i’ve been looking at a lot of photographs i have taken over the last year or so relating to an ongoing investigation and interest in ‘unclaimed and reclaimed spaces’
i started to make drypoints from the photos to make up a series of work, i really enjoyed drawing freely on the copper and decided i should get back to drawing so i’ve just drawn from the photos onto drypoint card and then printed them using the caligo inks as i am in school so trying to steer clear of oil based inks.
the problem i’m having is i prefer the photographs, i like my drawings but i think they would be better done from life and i can’t help but think the photos would be better developed as gum arabic prints..
With the looming end of project, inevitable exhibition, vaguely organised, and various other personnal deadlines like applying for print international and the national eisteddfod. I have been trying to reign myself back in to remember what i’ve been doing and looking at and making over the last year and what should make up a body of work to go on display along with all the other bits i’ve been doing with the pupils.
i found a load of photos i took of colwyn bay pier- i’ve spent a lot of time on the train that goes along the coast of north wales since i started this project and my car blew up.
The train goes right past the pier and i always want to jump off and take photos..
Colwyn bay pier always fascinates me, its got such a look of ‘good times used to happen here’ like quite a lot of old piers, so many just look dilapidated or abandoned. i love that look of decay, the colours and textures but also the presence of a past life..
i ran a workshop before christmas, not to do with this project but something i am interested in called ‘social mapping’ where you ask people to draw maps of their communities.
The idea is to get personnal perspectives on communities, obviously it is going to be different depending on the types of people i.e. young, old, local, student, ethnic minority, etc
So kind of a social study really but i think it has the potential for a really interesting art project and i am just in the stages of bringing the idea into the work i have been doing with the dialysis patients on my other residency, for which i am also in the process of sorting out a blog for. Although at this rate i’ll not have time for anything other than ‘blogging’.
The workshop i ran was an expressive drawing workshop and ended up being mainly young children to whom it was quite hard to explain my requests, but i think they came up with some really lovely drawings. What was more interesting as an experience i think was getting them to explain what had made them draw what they had drawn.
i called the workshop ‘map your world’ and asked people to draw what they imagined their world to be or what first popped into their heads when thinking of their ‘community’ or ‘world’.
i realised kids whole worlds stem from their homes, no revelation there really’ but a good reminder…
‘recycle with michael’ seems to be popular,
it is interesting how they’ve automatically thought of recycling and community and ‘population’
they sound to me like buzz words from some government education programme
The theme around my copper sculpture is the idea of the power that nature has even over the man-made environment. the plan is for the courtyard area with the dragon to become a mini sculpture park around the theme of earth, air, fire and water. The Dragon (breathing fire) represents fire, the copper piece represents earth. Air and water are yet to be designed and will probably be left as a project for the next artist or the school to tackle.
To get some of the kids engaged in my work on the sculpture i’ve got a small group to write down their ideas of what the words nature and environment mean to them…
I then got them to draw pictures that represented what they had written and then produce monoprints from their drawings…
I am planning to continue with this and use some of the monoprints to incorporate into the sculpture by transfering them onto the copper using the gum litho process.
i’ve got ideas of the drawings being like grafitti on the buildings in my drawing
