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| The Chapel St George's Field, Springtime Turmeric anthotype made from 35mm film image 4x6 inches |
I've just put the last coat of varnish on the last matte medium image transfer I've made for this exhibition - which opens a week on Wednesday and you can find all the details for it here:
I'm both excited and nervous about it as well as really looking forward to it. It's the culmination of a lot of hard work which has been both really challenging and really rewarding too.
I've spent the last six months working primarily on this project. I'm really glad that I put together a proposal and that it was accepted - in part because it's helped lay the ghosts of deciding not to continue my PhD studies at Huddersfield Uni in September 2019 with all the sadness and confidence knocking that entailed but mostly because it's given me a new focus (no photographic pun intended) and new impetus to continue with my research albeit for the time being in a different format. It's proof of the adage by Alexander Den Heijer 'when a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower'.
I have found the last six months a massive challenge - from the basic mental challenge of dealing with the anxiety of being in enclosed spaces with other people again having mostly avoided them during the last couple of pandemic years, to the mental challenge of getting my head round having the confidence to try again in an academic environment, the mental challenge of reading some dense and intense theory as well as the practical challenges of a longish walk to college (as yet despite my gratefully received booster jabs I still cannot face the enclosed space of public transport) learning new techniques and then trying to put all of the above together to be able to talk about my work with others, create new work and re-evaluate older work as well as write and deliver presentations, the latter being something I used to do with some regularity but which I hadn't done since February 2021. That really helped my concentrate my thinking and get it together.
As well as feeling like I have refound my voice I have also fallen in love with making turmeric anthotypes and all their tricksy idiosyncratic fading impermanent ways.
Along with new ways of making work I've also learnt new ways of thinking and writing about it and I've made new connections and re-established some old ones too. Leeds College of Art as was now Leeds Arts Uni remains one of my happy places and I am very grateful to have had the opportunity of being there again after doing my MA in Creative Practice there in 2014-2016.
I am very grateful to the leaders on this project at the college Professor Sam Broadhead and Curator Marianne Tsionki and her team, Henry for sorting out some printing issues for me, my aces challenging and supportive mentor Lauren Saunders whose work you can find out about here: and my fellow project artists Hafifa Ahmed, Ingrid Bale, Hana Lait and Carol Sowden for their support, patience, humour and hard work. Thanks also to the library staff who helped me a lot too.
Thanks are also due to my lovely supportive 'Man Ray people'* Penny, Jon, and Louise who proofread things for me and gave me feedback and last but not least to my husband for providing support and for putting up with the kitchen being taken over to make anthotypes, work drying in the bathroom and all the disruption that entails.
So come on down if you can - I'll also post again with some more pictures of the work on show so if you can't get there in person you can get some idea of what there is to see there.
* May Ray once said 'You don’t need a huge audience, you only need 5 or 6 people who care and support you, don’t worry regarding idealism and practicality. Try to get paid for what you do but don’t worry if you don’t. Just keep on working, you’ll make up for it in time.'
