paper with prussian blue ink using wet paper and dry paper one plate inked as relief and one as intaglio. Making these samples was preparation for printing the rail ticket collagraphs, how to ink and print and what images worked, and how to cut into the card to take some of the shiny surface off to create an image. Learning also that with printing you have to make the picture face the opposite way to the way that you want the print to be. This is a mind game.
I also made plates of a photograph of myself at age 19. I had put in a proposal for one of the MA student-curator's exhibitions called self love and wanted to make a CMYK etching from this photograph to see how it differed from screen printing CMYK in look and process. I submitted a proposal which was about looking back at my teenage self with the kindness and love that was missing at the time. I wasn't sure i'd been accepted until i was invited to the artist's meeting. Unfortunately the curator decided my work did not fit with the vibe of her exhibition and messaged me to say so. I had had doubts too but was frustrated that she didn't look at the work before rejecting it. The rejection brought out a rather feisty side of me that was very much part of my teenage self's mode of protection. This feistiness also met with the Jesus story in quite a fun way. It allowed me to reconnect with a wanton rebelliousness that wasn't uncomfortable at all.
The CMYK etchings involved going through the same process on photoshop as i'd gone though before with the screen print except that i only did half tone, as the comparison was not between two kinds of photoshop filters, but two kinds of print process. So then four plates were made and coated with photogravure ink and aquatinted and etched and then the fun and games of setting up a jig and inking four plates simultaneously and printing them one after the other on the one piece of paper, held still by the press rollers, began. I made a set of all the colours combinations, my favourite being the magenta and yellow, as well three full prints in CMYK. I got good feedback from the print technicians which made my heart glow and felt nice for the teen me too. Going back in time I re-found parts of myself that had got buried and lost re-meeting teenage me, after years of mothering and other life had buried her deep, has given me access to parts of me cut off by responsibility and wanting to fit and be liked.
It seems to make sense to follow the last images with the bronze cups but they didn't come till later as there was a wait, the investing and pouring. And during that wait. I printed some collagraph plates, that were really just doodles but came out quite nicely, for the Stations of the Cross ASU2 project. I had an idea that i wanted to make fourteen plates, at first i thought copper etchings, and then i decided to make them on old train tickets. In fact neither of these things happened as time ran out and covid19 hit. In the last week before lockdown i was able to cut to size (train ticket size) and cover with hard ground fourteen copper plates but i have not worked into them. I thought that i might make the train ticket collagraphs but my concentration was shot in the first few weeks of lockdown so i haven't had the time or mind space. Both these projects will happen but most likely not until next year perhaps in the run up to easter 2021.
The prints that i made from the collagraph doodles were cut from chocolate bar card and printed on an off white paper with prussian blue ink using wet paper and dry paper one plate inked as relief and one as intaglio. Making these samples was preparation for printing the rail ticket collagraphs, how to ink and print and what images worked, and how to cut into the card to take some of the shiny surface off to create an image. Learning also that with printing you have to make the picture face the opposite way to the way that you want the print to be. This is a mind game.
I also made plates of a photograph of myself at age 19. I had put in a proposal for one of the MA student-curator's exhibitions called self love and wanted to make a CMYK etching from this photograph to see how it differed from screen printing CMYK in look and process. I submitted a proposal which was about looking back at my teenage self with the kindness and love that was missing at the time. I wasn't sure i'd been accepted until i was invited to the artist's meeting. Unfortunately the curator decided my work did not fit with the vibe of her exhibition and messaged me to say so. I had had doubts too but was frustrated that she didn't look at the work before rejecting it. The rejection brought out a rather feisty side of me that was very much part of my teenage self's mode of protection. This feistiness also met with the Jesus story in quite a fun way. It allowed me to reconnect with a wanton rebelliousness that wasn't uncomfortable at all.
The CMYK etchings involved going through the same process on photoshop as i'd gone though before with the screen print except that i only did half tone, as the comparison was not between two kinds of photoshop filters, but two kinds of print process. So then four plates were made and coated with photogravure ink and aquatinted and etched and then the fun and games of setting up a jig and inking four plates simultaneously and printing them one after the other on the one piece of paper, held still by the press rollers, began. I made a set of all the colours combinations, my favourite being the magenta and yellow, as well three full prints in CMYK. I got good feedback from the print technicians which made my heart glow and felt nice for the teen me too. Going back in time I re-found parts of myself that had got buried and lost re-meeting teenage me, after years of mothering and other life had buried her deep, has given me access to parts of me cut off by responsibility and wanting to fit and be liked.
ASU2. SNU And the first glass in and out of its box and the extra slush wax casts ... the samples that didn't get made into bronze casts. And the glass that got broken during the mould making process leaving me with a shell (the mould) and the broken parts of itself that will no doubt get used and used again. For the time being i have not washed off the dirt from its journey to what it is now, i think it has a poetry all of its own.
ASU2. SNU. Perhaps i just have to carry on along this track and post pictures and words that i i hope make some sense to a reader and which act as a file of what i have done that may be a staging post, before writing the term up in a way that leaves out the thought process and emotion tho they are so much a part of my creative process feelings and thoughts are harder to mark than a bullet point document. I'm writing now in a muddle aware of learning outcomes but struggling to know what fits where and with whom. So to keep it simple. Here are the plaster moulds the three part mould piled up with the two two part moulds on top and the three part mould with one side removed so the inside can be seen. Of course a photo is not so much fun to see as a hands on experience of touching and handling but such is the life we are living. The black rubber straps by the side of the tower of moulds are bicycle inner tubes used to tie the moulds tight so the casting material doesn't leak out. They were kindly donated to me by Jess the print technician when i mentioned i needed ties and didn't know where to get some.
Monday 27 April 2020
SNU. ASU2. It is hard to know if this is both SNU and ASU2 or just ASU2. I could scratch a line through the mould making and say that although it was learning and related to the SNU driving theme, the printmaking skills could form one body of work, and the mould making and casting another. I felt that i needed to work with both as i built up to the master project which i expected to be doing in May, June and July. The story themes had begun to intertwine at this point and the work i was making became less clearly one module or the other. This i think is the nature of life there are overlaps, meeting points, and comings together, for sure division and stretch are also a part of life but connections seem to naturally happen without ask or effort if nature is let be.
I thought to make a mould of two parts of a glass, hoping to remake the stem which i have lost sometime along the way. There is something about making things good again that i like and i looked at repairs and mending when studying my BA in Textiles. And if we fall, we get up and start over again. This has something of a resurrection feel about it. And resurrection is part and parcel of coming back from grief i think, a hallelujah i'm alive feeling that is the spark of life reigniting, the desire re-emerging.
I took these two parts of the glass, the bowl and the base, and made two two-part moulds of them. This involves making a square frame with boards and clamps and packing clay around one half of the object, mixing plaster, pouring it and then waiting till it goes off (sets) when the packed clay is removed and the half mould plaster covered with clay slip to stop it sticking to the other side of the plaster mould. Its also important to seal the base of the boards and any gaps with a squidge of clay because otherwise the plaster, being initially fluid, runs through anywhere that it can. This happened with my first mould.
I was pleased with the outcomes of these moulds but when trying to set the slush wax casts on cups to be invested for bronze i realised that my plan to build a stem from a riser and then twine a thorn twig around was not going to work as the joins would be too flimsy and the thorns were not pliable enough to be used in the way i had hoped.
So i took another glass in, a very beautiful glass, unbroken, thinking that if i started with unbroken the stem would be stronger. But sadly this glass broke in the mould-making, first the stem and then the bowl. I was sad about this, both the glasses were relics from my grandparents house, they'd sat in a cabinet in their dining room and came to me after they died. Because of this i took the pieces home and made boxes for them referencing the chests that held relics of saints and of christ in the middle ages. The boxes the glasses are in are simple boxes made from recycled card but i may explore box making further on in time.
The second glass was made in three part mould which meant that the bowl held its precise shape inside and out. I have made two and three part mould before but i wanted to jog my memory again in prep for the masters project should my leaning to make something require these skills. Just before the deadline for investment i was able to prepare two slush wax whole glasses, two slush wax bowls, and one base and all these came out intact tho' i only had time to saw them free before taking them home before covid19 lockdown. I also made 5 spare slush wax bowls and two stems as i was sampling the thickness of wax that i wanted, the heat to pour the wax the how long to leave it in the wet plaster mould before pouring it out. I would ideally have spent more time doing this, learning my material.
I thought to make a mould of two parts of a glass, hoping to remake the stem which i have lost sometime along the way. There is something about making things good again that i like and i looked at repairs and mending when studying my BA in Textiles. And if we fall, we get up and start over again. This has something of a resurrection feel about it. And resurrection is part and parcel of coming back from grief i think, a hallelujah i'm alive feeling that is the spark of life reigniting, the desire re-emerging.
I took these two parts of the glass, the bowl and the base, and made two two-part moulds of them. This involves making a square frame with boards and clamps and packing clay around one half of the object, mixing plaster, pouring it and then waiting till it goes off (sets) when the packed clay is removed and the half mould plaster covered with clay slip to stop it sticking to the other side of the plaster mould. Its also important to seal the base of the boards and any gaps with a squidge of clay because otherwise the plaster, being initially fluid, runs through anywhere that it can. This happened with my first mould.
I was pleased with the outcomes of these moulds but when trying to set the slush wax casts on cups to be invested for bronze i realised that my plan to build a stem from a riser and then twine a thorn twig around was not going to work as the joins would be too flimsy and the thorns were not pliable enough to be used in the way i had hoped.
So i took another glass in, a very beautiful glass, unbroken, thinking that if i started with unbroken the stem would be stronger. But sadly this glass broke in the mould-making, first the stem and then the bowl. I was sad about this, both the glasses were relics from my grandparents house, they'd sat in a cabinet in their dining room and came to me after they died. Because of this i took the pieces home and made boxes for them referencing the chests that held relics of saints and of christ in the middle ages. The boxes the glasses are in are simple boxes made from recycled card but i may explore box making further on in time.
The second glass was made in three part mould which meant that the bowl held its precise shape inside and out. I have made two and three part mould before but i wanted to jog my memory again in prep for the masters project should my leaning to make something require these skills. Just before the deadline for investment i was able to prepare two slush wax whole glasses, two slush wax bowls, and one base and all these came out intact tho' i only had time to saw them free before taking them home before covid19 lockdown. I also made 5 spare slush wax bowls and two stems as i was sampling the thickness of wax that i wanted, the heat to pour the wax the how long to leave it in the wet plaster mould before pouring it out. I would ideally have spent more time doing this, learning my material.
SNU. ASU2. This is where my SNU and ASU2 projects begin to physically bridge. This old work used as objects takes me into the story of Jesus' journey to the cross simply because one of the models is Mary and child. If Jesus' story is used as an allegorical tale then there is not really so much space between my personal history, the Jesus story or anyone else's story. The cross is the life you carry on your back and it is a lighter or heavier burden dependent on those you meet, the way that you came to that cross, and how long you have felt its weight on your shoulders.
The models are human forms too, and perhaps that is also pertinent. The need to see outside of oneself to understand that our needs do not stand alone, they do not stand alone, and covid19 is giving us chance to see that, to understand that we as people do not stand alone, and we as a species do not stand alone. I have always baulked at the notion that man holds dominion over this earth that supposedly Adam was given in the garden of Eden, i feel that man has abused that gift. Again covid19 is letting us know that man does not have dominion.
In older paintings of the crucifixion there is often a skull placed at the base of the cross, this is Adams skull and represents the banishment of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. Jesus' death is meant to assuage the sins of the fathers and thereby allow passage back to the garden of Eden. Is there something we can learn from this whether we are christian or not (i am not). I'd add in here too the suffering of the two women left to grieve, his mother and his companion, their suffering should not be brushed aside. Their grief. Their pain. I wonder if the dead also suffer after death or if it is only the living, i guess i won't know till i die myself.
But here, the point where the SNU and ASU2 meet is with these models, the originals slightly bigger and the 3d models with scaffolding and base left intact. The hold between the two projects and perhaps any two living entities is understanding and compassion.
The models are human forms too, and perhaps that is also pertinent. The need to see outside of oneself to understand that our needs do not stand alone, they do not stand alone, and covid19 is giving us chance to see that, to understand that we as people do not stand alone, and we as a species do not stand alone. I have always baulked at the notion that man holds dominion over this earth that supposedly Adam was given in the garden of Eden, i feel that man has abused that gift. Again covid19 is letting us know that man does not have dominion.
In older paintings of the crucifixion there is often a skull placed at the base of the cross, this is Adams skull and represents the banishment of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. Jesus' death is meant to assuage the sins of the fathers and thereby allow passage back to the garden of Eden. Is there something we can learn from this whether we are christian or not (i am not). I'd add in here too the suffering of the two women left to grieve, his mother and his companion, their suffering should not be brushed aside. Their grief. Their pain. I wonder if the dead also suffer after death or if it is only the living, i guess i won't know till i die myself.
But here, the point where the SNU and ASU2 meet is with these models, the originals slightly bigger and the 3d models with scaffolding and base left intact. The hold between the two projects and perhaps any two living entities is understanding and compassion.
SNU. Casts from a couple of the moulds that were most successful ... yes, even the plum stone has a story but i won't tell it here. I wanted to see how casting materials cast, time limited me to just epoxy resin, slush wax (not seen) which was burned out to make a bronze cast, herculite plaster and paraffin wax. I made five slush wax plum stones and put them on a tree made of slush wax sprue forms with no risers because they were small enough and solid enough to take the metal pouring in.
Sunday 26 April 2020
SNU. Back to the nitty gritty and practical. Because my photographs were provoking deep and difficult emotions and i was struggling to keep my mind steady i decided to take a side step to making moulds out of objects. Remembering how to make plaster moulds was part of the brief i had set myself anyway and i wanted to find a way to make a mould of a paint tube so that i could compare the end product with the 3d printed painted tube and i'd hoped to make a slush wax paint tube that could be a bronze in the end. I also wanted to find out what kind of object worked in a silicone mould and then how the materials that could be cast in the moulds acted within the moulds. Similarly with plaster moulds. Also i was aware that i needed to press on with work for my ASU2 module but that my path to the work i wanted to make for that required me to build up a body of knowledge in preparation. That body formed part of my SNU practice.
So to start i took in pebbles, shells, a square stone (that i had/have several ideas for), a paint tube (not my granny's cool LINO ink one), a single doll's shoe (red, with cinderella written small on the the heel-sole as part of the design), and a red aeroplane from a stencil kit that i had as a child. The links to my childhood are obvious with the latter two objects but they also link to flight, and foot prints, and walking in somebody else's shoes ergo empathy, sympathy and compassion, and fairy tales, and journeys, and work i have made previously.
Work i have made previously also got picked as a thread that connected my SNU to ASU2. My creative process is a kind of mapping of ideas, a piece of work that comes out of the map acts as way marker and may be returned to as whim or pull moves me. My creative story threads are rarely completed they just get to a place where a stop can be taken.
It was part of my wanting to know what the 3d print could and couldn't do that led me to take in two models i'd made at different, much earlier points in my life, to see if they could be printed. One i had made at school, at about age 13, it is two figures kneeling one with an arm around the other. It was just before i gave up art at school. There are points in our lives when we make decisions that lead our lives one way or another and there is no way of knowing how things would have gone if a different decision had been made. I gave this model to my granny for christmas that year, i was proud of it, its a grown child's art i could be embarrassed about now but it said something i needed to say. My grandparents had it in their sitting room for years and it gave me a boost to see it when we visited Later after both my grandparents had died and their house was cleared i went up into their loft space for one last time. There on a window sill in the otherwise empty room was my model. I picked it up and took it home. It would have been rubble when the new owners knocked the house down to make space for their new home. The other model was a madonna, a mother and child, made in my early twenties when i was a young single mum. It is part of a set of three models, Gabriel, Joseph, and Mary with baby Jesus. It got knocked off the piano and broke in half at some point but you know what you value by whether you keep and or fix it when it gets broken. Again the broken things links ASU2 and SNU but at this point the theme is just emerging so it may become clearer later in the write up.
The two 3d models came out well from the printer but because i love to see the process i had asked if the scaffolding and base could be left rather than removed. This was because print size means more or less scaffolding and the shape of a thing dictates the need for scaffolding. I found this fascinating because the scaffolding changed the objects. Also because the models were made from figures the scaffolding seemed to relate to social fabric, support systems, the way the earth holds us, how much we ask of the earth. It is also part of a build up of the invisible framework of knowledge that is what my SNU project has been about building. With the printmaking what makes a good image using ready made images to help my eyes learn to discern, why 3d how do i build a thing that rests steady on a surface, height is a factor, also the reach from the centre as much as the reach from our own centre, physical, emotional or mental, changes our balance and may create a need to reach out for help or support.
At this point i went back to the counsellor i knew from my BA because sometimes leaning in towards safety can save a lot of trouble. I knew i was struggling but also that with the right support i would be able to define what part of my struggle belonged to me and what did not, to see my errors but also to let others carry their errors. This is more related to my ASU2 theme but all work is part of the movement that forms the sequence. Perhaps i am thinking too much for a short MA module but for me the emotional back story is an important part of the making process.
Starting the SNU module i was working with two threads, perhaps i could say they were coming in at 90 degrees, right angles; North travelling South to the centre, printmaking, image-making, work in 2d, and East travelling West again coming to centre, my life story with Jon as a part of it guiding the thread but not dictating its line. The ASU2 and the SNU mould making and 3d work could perhaps be South going North and The Stations of the Cross, or any story that isn't mine, West to East. I don't really know if i am making myself clear with this flat compass graphic but my point is that all the work is tied together, coming to me or out of me but not as a linear torch beam but more as a round or sphere.
If this is a research write up maybe that is probably too baggy an idea to put forward. But how does a person whose work is driven both by feeling and making write a research report without putting the felt process in as well as the manufacture ? Later my tutor pointed me towards phenomenology and i looked up a little about this but got stopped in my tracks by the virus which broke my ability to focus on anything mentally demanding for weeks. It is something to come back to as my ability to concentrate returns.
The next posts will be pictures of the silicon moulds and the objects and the 3d printed objects.
So to start i took in pebbles, shells, a square stone (that i had/have several ideas for), a paint tube (not my granny's cool LINO ink one), a single doll's shoe (red, with cinderella written small on the the heel-sole as part of the design), and a red aeroplane from a stencil kit that i had as a child. The links to my childhood are obvious with the latter two objects but they also link to flight, and foot prints, and walking in somebody else's shoes ergo empathy, sympathy and compassion, and fairy tales, and journeys, and work i have made previously.
Work i have made previously also got picked as a thread that connected my SNU to ASU2. My creative process is a kind of mapping of ideas, a piece of work that comes out of the map acts as way marker and may be returned to as whim or pull moves me. My creative story threads are rarely completed they just get to a place where a stop can be taken.
It was part of my wanting to know what the 3d print could and couldn't do that led me to take in two models i'd made at different, much earlier points in my life, to see if they could be printed. One i had made at school, at about age 13, it is two figures kneeling one with an arm around the other. It was just before i gave up art at school. There are points in our lives when we make decisions that lead our lives one way or another and there is no way of knowing how things would have gone if a different decision had been made. I gave this model to my granny for christmas that year, i was proud of it, its a grown child's art i could be embarrassed about now but it said something i needed to say. My grandparents had it in their sitting room for years and it gave me a boost to see it when we visited Later after both my grandparents had died and their house was cleared i went up into their loft space for one last time. There on a window sill in the otherwise empty room was my model. I picked it up and took it home. It would have been rubble when the new owners knocked the house down to make space for their new home. The other model was a madonna, a mother and child, made in my early twenties when i was a young single mum. It is part of a set of three models, Gabriel, Joseph, and Mary with baby Jesus. It got knocked off the piano and broke in half at some point but you know what you value by whether you keep and or fix it when it gets broken. Again the broken things links ASU2 and SNU but at this point the theme is just emerging so it may become clearer later in the write up.
The two 3d models came out well from the printer but because i love to see the process i had asked if the scaffolding and base could be left rather than removed. This was because print size means more or less scaffolding and the shape of a thing dictates the need for scaffolding. I found this fascinating because the scaffolding changed the objects. Also because the models were made from figures the scaffolding seemed to relate to social fabric, support systems, the way the earth holds us, how much we ask of the earth. It is also part of a build up of the invisible framework of knowledge that is what my SNU project has been about building. With the printmaking what makes a good image using ready made images to help my eyes learn to discern, why 3d how do i build a thing that rests steady on a surface, height is a factor, also the reach from the centre as much as the reach from our own centre, physical, emotional or mental, changes our balance and may create a need to reach out for help or support.
At this point i went back to the counsellor i knew from my BA because sometimes leaning in towards safety can save a lot of trouble. I knew i was struggling but also that with the right support i would be able to define what part of my struggle belonged to me and what did not, to see my errors but also to let others carry their errors. This is more related to my ASU2 theme but all work is part of the movement that forms the sequence. Perhaps i am thinking too much for a short MA module but for me the emotional back story is an important part of the making process.
Starting the SNU module i was working with two threads, perhaps i could say they were coming in at 90 degrees, right angles; North travelling South to the centre, printmaking, image-making, work in 2d, and East travelling West again coming to centre, my life story with Jon as a part of it guiding the thread but not dictating its line. The ASU2 and the SNU mould making and 3d work could perhaps be South going North and The Stations of the Cross, or any story that isn't mine, West to East. I don't really know if i am making myself clear with this flat compass graphic but my point is that all the work is tied together, coming to me or out of me but not as a linear torch beam but more as a round or sphere.
If this is a research write up maybe that is probably too baggy an idea to put forward. But how does a person whose work is driven both by feeling and making write a research report without putting the felt process in as well as the manufacture ? Later my tutor pointed me towards phenomenology and i looked up a little about this but got stopped in my tracks by the virus which broke my ability to focus on anything mentally demanding for weeks. It is something to come back to as my ability to concentrate returns.
The next posts will be pictures of the silicon moulds and the objects and the 3d printed objects.
Thursday 23 April 2020
Waking at 4.45
to an owl hooting
and the dawn chorus
Covid19 Diaries
April 23rd 2020
---
My phone took a picture of me
Covid19 Diaries
April 22nd 2020
---
After the "Teams" meeting.
Drinking coffee and eating dates in the sunshine.
And watching Dandelion seeds float through the air.
Covid19 Diaries
23rd April 2020
to an owl hooting
and the dawn chorus
Covid19 Diaries
April 23rd 2020
---
My phone took a picture of me
Covid19 Diaries
April 22nd 2020
---
After the "Teams" meeting.
Drinking coffee and eating dates in the sunshine.
And watching Dandelion seeds float through the air.
Covid19 Diaries
23rd April 2020
Tuesday 21 April 2020
Monday 20 April 2020
SNU2. The reason i might have lost the thread is because i am writing up a bit of time in which there was a lot going on and i was mentally and physically exhausted and felt overwhelmed, vulnerable, strung out and cranky. There were a lot of different tasks and deadlines going on simultaneously. Submissions for proposals for 3 exhibitions each with a different deadline and brief. And the deadline for the Creative Odyssey postcard auction. The UEA/NUA collaborative project presentation deadline. The deadline for making work to be invested for the next bronze pour. The MA symposium taking a day out from workshop time. Applying to help with a printmaking workshop for The Pilgrimage of the Animals event organised by XR and St Peter Mancroft with local print maker Maria Pavledis. Meeting with Maria to discuss the workshop and what she needed me to do as her helper. There was also an artists meeting for the sculpture trail. And through that a further meeting with another artist who gave me a link to a residency which in fact i did not apply for because covid19 made travel plans a little unpredictable.
And i was feeling hemmed in because when i meltdown i need to retreat but all that was happening was asking me to push out. And i was dealing with Jon grief and unresolved child's grief for my grandpa and wanting to get in touch with my father to ask when my grandpa died but not being able to because my oldest sister was in the country and when she is in the country my family prefer me to stay out of the way and not make contact which added to the grief i was feeling about Jon because when i met him he'd been my home, my happy, my soft space, away from my difficult family.
There's a book called "Talking of Love on the Edge of a Precipice" which i read some years back that spoke of resilience being born out of feeling loved. I wonder if that is why i hold the love affair i had with Jon so close to me. I felt loved in his arms, and his love gave me the courage to believe in myself, believe i was ok, not rotten, ugly, useless, horrible, but what i wanted to be, someone worthy of love. My anger towards his family stems in part from the way they refused to acknowledge our love affair as anything of worth when it was of huge worth to me, and maybe of worth to him too.
One of the things that was also bugging me was the issue of some letters of mine that he'd apparently kept which his ex-wife had told me about about two years before. I'd assumed they were a couple of postcards and maybe a birthday card that i'd sent him after our break up when we were close but not lovers. Cards he'd stuck on his fridge maybe. After a session about copyright law in the symposium i was thinking about how i wanted my words to Jon even if they were likely to be disappointingly flat to be in my hands and not the seemingly hostile hands of his ex-wife. A part of me thought "let it go, it doesn't matter" but another voice kept saying "you need those letters". In the end the "you need those letters" won over and i sent an email to nudge the ex-wife into sending them not really daring to hope she still had them, but chancing my arm anyway. Our email exchange was a bloody fight but she sent the letters to me.
What i hadn't expected was a package nearly a kilo in weight containing, it seems, all the letters and cards i sent him when we were together and a couple of notebooks; a holiday diary we'd made together, and one with poems and pictures and things that belonged to us and my thoughts collected together for him at the beginning of our affair. The stuff was so personal it seemed mad that she'd kept it for so long. It was devastating to receive. But also amazing. It made me feel not-crazy for loving him and believing he loved me too because surely he'd not have kept all that stuff and taken it with him if he didn't care. It made me want to swear because damn fool i loved him and would have followed him to the ends of the earth if he'd asked. It made me feel better about making work about him. Not silly but honest.
This post is an explanation, i guess, of the emotional landscape in which the SNU work was growing. I think that everything the maker-creator is thinking and feeling when they are making-creating becomes part of whatever is made/created so giving this much space to my heart-work feels appropriate if somewhat exposing.
And i was feeling hemmed in because when i meltdown i need to retreat but all that was happening was asking me to push out. And i was dealing with Jon grief and unresolved child's grief for my grandpa and wanting to get in touch with my father to ask when my grandpa died but not being able to because my oldest sister was in the country and when she is in the country my family prefer me to stay out of the way and not make contact which added to the grief i was feeling about Jon because when i met him he'd been my home, my happy, my soft space, away from my difficult family.
There's a book called "Talking of Love on the Edge of a Precipice" which i read some years back that spoke of resilience being born out of feeling loved. I wonder if that is why i hold the love affair i had with Jon so close to me. I felt loved in his arms, and his love gave me the courage to believe in myself, believe i was ok, not rotten, ugly, useless, horrible, but what i wanted to be, someone worthy of love. My anger towards his family stems in part from the way they refused to acknowledge our love affair as anything of worth when it was of huge worth to me, and maybe of worth to him too.
One of the things that was also bugging me was the issue of some letters of mine that he'd apparently kept which his ex-wife had told me about about two years before. I'd assumed they were a couple of postcards and maybe a birthday card that i'd sent him after our break up when we were close but not lovers. Cards he'd stuck on his fridge maybe. After a session about copyright law in the symposium i was thinking about how i wanted my words to Jon even if they were likely to be disappointingly flat to be in my hands and not the seemingly hostile hands of his ex-wife. A part of me thought "let it go, it doesn't matter" but another voice kept saying "you need those letters". In the end the "you need those letters" won over and i sent an email to nudge the ex-wife into sending them not really daring to hope she still had them, but chancing my arm anyway. Our email exchange was a bloody fight but she sent the letters to me.
What i hadn't expected was a package nearly a kilo in weight containing, it seems, all the letters and cards i sent him when we were together and a couple of notebooks; a holiday diary we'd made together, and one with poems and pictures and things that belonged to us and my thoughts collected together for him at the beginning of our affair. The stuff was so personal it seemed mad that she'd kept it for so long. It was devastating to receive. But also amazing. It made me feel not-crazy for loving him and believing he loved me too because surely he'd not have kept all that stuff and taken it with him if he didn't care. It made me want to swear because damn fool i loved him and would have followed him to the ends of the earth if he'd asked. It made me feel better about making work about him. Not silly but honest.
This post is an explanation, i guess, of the emotional landscape in which the SNU work was growing. I think that everything the maker-creator is thinking and feeling when they are making-creating becomes part of whatever is made/created so giving this much space to my heart-work feels appropriate if somewhat exposing.
ASU2. I hope i haven't lost the thread. These are a few scribbled drawings for the Judas' Kiss plates ... knocking out ideas roughly with pencil in a europa notebook. I like drawing ideas out on lined paper i think it feels a bit like writing and a bit like drawing and not like either which frees my hand.
ASU2. SNU. Judas & Jesus. You'll note that i've introduced the label/tag "Social Contract" this is one of the connecting points between my two projects but not just my two projects. The social contract is what binds society together, it is laws, it is government but it is deeper than the law or government of any country or institution. It is basic tenets of grace and respect that are seated within the body, a union of body, mind and heart, that commands the government of an individual within society. A society that might be any institution made up of more than one living being, from a brief encounter to a global civilisation. There is a lot to go into here and i'm not sure where to begin.
Here at this moment in time humanity as a species stands at a crossroad Covid19 is running the show. The relationship between us as a species and the virus is that the virus has the upper hand and its a bit of a shock. What is happening to us as result of becoming subject to this virus is that we are meeting ourselves with all our clothes off. It is not comfortable our rights and wrongs are being exposed, that which is good and that which is bad about who we are as individuals, and within small groups and culture too is being revealed by our impotence.
The element of being stripped naked is part of the stations of the cross, Jesus at the foot of the cross station 10 "Jesus is stripped of his clothes", and so it could be said that we as a species are there with him at the moment, but i am skipping ahead of myself because the work i am giving you now is related to Jesus' last night.
Jesus went with his disciples to the Gardens of Gethsemane. He and three of his disciples/followers went to the Mount of Olives to pray. The followers fell asleep. Judas came and planted a kiss on Jesus' cheek. The guards took him. Simon Peter cut the guard's ear off. Jesus chastised him. But also he chastised those he had taken with him to pray for sleeping. Maybe they were tired but he in that moment raged that had failed to keep him company on his last night of freedom, his last night alive. In the morning he was taken before Pontius Pilate and sentenced to death by crucifixion.
I am in a muddle here with how i take this blog/journal forward because my work here was a criss crossing of thought streams but it may be that this thing, the social contract, is the hub of it. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss thereby breaking the contract. But Jesus had publicly admonished him when he took issue with Mary washing Jesus' feet. To publicly humiliate another is to break the contract. The disciples had fallen asleep and so broken the terms that Jesus had thought they were under. But also maybe Jesus had asked of them something they were unable to do also breaking contract. And so on and so on. Because this is the thing and it is why the social contract runs deeper than state laws or government. It is about common decency but each person's life and their fore-fathers/mothers lives creates the essence of that contract and its about survival, physical, social and emotional survival. The social contract asks that we step into someone else's shoes and respond with understanding and compassion and that they do the same for us.
I say that it is the hub of my projects but its also the hub of the universe, the contract we make with our surroundings, not just human intercourse but our intercourse with the world we live in. In the UEA/NUA collaborative project we looked at those who were homeless and how those who were not homeless related to homeless people. When questioned few gave money and most of those who did were in "low skilled" jobs and had lower levels of education. The sentiment expressed was that the government ought to be helping. There was discomfort with seeing the homeless which made people turn away. We know when we witness suffering that we should help, but are stopped, often by fear, sometimes by revulsion, sometimes by denial, a refusal to see. To help us to not see we make that which we don't want to see other, not us. To ask what is home allows us to meet the absence of home in ourselves. To ask what is love allows us to meet the unloved. To feel homeless or unloved with the other helps us to understand and feel compassion and thereby meet the others needs as well as we meet our own.
At this time i was also applying for various exhibitions, the Raveningham Sculpture Trail, The Bishop's Prize, an MA student-curator's exhibition called Self Love (more on that later) as well as finishing a postcard for the charity auction at Mandell's Gallery. I'm not sure why i mention this now except maybe because it was yet more divergent paths i was treading. When writing a proposal for a piece of work for an exhibition I have to take myself some part of the way down the road of making it in order to know it is possible, to be made it needs to be conceived and given time and body space to grow. Art does not appear out of thin air, click it is made, there is a process behind it. The curator writing to accept or reject an artist's proposal is respecting that process and the work being offered. It makes it worth the time and effort it takes to make the work. The formal acceptance is part of the exhibition framework for me, it feels right, makes me feel valued and supported as an artist.
Here at this moment in time humanity as a species stands at a crossroad Covid19 is running the show. The relationship between us as a species and the virus is that the virus has the upper hand and its a bit of a shock. What is happening to us as result of becoming subject to this virus is that we are meeting ourselves with all our clothes off. It is not comfortable our rights and wrongs are being exposed, that which is good and that which is bad about who we are as individuals, and within small groups and culture too is being revealed by our impotence.
The element of being stripped naked is part of the stations of the cross, Jesus at the foot of the cross station 10 "Jesus is stripped of his clothes", and so it could be said that we as a species are there with him at the moment, but i am skipping ahead of myself because the work i am giving you now is related to Jesus' last night.
Jesus went with his disciples to the Gardens of Gethsemane. He and three of his disciples/followers went to the Mount of Olives to pray. The followers fell asleep. Judas came and planted a kiss on Jesus' cheek. The guards took him. Simon Peter cut the guard's ear off. Jesus chastised him. But also he chastised those he had taken with him to pray for sleeping. Maybe they were tired but he in that moment raged that had failed to keep him company on his last night of freedom, his last night alive. In the morning he was taken before Pontius Pilate and sentenced to death by crucifixion.
I am in a muddle here with how i take this blog/journal forward because my work here was a criss crossing of thought streams but it may be that this thing, the social contract, is the hub of it. Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss thereby breaking the contract. But Jesus had publicly admonished him when he took issue with Mary washing Jesus' feet. To publicly humiliate another is to break the contract. The disciples had fallen asleep and so broken the terms that Jesus had thought they were under. But also maybe Jesus had asked of them something they were unable to do also breaking contract. And so on and so on. Because this is the thing and it is why the social contract runs deeper than state laws or government. It is about common decency but each person's life and their fore-fathers/mothers lives creates the essence of that contract and its about survival, physical, social and emotional survival. The social contract asks that we step into someone else's shoes and respond with understanding and compassion and that they do the same for us.
I say that it is the hub of my projects but its also the hub of the universe, the contract we make with our surroundings, not just human intercourse but our intercourse with the world we live in. In the UEA/NUA collaborative project we looked at those who were homeless and how those who were not homeless related to homeless people. When questioned few gave money and most of those who did were in "low skilled" jobs and had lower levels of education. The sentiment expressed was that the government ought to be helping. There was discomfort with seeing the homeless which made people turn away. We know when we witness suffering that we should help, but are stopped, often by fear, sometimes by revulsion, sometimes by denial, a refusal to see. To help us to not see we make that which we don't want to see other, not us. To ask what is home allows us to meet the absence of home in ourselves. To ask what is love allows us to meet the unloved. To feel homeless or unloved with the other helps us to understand and feel compassion and thereby meet the others needs as well as we meet our own.
At this time i was also applying for various exhibitions, the Raveningham Sculpture Trail, The Bishop's Prize, an MA student-curator's exhibition called Self Love (more on that later) as well as finishing a postcard for the charity auction at Mandell's Gallery. I'm not sure why i mention this now except maybe because it was yet more divergent paths i was treading. When writing a proposal for a piece of work for an exhibition I have to take myself some part of the way down the road of making it in order to know it is possible, to be made it needs to be conceived and given time and body space to grow. Art does not appear out of thin air, click it is made, there is a process behind it. The curator writing to accept or reject an artist's proposal is respecting that process and the work being offered. It makes it worth the time and effort it takes to make the work. The formal acceptance is part of the exhibition framework for me, it feels right, makes me feel valued and supported as an artist.
ASU2. Prints from drypoint and hard ground scribble plates, worked into twice. Not finished. And note the faces are merely different types of face to distinguish between them. I'm looking at how a thing is seen from a different point of view. I haven't really seen in my head the faces of either character as i want to draw them. Next page is some scratchy drawings but not anything worked into. Do I see Jesus as more refined and Judas as rougher ? or the other way about ? it is all in the looking, the viewer, perspective, perception.
Sunday 19 April 2020
ASU2. I feel with this blog now a bit how i did months ago when i was at this stage of the term, my head spinning and like i have too many balls up in the air. I was aware that i had done very little for my ASU2 project. Remember, The Stations of the Cross. I'd been thinking the story, walking it through in my mind, the last days, Jesus' in the desert, Jesus' ride into Jerusalem, Jesus at the temple, the last supper, Mary Magdalen washing his feet, the conflict within his inner circle, the shared meal, the feeling of foreboding, Jesus talking about betrayal, "one of you shall betray me tonight", "one of you shall deny me before the cock crows three times", the blessing "eat, drink, this is my body which i give unto you, this is my blood". Who knows if he actually said those things but this is the story that has been passed down through the ages.
And then Jesus and his disciples leave to go to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray to contemplate or maybe just to hang out, a group of twelve men after supper taking a walk on a warm evening or night, was it warm ? or was there a chill or a breeze ? maybe there was tension in the air, did they feel Judas' absence ? did they care that he was absent ? Was he the fall guy, the mate that got pranked and teased ? Was he fed up with it ? Was he jealous ? Jealous of Jesus ? Jealous of the other disciples ? Jealous of Mary ? Was he a bad tempered lout ? or too stiff for the group ? or too sensitive ? what made him give Jesus to the men of the temple ? what drove him to do that ? his suicide after suggests he regretted it ? was it an impulse ? a fuck you ? a cry for help ? a please see me ? his name has gone down as the name of a betrayer but maybe he too was destined for the role he plays in the story, maybe his life led to his end as inevitably as Jesus' life is led him to his.
Jesus went with three of his friend to the mount of olives. I guess they were the favoured few, the inner circle. I imagine him looking out across Jerusalem, the sounds of city at night, animals, insects, and the small lights of windows, fires, the smells in the air. I feel him to be tired and sad, worn out with being idolised, by crowds and even his friends, i feel like he is thinking that the show is over. I don't know if he knows he is going to be crucified. Maybe he thinks he will get a hard beating and that afterwards he'll take his girl home and let go of his boyhood. Or maybe the atmosphere is so weighted its hard to ignore the feeling of impending doom, the dark politics that require a sacrifice, a scapegoat, an example to be made, rebel and you'll suffer, see, see how this man you all thought was great can be taken down, can be shamed, can be broken, can be killed if we like.
At last as dawn is breaking Judas comes with the temple guards. He greets Jesus with a kiss. The kiss is the sign. This is the one. How does that kiss feel ? is there a moment of love between the two ? a warmth from that contact that strikes like a knife ? the guards move forward to arrest Jesus, one of his friends, Simon Peter ? steps forward and strikes the guards ear with a sword or a knife, protecting his master, the leader of the gang. Jesus remonstrates. He knows now that some rough justice is to be handed to him. Does he know that fighting is pointless ? Does he seek to spare others ? Why doesn't he fight ? Why does he yield to punishment ? Does he feel he deserves punishment ? What is his back story ? What is he thinking. The guards take him away. Peter denies him three times before the cock crows, realising only on the third crow that it was he his friend spoke of. Or was the story made up after. Stories are fluid at their beginning, it is only later that certain parts become set, the bones of a myth.
And I am thinking about this part of the story of Jesus and i'm thinking that i want to make fourteen, or maybe fifteen if i include the resurrection, prints each depicting a station. I am thinking that i want to learn how to do drypoint on a copper plate and also how to make hard ground plate. These are pretty much new to me processes, i have done a little drypoint a good decade ago on aluminium and plastic but nothing really since, hard ground i have never tried.
I am feeling exhausted and my nerves are rattling particularly because of the collaborative project so i ask to be excused from a taught session because i know i need to drop down a gear, i cannot take in other people's seed ideas and i cannot let mine out without losing it. I should not have asked. I should have just taken. I thought i was being polite. I regret trying. I stop trying. I hate everyone because all i wanted was a moment to breathe and because i asked i have less moments. It is resolved now. covid19 makes before covid19 feel like years ago, another life, but i write it because it was part of the process.
I took the time tho i was told not to. And let myself scratch into a small copper plate front and back and an aluminium scrap too. Not good work. Resting scribbles.
The following day I took two scrap copper plates of the same size and worked on the back of one in drypoint with Jesus' face showing as Judas comes to him and worked into hard ground on the other with Judas' face as he approaches Jesus. Then after the hard ground was etched and cleaned i printed from them, one print each, and wrote on them to show what i liked and what i didn't, what was a typical drypoint mark and so on. The following week i worked into the plates again rubbing out parts and making further marks. I did not have time to write on them. I had planned to keep working into them. But there is never enough time. I printed on two types of paper the second time to see how that changed the prints. The prints are not good work, they are working work, learning work. I like how they look with the writing.
And then Jesus and his disciples leave to go to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray to contemplate or maybe just to hang out, a group of twelve men after supper taking a walk on a warm evening or night, was it warm ? or was there a chill or a breeze ? maybe there was tension in the air, did they feel Judas' absence ? did they care that he was absent ? Was he the fall guy, the mate that got pranked and teased ? Was he fed up with it ? Was he jealous ? Jealous of Jesus ? Jealous of the other disciples ? Jealous of Mary ? Was he a bad tempered lout ? or too stiff for the group ? or too sensitive ? what made him give Jesus to the men of the temple ? what drove him to do that ? his suicide after suggests he regretted it ? was it an impulse ? a fuck you ? a cry for help ? a please see me ? his name has gone down as the name of a betrayer but maybe he too was destined for the role he plays in the story, maybe his life led to his end as inevitably as Jesus' life is led him to his.
Jesus went with three of his friend to the mount of olives. I guess they were the favoured few, the inner circle. I imagine him looking out across Jerusalem, the sounds of city at night, animals, insects, and the small lights of windows, fires, the smells in the air. I feel him to be tired and sad, worn out with being idolised, by crowds and even his friends, i feel like he is thinking that the show is over. I don't know if he knows he is going to be crucified. Maybe he thinks he will get a hard beating and that afterwards he'll take his girl home and let go of his boyhood. Or maybe the atmosphere is so weighted its hard to ignore the feeling of impending doom, the dark politics that require a sacrifice, a scapegoat, an example to be made, rebel and you'll suffer, see, see how this man you all thought was great can be taken down, can be shamed, can be broken, can be killed if we like.
At last as dawn is breaking Judas comes with the temple guards. He greets Jesus with a kiss. The kiss is the sign. This is the one. How does that kiss feel ? is there a moment of love between the two ? a warmth from that contact that strikes like a knife ? the guards move forward to arrest Jesus, one of his friends, Simon Peter ? steps forward and strikes the guards ear with a sword or a knife, protecting his master, the leader of the gang. Jesus remonstrates. He knows now that some rough justice is to be handed to him. Does he know that fighting is pointless ? Does he seek to spare others ? Why doesn't he fight ? Why does he yield to punishment ? Does he feel he deserves punishment ? What is his back story ? What is he thinking. The guards take him away. Peter denies him three times before the cock crows, realising only on the third crow that it was he his friend spoke of. Or was the story made up after. Stories are fluid at their beginning, it is only later that certain parts become set, the bones of a myth.
And I am thinking about this part of the story of Jesus and i'm thinking that i want to make fourteen, or maybe fifteen if i include the resurrection, prints each depicting a station. I am thinking that i want to learn how to do drypoint on a copper plate and also how to make hard ground plate. These are pretty much new to me processes, i have done a little drypoint a good decade ago on aluminium and plastic but nothing really since, hard ground i have never tried.
I am feeling exhausted and my nerves are rattling particularly because of the collaborative project so i ask to be excused from a taught session because i know i need to drop down a gear, i cannot take in other people's seed ideas and i cannot let mine out without losing it. I should not have asked. I should have just taken. I thought i was being polite. I regret trying. I stop trying. I hate everyone because all i wanted was a moment to breathe and because i asked i have less moments. It is resolved now. covid19 makes before covid19 feel like years ago, another life, but i write it because it was part of the process.
I took the time tho i was told not to. And let myself scratch into a small copper plate front and back and an aluminium scrap too. Not good work. Resting scribbles.
The following day I took two scrap copper plates of the same size and worked on the back of one in drypoint with Jesus' face showing as Judas comes to him and worked into hard ground on the other with Judas' face as he approaches Jesus. Then after the hard ground was etched and cleaned i printed from them, one print each, and wrote on them to show what i liked and what i didn't, what was a typical drypoint mark and so on. The following week i worked into the plates again rubbing out parts and making further marks. I did not have time to write on them. I had planned to keep working into them. But there is never enough time. I printed on two types of paper the second time to see how that changed the prints. The prints are not good work, they are working work, learning work. I like how they look with the writing.
SNU. ASU2. And while the CMYK screen still existed i figured it would be worth trying out colours that weren't Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. I went again into my childhood and used colours from the book "Wings on a Wednesday". This is a picture book about a little girl, Hatty, whose mother takes her to see Aunt Zoe every Wednesday. When they get to Aunt Zoe's Aunt Zoe says "fly out of the room like a good little bird and let me have a nice long chat with your mother". The little girl goes to see the cross parrot in the garden. The cross parrot has feathers of pink and pinky-orange; yellow and yellowy-gold; red and ruby-red. One day Hatty finds one and then another and she starts to build some wings. And then every Wednesday she really does fly. The feathers connect to the seagulls as yet no more than an idea and also the bronze feather that i kept trying and failing to make.
Feathers also connect to Jon and the book has a theme of gardens, flight, escape, friendship, otherness, wonder, home. I guess these things tie in to my love affair with Jon. It is how it felt being with him. Creative paths like water are bound by that which surrounds them. Because remember the start of the SNU project began with giving Jon place, so that he was felt but not burdensome, could be without stopping me being. Coming back to the seed idea of a project is grounding, gives the project home.
And at the same time as all of the past few blog happening were going on i was applying for exhibitions and other things and still working on the St Martin's collaborative project with the UEA Business School students. This involved, 2 more afternoon meetings at the UEA and a presentation at NUA. There was also a hoo ha going on all around about this time but i've blogged about it before so don't need to repeat myself. But thinking about home i made a small etching from a piece of glass i found on the pavement shaped like a child's drawing of a house and an embossed print that sadly broke the glass.
A broken theme connects both the SNU and ASU2 projects and also, i think, the homelessness project. Broken hearts, broken bodies, broken trust, broken contracts, broken lives.
Feathers also connect to Jon and the book has a theme of gardens, flight, escape, friendship, otherness, wonder, home. I guess these things tie in to my love affair with Jon. It is how it felt being with him. Creative paths like water are bound by that which surrounds them. Because remember the start of the SNU project began with giving Jon place, so that he was felt but not burdensome, could be without stopping me being. Coming back to the seed idea of a project is grounding, gives the project home.
And at the same time as all of the past few blog happening were going on i was applying for exhibitions and other things and still working on the St Martin's collaborative project with the UEA Business School students. This involved, 2 more afternoon meetings at the UEA and a presentation at NUA. There was also a hoo ha going on all around about this time but i've blogged about it before so don't need to repeat myself. But thinking about home i made a small etching from a piece of glass i found on the pavement shaped like a child's drawing of a house and an embossed print that sadly broke the glass.
A broken theme connects both the SNU and ASU2 projects and also, i think, the homelessness project. Broken hearts, broken bodies, broken trust, broken contracts, broken lives.
SNU. Working with photographs was becoming a little intense. Feelings i had not anticipated had surfaced, and feelings i had thought i would be working with were turning out to be more raw and open than i'd expected. In truth i'd hoped the exercise would be a walk in the park, a sunny day in the garden, a trip along a country road, it began in that spirit but had taken me into dark places.
I decided to side step into working with objects in the 3d workshops. I had four metal origami flowers that had been poured at the beginning of the term that were sample pieces, they were me trying recall how to make paper pieces for burn out, and how the different metals offered in the workshops worked and handled, with a mind to needing this knowledge for my masters project in term three. The feathers i'd spent a morning putting on cups with sprue and risers had not been successful but these were good enough to use as learning props.
I also wanted to find a way to make a copy of a tube of lino printing ink that had come out of my granny's art studio bag when she died. The graphics were cool so i didn't want to burn it out or ruin it with plaster or silicon so i asked Steve the technician if it could be printed on the 3d printer. I had asked the term before if a couple of wire horses might be reproduced on this machine but they were too small and slight so i also had a yen to know what could and couldn't be 3d printed, again with a view to holding this knowledge for my masters project work should i need it.
Steve took the paint tube, photographed it and put the photographs into the computer, confirmed that it was viable and so it was printed. Success. And following that success i took in a ceramic bull that had been part of my childhood, an ornament that belonged to the same period as the CMYK screen prints. All the time when working my mind is making these connections, seemingly unrelated things have lines drawn between them that outsiders can't see. The lines are live wires. They burn. The burn intensity depending on the level of attention given or the strength of the connection. The bull was photographed and processed by Steve as before. One of the interesting things about the 3d printer is that it doesn't just replicate, it is a modelling tool in itself and also things being replicated can be sized up and down. The plastic comes in various colours but the paint tube and bull by chance were printed in red.
I decided to side step into working with objects in the 3d workshops. I had four metal origami flowers that had been poured at the beginning of the term that were sample pieces, they were me trying recall how to make paper pieces for burn out, and how the different metals offered in the workshops worked and handled, with a mind to needing this knowledge for my masters project in term three. The feathers i'd spent a morning putting on cups with sprue and risers had not been successful but these were good enough to use as learning props.
I also wanted to find a way to make a copy of a tube of lino printing ink that had come out of my granny's art studio bag when she died. The graphics were cool so i didn't want to burn it out or ruin it with plaster or silicon so i asked Steve the technician if it could be printed on the 3d printer. I had asked the term before if a couple of wire horses might be reproduced on this machine but they were too small and slight so i also had a yen to know what could and couldn't be 3d printed, again with a view to holding this knowledge for my masters project work should i need it.
Steve took the paint tube, photographed it and put the photographs into the computer, confirmed that it was viable and so it was printed. Success. And following that success i took in a ceramic bull that had been part of my childhood, an ornament that belonged to the same period as the CMYK screen prints. All the time when working my mind is making these connections, seemingly unrelated things have lines drawn between them that outsiders can't see. The lines are live wires. They burn. The burn intensity depending on the level of attention given or the strength of the connection. The bull was photographed and processed by Steve as before. One of the interesting things about the 3d printer is that it doesn't just replicate, it is a modelling tool in itself and also things being replicated can be sized up and down. The plastic comes in various colours but the paint tube and bull by chance were printed in red.
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