Apologies once again for the long break, the gallery chairman had an accident on the ice and is MIA for 3 months so my role at the gallery has stepped up a notch. Whilst I am enjoying the learning experience my own work has had to take a back seat although I did manage a fantastic shoot at a manor house this week.
I have a large amount of editing to trawl through and several works in progress could really do with some evenings in the gallery to blitz everything up to date without the admin/visitor interruptions.
New year is approaching and aside from the obligatory diet i must start looking at where I will go from here i.e. new residencies or touring an exhibition of my work but at the moment feel like I am clutching at straws and not actually getting hold of any of them!
A very busy hanging week for the Christmas Show which includes some of my own photographs.
We have been hit hard by the snow and frost and a recent exploration ended with me occupying my brothers couch for an evening as I was unable to travel back home! Made for some interesting photographs though so once again I have a large amount of editing to get through.
I have a list (of sorts) on the go as I have started physicaly making work and it is inspriring further ideas as I go. I moved windows with my installation and I am pleased that I was able to re-install it so quickly as I was getting worried about time constraints for installing the final exhibition.
I have been working with rust transfers which produce some wonderfully vibrant effects and are reletively simple to do. Salt water will transfer rust to other surfaces so I have been wrapping cloth around various rusted implements and soaking them in sea water.
I also intend to try some work with wax which if applyed flat and allowed to set will crack like peeling paint. I think this will be very effective and will post further once I have some results.
Not posting for so long would suggest I have been busy but infact I have been procrastinating and flitting from job to job without completing anything satisfactorily.
I am however, having ideas re the final show and have managed to secure myself a group show with two other photographers for 2012 :)
So early one morning after wrestling with ideas for presentation of the final project I had a thought that I could seperate the subject into older and more recent ruins. This is largely due to the sheer number of tholtons on the island which are often difficult to photograph and little information is available about them.
My initial idea was therefore to divide the two sections of the project and complete the Sayle Gallery show with more of an Urbex slant focusing on photographic imagery and mixed media work. I could then find a second venue and show the older ruins and historical information as a seperate show and book.
Having thought about this option I have come to realise how little I enjoy researching the older buildings and that the extra work involved would not hold my interest and would eventually become a strain on the main project. Personally these buildings hold little interest for me and rarely produce strong photographic images.
I initially wanted to include such information in order to better engage with local people and encourage interaction. I am now starting to realise that the public themselve are more interested in the more recent ruins and the more evocative images.
I have therefore decided to focus my work on conveying the feelings that these buildings invoke within me.
Another busy hanging week (www.paulparkermanxartist.com www.mcneillglass.com) and a change around of the gallery space making it much bigger and brighter all round. Hopefully the press coverage will increase visitor numbers and Im now in the window (fishbowl!) so pedestrians can see my work as they pass.
Im revamping the map with stickers rather than pins as the corkboard is rather ugly and im going to start looking into publishers and book layouts.
I have finally done some research and discovered that i may have a difficult task ahead of me as there is little or no information on alot of the smaller sites but the weather has closed in quickly so i have plenty of long cold days ahead to spend at the library.
Havent posted for a while, the dull weather here has affected my motivation. Have, however, managed to get a lot of editing done and spent some time on google earth locating more tholtans. Hanging week again next week and once again I feel I need the break from my computor screen.
I am planning to start commencing more mixed media pieces once hanging is done, I think the large scale piece I commenced took too long and failed to hold my interest so I intend to work on a smaller scale when transfering by hand. If the final results are effective I can move to a larger scale and have the images printed professionally.
I also feel that I have been putting off the research for far too long now so will start at the library on Monday (unless my new camera arrives before then!) With the weather closing in it is the perfect time to be inside in a warm library rather than outdoors damaging cameras in the rain! I have also found that researching helps me to generate ideas and get the creative juices flowing so fingers crossed I will be back on track within a fortnight.
