Longing……For……For……For……

This is some notes that I have made during my interesting lesson about Research Methods. Since being in this lesson it has opened the gate way even more in my mind into how I should look at my artwork and explore deeply within my Chinese theme. I wanted to take down these notes because I felt it would help me so much more into thinking about the way I should research and create new artworks.

What kind of knowledge will I be taking away from this?

Well… I think the next thing I should do is to use more researching components as well as using experiencing as a research on my China travels. I can think deeply about more aspects of researching that will enable me to pursue and interrogate my work further.

Why use this Chairman mao printing idea?

I want to try reflect china culture as a whole by using Chaiman Mao as the main icon to reflect what has changed since the victory of the China cultural revolution. When I am in China I see so much that has changed right in front of my eyes compared to the old style kung fu movies and it always keeps on surprising me to how rapidly the culture changes. So in respect to chairman mao, I wanted to change his appearance in a way that it is reflecting how the people of China treat modern society compared to the old days of chairman mao.

How will I be able to pursue this printing idea?

I have managed to look online for an authenticated look alike of Chairman mao using Google and managed to see one that was either a painted version of him or a smudged photograph of him. I decided that I wanted to change all of that entirely to make my own version of his expressionism myself by using photoshop.

So I began cutting out piece by piece, ‘a bit like a puzzle’ so to speak, and just by using this cutting tool in photoshop enabled me to carefully cutting out all of these different layers. I started cutting out the first layer which was the background, then I done the black outlines of his face, hat and body which will be the last layer to put on, then after that I just cut out the rest of the other parts of his body.

In the end, you get all of these nice layers of his face and body and this give me the great opportunity to using whatever colour that pleases me.

How will I be able to print these different layers out successfully?

Well… The trickiest part of the process of making this image is actually doing the photo emulsion phase. If people say its tricky enough trying to cut layers of an image in photoshop then you are wrong but only if you do not already know how to use photoshop. The most tricky part is projecting them using a light onto photo emulsion and then finally making the image onto silkscreen and this will indeed be the most tricky of all.

The reason why this will be the most tricky is because you have to get the right amount of photo emulsion on the silkscreen first if you are hoping that the image will show up on the silkscreen. another tricky phase is washing the remains of the photo emulsion off carefully making sure you do not rub off a part of the image as well. the rest after that is pretty much guaranteed to work out as I already know how to align the different layers carefully to make the different colours on the image of Chairman mao.

My Cycle of Artistic Practice for Processes, Research and more!

This afternoon I wanted to draw up a mind map of my arts practice of how successful I might have to be in the art world.

Research

I think well and truly that research and process is just as important as an art work I feel. I think that research can uncover those lost secrets of how historical and present art is made up today and could make someone understand more clearly to what the art is all about. Whether the research is as far as a distant country or it stands right there in a book or a computer screen, it feels us up with an infinite amount of ideas and strategies in creating our own artwork.

Process

Process is one of the key principles of documenting the making or an artwork or the finished piece. I feel that process can play just as importantly as the artwork because some of us always wanna know how it’s made, why they made it and where did they get the materials to make it? In some artworks that I have seen, I have always wanted to know how stuff was made and where they got the materials to make it.

Process – An Agent who imports materials from far distances

A guy like Damien Hirst for instance with his ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ which was a shark that was imported from the other side of the world from Thailand. Now most of us probably would not know about it if it wasn’t documented within a book, the internet or the recording of himself.

Process – Photography and video

Gordon Matta-Clark liked to document the makings of his art pieces whether it was knocking holes into apartments or warehouses. He liked to document his artistic process by using photography and videoing and this captures new discoveries, problems and  abilities of making an artwork within this kind of process.

Artwork Where? when? how?

How?

To creating the best artwork I believe we should enjoy it every second and treat it as if we were on a mission to discovering something new to the artworld! I believe that artists should be punctual, organised and allow enough time to finish tasks for the day in completing the processes successfully. Always take mistakes and criticism as this is not a heart to heart experience but is there for the best results at the end of the day.

When?

I think people should always make a nice scheduled time between their written work and practical work and sometimes is hard to switch off from one to the other. Some people work better by doing their practical work during the day and some during their written in the afternoon whilst most others do their written in the evenings instead. I believe that the best way is to finish our practical in the afternoon and allowing our mind to gently ease off any practical work. The time it takes to get back home may just be what our mind needs is a good break and could be a good way to gently ease into the written world in the evenings but people vary.

Where?

People always find it pleasant and relaxing to do most of their work in their studio spaces while some others prefer to do some of their artistic practice in the workshops where they can also meet different people everyday. I felt that meeting people in a workshop than in a studio space can be quite beneficial as new ideas can be passed around to help us develop our art work like 10x quicker. A workshop to me is one of the most important aspects with making new art ideas and making art work and I prefer to use my studio primarily as a thinking ground neighboured with computer work, blogging, resting and eating.

Essay work I feel should be considered as a side dish during resting times and evenings and at home where there is hardly any noise around you and a time of draining out any art ideas that you may have, simply throw to the side.

Exhibition-Fame

Getting known and knowing where your money comes from to making more artwork is often as not one of the most tricky aspects within the artworld. We all wanna make some nice cash for our materials and our precious time don’t we? I deeply feel that as part of an artistic practice, I think artists should relate their work to the right buyer, dealer or galleries for instance…

An printing art show = printing work = money = Fame?

I think by going to the right organisations that relate to art practices such as printing, painting or sculpture can put up the success rate even more within our artworks. To be able to know the right dealer to go to would be almost like looking for a needle in a haystack sometimes but for me, I like to phone around some new dealers that primarily look for printing by using the internet or seeing posters. In my experiences we have to go to it in order to get the most out of what we show for it and that is what I will keep doing for my art work.

Success

We all want to be successful in the end but how much do we know to get there? I feel that in order to get there we need to have a diary with a pen and taking down dates and organisational events that are coming up with phone numbers and clients names. I believe it is possible to get to the top somehow and by doing that I think that the list of aboves is essential for success.

At the moment, I am hoping to collaborate with a London print dealer called Monica who has now moved to east of England who will be opening a new website just for printing and with any luck she will be able to sell my printing work for a nice sum of money. I feel that a constant contact with your dealer at least ever week should be essential for keeping the friendship and business going for anyone who would want to sell their artwork.

Yes I have certainly tried the biggest mouthful of Chinese medication that I never thought I would ever face. The Chinese medication has certainly given me too many side effects I could feel my whole bodies nerves vibrating which has left me not being able to sleep properly. Also I have had to live on drinking salt water everyday to help heal any open wounds or disease within my bowel and this level of salt has reacted my levels of blood flow through my body which races my heart to a level that also stops me from sleeping.

Anxiety and depression in a diary – The memory traces of feelings and phrases in my mind that I wrote in China when I was suffering my illness…

“I never asked for this illness! I never asked for this suffering of not being able to eat the foods that I want to eat or the drinks that I wanted to drink like anyone else”!

“I never asked for any of this! I prayed to god that he would make all of this go away soon so that I could be normal again and be normal like everyone else that I know”.

“But I worked hard all my life to do so well! why I get treated like this”!

“Please dont give me anymore medication, it may effect my body and I might not be able to sleep”…

“I don’t wanna see anyone right now I am not in the mood I feel too bad and not normal like you other people”…

“I just want to leave this apartment and lose myself somewhere quiet where no person can see me so I can shout for help in my mind, I feel so helpless”

“No one believes me… no one can help me… People starting to dislike me because of my suffering, Must I suffer this whole time when I could be dying or have serious illness”?

“My parents are worried for me but yet they cannot help me as I am too far away… who can help me if my own girlfriend does not believe me yet”?

“I really think that my whole body and mind will never be the same after taking this many drugs, I just wanna be normal again, someone help me soon”…

Once I got back home I became even more like a drug addict…

Yeah… I had to take another heap of Medication but this time it was English version medication that was meant to help heal my inflammatory bowel disease and of course like always leads me to more anxiety taking more drugs. But thankfully right now I have stopped taking all of my medications apart from my inhalers because I have asthma anyway and with any luck this will be the only medication I ever take for a long long while.

Now I just wanna feel more normal again but lately I still been having trouble sleeping through the night and wake up at least 2 or 3 times without any reason. I guess I must still be getting over my suffering now maybe and still scares me a little when I think back of what had happened to me. Hopefully I never have to go through that nightmare ever again and just be that normal person who I was before I left to go China.

Does this relate to any art ideas?

Yes indeed! these experiences of my condition have certainly given me quite a lot of artistic ideas that I believe will turn out to be good art works. I have put some of these art ideas into my sketchbook which I can fall back on to see what ideas work best and pick the best one that I have drawn. Once I have picked out my best drawn sketches I can put them into practice and try my best to get the materials that I need to make my ideas.

Mmm where to start…..

Normally my visits in China are quite successful and very exciting to explore new places as part of my research but this summer has been one of my worst illnesses that I have ever experienced in my life.

The story of my Illness goes like this…. 

Well… it all started from flying to China, as soon as I landed in China in Wenzhou city, I began feeling a bit uncomfortable in my bowel area. I felt as though I could not stand for long but I knew it was a long flight so I blamed that instead. After meeting my girlfriend Wei Cheng there at the airport we normally get a hotel so that I have the chance to recover from jet lag and getting my sleep back. However this was not the case when I reached the hotel at all, all I wanted to do was just use the toilet as soon as I could reach it in the hotel…

What Happened and what kind of Illness this may be?

I could not stop going for the toilet and altogether I had been 7 times already for that evening in the hotel and the days to come after that and I believed that I had some kind of inflammatory bowel disease which I thought had started on the airplane. I felt even more tired and felt as if my whole body was draining away from inside of me and I just wanted to stop it but it kept going on all the time.

Did it get worse? Stay the same?

Yeah it got potentially worse because I kept on losing weight making me lose 7 pounds in total and after going for so many times in the end I started seeing blood in my stool and then after a while it was just blood and mucus on its own. Now this made me very scared as I was across the otherside of the world where I might not be able to be helped enough in China because medical services are different to our free NHS Service. I felt very helpless and all I kept on doing was complaining everyday of my pain that I had in my stomach and bowel and getting sleepless nights also.

I felt like I just wanted to switch off completely because nobody believed me it was this serious! I thought I was going to die or something because my girlfriend keep saying to me she knew a friend who had a bad stomach for some time and keep saying to me not to worry but i never had this before in my life…

Me and my girlfriend argued almost everyday because of my bad illness that I suffered in China and when I keep asking her to take me to see the doctor at the proper hospital, she would not do it because she had to work during the day and she thought it was not serious enough because of her friend suffering from it. All I could do was drink the chinese medicine that they bought for me which had a lot of salt in it and herbs, hoping it would go away soon… The amount of salt content in this medicine might have resulted me to not sleep very well as the salt boosts blood levels!

How did I resolve this problem?

Well… in the end it did get worse that I could not move very much and just felt stiff all around my bowel area and very painful that my girlfriend finally listened to me and not her friend and decided to take me to the Doctor.

At that point I felt so relieved and and safe that something was finally gonna happen about my bowel problems. I never seen a hospital that was so busy in all my life! there were just full of people everywhere… and I had to cue to try obtain one of their health cards first before I can even see a doctor… so I did and waited for half an hour to get the health card with my girlfriends help.

In the end I saw the Doctor and his office was like one I never seen before, at least more than 6 different patients are waiting right next to the doctors desk waiting to be seen with absolutely no confidentiality whatsoever compared to our NHS services.

Anyway he saw me and examined me by touching me around my bowel area to see if hurt anyway and I did hurt on my left side more than my right side. He booked me in on the same day to have the CT scan, blood tests and I managed to get them results the same day! was such a quicker service compared to here in England.

Good News? or Bad News?

Well… it was not good news at all, when he saw on the CT scan, he said apart of my large intestine is too narrow which meant that I could not digest food properly resulting me to go toilet too many times and losing weight. He said to me it was either Crohn’s Disease or a Tumor! I felt so guttered and frightened if this could be true or not…. So I had no choice but to persuade my girlfriend to help me go home early to get this treated properly in the UK to make sure if the Tumor or Bowel disease does not get worse.

My girlfriend was very supportive to me once she heard it was more serious and in future she said she will listen to me more and not other people all the time. So I catched the early flight back and i missed one month of staying there out of the three months but I got enough research and time with my girlfriend to have a successful trip in the end.

A Missed flight…

The first plane come in to Hongkong 2 minutes late and I missed it and I felt guttered that I would have to wait longer for the next one… I managed to get another one at the helpdesk which was Virgin Atlantic airways which i never flew on before and the gave me a free hotel to stay in to get some rest whilst I am waiting for the next 7 hours.

In the end I caught one one time and because of my bowel problems I wanted to spend a bit extra for the special seat which was nice because I managed to get the whole row of seats in the end.  Nobody bought the rest of them special seats so I could actually lay down properly on the flight and this gave me about 7 hours sleep which is very hard to get on a plane when you have to sit up right.

Got Back to Home sweet Home

Yeah once I was back I just could not explain how relieved I had felt to see my supporting family again and how they wanted to help me get better quickly. On the day of coming home I arrived back home by 8:00 from Heathrow airport and my father managed to book me the appointment to see a doctor the very same day. The doctor that I saw said he wanted me to go to the hospital so my mother and father took me there to have an X-ray scan done there and they said that my bowel looks fine? what? I was thinking…

They done all the blood tests X-ray and even a Colonoscopy test few weeks later and all the tests came back positively that I had no serious tumors or Crohn’s disease but they did say that I was a bit inflamed inside the bowel so maybe it was just the tail end of my serious infection that i suffered in China.

Some of my recent art work started from my Medical problem this summer but my whole summer vacation in China was not all bad as I managed to visit Beijing with my girlfriend and got a lot of art ideas.