University Campus Suffolk, Ipswich

9:30am

I feel the need to write up thought on my dog sculpture. Obviously as seen in a previous post it is still a working progress. I am n ot sure whether it fits into my project yet or whether i am deviating from my initial idea. I dont know what to think or feel about it yet so will soldier on and see what happens when it is at a stage of completion. The other thing about this sculpture is that i feel it is not orignal enough an idea for me because i have seen similiar sculptures before. Robert Bradford has done sculptures of dogs and used toys to cover and make the body. I have yet to find out the concept of these works but aesthetically i feel my dog needs to be pulled worlds about. I wont to make mine more craft based and not so much about the childhood aspect.

11:45am

I want to reflect on a my ‘Dog Blanket’ piece in this post with relation to a previous post about the craft and fine art um… boundaries. This piece i was very excited to see develope and finished as i had anticipated a beautiful and somewhat perfect outcome. This however is not how the piece came out. Once i had finished the piece i had noticed how the crochet had bunched up slightly under the sewing and become somewhat untidy. I know this in a craft point of view can be understandable as hand made items are sometimes bound to come out a little off. However i wanted this piece to look perfect and be straight lined, so that it would be easy to hang on a wall as my own contemporary tapestry. I now realise that it is still a contemporary tapestry (in my eyes anyway) but it to me is no longer a piece of craft. My view about craft is that it should be perfect phycially and aesthetically and because this is not of that standard that i wanted as a craft piece i decided to remove the craft element away from the context and it became merely a ‘Dog Blanket’.

The final thing i wanted to add to this post is some numbers that i have decided on for my cubes after relecting on my research. They are as follows 4, 5, 8, 12, 23, 26, 29, 40, 71, 74, 100, 181, 306, 505, 511, 559, 784, 1038, 1083, 1990, 2172, 3884. Like beagles in labratorys some of numbers mean nothing at all where as some of them are significant numbers that are now left in the history of these test labratorys.

9:20am

I want to discuss my work abit more critically today as now i am in the studio infront of my colourful display of art and craft. Firstly i want to add a little something random to my blog that i relate to with my work somewhat but also i wanted to add a thought i had the other day in blog review.

”You can’t polish a turd but you can put glitter on it” Sarah James 2013

I like this quote said by a friend as it makes me wonder whether i can make a shitty fine art context nice and attractive by covering it in an aesthetically pleasing craft. Thus hiding the identity of one’s fine art context in my craft based work. Not entirely sure, might need to think further on this.

To further my discussion i feel that within my work i am not only hiding the identity of a fine art context but i am also taking something beautiful and deicate and removing it from its craft home. I am attempting to do so by putting my craft into a thought provoking and questionable environment. This links directly to how an animal testing labratory removes a beagles identity. I think my work may be removing the traditional craft identity from the material and in doing that, it becomes something else. So actually i am not consciously saying that my work is craft doing its best to stand out in fine art but i am using craft materialistically to portray a fine art language within a subject i feel strongly about.

How do i get other people to relate to my work if perhaps i dont fully understand what i am doing myself yet?

9:55am

I have been thinking in a bit of a daydream about my work in particular my cubes. I like what they represent, i think it works and i think the physical nature of them works also. I am just unsure and not happy with the text that i ahve used beneath each one. At first i thought that having the colour, sex and age of my made-up beagles beneath would be a great way to express the importance of awareness, as these beagles are so young but i feel i am giving away too much. I want to make my cubes more subtle while also allowing audience and personal provocation from the context behind the cubes. But then, do i want the audience to know exactly what is going on, do they need to know what my cubes means. Can i keep that to myself? Ooh thoughtful stuff!!!

Anyway instead of the more discriptive written words beneath the cubes i have decided (after looking at my research again) that just ike the labaratorys, i should only use a number. I dont whether the number should just be random or whether i should use numbers that i have seen in my research but it needs to be a number beneath each cube. This makes sure that i can portray how beagles loose their identity as a dog, as man’s best friend and as a creature with a huge personality. Yes a number is crucial in order for my work, in my eyes, to be provoking and interesting. I dont want the cubes to give anything away themselves. I think they portray what i want them too. I think i need to get them out of the studio and put them in a different environment. Also need to make some more up and get some bold numbers together. Test the waters of my idea. 1083, dont know why but this number needs to be a part of it. I feel attached to the number somehow.

‘The Persistance of Craft’ (a book that had influenced my dissertation as well as my pratical work) primarily looks at how crafts are, and have been, tendered toward the use of minimal, geometric and gestural abstraction which essentially is accompanied by overt focus on the function of the object being made. Skills within craft are, and were, associated with the idea of quality. ‘Craft and skill have often been used as interchangeable terms and this has undoubtedly undermined the status of craft as a modernist activity’, (Greenhalgh, P. 1997, p16). The interchange between function and concept reveals the contextualisation of practises in the contemporary art environment today. The on-going continuum of genre history has enabled crafts to continue to engage with the processes of conceptual change at large in the modern world.

This i have and do link to Grayson Perry and Rosemarie Trockel with regards to my own practise. Rosemarie Trockel has been a huge influence with regards to portraying my craft as a conceptual piece of art. One piece in particular that has had a big influence on me is her balaclavas. The balaclava has continued to serve as protection to humanity, allowing for the preservation of anonymity. Trockel’s balaclava’s show a lack of mouth-opening which signals the terrorists and humanities inability to speak in the face of perceived oppression. This i feel i can link to my own work as craft is associated with a homely, functional object of use, where as my craft is trickling further into new dimensions. I feel using this particular work of Trockel’s as a main reference will help me to imagine my own in others way. For example i had not even thought about the identity side of my crochet cubes and they can can represent the identity of beagles. This i feel is a powerful factor to use within my degree project.

Now down to the more craft based skills side of things. I have chosen to remain firmly rooted in Grayson Perry’s work. I feel a passion towards how he thinks and speaks about his work and the word. I also very much like how, like my work, Perry uses his hands to make work as well as some very traditional materials and methods. This i think is key to keeping the structure of the craft clear to yourself as well as the audience.

Many artists have used pots and pans, and ceramics in their work however Perry deliberately exploits the scandalously unfashionable associations that are associated with decoration, domesticity and craft. In relation to this Perry had said this about Duchamp in respect of the handmade pot; ‘But the final irony of it is – and I love this story – is that if you go to an art gallery and you see the father of that explosion – Duchamp’s urinal sitting there – it would have been handmade because the original was destroyed and by the time people became interested in it, you couldn’t get that model of urinal anymore. And so those urinals were handmade by a potter.’ (Perry, G. 2013, Reith Lecture, p.16). Like Duchamp in some ways Perry brings work into galleries that are dangerously seen as art but perhaps should be set and sold within a village or country craft fair or in a homemade house ware store; or in Duchamp’s case the men’s restroom. Ceramics tend to rest within its presumed second class status, and this is why ceramics appeal to Perry.

Grayson Perry’s pots occupy an uncomfortable border territory, in this case between art and craft, so too does Perry’s sexuality as a transvestite. His flamboyant dressing up suggests a similarly dangerous blending of boundaries: between male and female, intellectual and sensuous, serious and comic; presenting an amusing diversion. (Klein, 2009, page9).

In after thought for now, i feel craft is something that needs to remain in society as it holds so many traits that people can contact with. Also it causes debate, debate in my mind about how i use my crafts.

Do i need my work to feel uncomfortable for it to be seen as art and not craft?

Does my work have a border territory?

Should that be in a gallery?

Can you represent something serious using craft?

How do retain integral craft roots while also fixing a concedptual context?

Is there any point in this?

I may discover some answers for these and i further develope my project and my research but for now i just wanted to put down something about a couple artists that i can link with materialistically.

This is not directly relevant to my work but it is (well i think it is) a powerful quote from Bruce Lee in one of his movies. I feel the words speak truths throughout everything you can do including making art.

bruce lee water

In my project i am trying to take something beautiful and delicate (handmade craft), and remove it from it’s familiar craft home. In doing this i will put the work into a a thought provoking and questionable environment. Just like a lab that tests on animals, removes the beagles identity; my work is removing the traditional, soft craft identity from the materials. In doing that it becomes something else, something no longer functional. This i will explore further and in order to do this i will reflect upon my dissertation. For example i will relate my work to that of Grayson Perry and Rosemarie Trockel in order to explore the idea of taking something, once a functional craft item, and making it fine art through means of a context that relates to me or something i feel strongly about.

With regards to relating my work to something or someone. I have spoken about relating my work to the audience, making them want to discuss it, like it , hate it and give opinions on it. I have forgotten that i am the first and most important critic of my work. How can other people really understand the roots of why i do what i do when to be honest i am not completely sure of my own understanding yet? In furture posts i hope to dicuss my work more critically, well after a bit more critical research first.

Furthermore i wish to discuss a couple of things that are important to me within this project, as well as many others and important to my everyday life. Colour and texture are very important to me. I love how a colour and the accessories we choose can represent an emotion, your personality and to me it also represent life and wonder (curiosity and learnign also). Texture plays a big part in my life, and i am sure it does in every other living beings life too. New life uses colour and texture to determine what they do or do not like. I t allows for wonder and new experineces to arise and develope. I find it very familiar and comforting no matter the texture of colour, it all has an effect on the senses and thoughts. I like all textures whether soft, hard, solid, tactile, bumpy, rough, smooth, fluffy etc. The list could go on.

I very much appreciate the fact that i can use my hands to touch and feel the materials that i use. The materials become part of my life, my individual culture. Moreover i could not imagine not using colour or texture within my work as i feel that our sight and touch is so incredible. I love how it can influence our thoughts and feelings surrounding the world, nature, human beings, words, life! I enjoy looking at colour and feeling different textures as the vibrancy of these things interests me. I feel as a young human being that colour and texture within life (also within my craft based work) is a means to a life full of experiences, hope and dreams.

To kind of sum up i am attracted to colour and texture in all forms and tones based around both art and craft. Thus the reason for it being a big part of my work through the degree.