Alongside my bibliography i think it makes sense for me to make a note of artists and other people i come across whose work sparks a light in me. The list is ongoing and will be incomplete for sure but gives me a space to jot down names i might otherwise lose ...
Cai Guo-Qiang - gunpowder artist - sky ladder - (see Ashmolian Museum, Oxford)
Morris Graves - painter (see Wikipedia)
Garth Williams - illustrator Rabbit's Wedding (see Wikipedia)
John Stezaker - masks (see Tate.org.uk)
Harry Callahan - photographer - (see Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson)
Marianne Breslauer - photographer Weimar Republic
Saturday, 25 January 2020
My blog as my reflective journal continues. I have had a week of ups and downs, not a roller coaster but a bumpy sea. On Monday i finally with quite a lot of help from Jess got my copper plates photo etched and ready for printing. Jess is amazing. I see how she holds every student that comes into her studio, how each of us is given the time that we need and the help. She meets every project it seems with respect and kindness. Actually the technicians at NUA are pretty much all great. Generous with their guidance, sensible to where we need help and to where help is not needed and their best help is to stand back or nudge us to think and do for ourselves. They are the lynchpins, the angels, the quiet heroes. We learn from the technicians in a way that we cannot learn from our tutors who, having the job of holding a mass of students in their care, are not able to engage in the same hands on way.
So with the plates etched I was able to move on with them. And while i'm praising Jess i'm going to mention that she'd also let me talk about ideas i am considering for my SNU project, and given encouragement, being able to give voice to an informed listener counts for a lot when a thought thread is young within the body. On Monday afternoon, after the plates were etched, i began to make test prints using strong black and bone black. There are six black intaglio inks on the studio shelves and although they are similar they are not the same. My intention after last term was to have a look at these and so it made sense to print the two plates in each of the blacks so that i could see and feel the difference. Feel ? Yes feel, because each ink moves a little differently, and sits on the plate a little differently too. I know it might seem dull to make the same print over and over again but coming from a textiles background testing the materials i use is a key part of my creative practice. It serves as a bedrock, i know that leaving the university at the end of this MA my printmaking will still be rudimentary but i hope that my understanding at base level will pass muster and be a ground that allows me to keep going.
By Wednesday when we had our first taught session i was feeling good about the new term, two etching plates made and six inks tested on each plate throwing up interesting information, two projects (ASU & SNU) that seemed to be calling to each other albeit across a fairly wide divide but both live and kicking and feeling good to go.
But then comes the mood drop, the academic part of this course confuses me. I did less well in my RIPU last term (RIPU stands for "Research Into Practice Unit" i think). Part of that stemmed from my not knowing what was being asked of us until a very few weeks before our hand in. I think it may be that i am not good at learning with the teaching method, it seems like the module is coming in bite size mouthfuls but i feel like i'm tasting blind and not sure what i'm supposed to do with the new taste. Or perhaps a better analogy would be that it feels like being shown around a city by someone who knows the territory but not really taking in the way to here or there and so feeling lost. I will have to sharpen my senses and get with it and know to ask for help sooner rather than later if i am still struggling with knowing what the SNU brief is asking for.
It is disconcerting tho' as i thought i had a handle on what i needed to do and was following a clear path but both the lecture and seminar confused me, leaving me feeling sad, and stupid, and frustrated with myself, and mentally petrified. Useful things that came out of the seminar session for me were the notion of an elevator pitch and the double diamond. And we discussed the learning outcomes that we are assessed by, boxes that need ticking, hoops that need jumping through. I am not so good at jumping through hoops but in her ASU lecture Marie Brennan, the MA course leader, spoke of learning outcomes as the skeleton and i liked that metaphor, it felt like something i could get a handle on ... "the knee bone connected to the thigh bone" and so on.
The ASU lecture and seminar were generally less disconcerting. It was nice to meet more formally all the first year MA Fine Art part-timers. And Desmond sensibly asked us to draw in and map our creative vision/focus in silence for ten minutes before it was put out to be seen, met and spoken about. A lot of my creative process is done in this way. In silence and unseen i will think through an idea, testing it and pushing it, researching and assessing, before i feel ready to give it visible presence. I was thankful to be given that space to move in a class setting.
My work process is intuitive, i work with my senses, i wonder if my process is a little primitive, i think education asks me to be more cultured and sophisticated, it feels alien but will up my game if i can take with me the primitive part and not lose it in the process of being civilised. Raised not razed. I suppose it's a need to maintain the poetry whilst building skills.
On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday i spent time on the print studio computers as well as attending taught sessions. The computers are definitely civilised machinery, i struggle with even the basics but i am using photographic images for my SNU project and i need to know how to scan them and fiddle with them to get them to a point where they can be used to make prints so working with the computers are a must. Under Jess' guidance i have made eight images to be screen-printed in CMYK in half tone and diffusion dither (i think i've got those names right). Eight images is one for each colour, in each setting (?). All the same picture but to be printed on top of each other to make two whole prints, one in diffusion dither and one in half tone, each in four colours CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow & black). That is my next week's project and will probably take up the week after too. It is going to fry my brain i think but will hopefully be exciting and will lead me to knowing better how colours blend and also how to register a print which is one of my personal MA learning outcomes.
I intend to alleviate the head-stretching screen printing with gentler work printing from and playing with etching plates and mono printing and hopefully some mould making and casting in the 3d studio too. Whoosh the time, i know, will fly by.
Lastly to cap the week off nicely on an up i received this morning an email from Sarah Cannell the Raveningham Sculpture Trail curator saying that i have again been chosen to be one of her artists on the trail. This is a lovely way to start a weekend as Sarah is a joy to work with and the sculpture trail has been one of the highlights of my year in all the years i've been a participant.
So with the plates etched I was able to move on with them. And while i'm praising Jess i'm going to mention that she'd also let me talk about ideas i am considering for my SNU project, and given encouragement, being able to give voice to an informed listener counts for a lot when a thought thread is young within the body. On Monday afternoon, after the plates were etched, i began to make test prints using strong black and bone black. There are six black intaglio inks on the studio shelves and although they are similar they are not the same. My intention after last term was to have a look at these and so it made sense to print the two plates in each of the blacks so that i could see and feel the difference. Feel ? Yes feel, because each ink moves a little differently, and sits on the plate a little differently too. I know it might seem dull to make the same print over and over again but coming from a textiles background testing the materials i use is a key part of my creative practice. It serves as a bedrock, i know that leaving the university at the end of this MA my printmaking will still be rudimentary but i hope that my understanding at base level will pass muster and be a ground that allows me to keep going.
By Wednesday when we had our first taught session i was feeling good about the new term, two etching plates made and six inks tested on each plate throwing up interesting information, two projects (ASU & SNU) that seemed to be calling to each other albeit across a fairly wide divide but both live and kicking and feeling good to go.
But then comes the mood drop, the academic part of this course confuses me. I did less well in my RIPU last term (RIPU stands for "Research Into Practice Unit" i think). Part of that stemmed from my not knowing what was being asked of us until a very few weeks before our hand in. I think it may be that i am not good at learning with the teaching method, it seems like the module is coming in bite size mouthfuls but i feel like i'm tasting blind and not sure what i'm supposed to do with the new taste. Or perhaps a better analogy would be that it feels like being shown around a city by someone who knows the territory but not really taking in the way to here or there and so feeling lost. I will have to sharpen my senses and get with it and know to ask for help sooner rather than later if i am still struggling with knowing what the SNU brief is asking for.
It is disconcerting tho' as i thought i had a handle on what i needed to do and was following a clear path but both the lecture and seminar confused me, leaving me feeling sad, and stupid, and frustrated with myself, and mentally petrified. Useful things that came out of the seminar session for me were the notion of an elevator pitch and the double diamond. And we discussed the learning outcomes that we are assessed by, boxes that need ticking, hoops that need jumping through. I am not so good at jumping through hoops but in her ASU lecture Marie Brennan, the MA course leader, spoke of learning outcomes as the skeleton and i liked that metaphor, it felt like something i could get a handle on ... "the knee bone connected to the thigh bone" and so on.
The ASU lecture and seminar were generally less disconcerting. It was nice to meet more formally all the first year MA Fine Art part-timers. And Desmond sensibly asked us to draw in and map our creative vision/focus in silence for ten minutes before it was put out to be seen, met and spoken about. A lot of my creative process is done in this way. In silence and unseen i will think through an idea, testing it and pushing it, researching and assessing, before i feel ready to give it visible presence. I was thankful to be given that space to move in a class setting.
My work process is intuitive, i work with my senses, i wonder if my process is a little primitive, i think education asks me to be more cultured and sophisticated, it feels alien but will up my game if i can take with me the primitive part and not lose it in the process of being civilised. Raised not razed. I suppose it's a need to maintain the poetry whilst building skills.
On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday i spent time on the print studio computers as well as attending taught sessions. The computers are definitely civilised machinery, i struggle with even the basics but i am using photographic images for my SNU project and i need to know how to scan them and fiddle with them to get them to a point where they can be used to make prints so working with the computers are a must. Under Jess' guidance i have made eight images to be screen-printed in CMYK in half tone and diffusion dither (i think i've got those names right). Eight images is one for each colour, in each setting (?). All the same picture but to be printed on top of each other to make two whole prints, one in diffusion dither and one in half tone, each in four colours CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow & black). That is my next week's project and will probably take up the week after too. It is going to fry my brain i think but will hopefully be exciting and will lead me to knowing better how colours blend and also how to register a print which is one of my personal MA learning outcomes.
I intend to alleviate the head-stretching screen printing with gentler work printing from and playing with etching plates and mono printing and hopefully some mould making and casting in the 3d studio too. Whoosh the time, i know, will fly by.
Lastly to cap the week off nicely on an up i received this morning an email from Sarah Cannell the Raveningham Sculpture Trail curator saying that i have again been chosen to be one of her artists on the trail. This is a lovely way to start a weekend as Sarah is a joy to work with and the sculpture trail has been one of the highlights of my year in all the years i've been a participant.
Saturday, 18 January 2020
Well there now, the new term has started. I got my grades for last term's modules on Tuesday evening, they feel fair to generous and put me in a mid bracket. The need was only to pass and i was worried that i wasn't good enough to have passed and so a pass feels nice, but then there's disappointment in myself that i do better, no question in me about my grades, they were as good as i deserved, but can i be better ? is this where i rest ? or is there another ounce or so that i can give ?
On Thursday we had tutorials with our main subject teachers and they were helpful and positive. I will continue to explore printmaking and trying to make "pictures" out of stories. In one of my last term's tutorials my teacher questioned me wanting to back off from my own story. I wanted then to see if i could make work that was not related to me, to take more universal themes and give them my mark but it seems that the way i give them my mark is to take them inside of myself and then re-release them as i have found them within me.
I failed to get to grips with the RIPU project until almost too late. Thankfully just in time i broke in, breaking in has shown me new ways to enquire but i was not quite forward enough to really make the most of this module. It has made me aware that i need to dig deeper, to read other people's thoughts and go further with my own.
Last term i gave myself a hard task, i set out to explore a story i was only slightly familiar with, from a culture that was not mine, and which i had only indirect experience and no real physical reference points. I think i took on too much. Maybe i needed to take on too much. But it meant that i was unable to go as deeply into the story as i would have liked and that researching the story distracted me from other research and meant that the MA modules barely linked.
This term i'm exploring for my ASU 2 unit the stations of the cross, christ's journey to his crucifixion. Not a cheery subject but it calls to me so i'm going with it. I begin with an easier in because christianity and the Church of England church are part of my formative years. I have no religion now, i am perhaps polytheistic, interested in religion but not committed to one, i err most towards nature as my source, but a light christianity forms the bedrock of my being. And the bible as a storybook is no worse than any other book of stories as an aid to understanding.
I am not sure how i will move with the Stations. At the moment i am looking at artists, poets and film makers for inspiration, taking in the journey, the passage, that Jesus took to his death on different levels, considering his life as it is given to us by the saints who wrote the gospels, thinking about those who according to those gospels shared his life and death. Wondering about telling the stations not from his perspective but from those whose lives he touched. I trust my creative process to take me where i need to go.
That leads me to my SNU project which is coming from my own story, my memories, my being. I was drawn to do this because i found some old photos of Jon on a memory stick over the christmas holidays. It made me realise that i needed to allow myself to bear witness to the life i had with him, in part because there is no one for me to share witness with him, our life together was mostly just him and i. I have buckets of memories but no-one to turn to and say "do you remember ?" and cannot bring him back to life in that way. I cannot bring him back to life physically but this is how we bring our dead back to life when we have need of them.
When Jon died my counsellor said glibly that my grief would be a complicated grief. She spoke truly. My relationship with Jon was both light and dark and to deny either would diminish the whole. So i have to take in the good with the bad, and the bad with the good, they are front and back, left, right, night, day, up, down, a pairing. Finding balance between the pair creates a tension that i must meet or else lose the truth.
My feeling is that my SNU project and my ASU 2 project will have meeting places but it will only be by travelling their paths that i will find them. Already i have widened the scope of the SNU to a broader theme that is memory and remembering tho i think this theme will dilate and contract as the pupil of an eye dilates and contracts, to meet circumstance, both past and ongoing. Widening the scope changes the theme but maybe that is actually the need i am meeting. Placing my relationship with Jon within the context of my whole life. Giving him, giving us, our being together, the space, the worth, that he, that we, that i, that he and i together, that i think we merit. His family have been absolute in their condescension, i am sure i am written out or cast as worthless or worse within their narrative. I guess that hurts. No, i don't guess, i know. It hurts. Maybe this project is also part of healing that hurt.
I linger too long on a delicate subject. Of course being blanked, excluded or cut is painful. It may be that it is in felt experience that my SNU and ASU meet. Feelings run clean through time. Feelings may be the path that connects one story to another.
On Thursday we had tutorials with our main subject teachers and they were helpful and positive. I will continue to explore printmaking and trying to make "pictures" out of stories. In one of my last term's tutorials my teacher questioned me wanting to back off from my own story. I wanted then to see if i could make work that was not related to me, to take more universal themes and give them my mark but it seems that the way i give them my mark is to take them inside of myself and then re-release them as i have found them within me.
I failed to get to grips with the RIPU project until almost too late. Thankfully just in time i broke in, breaking in has shown me new ways to enquire but i was not quite forward enough to really make the most of this module. It has made me aware that i need to dig deeper, to read other people's thoughts and go further with my own.
Last term i gave myself a hard task, i set out to explore a story i was only slightly familiar with, from a culture that was not mine, and which i had only indirect experience and no real physical reference points. I think i took on too much. Maybe i needed to take on too much. But it meant that i was unable to go as deeply into the story as i would have liked and that researching the story distracted me from other research and meant that the MA modules barely linked.
This term i'm exploring for my ASU 2 unit the stations of the cross, christ's journey to his crucifixion. Not a cheery subject but it calls to me so i'm going with it. I begin with an easier in because christianity and the Church of England church are part of my formative years. I have no religion now, i am perhaps polytheistic, interested in religion but not committed to one, i err most towards nature as my source, but a light christianity forms the bedrock of my being. And the bible as a storybook is no worse than any other book of stories as an aid to understanding.
I am not sure how i will move with the Stations. At the moment i am looking at artists, poets and film makers for inspiration, taking in the journey, the passage, that Jesus took to his death on different levels, considering his life as it is given to us by the saints who wrote the gospels, thinking about those who according to those gospels shared his life and death. Wondering about telling the stations not from his perspective but from those whose lives he touched. I trust my creative process to take me where i need to go.
That leads me to my SNU project which is coming from my own story, my memories, my being. I was drawn to do this because i found some old photos of Jon on a memory stick over the christmas holidays. It made me realise that i needed to allow myself to bear witness to the life i had with him, in part because there is no one for me to share witness with him, our life together was mostly just him and i. I have buckets of memories but no-one to turn to and say "do you remember ?" and cannot bring him back to life in that way. I cannot bring him back to life physically but this is how we bring our dead back to life when we have need of them.
When Jon died my counsellor said glibly that my grief would be a complicated grief. She spoke truly. My relationship with Jon was both light and dark and to deny either would diminish the whole. So i have to take in the good with the bad, and the bad with the good, they are front and back, left, right, night, day, up, down, a pairing. Finding balance between the pair creates a tension that i must meet or else lose the truth.
My feeling is that my SNU project and my ASU 2 project will have meeting places but it will only be by travelling their paths that i will find them. Already i have widened the scope of the SNU to a broader theme that is memory and remembering tho i think this theme will dilate and contract as the pupil of an eye dilates and contracts, to meet circumstance, both past and ongoing. Widening the scope changes the theme but maybe that is actually the need i am meeting. Placing my relationship with Jon within the context of my whole life. Giving him, giving us, our being together, the space, the worth, that he, that we, that i, that he and i together, that i think we merit. His family have been absolute in their condescension, i am sure i am written out or cast as worthless or worse within their narrative. I guess that hurts. No, i don't guess, i know. It hurts. Maybe this project is also part of healing that hurt.
I linger too long on a delicate subject. Of course being blanked, excluded or cut is painful. It may be that it is in felt experience that my SNU and ASU meet. Feelings run clean through time. Feelings may be the path that connects one story to another.
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