Week 24: 25th February – 3rd March
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about making stuff, but the fact is that the first year definitely seems to involve a lot more reading and writing (at least in my case). However, I also seem to have got myself involved in a number of various projects and exhibitions, which I’m using as milestones to contribute to my final thesis.
I’ve been considering how to document the full journey of the art making process as, although I often blog about my work, it’s usually from the relative safety of an exhibition already produced or an artwork already made. Even writing about the conception of an idea, fails to convey the sheer frustration of developing the work to fruition, so I felt it necessary to be more explicit about these processes to try to capture the essence of what it means to be an artist.
Captivation
Alfred Gell discusses a state of captivation when observing an artwork, where the observer is unable to imagine themselves taking the same journey as the artist through the mere act of looking at the finished object. The state, which he refers to as ‘enchantment’, may contribute to the lack of understanding of the artistic process and perhaps undermine artistic interpretation, if the observer is unable to quantify this journey in concrete terms. Through documenting this process I believe it is possible to break this enchantment to benefit understanding, without this being of detriment to the finished work.
Adventures in bookbinding
So back to my own artistic struggles, my book art submission had been accepted to be shown on the AMBruno stall at the Leeds International Contemporary Artist Book Fair (in week 18). As much as I love making objects, I have to say there is nothing like that initial enthusiasm when an idea is first conceived. The rest is very hard and frustrating work. In fact, often the enthusiasm only returns after the work has been created.
Having decided to create a cylical flexagon, I set about measuring, cutting and folding my books and covers with the idea that I would print the images onto the finished bound objects using lino print. It took a number of days to work out the correct measurements and to do them in a way that my perfectionist nature found acceptable, but I finally worked out my process and had 20 finished books and covers to show for it. Unfortunately at this stage they were still blank, and not only did I not have any images created, but I wasn’t even exactly sure what the images would be.
Alchemical symbolism
I’d been thinking a lot about alchemical symbolism, so it didn’t take too long to work out a series of symbols based on the various elements attributed to alchemical production. I duly transferred these to the lino and set about carving the tiles. Before I’d finished them all, I decided it would probably be a good idea to test them out in the print room, and it’s a good job I did, because after trying with various different types of ink, I still wasn’t happy with how they looked and retired to a nearby cafe to rethink my strategy.
I realised I would have to produce the work digitally to get the kind of effect that I wanted, but this would have the added bonus that the work wouldn’t need time to dry. However, this also meant redrawing all the symbols in Photoshop, setting them up in the correct order and then hoping that it worked when folded.
Thankfully, it seemed to go a lot easier this time round. The folds and measurements were all in the right place and the mechanism of the book was a lot smoother than my previous attempts. I wondered why I hadn’t done it this way in the first place, before realising that it was only this ‘easy’ due to my previous ‘mistakes’. Often an artwork develops as the result of many of these ‘wrong’ decisions, and it’s worth remembering that, not only as an observer, but also when I’m struggling with my next piece of art.
