Employment & Enterprise module

I had my first contribution to the above module this week.  We each had to give a 5 minute presentation on our work and what motivates it, and to make it a pitch to interest our audience. 

I spoke about how my work on pomegranates originated from my year in Australia, fits with my liking for the domestic and mundane (homely objects and fruit and veg) and how I like the hand drawn.  My work is contemporary because I use digital print and am experimenting to identify what it does really well (detailed colour reproduction, detailed monochrome tonal detail, and variation in scale) and what it does, that cannot be achieved in screen printing.  To me the computer is a tool, and no more.  I am a textile artist, not a computer operator.  I need more art skills, rather than computer art skills I caught a glance of appreciation from my tutor, Sara, when I said that my hand drawn illustrative style is reacting against the digital world, because I want my work to look hand drawn, not photo-realistic.  I am a textile artist, not a computer operator.  The computer is my tool which I use selectively, and I dictate its role in my work.  It does not dictate to me.

I showed some original artwork, c4" (10cm) square, which I had enlarged to 1m square.  I noted that where I had used inktense pencils, and flooded the pencil with water, you could see on the x100 enlargement where I had not quite made the colour meet up, and there were tiny white areas within the print. But this is why I did the enlargements - in order to push the technique and see at what stage it breaks down. 

After this session I went to the V&A for the Home Sweet Home course.  This time the lecturer was describing the evolution of Dining Rooms and Drawing Rooms.  In medieval times, the great hall was used for all activities; then in Victorian times rooms developed distinct functions, and now in modern times we are returning to multi-functional, open plan rooms.  All the discussions centred on life for "the middling sort" ie the middle classes, rather than the peasants or gentry.  I also like the discussions on different representations of pictorial art, where we learn about how to read the image.  An open window beside the main subject means the person depicted had an open mind; the scene through the window indicated their interests or source of their wealth, eg shipping, mining etc.  All in all, a lovely lecture.