I’m not getting much time to blog lately as it’s the final few days before studio clear out and the degree show goes up! I’ve been busy working on the final touches to my assessment work so it’s been difficult to find the time to write.
I have ordered my reflective journal (a combination of my offical uni reflective journal and my posts from this blog) to be printed as a proper book. I’ve also put together a print on demand book of my visual documentation. It’s filled with pictures of my studio and work developing along with writing and annotations about my progress since September. I can’t wait to see the printed versions after spending so long putting them together on the computer, compiling them using my sketchbook and journal. It seems strange to be summing up this final year after 4 years of studying for this moment.
When graduation comes I’ll be left without a studio and without a screen print workshop on hand for free, no need to book just turn up and work hassle free. So I’ve been looking through the a-n site at the graduate help posts as well as taking notes of the many useful tips that Simona Dell’Agli from ArtQuest has been giving us in lectures these last few weeks. Here are some of the posts that I found most useful/interesting:
The Art of Blogging:
www.a-n.co.uk/p/406327
Agreeing a contract:
Budgets:
Degrees of Success:
How to get Crowd Funding:
Social media:
Artists and Pinterest:
www.a-n.co.uk/p/2160345
I’m particularly interested in the social media side as I believe that so much of our lives are online these days. If you want to be known you have to be present on the internet so these are really useful. When Simona Dell’Agli has given us talks she has mentioned the impact of Twitter and blogging. being able to update people with your artwork quickly and easily. It also gets you noticed by a lot of different people who you may not target as your audience. The most recent addition to the social media networking is Pinterest which I have personally been on since sometime back when it first started. As a purely visual networking site is ideal for artists to use to collect inspiration of their own but to also get their images out into the public. You do as always have to be careful about copyright and be aware that people will be pinning images left, right and centre. The article in this month’s a-n magazine is interesting on this subject and definitely worth a look at.
Post #2 for today! I have a Blogger Profile now up: www.a-n.co.uk/p/2086261/
I’ve been answering all sorts of questions about printmaking, teaching and what I think I’m going to do after uni…scary stuff! This is the 3rd interview I’ve done about my art practice and it isn’t getting any easier, I always find it tricky to answer questions about it yet I could write for days about what I’m doing, very frustrating. I hope you enjoy reading it anyway and if anyone has any questions feel free to comment…
I’ve taken a small break from the blogging scene to finish off my dissertation but now I am back and have a few short posts that I’ve been saving up over the holidays.
Firstly I went to Berlin for a week at the end of March. It was a fantastic trip and very cultural, I didn’t go into any art galleries though! Instead I went on an underground art tour, a small group of us were taken around Berlin, away from the touristy parts and instead to the hidden gems of the art houses and street art pieces.
I’d never heard of an ‘art house’ before but as far as I understand it’s just a studio space shared amongst artists but sometimes they actually live there, I think it used to be that everyone lived in them back when times were much harder with the Berlin wall etc. Some of them were a little intimidating, very dark and oppressive with the walls, floor and celing graffitied with not an inch of blank space left. There was one that we went to that was a shop front with a make shift exhibition happening on one side of the room, a kitchen and seating area on the other and a ladder to blacony bedroom! The artist/gallery owner/curator just lived in the small space alongside the exhibitions of his and other’s work, it was not something I’ve ever come across before!
We saw a lot of street art and came to spot some regulars who had very distinct styles. It was also great to see some of the more famous pieces which were huge works on the sides of buildings. We were told about the history of the buildings and the art scene in Berlin which was fascinating, discovering the stories behind the places made the works so much more prominent, especially those in close proximity to the Berlin wall.
Maybe next time I go to Berlin I’ll get a chance to go to some of the galleries – there’s so much to see it’s impossible to fit all that art into just one week!
Today I learnt how to do stone lithography. It is one of the most tiresome processes I have come across and is very labour intensive, not for the faint hearted! I think you definitely have to be a die hard printmaker to have the determination to go through with this process as it takes a very long time to do all of the preparation work thoroughly.
Here are some photos of my stone so far, I won’t be printing it until tomorrow as my arm started to shake so much from grinding the stone that I wouldn’t have been able to put the paper down steady enough!
It is a field of poppies so I think I will hand paint some of them with watercolour and possibly monoprint via silk screen with some of the others to get a coloured background down for them as I really like to get a bit of colour in my work.
I’ve now finished my degree show piece…scary! It’s all wrapped up and stored away now, ready to attach the hanging batons just before installing it for the exhibition. Because it’s so large I haven’t been able to find anywhere big enough to lay it all out with the proper spacing between the 9 panels so it will still be a surprise for me as to what it looks like when it’s on the wall!
I’ve had my first curation group meeting, finding out what each of the other students will be exhibiting in the same room as me. We are the room of the unexpected, each work has a slightly darker side to it than you first think. Everybody is excited to see this room when it’s all finished, it’s the only room to be curated thematically as opposed to visually or by media.
I have been making some small prints as presents this week, oh how I wish we had a letterpress to make it all easier! I have been creating letter press style posters for a friend who is getting married – no photos unfortunately because the big day isn’t until the end of the month and I can’t ruin the surprise! I have 2 ideas for prints entirely unrelated to my degree work that I will be printing for a local screen print exhibtion – they will be the first in what I am sure will be many in “the ridiculous animals” series. Photos appearing at the end of next week…watch this space.
I will also be designing some editions of small prints to sell at our degree show. I’m not entirely sure what the theme for them will be yet, whether they will be directly related to my degree show work or different to show that I can do lots of different things. I won’t be designing those until the Easter holidays though so plenty of time to decide on the content…
