WEEK 20
an email i recieved……
Dear Trae,
Thank you for organising today’s visit. It was very challenging looking at so many different exhibits/installations and styles. Very thought-provoking. I am glad we did not have time to see everything! Hopefully I will get back and maybe then can consider all of your questions on the sheet. Lots of items were short-term memorable, but not necessarily their titles.
Looking at a lot of ‘modern art’ draws me back to the question ‘what is art?’ to which I am sure there cannot be a definitive answer. All I know is that art means nothing to me if it does not communicate something, and that it is amazing how much work an artist will put in to communicate an idea. Perhaps there is a link between the amount of work and the number of people who wish to appreciate it, and that is why we have art galleries. Thank you for the work you put in to help us appreciate these things.
Thank you for the work you put in to help us appreciate these things.
week 18
Artists in attendance 9
Time is a ticking……
Has the suction experiment worked…… yes yes it has!!!!! We are now able to hang pictures for the exhibition in the windows hurrah!!!
This week the group has been cracking on with the graphic design of their poster and invites. They have set each other jobs like wording, spell checker and visual director. So far we have a strong image but no wording so i’m hoping that next week we will have some words.
We had a little critique of the work I took a finished painting of mine to show them the kind of finished standard I wanted them to get to. When people said they were finished I put it to the group to give a little feed back on their work, as I don’t want to be the one saying yep that’s done I wanted it to be more of a peer-mentoring thing. There was lots of constructive criticism and everyone handled it well. It’s such a great thing to see the group supporting each other.
next week our new guest artist Nicola Smith will be popping in for a brew and a get to know the group in preparation for her curating workshop.
WEEK 17
It is amazing how scary computers are to the older generation; Ipads are not so scary, why? Well I don’t have an ipad so we will just have to work on my trusty ancient Mac book.
This week I was working 1 to 1 with the artists on designing our poster to advertise the exhibition. We looked at promo posters on the Internet and made a list of what was important about a poster. “Eye catching, Simple and have all the relevant information on it”. “Date, Times, Venue, Title, Logos and art group information”
After an initial discussion and expression of worries we got started by picking out posters we liked and I used various bits from our choices to create a simple mock up in Photoshop. We discussed corporate identity as the café where our sessions are based (run by Didsbury Good Neighbors) already has a style of its own.
One of the artists created a beautiful image of bright colours a lovely simple design (see picture on this blog) the artists did get into the swing of it and really had some interesting ideas with me doing the computing work it made them free to just make the design choices, We decided it would be good to incorporate some of the Didsbury Good Neighbors design into our own poster. We decided to keep the 2 predominant colours. Regal blue and orange. We chose an abstract image for the background so it would be purely decorative rather than send a confusing message of what the exhibition is about.
In the afternoon session we discussed hanging the exhibition we were trying to think of ways of putting work in the window someone came up with a brilliant idea of using suction handles that you can buy to help you get in and out of the shower or bath. I looked at these and they were a bit big and quite ugly. I did find some screw suckers that you can hang shower and bathroom shelves off. I experimented at home and they worked fine with a panting hanging off. I took one to the café art space to hang over the weekend to see if it works, the windows in the café get very hot as the sunshine’s on them so I will see on Wednesday if it has done the job. Fingers crossed.
Next week more computer design.
