Yesterday I went out on an art teacher’s CPD event organised through the Birmingham Artist Educator network, 4MAT UK. We took a trip on the Ikon Gallery’s barge to make clay houses, part of the Black Country Voyages art programme. The lead artist on this project this year is Mahtab Hussain and his project is called
The Auspicious Journey. He has used the barge as a vehicle for exploring ideas about the displacement of people from his homeland in Kashmir in the 1960’s resulting from the construction of the Mangla Dam. Many of the affected people did not move on to the nearest settlement in Kashmir, but came to the UK to find work around the Black Country canals. You can find more information about the project
here.
The day was a great opportunity to relax and spend some time making – it’s a long time since I last used clay; it was very therapeutic, especially throwing it at the start to get rid of the air bubbles. It was also a great chance to chat and network in relaxing surroundings with other artist educators from the region; Emma, a fellow sketchbook circler; Lisa and Karen from last year’s Artist Teacher Scheme; Emma from the Ikon Gallery; Philip, part-time skipper and art therapist.
The workshop started me thinking about my own work in new ways too; where to go with my tubes made out of drawings and written extracts; new ways of making my mark on paper and on the world; new materials to try. I am pondering ideas about making my tubes out of clay, and the interactive, inclusive element of asking members of the public to make pieces for a project.
Next week I finish my job and take a step out into the unknown; I will be a freelance artist educator. I am scared and excited but am looking forward to the challenges and the changes, and seeing how these manifest themselves in my art practice. I will certainly have lots to write about in my notebook, lots of thoughts to illuminate, lots of ideas to make into tangible objects.
It’s been a patchy week in terms of making time for my own work; business appointments and writing applications to register our company, parenting and the day job. I feel unsettled and uneasy; I need the mental downtime that writing and making give me.
I have managed to make some drawings using soluble graphite on wet paper. I have snatched half-an-hour here and there to relax with some jazz music and sit on my living room floor drawing and spraying, letting my mind unravel, watching the graphite bleed and run.
I’m intending to use some of these drawings to make more tubes with; I like the written thoughts on them, the combination of fragments of drawings, and the inner lighting; lanterns shedding a light onto my thoughts.
I’ve been experimenting with hanging the tubes on a string of fairy lights (a safer alternative to using candles inside paper structures, I felt!), and although I wasn’t overwhelmed by the overall effect, I liked each individual ‘lantern’ and I managed to achieve some quite painterly effects by increasing the contrast in the photos.
This idea is still rattling around in my brain amidst the rest of the clutter, and I know that I want to continue to explore it through a combination of making and writing. My thoughts now are directed towards how to present it. I’m pleased to be moving my ideas out of a sketchbook and making them occupy a physical space, drawing in 3D, shedding some light on what it means to be me.
On Saturday I visited the Eva Rothschild exhibition at New Art Gallery Walsall with the Artist Teacher crew. We then visited the gallery studio for a workshop with the current artist in residence, Chloe Ashley, whose work you can see here. Chloe is an analogue photographer who presents her work in sculptural ways rather than in a traditional framed format.
Chloe’s work also reminded me of a body of work called The Last Silence by Sandra Meech, and represents the artist’s experience of the silence, the cracks in the ice and sound ‘marks’ whilst out walking on Baker Lake in Canada. You can visit her website here.
I felt drawn to both of these artists’ work; Chloe’s because I am interested in photography, and altering, overlaying and colouring images of my own work and ideas; Sandra’s because of her representation of sound and physicality, and her limited use of colour – something I have been exploring in my own search for my own practice. Both artists interest me because of their sculptural, 3D presentation of 2D pieces.
So I have spent the weekend sitting on my living room floor surrounded by strips and pieces of my torn up intuitive mark-making pieces, making them into tubes of varying sizes. (Don’t ask me why tubes; I followed my intuition). Some of them are made from two seperate pieces of work; some of them are tubes within tubes; one of them doesn’t stand up very well by itself. I tried different ways of securing them into tube shapes, but after a couple of setbacks I settled for stapling them or pinning them with dressmaker’s pins. I’ve made apertures in the tubes and lit them from inside. I’ve written some of my thoughts and ideas on them.
And that’s where I am now. Another twist to the tale. I’m still not sure where this journey is headed, although I’m pleased with the sculptural pieces made from my drawings. I’m trying things out, following my impulses, seeing where it takes me.
