Staging the end of year review

On Friday I was staging my end of year show, along with the 3rd years who were staging their degree show. 

It never ceases to amaze me how I continue to learn different things, despite having done this for 4 years now.  I had privileged my "yokes" piece by hanging it on a separate wall from the rest of my work.  I displayed my year's work by setting it out in a chronology along one wall.  This showed that a lot of the meaningful development and drawing took place towards the end of the year.

Having hung "Yokes" at the Parndon Mill exhibition, I thought I knew how best to hang it.  Wrong!  At Parndon, I realised that for the hangers to sit well on a rail, I needed a round rail (not square at at Parndon).  So for my review, I found a 6' round dowel, painted it white, and bought white cup hooks to support it, which would meld into the white wall.  I trialled the positioning on the wall with brightly coloured map tacks (which looked amateurish).  Then I screwed the cuphooks into the wall, inserted the dowel and hanged the yokes on wooden hangers.  The white dowel looked terrible.  It was slightly warped, so not absolutely straight, and a pronounced shadow formed beneath the rail.  It would have looked much better if I had hung it using clear plastic map tacks.  I left it as it was, because removing the cup hooks would have left visible marks, and I had no clear map tacks.  But this is the stuff you only learn by experience. 

I went to the studio where this week the 3rd years have been staging their work.  This was the final day of staging, and only a couple of people had completed their work.  I decided that when I stage my final degree show next year, I will aim to complete it early.  This was the last day, and people were getting stressed.  One person had requested special electrics to plug in an Ipad that showed rotating photos of the work in progress.  The electrics had not been put in, and as the work was on an island stand, a hasty botch fix was needed to get the electricity from the wall to the stand.  At about 2pm, students were still touching up the walls with paint while work was being positioned(!).  I looked at a couple of pieces of framed embroidery and was puzzled that the work had not been properly ironed prior to being mounted.  It seems odd to put in all the development and making time, and spend a lot of time framing and staging the work, but not to realise the creases will detract from the finished product.  However it was good to see that two people who had prime sites at the studio entrance, had mounted and displayed their work to best effect.  One was about fairy tales, stranger danger and application to fans, and another about knife crime for application to teenage clothing.  Both were strong gutsy themes and I expect them to get a good grade at assessment.

I'm looking forward to going to see the completed show next week.

Feeling thoroughly miserable

I am having my teeth straightened.  I had the bottom brace put on this morning and now I feel thoroughly miserable. 

I have my end of year review tomorrow.  Most of my work is packed in the car.  I have made up a maquette of a padded cell - this was an idea I came up with when I was thinking about cushions and linings, and trying to push the boundaries with them.  Sometimes with housework, you feel like bashing your head against a brick wall because of the never-ending nature of the tasks.  So what would you need?  A cushioned wall of course!  It also makes me think about the difference between inside and outside.  What is a lining and what is on the outside - is wallpaper on the outside because it faces the occupant, or is it a lining because it is on the inside of the house walls? 

I got the results from my Enterprise and Employability module - 65%.  This is good enough.  I found some parts very difficult because it is about detail consciousness.  The details of what you put in an artist statement, the imagery you use, your font choice, the positioning on the page, and the size of the photographs.  However, I have applied the feedback to my artist statement for the Degree Planning module to be assessed tomorrow and we will see whether it makes any difference.  There is an awful lot of work to be assessed.

Let's hope my teeth don't make me feel like a wet rag!

Thoughts from the swimming pool no 10

A great swim - I swam 64 lengths, or a mile, or 1600m, depending on your measuring system.  Felt strong and powerful. 

I am planning to go to William Morris Gallery to see a Goldsmith's Exhibition about political slogans regarding tuition fees.  I was thinking about how to expand my understanding of what I have seen, how to publicise thought provoking exhibitions and how to maximise the impact of exhibitions on my work.  I think it would be a good idea if the class had an ongoing exercise where, whenever anyone went to an exhibition, they came back and did a 5 minute talk to the class about what they enjoyed, what ideas they had come up with in relation to their own work, and how it changed or developed their thinking about their current project.  This would fit well with how I use my Exhibitions Sketchbook.  I note down the event, date and details, draw something that appeals to me, add a postcard (attached in a different way each time), and add notes of anything that seems significant in relation to my work.  So really I have done the prep already.

For example Schwitters made me think about collage; using my old textiles samples as raw material for reuse; the difference between recycling by drawing on pre-used/printed paper and defacing a printed object eg a programme; how materials used can represent a moment in time or the "now" of the making.  I would expect the exhibition at William Morris to make me think about how slogans are used; how the message of materials can change (William Morris was a socialist working with very expensive, quality mediums, yet his materials are now mass produced for the middle class home). 

Should my thoughts be shared?  Yes, I think they should.  Will students be interested?  Not sure, but if we don't try it, we don't know.  I think this exercise might be well suited for inclusion in the Materials and Ideas module, which I think is a first year module.

Schwitters exhibition at Tate Britain

I went to see the Schwitters exhibition at the Tate.  He was a German artist who was forced into exile by the Nazis prior to WWII, because they had labelled his artwork (Merz) as degenerate.  He migrated first to Norway, then England when Norway was invaded.  He was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man.  His work used many found objects, partly because he saw art in the everyday mundane, but also because when interned, the detritus of life was all they had to work with. 

He commented "In Merz pictures, the boxtop, playing card and newspaper clippings become surfaces; string, brush stroke and pencil stroke become line; wire netting becomes overpainting or pasted on greaseproof becomes varnish; cotton becomes softness". 

To my mind, collage was his forte, although he worked with oils, sculpture and other media, in order to inform his process.    I liked the way small fragments of ephemera were carefully selected.  A scrap of a Bassetts liquorice allsort box frames the coconut liquorice and aniseed ball jelly sweets to form two heads cuddling.   The wrappings from American Red Cross packages, British newspapers, London Transport tickets and old German news cuttings indicate his reality at the time.  A good historical representation of his identity at the time.  I need to think more about how using the detritus of my "now" represents the time in which I am working.  Louise Baldwin's work demonstrates this.

Working the exhibition

I was allocated to staff the exhibition on Saturday from 1.30-5.  For the first hour I was on my own, so I used this time to look at each exhibit in detail, and write down what I made of the work.  This was time well spent.  I concluded that the jewellery and ceramics on display was generally strong work, but that the textile work was generally weak.  This surprises me a bit as we have several textile tutors, only one jewellery tutor, and I am not sure whether there is a tutor for ceramics and glass at all.  I know the jewellery and ceramics students have complained about lack of support and that Antje has tried to address this. 

Many of the artists statements were ok for first attempts, but many of them had punctuation, and grammatical errors.  I think this could be improved if, one person who is good at grammar, proof-read and corrected all of them, prior to another person printing and mounting them all.  Beth had done an excellent job of printing and mounting all the artist statements, and had a consistent layout and photos for all students.  Some of us (ie me!)  had dreadful personal photos, so this needs to be addressed before we exhibit for our final year show.

Having reviewed everyone's work, I made the following comments about my own work. "Artist statement does not explain why "yokes" is the title. Shorter artist statement works better (c100 words) but needs to be refined.  Hanging pole should have been round so hangers sit better.  No business card.  Poor photo on artist statement".  I will be addressing all the above points for my final year show! 

During the 4 hours I was there, there were only about 6 visitors.  I think we need to improve our publicity, consider who we want to visit, consider what is the purpose of the exhibition, and target accordingly.  For me, the purpose is to gain experience of setting up an exhibition; publicise the work of the individual artists; publicise the course at UH; and have a good time at the private view - in that order.  Therefore it is important to get more people visiting at the weekend, to make it worth staffing it.  Otherwise you would just hire the room for the Friday evening for a bit of a jolly, and take everything down immediately.  I think we need to identify who is likely to visit on Saturday and Sunday, (potential students and teachers from the local area?) and make sure they are aware of our event.  Can we get flyers into local A level art classrooms?  Could we get access to data that identifies where students who are local residents, went to school?  What about a bit of historical trend analysis?

Setting up the Parndon Mill exhibition

On Friday I had a busy day.  I drove to uni, received feedback on my essay, loaded the car with exhibits, drove to Parndon Mill, helped set up the exhibition, drove home, drove to Witham, travelled to London, did my evening class, back to Witham and drove home. 

Essay feedback: Excellent communication skills; intelligent use of secondary sources; paraphrasing clear and precise.  Don't use Oxford English Dictionary for definitions - find better sources. The use of historical sources is well contextualised in a wider debate.  Substanital use of Treadaway's thesis is appropriate and well paraphrased.  Detailed theoretical debate is matched with interesting examples of  contemporary practice.  Greater attention to the benefits Cathy has gleaned from this work would have been useful but otherwise this essay is done to an excellent standard.

I was very pleased with this outcome - by the time I had handed it in, I had looked at it so much, that I was not at all sure whether it was any good or not.  It is as if I completely lose my critical faculty and self awareness by the end of a long piece of research.  This is because I have to work so hard to get the details right, particularly the bibliography, and fiddling about with details makes me exhausted, frustrated and bad tempered!  So this feedback made me delighted.

Setting up the exhibition at Parndon Mill was the usual scramble.  Textile pieces being ironed, cabinets being cleaned, debates about how to display work to best effect.  The students had organised the private view for Friday evening and arranged catering.  Unfortunately I had to leave in the afternoon, as I had an evening class in London. 

My Drawing class was great fun again.  This time we were looking at drawing plants using tonal value.  I focussed on a swiss cheese plant and used heavy and light lines to draw the light and dark areas of outline, then we moved on to working on paper coloured with dilute ink, and drawing tonal areas in charcoal and chalk.  Different people drew in different ways - I use the side of the charcoal a lot, and use a lot of pressure so the charcoal breaks and shatters, as this is the quality of the medium. Other people used the charcoal like a pencil, with delicate fine lining. I liked the bold shapes of the swiss cheese plant leaves, others liked the delicacy and detail of some of the flowers on display.  Very enjoyable.  And I like the classroom environment, where I get to look at other people's work and see how they use the materials.

Thoughts from the swimming pool no 9

Another 1350m swim and I felt strong and powerful.

I was thinking about my review in a couple of weeks time.  I am starting to see that the development work I have done about women's work is quite good, although it has taken me for ever to get there.  I was thinking about how to target different markets, which has facilitated my understanding of how my ideas have developed.  I worked up 3 cushions depicting weighing scales, and although they are very nice, they appeal to a middle class, middle aged female market.  This is a valid market for commercial application, but not what I want to target.  I want to work towards more thought provoking work and my ruminations around how linings represent women's work, are becoming more important.  Linings improve how curtains and clothes wear - they are largely invisible, but support and improve the feel and life of the object - just like women's work!  I need to find women's domestic objects/garments that are lined - preferably for working class women.  Or what else gets lined?  Drawers?  (Furniture, not knickers!)  I need to work out how to incorporate some of my cutting one-liners into my portrayal of women's work - this would emulate Timorous Beasties work. I am ok about emulating their work, which is odd, because I cannot praise Caren Garfen's work highly enough and if I were to emulate her work, I would feel I was plagiarising it - and I would not insult her work by so doing! 

I also considered what to say at my review, about the Degree Planning module.  I have been worried that I have not produced enough samples or completed objects.  But today, swimming up and down, I realised Planning is about Thinking.  Next year, Final Major Project, is about Organising - ie Doing.  Most people confuse planning & organising and think they are the same.  But if you differentiate it into Thinking and Doing, the difference becomes obvious.  I have done lots of thinking (at which I am very slow and ponderous) and that is ok, because that is what this module is all about. 

I am still exploring different drawing styles and am looking forward to my next class at City Lit.  Last Friday we worked on continuous line drawing and I meant to practice on my domestic objects during the week.  As usual, life just got too busy, so that never happened, but I still have good intentions.