I’ve lots to share, it’s been six weeks since I did the photograms and I’ve been having fun pushing the work more and refining the presentation of what I’ve already made.
I’ve framed up the photograms and I’m increasingly happy with them. I showed them, along with my other current work, to Lorenzo Fusi at a portfolio review at Castlefield Gallery in March. He felt that the photograms and the drawings were more dynamic than my proposals for the digital projection works, but I think that I agree with him and I know that I’m at the start of a process with that work.
After doing the photgrams I felt that I’d got into a rut with each piece of work following a prescribed pattern (left/right/up or down), so I’ve been to John Moores University to get some arrows cut into rubber stamp material using their laser cutting machine. I’ve also had them cut interlocking panels out of plywood to make display boxes for my pinned collages. I’ve spent the last 3 weeks adjusting, gluing and spray painting the boxes and three of them are finished, the last one is nearly there. I’ve been reeeeaaaalllyy patient with making these as I want them to look great, and I know that when I spray paint things that they always look rubbish because I rush. So I didn’t. And they don’t.
The rubber stamps of the arrows have been really freeing. I’ve been ‘drawing’ with them and I’m able to try different flows that I wasn’t able to do when I was tracing the outlines or working ‘blind’ in the photograms. I’ve been trying to make myself work responsively to the page and the marks I’m making, trying not to think too hard, and pushing past the ‘don’t waste the expensive white paper’ gremlins. (Thanks twitter folks for their ‘just get on with it’ support, it was a great help)
I’ve had a clear down of the wall where I peg works in progress and recent experiments and am now displaying the boxes so that I can photograph them properly. It’s really refreshing to have a change of content in the studio, I’m going to look at the three sets of work (photograms, collages, rubber stamp works) and decide where to go next.
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ooh, I meant to also write here that I’ll be starting an off-shoot blog from this, as I’m fortunate to be receiving a Re:View Bursary from a-n. I’m going to have critical support from artists who have an established practice in digital interactive media and from staff and students at Salford University who can help me to develop my proposal for the digital interactive projection that I keep going on about.
