I have spent the last couple of days deliberating on how to proceed with my work. Since I finished the painting that I had been working on for the past year, I have been left in a rut of not knowing what to do and feeling rather lost.
After doing a little research, I have found that my work, particularly my sculptures, have strong ties with Arte Povera. This realisation has thankfully helped to kick me back into gear and I have decided to do some more work involving cement.
I have also been pondering on my glass work – last year, the majority of my work revolved around fusing and slumping glass. While the outcomes were striking and quite charming, I felt they lacked conceptual links and were overly decorative. Thus, I felt they were more in the field of craft than fine art and so the art/craft can of worms was opened leaving me struggling to know how to develop these pieces further. The more I thought about this dilema, the more I began to realise that the key in them being seen in a more ‘fine art’ light, as opposed to ‘craft’, lay in their presentation.
Take Sue Collis for example, an artist who I am very much influenced by. She mainly works with precious gems and inlaying mother of peal into things – these materials would usually be associated with craft. The actual pieces and installations she creates however, are firmly rooted in the area of fine art and hence the secret is in the presentation of the work and materials.
Thought my blog was looking a bit plain so here are some pics of what I am working on at the moment. The mixed-media painting (dimensions 1m x 1m) is basically finished now, although I am planning on giving it a simple frame to make it stand out. The piece was initially inspired by a used paint palette I found in the studio, but also by the patterns on some rocks I found at the top of a mountain in the Lake District.
The other image is of a work still very much in progress. My lecturers thought I should perhaps leave it as it was and just exhibit the found object like Duchamp with his readymades. Although I feel that while readymades can be art works in their own right, there is little artistic passion behind them. I would rather use the found object to create a sculpture that incorporated my own response to the form, so the piece was like an unspoken dialogue between my expressions and the found object. I would hope that a piece like this would be far more available for an audience to connect to as opposed to a readymade.
I am currently trying very hard to summon up both courage and motivation to start on my dissertation. It’s not going brilliantly.
I have decided to write my dissertation on the concept of beauty in relation to art, in particular to consider whether art has to be beautiful to be considered “art”, whether that matters, and also whether in the 21st century it is somewhat superficial to create ‘beautiful’ work given all the horrors that have been seen worldwide in the last few decades.
This theme seems to be ideal for me to pursue as it is very much linked to my own practice and it has meant that I can look into artists that inspire my own thinking and working. Sue Collis and Robert Rauschenberg being particularly influencial both with my practice and my plans for my dissertation but I am also taken quite strongly by the works of Rineke Dijkstra in relation to the concepts behind my proposed dissertation.
Feeling rather under pressure at the moment, but trying to focus on being productive and NOT PANIC!
Plan of action for today…
– Pick up concrete from some lovely builders down the road, which I will use to make some bases for some of my sculptures.
– Make an appointment with the photography chappy at uni who will help me take some swoosh pictures of my work to upload onto website.
– Photocopy a few pages in a fabulous book called “Formless: A User’s Guide” which has proved to be an invaluable source of inspiration in desperate times.
– Do first layer of concrete for the bases for a couple of sculptures.
– Continue with some of my paintings…
But first… TEA.
After a whole summer of designing and a couple of days worth of fighting with my computer, my website ( www.beth-webster.com ) is FINALLY up and running! I was beginning to think all my work designing it from scratch had gone to waste and I was never going to be able to upload it to the internet… but I am relieved to say that with a bit of perseverance I have managed to make it work.
The site itself hasn’t got much on it yet as I need to get some recent pics up, but at least it is now up and running.
I am finding that I am doubting my art more now I am in my final year. Is it valid? Would people like it? Does it really represent what I think it represents? Maybe this is a natural stage to go through, but I certainly wish these questions in the back of my mind weren’t quite so strong as I am finding them quite distracting! Either way, I am doing my best to bury myself in art-making to try to keep my mind on track and be productive.
