Ceramics week 1 - postscript

One of the functions of my blog posts on each class is that they function as my "self reflective journal", the log book that everyone on the course is keeping, like it or not; the SRJs need to be seen at each assessment. As the assessment lasts for only 20 minutes for each student, there's no time for the examiners to read the SRJs, and of course some people say "why do we have to do this when no-one reads them anyway". The other thing that happens is you don't do the SRJ entry immediately and then you end up doing them all at once, which negates the purpose of the exercise - for it does have a purpose -- to get us thinking critically about our own practice.
The examination board gave a list of topics to use when thinking about the day's work:
1. Research (visual and contextual)
2. Sources
3. Form
4. Content
5. Process
6. Conclusion (the final product)
7. Analytical
8. Evaluative
9. Projective

[As an editor, I do wish they'd stuck to using nouns throughout -- but that's exactly the kind of thinking I'm trying to break away from!]

So, I'm looking at my summary of the ceramics class and wondering how many of these areas are covered, even implicitly. (If the process of making art is so synthetic, why is thinking about it so analytical?) [Ah, "synthetic" - there's a tricky little word!]

And why is it so hard to stay on this topic? This thinking-and-writing thing isn't easy....
Research - done after the fact, by searching out the links in the previous post. Sources - previous research on houses, doorways, interiors, and my own thoughts about "imagined interiors". Form - corners and boxes with "doorways", sometimes decorated, made in clay. Content - the theme of inside & outside; aspects of the built environment. Process - joining slabs; molding; painted, impressed and pierced surface decoration. Conclusion/product - clay models that can be held in one hand.

Analytical - these arose from the need to do something with my hands while thinking, and also from a hope that during the making "something would happen" - I'd notice an effect, or think "what if" - and that would lead to a chain of events, to surprises that would move the idea forward (to paraphrase the famous "I know what I think when I hear myself talk" -- I know where it's going when I realise what's happening). Evaluative - these are still experiments, I still don't know where it's going, I still don't have a plan, even a vague one; though there's an intention and a theme, these aren't clear on looking at the work produced today. Projective - some of these will be discarded as irrelevant (though they might be glazed as part of the learning about the ceramic medium); others could be assembled for an installation.
The second reason for all this text with so few pictures (apart from forcing myself to write a "proper" SRJ entry for once) is to hear myself talk about the previous day's excursion into an area that's not strictly On Topic. I was tempted to narrow my topic to the theme of safety and danger .... there's a point where suddenly you're in the one condition and no longer the other, and I'm interested in what that point is, how you know, what happens next, what's gone before - and how to show all that [and whether it's a dumb thing to do "art" about, or just too difficult for me] -- but safety/danger is just one pair of opposites, and there are many others that I can use more easily and effectively in this project. One tutor advised, "stick with the really basic things, the simple things" - did he mean rough vs smooth, big vs small ... making that interesting is a challenge too, but it's not the brief I've set myself [which would be ... what, exactly?].

At the start of the day the four of us who were able to get in, given the snow and disrupted transport, had a long discussion about our projected projects - and I wittered on like in the paragraph above. However when Robert came back and asked, what has everyone decided, I announced that I'd be sticking with doorways and thresholds, rather than veering off into safety and danger. If it's not a passing phase, it'll be something for "later". So: doors, thresholds it is, for the next wee while.

These final pictures are some bags from Madeira that Robert will be using in his ceramic work.
You know how it is with embroidery - you always have to see the back...

Turner Prize 2009

On the last weekend of its run, we got to the Turner Prize show.The first work in the first room was Leonora (Death) 2006 by Lucy Skaer - "an engulfing swathe of densely worked paper, its surface almost entirely covered with a suffocating matrix of tiny ink and graphite spirals, each a tiny self-contained unit. From a distance, however, the life-size outline of a whale skeleton is faintly discernible amid the abstract marks. The eye is forced to oscillate between the different registers - the detail and the whole - in an attempt by Skaer to generate the vertiginous sensation of 'the whale moving beneath you'." (This is from the little book about the show.) The drawing is part of this installation shown elsewhere -
Photography not permitted, so this picture of the prize winner, Richard Wright, is from this website -
It will be painted over. Wright says the ephemerality of his site-specific work is part of the concept.

Outside the exit, people were invited to comment on the exhibits -
Children had no compunction about doing so, nor did parents hold back on encouraging them -
We thought "Louis" had the makings of a connoiseur, or a poet - or, with a little training, an art critic -
Nicole, also a Wright fan, got into the spirit of things -
"please destroy this note after several weeks".

Back to class - term 4, core 1

This term "core subjects" will be a day of doing personal work, most of the time. Several of us went down to the caf for a coffee and spent a good hour talking about exhibitions, sketchbooks, artists, what we did at New Year, how confused we are about the final project....Timetables, forms, the inevitable to-do list....
My "inside outside in between" theme seems to be developing into safety vs danger, and the "tipping point" or threshold of moving from one to the other. Finding this book in the library was useful -Not only did it have a variety of doors pictured portentously, it had renderings of mysterious atmospheres -


I filled a "research" worksheet by the end of the day -
The tutors were talking to individuals about how to fill in the "statement of intent" about their project for this term - the modus operandi is to be vague, to talk about "exploration" in terms like "previously I worked on ... and discovered that ...; I am therefore doing ... to extend this to ..." and make links to previous learning. A section that's difficult for people is "method of evaluation" - how will you know that what you set out to do is actually working? (Keep the words "appropriate visual language" in mind here...)

Cross-body bag

After unsuccessful attempts to find the Fossil Small Top Zip cross-body bag online, I decided to waste no more time on the search and to buckle down and make one. It's almost completely recycled - the lining is a shirt front and the outside is the leg from black linen trousers, with leftovers of fusible wadding in between, sewn with variegated thread (that's not recycled). The handle is the hems of the trousers, sewn together and reinforced with stitching. The handle seems to be stretching with use -The pocket on the front holds the camera, which I keep looped around the handle for quick access (and safety in use). There's a smaller pocket inside for lipstick and stuff like that. And plenty of room for my small sketchbook -- in fact the bag is a bit toooo big ... might have to make a slightly smaller one next weekend.

Art I Like - Charlotte Hodes

Charlotte Hodes was artist-in-residence at the Wallace Collection recently (Fragmented Images was the title of the show in May 2007), and currently has an exhibition in the west end. All the work in the show is on the website. This pic (of my favourite piece) will give you an idea of how the works relate to each other -Vases based on 18th-century shapes, huge! - and strangely blobby women on them, somtimes dragging, what, a duvet ... and little pots & pans ... all very decorative and shiny and beautiful, but slightly edgy too. And her big wallpieces - collages, cut out and stuck on but printed first - mainly pink and brown, sometimes a flash of fuchsia or turquoise - you're drawn in to look at little things, and how they connect up, and you can't quite understand it, but it's fascinating nonetheless. If I'm in the neighbourhood before it closes, I'll certainly go again - it's on till 30 January.

This 1997 work is from her article (Interpreting Ceramics, issue 8) on perspectives on the female figure. A central theme in her work how to depict the female figure from her own female perspective within the context of historical representations.Her 1998 residency at the Spode factory introduced her to working on ceramic surfaces -I love the idea that this dinner service (2001) can be read like a painting, across the whole surface, and that as the meal progresses and items are removed, further images are revealed and concealed -A 10-minute video on her use of digital images is here - it's always interesting to see someone at work and find out how and why they do what they do. She kept a log of the project ("Drawing Skirts"), first with notes to get a feel for what she wants to do, and she keeps notes when she's working on images on the computer, and printouts as she goes along. Drawing isn't just about getting the right position but trying to impose a feeling or mood. When she comes to "cut and paste" on the computer, you can see how she manipulates the colours, and it's interesting to see how the huge prints are physically handled. If dealing with teeny tiny bits of paper gives you the shivers, you'll know when to stop watching!

She won the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2006, and is Senior Research Fellow in Drawing at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts, London.

Pure pattern

Touching

Wood of course is another very tactile substance. This fellow in the V&A's newly opened medieval and renaissance galleries comes with a warning -But elsewhere are many invitations to touch, whether it be turning the pages of a book or feeling the surface of a medal -
a mitten gauntlet -
or feeling the subtle difference between porphyry and serpentine -

Inside, outside, in between

Art classes resume in a few days and I haven't forgotten the need to develop my project next term. This sequence of photos started with noticing this statue on the way to the V&A on New Year's Day. (We were on our way to see the new medieval galleries, and they're super!) We crossed the street and turned right at the postbox -Then I noticed the reflection in the bay windows as we walked down the road -
which led to taking a series of photos of reflections. It's quite a long street with a variety of buildings -
some with windowboxes -
not to mention security measures -
Further along, we walked past Imperial College, with its newer, more functional buildings -
But even there some windows had "homely" touches -
Only some, though -
Walking through Imperial College's ground, it really started getting confusing, as reflection, glass pattern, and interior started to mingle -

Until eventually the reflection won -

Looking at the snow

One evening in Ghent, recently, we were out in the cold taking pix of the reflections on the canals. Apparently the tourists do that a lot, there -The blowing snow got in the way! I took lots of photos of the travelling snowflakes, under various wind conditions. The ones that look like lines of machine stitching are my favourites - but rather dark. So let's see what can be done with Photoshop. Here's the original -
First, my usual adjustment - Levels, to get the photo brighter -
No, now it's tooooo yellow.

This is what happens with one click, Autocolour -At the time I didn't think to try adjusting the lighting on the camera (it was cooooold...!), so maybe Greyscale will be the answer? -
No, too dark. Back to the original...

Couldn't resist trying the Invert tool -
Those colours give much more of a "snowy" feeling than black and yellow! (But I'd like to pick up those three blobs on the left and move them a little to the right...)

With the Selective Colour tool, you can adjust each colour separately - this has been adjusted for yellow and the settings are magenta -25, yellow -50, black -75:You get much the same effect with one click, using Vibrance:
and to get it lighter, adjust Brightness (here it's -100; max setting is -150):
What I've found with these experiments, many of which aren't shown here, is that there's certainly more than one way to skin a cat in Photoshop.

After our photography (the temperature dropped to -10, we learned later), we went to the pub -