Etching 2 (Aquatint)

Another successful, and enjoyable, day in the print room. I am really pleased with the aquatint print I made - I think using tone worked really well with the composition I chose, and it is a far more interesting image than my first hard ground etching.

I found myself perhaps more interested in the look of the plate as I was preparing it - the different surfaces bitten into it were fascinating and I would be quite interested in experimenting with what can be done with metal itself (and forget about the print). Another student from a different year was using the acid to corrode a metal box, which was making really beautiful colours on its surface - I'd love to investigate something similar. ...I think perhaps this points towards my interest in materials over making marks (drawing), which I view as more of an ideas process.

Drawing Development

 

 Developing ideas was momentarily tricky because I kept on coming up with the same ideas - I feel my drawings all have quite similar qualities because I have used line a lot, so they were not providing me with much variety with which to develop my ideas. Sticking to a particular 'style' is something I know hinders my work quite regularly, but I think perhaps I am learning to overcome it with set techniques. My second conversation with the tutor was needed and very helpful as we discussed how I should bring random elements from my environment into the drawings, introducing new motifs or exploring juxtaposing the qualities from different drawings. As a result of this conversation I began to use the cereal boxes and masking tape that were around my work space, as well as making cardboard maquettes and playing around with inverted images.

 

 

Etching 1

My slight apprehension about this new process was unnecessary because I really enjoyed it, and feel pleased with the prints I produced. I made a conscious effort to note down as mush as possible about the process so that I could refer to it later and observe small details so as not to get things wrong. I must do this for other processes in future because it enabled me to work independently, and (most importantly) with confidence... where as I might usually feel anxious about doing something wrong from memory.

I did not spend much time on the composition of my first etching.. I thought I might concentrate on experiencing the process instead. I enjoyed learning how and why the different steps work in preparing and manipulating the etching plate - I always find that I am better at something if I understand the reasons behind it, and this was very well explained to us.

I consider my first print to be successful because it was very clean, and the plate seemed to have held the ink well. I think the drawing itself was a bit sparse and uninteresting, but still coherent with the rest of my work and showed a new, different quality to using pen as I had done before in the week.

 

I think, although enjoyable, etching possibly isn't a process I would use very often in my practice because I only tend to use drawing as a means to making a 3D object and it would make more sense to use pen... Nevertheless, considering the preliminary drawings of artists such as Rachel Whiteread, which are really interesting and can be viewed as artworks in their own right, perhaps occasionally I could formalise some of my sketches in this way.

Weekend Reflections

Grayson Perry's last Reith lecture has given me much to think about. I loved hearing from someone inside the art world giving such honest opinions, and it was really helpful. I feel inspired to really try and to take every opportunity possible(even though I don't want to be an artist).

Have also been looking on tumblr quite a bit and finding it really useful to find new artists by following art blogs - it is also a handy way of keeping track of all the artist's names that I find.

Discovered work of French sculptor Vincent Mauger... amazing! Reminds me very much of Tara Donovan, and I love it instantly just as much. Such brilliant intricacy, but with the use of one, simple, everyday/industrial material, which is transformed to almost organic forms in the contouring and decomposition. I was particularly drawn to the pipes sculpture because of the simplicity of the circular lines, the sections look so beautiful, they remind me of coral or geometric mountain ranges.. His work that is displayed on the ceiling instead of the floor is another favourite because of the way it changes the normal format of the gallery and makes the viewer look to a place that is not regularly used - of course I am still very interested in this concept, and I feel unnoticed spaces is something I want to continue from foundation.

Something that is very apparent from looking on tumblr is that there are so many works out there... I wondered this morning whether it is beneficial or detrimental look at all these artists and to be constantly reminded that it is nearly impossible to be original. In the short term I think it is beneficial for providing inspiration - their art gives me new perspectives of the world, and feeds my own ideas. But it is still a little hard to comprehend how many artworks and ideas there are being made continuously, infinitely. It is very tricky not to feel self-conscious and insignificant with this in view.

 

Drawing

Drawing is going well. I responded to the brief quite quickly making a range of drawings without planning them at all beforehand. To begin with I didn't think this approach was successful because the drawings looked messy and very rough, but as I have made more and viewed them together, they have begun to have some significance.

 

I have become quite reluctant to draw lately because I haven't practiced it seriously since AS Level.. I use drawing as a part of my natural process in developing ideas, but mainly continuous line drawing and very quick sketches. The topic of drawing also makes me feel guilty because it is something I know I should keep up with, having focused on it and enjoyed it for so many years.

 

Chosing the sources was fairly easy: the wasps nest, which is just so intricate and fascinating, a macro eye shot by photographer Suren Manvelyan, and the photograph of my shopping bags on washing line AS experiment, which still interests me now.

 

 

 

Today I set myself a target of making a detailed, studied tonal drawing, as a test of my patience, which I feel I have latterly lost. While I was drawing I was thinking about how it is very easy to rush artwork.. my reason for not painting is that I don't have the patience, and the same for drawing, and the same for learning how to use a proper SLR camera... the same even for using materials such as wood and metal - (as well as being afraid of the machinary) I can't instantly manipulate them with my hands like I can with paper and the materials I have worked with recently... I need to be more patient, clearly. A new goal.

 

The crit today went well. I really enjoy hearing about other people's work and I was told I work in a similar style to Eva Hesse, which made me happy. Today I also found myself able to describe and interpret work in more detail and with more depth; I think I am getting better at viewing works with an emotional response, as well as just looking at the obvious aesthetic. I think this is probably down to thinking and looking at the works for longer, something that has been encouraged by all the tutors so far.

 

Not really sure how I am going to develop my pieces yet.. I am going to think about it over the weekend. Initial thoughts are that I'd probably like to keep it 2D just so I can have a go before I go back to my usual medium.

'Figuring It Out'

Reading my book... 'Figuring It Out' by Colin Renfrew, which I chose because I have enjoyed reading 'But Is It Art?' by Cynthia Freeland - the theory of art is something I'm really, really interested in.  I feel reading these sorts of books is something I need to do to keep my brain going... like at A Level, I think a balance of physical creativity and intellectual subjects is necessary for me. Last year I also found that reading became a part of my creative practice... reading about the history or philosophy of a type of artwork gives me new ideas.

 

Aside from these things, reading just now also made me think about art at school... I knew nothing of art history before foundation, and I'm really puzzled over why not - there just seems so much out there to learn, which I am really excited about, but I guess I am shocked by how little I know. But why were we not even introduced to art theory and philosophy, and told to draw pasta or rope or copy an artist's work instead... Recently I have got quite annoyed at how people might view art as an 'easy' subject, or one which doesn't require a lot of brains or academia... but there is so much intellect and meaning and interesting ideas to learn about within the subject. The book is describing how art can inform our knowledge of human development... art is as good as science in learning about the world around us.

Temporal Practice - Friday Crit

 I didn't have a great amount of work to show after my week of no ideas...

1. Three video clips of toilet paper falling to the ground, mirrored

2. Photographs of 12 compositions produced by black wool thread being dropped onto the ground

These were made as a way of investigating the materials in an active way. I learnt about Gutai in Wednesday's lecture, a post-war Japanese group of artists who used performance to highlight the properties of materials. I was drawn to their ideology more than the work itself - they believed materials should be valued for their own properties instead of being used to represent different objects, as if they are pretending to be something they're not (e.g. traditional sculpture - clay modelled to represent figures...). I realised that I am also more interested in the materials, how they move and what I can do with them, over figurative things that I can make with them.

Although only a rough idea (a video version of a maquette perhaps), I was pleased with the short clips of the falling toilet paper... If anything it is a base for an idea that interests me and I would be happy to investigate further. I think this was a key thing I was lacking last week - I had neither any confidence, nor any interest in the ideas I was coming up with. One thing that was helpful, and with hindsight seems like an important thing to remember, was the suggestion by Ed that I should focus on what inspires me. I was thinking of ideas that fitted the brief well but that I did not feel comfortable with and were quite removed from my usual way of working... although I want to grow and develop my style, If I'm stuck maybe it is sometimes a good idea to return to an idea/concept that I know has some mileage.

The feedback was quite positive, the group seemed to find the video peaceful and aesthetically quite interesting. I was asked whether I might consider using colour in my work as both my pieces were monochrome. I tend not to use a lot of colour in my work, colour itself certainly isn't something I really try and investigate - I don't really like bright colours because I always want my work to be subtle... after a discussion, we all reasoned that colour perhaps wasn't necessary because, if it is the materials I am exploring, it wouldn't make sense to give them artificial properties.

The wool composition idea seems a very simple idea, but I really like the spatial quality: some of them look to me like they are balls of thread instead of being flat on the surface beneath. I also really like how they are all different... this element of chance was something I wanted to focus on in both my experiments because of the history of this way of working in video and performance... I think it emphasises how the work was an action, unravelling the wool and allowing it to fall where it will.

 

It was by chance itself that I learnt that Marcel Duchamp did a similar thing in his 1913 work, '3 Standard Stoppages', dropping three threads, each 1m long, onto canvases and glued them down. I found an interesting quote about Duchamp's opinion of the work:

 

Three Standard Stoppages, according to Marcel Duchamp, was one of the key works in his development as an artist. He said,"In itself it was not an important work of art, but for me it opened the way -- the way to escape from those traditional methods of expression long associated with art. I didn't realize at the time what I had stumbled on. When you tap something, you don't always recognize the sound. That's apt to come later. For me the Three Standard Stoppages was a first gesture liberating me from the past." (found in: tout-fait :The Marcel Duchamp Journal On-line, Issue 1/Vol1, December 1999)

 Reading this gives me more confidence to make works that may not be particularly monumental, but which are interesting and might be the beginning of another series of works.

Other hings to learn from the last two weeks would be...

- To ask for help (perhaps main aim to learn to do this)
- To not panic/get overly anxious, because it doesn't help
- To investigate what interests me
- Video can be used as another method for investigating materials and recording ideas