Another exhausting art class with Vanda (or Vanda's lost her marbles!)

Today I am absolutely spent.  Art class yesterday has left me completely exhausted.  This is why I am a part-time student.  I cannot imagine working so hard full time, and although I am physically tired, I am still thinking about all the ground we covered yesterday.

Yesterday the four of us were working, using art techniques inspired by the Jerwood Drawing Competition entrants.  Vanda had selected 10 images from the Jerwood online exhibition catalogue, that showed interesting insights into making art.  We had to use the techniques demonstrated in our own artwork.

Beatriz Olabarietta had drawn around 2 moving marbles, bi-dextrously, using marker pens.  Unfortunately Vanda had lost her marbles, so I did the same exercise using a ball of screwed up sticky tape, using a pen and pencil.  Then I tried it with a charcoal stick and rubber.  Then I applied this technique to drawing kitchen utensils, bi-dextrously, using charcoal and rubber.  They came out with a wonderfully free feeling to them.  This was fantastically successful!  I can see a relevance of the two handed work here, as I enjoy needlepoint and knitting, both of which require a two handed action.  It also fits with my interest in how the two hands complement each other, one providing dexterity, and the other strength in most activities.  With two handed drawing, the dominant hand provides relative accuracy and competence, whereas the non-dominant hand provides a feeling of freedom.  I very much like this.

A meat roasting tin

Potato masher

Serving spoon

Draining spoon

Then I tried drawing on fabric, as shown by Jonathan Polkest who drew an upside down chair on a fabric doily.  Not greatly successful for me, but Brenda's work drawing a deconstructed shoe was wonderful.

Rather weak

Better, but not my favoured technique

Lindsay Connors had used an Inland Revenue envelope and cut out a scene that was seen through the window.  I  did this several times, using rubbings of a draining spoon and potato masher.  These got better as they progressed, with more sensitivity to cutting away the actual marks of the pencil, rather than removing big chunky areas of paper.  More thought required here about perceiving the envelope as a pocket, which would make it work as a textile.

Sharon Leahy-Clark used a piece of found paper, mounted it and "firmly asserted it was a portrait".  So I found a skeleton leaf, considered what the veins represented to me, and declared it was an artwork about depot tracks, as it looked like a railway track diagram.

Railway track diagram

Sally Webber's work was on a piece of old music score, with notes and other printed marks floating off the stave into the open space on the paper.  So I took a page of an atlas (east coast of USA) and drew into the ocean area using marks inspired by red lines marking the roads and other boundaries.  This technique definitely needed space for the hand marks to work.  Vanda commented that my Yokes textile pieces from last semester had worked because the imagery needed the large amount of clear space I had given.  I need to consider this more, as I had worried that there was not enough "work" in this textile, but actually, it needed the space to breathe.  I need to gain more confidence and understanding about to use space in my design.  I know "less is more" but still want to fill in every bit.  I have not finished thinking about how to best use space.

I am still chewing over why I want to use textile to be the medium for my artwork.  At the moment, I really don't know why.  I like handling cloth, thread and other materials.  I think of my current theme as Women's Work and feel textile is appropriate.  Elizabeth Wayland Barber,an anthropologist, wrote that women are associated with textile work from ancient times as women would be caring for children and spinning and weaving are interruptible while watching children.  Men would be away hunting and fishing, so not available for childcare and other domestic tasks, and this is the anthropological reason for the division of duties.  I am not sure that this is enough to explain it, but it is a good starting point.

The group challenged me on why my theme is Women's Work and not Domestic Work.  I am not saying men don't do cooking and cleaning, but it is most usually women who do it, and, when done by women, it is often unseen and undervalued.  I use my artwork to Recognise significant actions.   I don't want my artwork to be in panels on a wall.  I want it to be used in an everyday setting, about notable actions that are taken for granted, and the serious message of the artwork is only seen by the insightful who will recognise it for what it is.  Maybe another title for my work could be "Part of the Furniture" as  I want to apply my artwork to useful objects, and this would play on the unseen nature of Women's Work, and how it adds to the comfort of everyday life?

I can see that this theme could be taken further, with recognition of the essential but largely undervalued and unseen work done by other groups - for example, people who work sorting rubbish for recycling; cleaners; track workers, fast food restaurants.  I will stick to the Women's Work theme until the end of my degree though.

It is all the thinking that I find so exhausting.  Maybe being middle aged makes my thinking slower, because I am aware that there are many right answers, and lots of right answers need to be considered before making a conclusion.  Whereas when I was young (and stupid!) I believed in "one right answer" so needed less time for thinking as the first one I came to, was enough.