This blog has changed from me just wittering about whatever took my fancy (usually lovely oldy worldy postcards or Sooty) but since I started back at college in September it's become completely MA-centred as has my life really - I spend a lot of time working directly on it - or rather doing reading for it as I haven't done much directly creative work in a while. That isn't a complaint - I am loving it but I'm not doing nearly anywhere near as much 'art doing' as I did before I started the course. I did take some film pics when I was in Whitby, and some colour digital ones in London (as an avowed monochromist I'm still wondering about this but suffice to say wine was involved...and I'm still mulling over the results and what to do with them - one in particular I am thinking will make a lovely fabric print) and the fact that this isn't preying on my mind is preying on my mind if that makes sense. Part of me thinks you've spent precisely one day in the dark room so far this term - that isn't enough but equally I've not made anything yet that gives me cause to be in the darkroom at the moment. But that's not to say I'm not thinking about the work I hope to make because I am and my notebook is filled with notes regarding the three projects I want to start lifting from the pages of my notebook into reality in the new year.....
I'm not going to say what they are here until they are a bit more realised but suffice to say they involve cameras, film, objects, fabric and memory and memories...and I am thinking about them A LOT!!
And because no post looks right to me unless it has an image here is one of me after having met my beloved John Waters for the third time (I'm still beyond thrilled about this as he is one of my all time heroes) and my lovely husband took it on a camera just like the one Pecker uses in the film Pecker.
My work is so inspired by victorian death culture that that is what I am mostly reading about each day. But I have also been attempting to read books about research practices with little success as so far they remain stubbornly incomprehensible.. I say they, what I actually mean is Art Based Research by Shaun McNiff. But I'm going to have to pull my finger out or rather my library card and get reading more as I have to write an essay about this for the second week of December.....I think I'll also have to do a separate blog post listing all the books, websites and what have you I've been reading and looking at and properly harvard reference them.....which is a habit I'm trying to get into and I'm kind of getting there, in that I know the things I need to note about each piece I look at (like date accessed, title, author, publisher etc) but still not got into a habit of writing them down in the right order...
This last week I have mostly been reading and finishing (hurrah!!) Mourning Costume by Lou Taylor, Death in the Victorian Family by Pat Jelland, Introducing Barthes by P Thody and P Course before I tackle Camera Lucida by Barthes himself) had a tutorial, watching Ways of Seeing by John Berger (really interesting thought provoking stuff) and put together my second presentation for the course so far. I really enjoyed putting that together as I decided to shoehorn in as many pictures as possible of my screen heroes so it contains stills of Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Basil Rathbone from some of my favourite Hammer films including Dracula, Dracula AD 1972, Curse of Frankenstein and The Hound of the Baskervilles Though I have scripted this one as I still don't feel comfortable in a college setting without planning every word I want to say as I don't want to be stood there going 'um, er' and forgetting points I want to make.
I didn't pre-script every word for the talk I gave to a girl guides troop about victorian funeral customs and cemeteries in Leeds last week though. I wanted that to be more of a two way thing with them interrupting to ask questions and me asking them questions so I just made notes to go with the slides I put together. I also said right at the beginning if I used any words they didn't understand to interrupt me and ask what it meant - they didn't but they were a very quiet well behaved group and they did eventually answer some of my questions and a couple of them did have a go at trying on some black voile so they could get an idea of what it might have felt like to be wearing a mourning veil, but as they were leaving one of the older ones (they ranged from 12-17 years old) said in front of her friends that 'it was actually really interesting' - I'm taking that as a 5 star review.
Last week I also saw an amazing film called The Creeping Garden at Leeds Film Festival (though it was a bit uncomfortable having to share a sofa with a stranger at the Everyman even if there was a bolster between us) which was all about slime mould and the artistic uses that it is being put to and the research being done on/with it. Fascinating - that in turn has given me an idea for my work which would take time and possibly permission too........
I also went to an artists talk at the Tetley which mostly left me cold as it seemed to be a kind of 'profundity olympics' amongst the participants and they used the kind of 'artspeak' which in my experience puts people off and makes it even more exclusive. I'm still mulling over this though.....and how to use language in such a way that doesn't make it so exclusive and so self reverential.
I also haven't talked about my interview with two morticians/undertakers the week before - partly because I promised I wouldn't say anything that would make them identifiable and partly because I'm still mulling over what we talked about, they gave me lots to think about including sad things like how some people don't stop and let funeral processions pass uninterrupted anymore and cut them up and they also gave me a copy of the Funeral Directors Monthly magazine (it contained a really interesting article on photography at funerals) and I discovered that you get a seat to yourself on the bus if you read that magazine on the way home....
I've also been in touch with two archives today - West Yorkshire and John Rylands Library to see about making an appointment to go in and see what victorian photographic delights they contain, and to see if they have any victorian diaries with accounts of either going to a photographers studio or a photographer coming to your house, or going to or arranging a funeral.
I've also been in touch with a group of artists based in Birmingham whose work is also inspired by death and been asked if I want to take part in work with them next year - to which I of course replied yes please!!
I think that's just about catched up most of the things I've been doing over the last couple of weeks - here's hoping my presentation goes okay tomorrow, at least this time it emailed through okay without my having to resort to the horror that is googledocs, now I have learned the trick of resizing images......
So keep your fingers crossed for me tomorrow that it all works out okay.......
At least I think it's week 11 plus my plan of always writing up after a college session has gone somewhat awry due to life and being busy so I'm not sure what week I'm really.....
But I thought I'd best get some of my thoughts down here before I forget them plus this blog is going to be one of the things my tutors look at when it comes to assessment time which is creeping nearer and nearer and frankly I'm still not that wise about what I have to submit - or rather I am in terms of dates and amounts of words but not in terms of what those words need to be about...needless to say this is top of my list of things to discuss when I next meet with my personal tutor. In particular I need help to flesh out what theoretical contexts I want to situate my work in....
Plus my work - I have been doing lots of reading, lots of looking and lots of thinking which is all work (especially as my work is so historically informed and inspired) but I haven't been doing much work of making - though I did take some photographs on our recent trips to that Whitby and that London (Whitby was mostly on film) and that London was entirely on digital - not because I've had a digital conversion as to paraphrase Charlton Heston 'you will prise my film camera out of my cold dead hands' but because it's much smaller and lighter and the whole point of the London trip (aside from seeing my beloved John Waters and Terror and Wonder at the British Library) was to travel light - so much so I didn't take a paper book with me.
I did have stuff to read on my husbands kindle - it's very easy for me to be a luddite in todays highly digital world as I have a very technical husband who understands all that kind of stuff and who is compared to me a very early adopter indeed but the lack of a physical paper book was nagging away at me. Anything longer than an article I don't feel comfortable reading online - it's just not the same, the weight and the feel of it in my hands isn't right (in spite of the kindle being quite heavy) and it just doesn't smell right either - I have loved books in their traditional paper form ever since I can remember - I could just about manage without my music collection (provided I had a radio to hear R4 and R4 Extra on) but the thought of not having my books fills me with horror. But an electronic copy of something - it doesn't feel real to me or that I own it somehow unless it has some kind of corporeal presence. I don't download music - all the tunes on my at least 8 year old MP3 player is from a CD I own and have ripped to it. Even doing Jane Eyre for WI Bookclub - I preferred to buy a physical copy rather than download it for free....
Even though I knew I'd probably be buying books in that London - I still felt uncomfortable going on a long journey without a book ) I never go anywhere without a notebook and rarely go anywhere without a book, or my knitting in my handbag. The books I got in that London were Photography A Very Short Introduction by Steve Edwards in the Tate - it's small, light and nicely filling in lots of gaps in my knowledge about photography as an art discipline and fits nicely in my handbag and isn't too brain taxing and Camera Lucida - by Roland Barthes which also fits nicely in my handbag but I have yet to begin to read it. That came from a whistle stop almost drive by shop in the Wellcome Collection Bookshop (along with an oven glove with a hand x ray on it and a black skull moneybox) so I did come home with books - plus my husband bought the Terror and Wonder Exhibition catalogue from the British Library.
But I still felt uneasy about not having a book in my handbag before we got there - so imagine my delight when we were walking through Southwark en route to Southward Cathedral to see some of Andrew Logan's work (all of it wonderful, all of it for sale and sadly all of it beyond my budget) when there was a bookcase outside an office with the instruction to take a book and pass it on - and further imagine my delight when there was a copy of the collected Mapp and Lucia stories by EF Benson. I adore them - so much so our cats are named after them: Lucia is the black and white fluffy one and Mapp is the white and tabby one.
So I think it can safely be said I have a book fetish - a paper book fetish that is, an electronic copy of the same words in the same order, in the same typeface just wouldn't have the same appeal for me at all. Books don't just transport and inform me but they always give me something to do - not just with my hands but with my brain. You're never a complete Billy No Mates if you have a book in your hand....
So with all this reading I am learning new words though it is a struggle to get them to stay in my memory sometimes - I have had to look up some more than once - but I think I've got to grips with empirical, heuristic and pedagogy now but this isn't just a struggle because it makes my brain hurt but also because it makes me think it makes art and artiness exclusive. The more I learn about visual art and visual art techniques the more I realise it's not so much the visual as the language. But I still worry re the language - partly because I am not yet fluent in its jargon, but more importantly I think the rarefied language of the aesthete and the art world makes it inaccessible and exclusive and I don't like and am uncomfortable with this aspect....
I hope I don't get too caught up in this jargon and forget how to speak down to earth easy to understand english. I did a talk for a troop of Girl Guides last night on the history of cemeteries in Leeds and victorian death customs and I said in my introduction please ask me if I use a word they didn't understand to interrupt me and ask me what it meant - they didn't but that could just be because they were incredibly shy and quiet (v different to the troop I tried to teach how to knit a while ago) but one of them told me at the end 'that was actually really interesting' which I'm taking as high praise indeed....
But back to the words....words, words, words.....I've nearly finished Mourning Dress by Lou Taylor, Death In The Victorian Family by Pat Jelland, have finished Memento Mori The Flats At Quarry Hill by Peter Mitchell, Alexander McQueen Genius of a Generation by Kristin Knox, but still have Photography and Death by Audrey Linkman, the exhibition catalogue from the British Library Gothic Exhibition, Death,Grief and Poverty in Britain 1870-1914 by Julie Marie Strange, The Gothic Subculture by Roberts,Livingston and Baxter-Wright, The Art of Gothic by Natasha Scharf, Dissection by John Harley Warner and James Edmondson.....to really get to grips with....
Other things I am mulling over are why I like the things I do - especially fiction-wise as they are so placed in upper class pre second world war social circles and the upper and middles class death customs of the victorians - a more class ridden socially exclusive society you couldn't wish to be in and in reality that kind of social restriction is one of my all time least favourite things......a bit of a dichotomy there.......mmm back to the list of required reading for college - but they will no doubt make my brain bleed and my nascent class war hackles rise......
Am torn between thinking I haven't done much college-wise this week as I'm still struggling to to get to grips with some of the theoretical stuff about arts based research. I read an article by Shaun McNiff twice and it still makes as good as no sense at all to me. Though I have learnt what heuristic means and the most useful definition for me is:
an educational method in which learning takes place through discoveries that result from investigations made by the student or allowing students to learn things for themselves.
Which could also be boiled down to what my Dad often says - 'you learn by doing, not by reading about it'.
I also feel a bit behind as in spite of my best efforts to negociate the e-reading system at college it remains as clear as mud to me so I'm going to ask in the library tomorrow for some help with this as I'm clearly missing the trick to using it. But this is feeding into my Captain Paranoia/Imposter Syndrome voice of 'you're not intellectual enough to do this course' which I know isn't true but I am struggling a bit with that at the moment...
But on the plus side - I have been lots of 'doing' - took lots of pictures on our recent trips to Whitby and London and whilst I am still taking pics of graves, I am also taking more pictures of abstract patterns - reflection of different coloured lights in sides of vehicles and which I am thinking about blowing up and applying to fabric as I can never get my hand with a paintbrush to make the marks on paper that I would like it too......plus I have had the fantastic inspiration of the Terror and Wonder Gothic Exhibition at the British Library (not enough Peter Cushing but a James Mason voiced short film made up for that omission from my lust list) and an evening with John Waters who was just WONDERFUL and who laughed when I told him about the documentary I'd seen on C5 which featured 'anal bleaching' - before you go thinking I am even worse then he is, he had asked in his show if it was real. Whoever said some things cannot be unseen was right.
There was also a powerfully thought provoking exhibition at the Imperial War Museum called Truth and Memory which was intellectually stimulating, depressing, and had some wonderful for that read visually impressive paintings. It featured the work of artists like CRW Nevinson, Paul Nash, William Orpen and Percy Delph Smith. Overall though the effect was depressing - at the risk of sounding naive - war is just so horrible and so repellent and it made me feel quite powerless in how to respond to it. War I mean - not the paintings which made me respond in a mix of 'that is a really powerful/depressing image' and my usual envy when seeing any kind of figurative painting which I admire which is 'I wish I had that kind of skill with a paintbrush/pen' plus Delph Smith's rendering of Death as a robed skeleton was just visually stunning. It raised all sorts of questions about the ethics - eg one of the most to my eyes realistic looking paintings of a wound station turned out to have painted by a man who had never seen action on the front but had spent the war innoculating soldiers in Blackpool. Plus it did make me think about voyeurism on the part of a viewer too.
AGH SO MUCH THINKING AND NOT ENOUGH TIME TO GET IT ALL WRITTEN DOWN.....
We also had time for an impromptu trip to Tate Britain where I fell in love with the photographic work of Karen Knorr and had a restorative half an hour amongst PreRaphaelite splendour - I'm a sucker for a Pre-Raphaelite painting though I'm not entirely sure why though some of it is simply envy at such skilled and incredible brushwork and use of colour and just such wonderful over the top lush-ness plus the fact that they were painted in victorian times - one of my favourite periods in history also has something to do with it, though the irony that a fair number of them feature classical or medieval mythology is not lost on me - an artist who creates work 'now' but who is inspired by the 'past' so much.
What else? well got a to do list as long as your arm and a reading list that I just don't seem to be getting to grips with so I'd best crack on with that hadn't I? Afraid I cant add an image of the new more abstract direction my work is taking me - I could lie and say it's because they're not finished yet but it's more that I haven't worked out how to use the new card reader properly yet.......and yes they were digital as opposed to film and that was because the trip was a 'travelling light' one and so I left my heavy film camera at home and used the lightweight digital one instead.....but have no fear - film remains and will remain my firs love for non abstract pattern type photography.
Plus must add before I forget I got a reply from Exeter Museum in response to my query about the 'smothering' cap, and information and offer from Vivid Project based in Birmingham which sounds very interesting indeed....
At least I think it it's week 9 I'm writing about whilst actually being in week 10. Oh it's all just a tad too confusing but hopefully getting less so as the weeks go on.
This time last week I was trying not to get too anxious at the thought of having to give my first presentation - it was first time I'd used powerpoint and I think I've just about got the hang of it thanks to both tutor and chum input and it was the first time I'd stood and talked in front of my fellow students and tutors. It took me a good day to put the presentation together - I knew what areas I wanted to cover, what quotes and pictures I wanted to use and I think I'm just about getting to grips with this harvard referencing malarkey, what monochrome colour scheme I was going to use....but the lessons I have learnt for next time are - resize pictures before inserting them into the presentation or else it'll be too big to email and you'll have to faff around with and get very stressed by using googledocs instead and googledocs doesn't have the lovely copperplate gothic font you'd decided on either and the instructions on how to use it aren't clear when you're stressing........ so thank goodness for the ever patient and ever tech savvy husband who came to my rescue to email it in or else I'd have been walking to the college with it on a memory stick to meet the deadline. Thank goodness I was ahead enough of myself too as if I'd left it til the following day to email it I'd have been in a right state - even though I'd finished it the afternoon before the deadline. I'd completely forgotten re resizing pics but then part of me was also thinking it's an art college - they'll want the best quality image possible but no......
But the good news is - it went okay (PHEW!!!) and I got good and useful feedback to work on for the next one, I can't tell you how relieved I was when it was done and dusted - plus I was then whisked away from the college by my lovely husband (who is not a goth at all) to Whitby for the Goth Weekend which was as always lots and lots of fun - had a gothblood* milkshake,won a prize in the Bunker 13 raffle, chatted about death customs and issues of consent with lots of chums, made some new chums including one I might collaborate with on some artwork, drafted a talk I've been asked to deliver to girl guides on history of Leeds Cemeteries, finished Jane Eyre, got a new pinstripe skirt, and whilst I didn't do any course reading whilst I was there I did do lots of thinking and I bought a new book entitled The Art Of Gothic by Natasha Scharf and I did take quite a few photographs too, 2 rolls of Ilford PAN 400 which I need to develop and some digital ones too - see below for view of Ruswarp railway line taken from the iron bridge, took some film ones in Staithes too - and had the best crab sandwich I've ever had in the Royal George Pub.
And home to 2 cats who were pleased to see us, a mountain of laundry, a lot of unpacking, and some very exciting post from Vivid Projects whose current exhibition A Record of Undying sounds marvellous but alas I won't be able to make it before it closes, and a reply from the Pitt Rivers Museum regarding my request to see a Conical Death Cap as mentioned in Lou Taylors Mourning Dress from a book entitled Women Of Al Nations from 1908 - I will track down an image of said item if it kills me.......as sadly it was reputed to do to widows.....
So much to be reading.....so I'd best crack on with it or else I won't be ahead of myself when it comes to the next presentation hand in......
*does not contain actual blood of goths....as far as I know that is.....
