Artist in Residence at Fisherton Primary School in Ayrshire March – June 2012

Fisherton Residency – Week 3, Origins of Photography

I am now half way through my first full week at Fisherton Primary school, and mid way through my first project, which is an introduction to a couple of processes that pre date photography.

I am focusing on two activities this week, with the younger ages groups I’m running Cyanotype workshops using sunlight to expose found objects from the environment onto photographic paper. And with the older groups I’ve been making Camera Obscura’s and using them to initiate a drawing exercise.

Both of these activities are drawn from experiences and interests I picked up while at Art College in Dundee. One of the aspects I enjoyed most during my course was the interaction with my contemporaries and the conversations that arouse around all the diverse art practices people were developing. I girl in my year spent a lot of time researching and producing cyanotypes, so even though I had not explored this medium myself I felt well acquainted with it.

For the school workshop I have collected an array of different seaweeds, pebbles, shells, glass, small pieces of wood and other debris found on or around the beach. These objects will be placed onto the photo-sensitive paper and left in direct sunlight to expose for approximately 15minutes, then to finish the exposure the print is washed until the water runs clear. I am going to run my first cyanotype workshop tomorrow morning and am excited to see how the children respond to this simple photographic process. I also intend to give some background information about the origins of the process to the older groups.

The English scientist and photographer Sir John Hershal first discovered the cyanotype in 1842 but it was the work of Anna Atkins, credited as the first female photographer that gave this process its photographic function. Atkins was a botanist and collector of seaweed, ferns and other plant life, which she documented in a series of limited edition cyanotype books, composed of the silhouettes of her specimens.

The second activity is a direct progression from my own art practice. During my final year at Art College my work focused on creating objects that provoke a heightened sensory interaction with the natural elements. I created works that engaged with the rain and wind and two that were designed to interact with sunlight. One of these was an Origami Camera Obscura designed to be a pocket artwork used to encourage exploration and viewing the environment in an alternate way – everything viewed through a camera obscura is projected both upside down and back to front.

I have already held two of my three camera obscura workshops with the pupils and they have largely been very successful. I started with an introduction to the history of the camera obscura and it’s function to artists before the invention of the camera, I then explained briefly the function of the lens and the correlation to how lenses work in cameras and the human eye. Finally I showed the group the work of one of my favorite artists Chris Drury, who creates camera obscura rooms or Cloud Chambers which have a lens and sometimes a mirror in the roof of a small windowless shelter made of stone, banked earth or wood which projects the outside environment onto the floor or walls of the inside space. The Cloud Chambers are situated in different locations and so project a variety of views of sky, trees, mountains and water.

Following this introduction we made our own small cardboard camera obscura’s using a small plastic lens and a piece of tracing paper to act as a viewing screen. Once the group had competed their Camera Obscura’s we took them outside to practice focusing the image by adjusting the distance between lens and screen and finding a location that gave us the best quality projection. Once we found this location I asked the group to draw what they saw on the projection screen, an exercise that demands that they observe exactly what they are looking at and not what they assume to be there. This produced some great results, which I look forward to exhibiting at the end of the residency.

Exploring Fisherton and Dunure – First encounter 28^th of March

I walk down from the school beside fields fringed with yellow lichen covered rocks and past a line of sprawling seafront bungalows. At the end of the row I dip under a canopy of leaves and branches, bright dappled sunlight on the road. The chorus of birdsong grows louder, on the left a break in the trees reveals stacks of fishing boxes, lobster cages and old buoys. Around the bend I emerge at the harbour, I walk along the edge of the wall towards the eaten away and smoothly pitted stone of the harbour tower. From here I climb off the wall and continue across sharp edged rocks tinged with green. As I climb over some taller rocks and into the bay I notice the many coloured and very smooth stones lying just beneath the water, scattered across a large slab. I progress slowly across the beach, eyes scanning across its width: smooth oblong stones, seaweed and fragments of shells. In the shallows many sharp stones rise out of the water, clustered in groups, one seagull sits on the largest yellow-capped one. There is a gentle breeze.

I walk along a half submerged rusted pipe to a small waterfall coming down onto the beach, surrounded by green luscious grasses on one side and dry gorse on the other. I climb up some muddy steps hollowed from the grassy slop towards a protruding stone Dovecot, rounded sides pierced by rough slate-like stones. I continue through deep tufts of grass to a vantage point between castle ruin and the beach bellow. Towards the bay alternate crescents of rough and smooth water sweep in from the sea. The only noise is of lapping water and birds. A seagull sweeps down from behind me, a small plane passes above leaving a streak of white in the sky. The sky diffuses from deep blue above my head to almost white at the smudged horizon.

Fisherton Residency – Preliminary visits and weeks 1 & 2

As a recent graduate undertaking the role of an artist functioning within a community I have much to adapt to and learn from but also much, I feel, to offer to the community.

My appointment as Artist in Residence at Fisherton Primary School in Ayrshire was first arranged while I was completing a research scholarship in Florence at the end of last year. I was contacted with a brief explanation of the project and undertook a phone interview, but at this point everything was still largely unknown.

On returning to Scotland I went on a couple of preliminary visits, the first to visit the school and the second to visit Fisherton Farm, where I was to live during the week. These were both flying visits, showing me glimpses of the school, where I would live and the new environment I was to work with as an independant artist and with the school. After the first of these visits I tentatively put together a residency plan to impose a structure on my time at the school. I was cautious as I hoped the residency would develop itself and did not want to restrict myself too early on. The structure I planned took its starting point from my initial remit for the residency, which looked for an artist working with photography and the environment. So to start I would expand upon three subjects: The origins of photography, Using photography to create images and Art and the environment. After these three projects I hope to develop a final project inspired my by own research and my interactions and experiences with the children.

My residency officially started on the 21^st of March when I travelled to Ayrshire for two days to observe in the school, it is a very different school to the one I attended in Edinburgh with about the same number of pupils in the school as was in my class. Within each class the teachers have to teach children up to four years apart and of all different ages which is challenging, but at the same time the children are taught in smaller groups, with much more individual time with staff. These first few weeks were made much easier by the great welcome from staff and pupils.

On my second week I spent three days running some simple origami workshops for each age group, gauging the abilities and interests of each group. This time was vitally important to inform some final tweaks to my program of activities. During these first two weeks I also gave introductory talks to both staff and parents to explain my background as an artist, show examples of my work and outline my plans for the residency. I then went back to Edinburgh over the two week Easter holiday, to practice lessons and order materials ready for the beginning of the first topic, the origins of photography.