Core studies week 7

Back to classes after "reading week", starting with a morning of talking in groups of six about our "collection" and what we're heading towards as a project. That was really good - both seeing how other people were approaching it, and getting input on your own from different perspectives. I was amazed at how much work people had done both gathering their collections and working on them subsequently. The topics/starting points in my group were: gestures (women abstracted from famous paintings); mapping memories; received ideas; bioluminescence; comics. Helen took notes on all of them -
Also helpful was explaining yet again what it is you think you might be doing - "I know what I think when I hear myself talk". My "imagined interiors" (not "imaginARY"!) are quite difficult to explain. Partly because they are mysterious to me, I can't put into words what it "is" about them - which means, I don't know what I'm thinking! Not sure if this state of confusion is a good starting point for a coherent project. It's certainly something to struggle with; isn't struggle supposed to be a vital component of art?

In the afternoon we sat working on our projects, somehow -- which for me meant covering sheets of paper with mark-making -- not surprisingly, most of my marks looked like stitches.
I'm going to be translating these onto clay for textures, eventually. It was a peaceful, restful (somewhat pointless??) thing to do, while the tutors were having one-to-ones. My own one-to-one identified the need to consider scale, the possibility of illusion, the idea of a labyrinth (not excited by that...), and whether the finished form could be common objects with non-visual dimensions. I'm letting all that slush around in the subconscious.

These rubbings (bits of paper placed underneath; the stencil provides boundaries and spacing) relate to the current sculpture project
and this is yet another worksheet - the project keeps evolving. It's time to actually make it -
After class, meeting Lisa in a pub on Great James Street, in the 18th-century district near Grays Inn Road - you may have seen it in Brideshead Revisited?
and to a talk about the Chord artwork. The talk was held in the Camden Local History Archive in the library on Theobald's road - a great resource!