I am four weeks into a part time Masters in Ceramics at the Cardiff School of Art and Design in Howard Gardens. I’m learning a lot about the creative process and how I as an artist negotiate my way through this. I’m currently working on drawings and using mark making to explore Edmund De Waal’s piece Porcelain Wall from the Cardiff Museum.
I’ve been exploring the potential of solarplates; I like the relief quality that they can give to both paper and to clay. I’ve been very focused on the image to the point where I stopped thinking about the prints as being objects in their own right. I want to really exploit their sense of objectness and make the print and the material that it’s printed merge together more and almost be the same thing.
I had a tutorial with David Ferry the printmaker which was really good because he was looking at the work from a different perspective. He highlighted the significance of the object and the handmade which, I can sometimes overlook because ceramics is the discipline that I’m trained in. I had become very focused on the image and the print, forgetting that the prints on clay were also objects within their own rights. He also highlighted for me the fact that I was dislocating the impact of the photograph by the use of the grid.
I’ve been looking at work by Andreas Gursky, Dieter Roth, Louise Nevenson, Antoni Tapies, Gerhard Richter, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Vito Acconci.
Several questions have arisen within my practice that require exploration. The first of these is: ‘How can I enhance the visual experience of the viewer?’ I am going to explore further the layering of different halftone shapes and frequencies of halftone to create patterns or optical disturbances. I can explore the grid further by creating differences within the components of the grid through their size or the shape of halftone that is used. Other approaches to the creation of a visual experience include: CAD to create a low relief pattern, resist processes or a flexiograph to create texture. These processes could be used to explore the pixilation and dispersal of the image.
Another question is: ‘Is the frame as important as the concept of the frame?’ Perhaps the manipulation of perspective could be employed by using different sizes of the same image as in slide nine or playing with the perspective of the frame .
This issue of the use of perspective relates to another question that I wish to explore which is: ‘The room, the wall, and the way in which the image is used within this context?’ This relates to installation art, but also to architecture as it is possible for my work to be built into the fabric of a building.
My dissertation has now been handed in so, I have until the beginning of September to focus on practical work. The dissertation examined definitions of creativity from different fields and looked at approaches to understanding the creative process within artistic practice. It’s really starting to feed into my practice, I’m using it to improve the content on my website.
http://www.elaineflannery.com/#/table-of-contents/4547548999
I am a problem finding artist as opposed to a problem solving one. I pose questions to myself that I don’t always have the answers to. My current question is: How can I make the image move or create a sense of movement? It’s a more interesting way of developing work as you have to look at your area, set out your criteria, identify the problem and then look at ways of tackling it. Reading about creativity research led me to think about this and by chance I came across a quote by Chuck Close which sums up the benefits of this approach quite well.
“Chuck Close has described himself as “an artist looking for trouble, because pushing the limits of a technique gets him in trouble, and extricating himself from a technical corner becomes an essential catalyst to his creativity.”
