BA Visual Arts at Todmorden College accredited through Leeds Metropolitan University. We’re all mature students with so many differing motivations and objectives working in a wide variety of media. The college seeks to nourish the individual and promotes no “house style” with little assumption about what “professional development” might mean to each student. Small, under resourced and often chaotic, this place and this course is unique.
The final show is speeding towards us with… speed. We’re in quite a happy flurry with publicity, mailing lists, and tomorrow is the big who-is-going-where debate session. We get on well mostly, I look forward to seeing my fellow artists-in-the-making.
My work has taken such an interesting turn in the last few weeks. Initially I felt this was Not Great Timing, but its just working out so well. I know what I am doing, there is lots to do, and I can see my work stretching out into the future, beyond the degree. I guess I must have worried that the end of the degree would see the end somehow of my work, because it feels like relief. Bring on the show – I am genuinely looking forward to it.
Oil painting! After these months of installations and animation work, I return like the prodigal oil painter to the land of oil painting. I am loving the home coming, and there has been such a satisfying step forward in my work thanks to this move.
The drawing – and painting – has always been there just behind the surface. Perhaps I have wanted to wear a mask, perhaps being just a painter didn’t feel like enough, perhaps its my genuine excitement and interest in installation work and animation. Doesn’t matter, point is, I’ll be putting up paintings.
Creative Chaos
Is it normal for an art college to be so utterly haphazard and chaotic?? Walking into Tod college one walks into another darker, madder world, where everything reeks of unkemptitude and you really do need to be careful where you sit/walk/put something down. Sometimes it bothers me. Sometimes it bothers me a lot. Sometimes its a fully acceptable part of life in the great creative mix. Occasionally I even appreciate the madness – for its edge, its abandon, its wanton disarray.
Ok so maybe I exaggerate slightly. Our sessions are not always chaotic. Not all of the tutors are entirely chaotic. Some of the students are in fact very sane.
What do we think about madness and creativity these days? Where is the pendulum just now on the swing from stereotypical crazy artist to blind denial and anti-feeling art?
Tod often feels like a place for the marginalised. Normality is not the norm. Love it hate it love it hate it. And many people thrive on it. This is good, right?
It feels unique. I just wonder if it is…
Answers on a postcard please, to be curated in a shoebox and composted.
For a visual essay on this visit http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=199278&id=709145588&l=a4825b4806
The Installation Space
This is a 2 x 3 metre approx section of the 3D sculpture room, cornered off with a few boards. There are a few spotlights that some times work, and a white board where you can sign up for a week’s slot.
The space somehow has a very good feel, and is the only space in the college that is unchaotic. This might be one of the reasons that I am falling in love with installation.
You come through the 3D/Sculpture room, past the “we-have-no-fairy-godmother” sink, turn the corner and here is a small, clean, white cubic space. It is either empty – “leave it as you found it” – or has some intriguing art work installed. Or a student is working away at producing something new.
The installation space is invaluable to me as it gives me the opportunity to experiment with installation; to try out techinical details; to create the thing, step back and see. Also to show the work to others and get feedback from tutors and other students – so valuable.
Disconnected is the second installation I have created this year. A living ivy plant suspended with invisible thread. If I could suspend it without any thread I would do that, as invisible thread is annoyingly visible. “Can anyone lend me a magic wand? Do we have one in the equipment cupboard? Perhaps on the shelf where the tripod and projector would be if we had those?”
Step back and see – yes, it works. How could i improve it? How would I do it differently next time?
A short keywording with the BA group – excellent. Many people in this group are generous with their time. There is an easy community feel – we seem to work well together, mostly.
Photos taken, and then time to take the installation down. 5 hours to put it up, 10 minutes to take it down. Making clean-white-cube space for the next installer.
