MA-Ness Week 8 Cyanotyping, Trying To Get Ahead Of Myself, Watching Others, A Dry Wank and can't quite read/understand my own notes....

Last week I tried to get ahead of myself by writing this blog post on Sunday rather than my usual Monday and this week finds me doing it today partly in an attempt to get ahead of myself, partly to take advantage of the fact that I've had a college free day today as most of my fellow MA-ers are in Poland and partly to do something so that I don't feel my original plans of having a reading day have gone to waste (as aisde from Farcebook and an interview with Laibach I haven't read anything of note so far today) and also to do something to stop my impatience whilst waiting for my latest batch of cyanotypes to dry....

I'm also trying to work out what I meant by some of my notes - in particular what I meant by BAF Syndrome - if you have any idea then please let me know.....edited to add at 17.45 - BAF stands for Blue Arsed Fly as I have been running about like a blue arsed fly most of this week. Anyone who knows the origin of the phrase - please do tell me.

It's been a really busy week not helped by feeling under the weather and waylaid by appallingly bad stomach ache either but I feel I have got a few things done this week - namely got some printing done with the help of the chap deep down in the bowels of the college - I printed or rather had printed some 7 images that I'd taken (2 digital - one of me and my husband at the top of a car park in Manchester taken in January and one of the view out of the window of the Chapel in St George's Fields taken last summer when the university very kindly gave me access to it, and 5 on film - 3 on colour film at Temple Newsam taken just before xmas and two of the same film image of a bench in St Marys Churchyard one inverted and one normal taken last November.

It was interesting to see how the different printing methods each changed the way the same image looks - the inverted black and white digital images look okay on canvas but the colour ones of flowers look like any of the canvas prints you can now pick up for cheaps in Ikea or Wilkinsons (not that there is anything wrong with that but I want my images to stand out not blend in with commercially available homogenised ones) plus canvas is quite expensive to print on.

The ones on matt A4 paper again look okay but nothing special but the ones printed on tracing paper (which joy of joys is the cheapest to print on) look by far the best - they have an ethereal translucent quality to them which I love plus they will look good either just hanging or up against a window or a lightbox and I am now planning to rescan the original negatives of them so I can get them printed to AO size without losing any of the quality of the original image.

Think I will also have to try and retake/ remake some of them on 120 film aka medium format using my favourite camera - a Nettar Zeiss Ikon from 1956 which both looks fabulous and is a joy to use. Fingers crossed they will come out okay though...aah the unpredictable joy and difficulty of using film without that handy screen on the back of the camera reassuring you that yes it's working or immediately telling you no, it isn't so change your settings......

Which leads me nicely into the unpredictable joy of cyanotypes too - I prepared a lot of pieces of paper with solution earlier this week, including some more grey paper which I really like (see top image above which is printed on it) and another piece of tracing paper but alas I am a tad too heavy handed with that and have torn the corner slightly plus it is a bit of a bugger to work it as it is so flimsy and folds over on itself so easily, and some water colour paper, the offcuts of the paper I had my images printed onto in the college darkroom (I want to make full use of everything and waste as little as possible) and some newsprint which I won't be using for cyanotyping again as it doesn't hold the solution well enough.

I also experimented with different shapes on the surface of the paper (circles, squares) and am v pleased with the circular one - though part of me is thinking maybe I should have left it in the sun a little longer but it clouded over and I thought I saw a spot of rain on the window.....and of course it brightened up again whilst I was washing it but a chum has said it has an opening credits of Bagpuss quality about it, another has said it looks v victorian and another said 'they have a very errie quality-a bit like what might stay with you after waking up from a dream' which pleases me enormously, plus hopefully once they are dried and framed they will look even better. I have started saving the dying petals from the bunches of flowers I have to go in the frames and I intend to pick some site specific flowers too if possible.

So lessons learnt - different papers/printing surfaces make a massive difference, I need to curb my impatience, practice at drawing/painting a circle and not to lose sight of the fact that this is the best photographic fun I've had in ages and as much as I love the college darkroom I'm happier at home where I'm in as much control as I can be of the process - ie no-one except a cat walking past to look at what I'm doing and no-one to dry or drain anything else on top of what I'm trying to do. Plus I am loving it's haptic hands on physical interaction as opposed to just clicking a button on a machine - though to be fair that is involved too, either with the original image or transferring it onto acetate to then put on the cyanotype paper.

Plus as I said before cyanotyping is a victorian process in origin and it was popularised by a woman called Anna Atkins (details about her here) so it warms the cockles of my victorian era loving feminist heart. However the irony of a self proclaimed goth and lover of the darkness being dependant upon strong sunlight to create the images I want is not lost on me....but then aside from a love of gothic literature and lovely old black and white horror films and a fixation with graveyards I'm quite a crap goth really and even my hair isn't as black as it could be as it's a while since I dyed it and I haven't had chance to redye it and now I'm waiting til I get it cut or else I'll have to do it twice .....and it was a music subculture when I first came across it in my tender and impressionable teenage years and I am much much happier listening to lovely 1930's and 40's big band swing, or Frank Sinatra's greatest hits.......

But I am excited about seeing Laibach* in a few weeks and read with interest an interview they did for Louder Than War earlier this week (full interview here) (and I am writing this blog post whilst listening to Spectre and whilstling along v badly indeed..) and I was most struck by their response to the question about them being provocative:

'..We like conflicting situations, but we never provoked for the sake of provocation itself; we did it out of necessity, because by definition a work of art is no good if it doesn’t provoke – and that is a vital rule, valid in any political system anywhere.' 


and there is a lot of food for thought in that for me......not that I think I am brave enough to provoke....

 
As well as printing, personal tutorials and attending the last of the very informative Leeds In Your Lunch Hour lectures at Trinty Church by Dr Kevin Grady of Leeds Civic Trust I also attended the Feminist Art Event at Leeds Library yesterday which sadly due to stomach ache becoming intolerable I had to leave at lunchtime, but which featured entertaining and thought provoking presentations from Casey Orr whose portraits were a joy, Jo Hassall made me chuckle and think with her presentation which featured a hostess trolley and a scab picking finger ( I would kill for a hostess trolley)and the talk by Melanie Maddison about her feminist zines Shape and Situate and Colouring Outside The Lines was both enlightening and empowering. I bought copies of all her lovely zines and the Home Rules presentation by half of Bristow and Lloyd was also a joy  - but the morning was also beset by technical difficulties with the projection equipment and Kiff Bamford's talk about a photograph of a vulva by Henry Machionne as discussed by the french philosopher Jean Francois Lyotard left me completely cold. Partly because he read out his slide - admittedly it was in french but even so I can read and do not need someone to read things out for me - translate yes, but not read.

There was also mention of Derrida and (my beloved) Barthes which made me feel like it might not have been very accessible to folks who are not familiar with either of those I've just named, and also like it was bit of an exclusive club and I'm not sure how I feel about that except it makes me feel a bit uncomfortable,  even though thanks to my recent reading I have some understanding of the ideas and concepts and so am on the edges of that group. Is it being on the edge that bothers me? No because my discomfort is not about not being fully part of it but being fully part of it.

Which in turn makes me worry and think is it inevitable that we all become what we most fear and more than occasionally and possibly unfairly deride?....

And speaking of intellectual approaches, was chatting with a chum who is working on the last song for their third album (and who have also kindly provided me with a soundtrack for a piece of visual work I am hoping to start work on when the weather has improved a bit and so it won't be too horrible for my long suffering ever patient and lovely husband to lie down on the ground and pretend to be a corpse for me) and you can check out examples of their fabulous work here and how hard I am finding it approaching art from an intellectual angle as opposed to an immediate emotional response and how yes it does deepen understanding, change the way I look at things and think about them and think about creating them and what I am trying to achieve with them but how it also makes me think of my chum Jon who when watching a lacklustre phoned in performance from a band at a festival pronounced it ' a dry wank'.

And this is what I fear an intellectual response to artwork may become - a dry wank of a response trotting out standard philosophical approaches as opposed to something immediately heartfelt and visceral.

What else - earlier in the week I met the external examiner for the course who seems a thoroughly nice chap (and no I'm not just saying that because at some point he'll probably read it) and who gave me some useful reading recommendations and we also talked about the uses of flowers in memorials and how they differ from culture to culture - how they are mostly used to signify a death in the UK but how they are used as offerings in other cultures which them lead to a discussion about what we have left on graves and what we want left on our own. I once left a toblerone on my Nana's grave as she didn't like cut flowers (what use are they, you can't eat them) though she loved flowers and had a kitchen and garden full of them but she did love Toblerone so I left one of those on her grave instead. My husband said I'd made a tramps day....

I'm not sure what I would want left on mine.....what would you like left on yours?

I've been dared to put a picture of Peter Cushing in my next presentation which is easy as I've done that so far anyway but the sting in this tale is that it has to be a picture of Peter Cushing from At The Earth's Core which is not one of my favourites of his as he looks nowhere near as dashing in it as he does in The Curse Of Frankenstein. But never let it be said I don't rise to a challenge so will have to find one I like and one which will fit in context.....

I've been writing this for over 2 hours now and my prints are almost dry but not quite......I'm just too impatient.....

*I think Laibach are responsible for the most beautiful cover version EVER - namely their version of Across The Universe though I am also a huge fan of their more stompy dance music too - and just hearing the beginning of Tanz Mit makes me want to put on very big boots indeed....though my fave stompy big boots dance tune is still Lass Uns Tanzen by Scooter which I absolutely adore as it reminds me of dancing about in Whitby with good chums and also my lovely much missed friend Henry who translated the lyrics for me and they mean 'let's dance or fuck or both as we will all be dead tomorrow'. Fairly good advice there I think.

 
 

MA-Ness Week 7 Cyanotypes, Presentations, Potential Collaborations and Music While You Work....

It's 4pm on Sunday afternoon and in an attempt to get ahead of myself and feel a bit more on top of things I decided to write my blog post today instead of my usual Monday morning when I normally try to collate all my thoughts from the past week and lots of thoughts there have been if you look at my post it note - which is all in my handwriting this week but occasionally in different pens....

This week I have been mostly cyanotyping and presentation writing and thinking. I have just about got to grips with the process in photoshop needed to make images into a format that can be successfully copied onto acetate and used in cyanotyping - that is greyscaling the image if needed (some of mine did thanks to this pesky new habit I seem to have developed of taking images in colour) inverting it and upping the contrast so that the blacks are blacker and the whites are whiter - all the better for making successful cyanotype images and I am really chuffed with my practice ones, even if it does take longer than you think - leading to my new aphorism for the week - namely a watched cyanotype never develops......

These are some of the ones I did in college, on the left is one of my favourite reflection images of me and my husband in a mirror at the top of a car park in Tib Street Manchester (be grateful that the image does not have smell attached as the stench of skunk and piss in that car park was almost overpowering but the murky mirror was too wonderful to resist and though I lowered myself to take the image I did not let my knee touch the floor) and the other two are of my friend Jen as a faux victorian widow in St George's Fields - my usual fave graveyard haunt and which I returned to this week to do some papier mache relief work in....but am getting ahead of myself.

I loved being in the darkroom again, the act of painting the solution of potassium ferricyanide and ammonium citric acid onto the paper in thick brush strokes - it made me think of the way I paint my nails and I found it rather therapeutic plus I love the way it shows on the paper too - missed bits and lined gaps all add to the charm of the end result to me, plus it looks like a human has been involved in the process too as opposed to the clean sharpness of a digital print say.

Once painted you leave it to dry and then place whatever you want on top of it and weight it down with glass if need be, I did images I'd transferred onto acetate the previous week and then you leave it in the sunshine as it is the action of the uv light in sunshine that makes the print develop.

Once all the yellowy tones has gone from the paper then it's ready to be washed off in clear water for about 20 minutes and then you leave it to dry again. You can only really under develop them so it's no problem if you go off to get a sandwich, nip to the library or do any of the other things I did whilst waiting for them to develop. But it is more difficult to see that on the grey paper I used so although that appeals to me more colourwise I don't think it's as successful so far as showing the images than the other paler coloured paper....or maybe I just need to leave it for much much longer......

It was however a ballache when inconsiderate and unthinking fellow users of the dark room left other equipment drying on top of one of my almost dry prints meaning it had to be washed and dried again.....sigh.

But I also coated paper ready to use at home where the only potential interference is from a cat either sitting on it or knocking it but thankfully Mapp and Lucia were well behaved and other than a cursory sniff they left them alone and they didn't seem to mind being shut out of the bathroom either whilst I washed the prints - using an old litter tray which was handy as none of the red photographic trays which I know we have could be found in the garage. I am very pleased with the results too

Eagled eyes amongst you may notice a smaller than A4 print of me and my beloved John Waters - this was done on the ready made commercially available cyanotype paper you can buy and developed under the sun lamp which was wedged on top of two boxes of cat food (how's that for a Heath Robinson device eh?) and although I like the texture of the paper I much prefer the 'home made' - well college dark room made version instead.

Cyanotyping is definitely something I will be doing more of - I like the process, the like the end results and their slightly unpredicatable variability and as a process that was brought to public attention by Anna Atkins (info her here ) it also warms the cockles of my victorian loving feminist heart.

I'll also be able to do much more of it at home once I've bought some more pegs so I can hang them up to dry more easily - the perils of having a tumble dryer is that you don't have pega anymore and the clips you use to hang up film have spikes in them and so are no good if you are trying to keep the paper as intact as possible.

I also spent a big part of my time last week writing and practicing a 10 minute powerpoint presentation for the Practice and Personal Development Module I'm working on at the moment and for which my portfolio needs to be handed in towards the end of March.

I thought I had the hang of the technical side of this powerpoint malarkey as I've done 3 now but at times I wanted to tear my hair out in frustration as on Monday evening I could just not get images to go where I wanted them to and resizing them so they would be smaller and so more easily emailable and transportable on a memory stick seemed a right ball-ache too.

But coming back to it with much less tired eyes and brain on Thursday I at least got it into the shape I wanted and I got very positive feedback for it - both from my fellow ma-ers and the tutors so that was both a good and b) big relief as the one thing I've learnt is how important it is to be able to give a good presentation of yourself and your work.
   
Plus I once again shamelessly used the opportunity to show images of my beloved Peter Cushing on a big screen - which can never be a bad thing in my book. It was also a good opportunity to go over all the stuff I've been doing over the last few months and realise how much further along I am in practice, understanding and presentation too.

This time last year I had hardly done any presenting nor used the dreaded powerpoint but now I have done an artists talk, a speech at the Place and Memory launch at Inkwell, a speech at Leeds Museum as part of the Love Arts Festival (you can see me here on page 7) a talk to girl guides, a talk at the Cultural Heritage Show and Tell event also at Leeds Museum as well as 3 presentations at college.

If you'd told me this time last year I'd be doing that I'd have laughed in your face. I still get nervous and have a horrid disconnect between heart and head as in my heart is going nineteen to the dozen but my head is saying it's okay - you can do this but it's really important for me to be able to do this. And the other note to self is - if you are tired then leave it alone and come back to it when you are less tired as it'll b easier then.

Plus this time I wrote the words first and then added the images - last times I found the images first and then wrote words to fit them.....think I prefer the latter way of doing things. Oh and other lesson learnt - if printing speech double sided then write page number at top of each side of paper so you don't get confused as to which side you're on. Confusion which thankfully didn't show.....

And speaking of thought provoking images - here is one I saw on my friend Jane's facebook page the other day:

which I found very appealing and interesting but when I looked up its source and discovered it is from his weighty tome called The Essence of Christianity I decided to stick with my first love theorist Roland Barthes who I have fallen in love with on the basis of his talking of about emotion and the dead. I heart Barthes.

I went back to St George's Field yesterday to learn a little of the papier mache relief technique from my fellow ma-er Lesley and this is the result so far: a detail taken from the corner of one of the gravestones there of Joseph and Mary Ellen Beaumont - first you wet the grave and then layer it with pieces of toilet paper (apparently asda shades is the best for this job) and get it into the nooks and crannies with use of a stencil brush and continue to wet it, let it dry a little bit then remove the piece as a whole and lay it on a flat surface for it to dry completely.

I'm really pleased with this and will definitely be going back to do some more when the weather is a little warmer and less windy - I like it because it makes me feel like I am doing something with my hands as opposed to my eyes and a machine, I am interacting directly with the subject matter plus best of all from an ethical point of view it does no harm nor leaves any trace on the gravestone. My kind of process.

Plus in some ways this makes me feel more of an artist which is all to the good as it silences my inner critic which says I cannot be an artist because I do not paint or draw..an illogical view and one which I do not apply to others but do apply to myself......mmm something else to work on. As is my other illogical inner critic voice which is starting to murmur 'jill of all trades and mistress of none' which again is ill-founded and not one I would apply to others - artists need to be able to write (convincing funding applications if nothing else) so why do I feel a disconnect between writing and doing - when really they are equally important if not same sized bits of the whole...mmm a whole other thing to pick apart there.....

What else? well a couple of years ago I did a course in Human Remains Analysis at the Discovery Centre in Leeds and it was fantastic. I learnt lots, got to handle human bones and best of all my favourite things human skulls as well as have a nosey round the Discovery Centre which is marvellous - and well worth a trip if you haven't been - details here and I have stayed in touch with the lovely lady who ran it and last week I mooted the possibility of a collaborative project though as yet I am not quite sure what format it will take and to my delight she has said yes to talking about it - so watch this space for further developments........    

Edited to add - realised my posts are getting longer and longer, this one has more images than any other (will I ever reach a point where I can do a John Berger-like essay which is only images?) and I forgot to write about music which was I usually have Radio 4 on whilst I work but this week I have mostly been listening to the soundtrack from Only Lovers Left Alive which my husband gave me for Valentines Day which is gorgeously ethereal and languid.....might make a point o listening to R3 this week instead and see what difference if any that makes.....

MA-Ness Week 6 Acetates, Crits, Signing Up For Exciting Things and Nostalgia Bathing

Mmm Monday morning and a rather grey and bleak looking monday morning it is - perfect for taking colour photographs which would capture the lack of full blooded colour so much better than black and white ones would but instead I am sat inside writing this....

But that's okay as I have been taking quite a few pics recently - 3 rolls in Cleethorpes and tomorrow (all being well) I shall be making some cyanotypes - a good old fashioned victorian invention which cheers the cockles of my victorian loving heart. Even if they will be cyanotypes with a 21st century twist of photoshop to invert the images and photocopiers to copy onto acetate to create them but hey ho I'll take my 19th century kicks where I can find them - though I'll leave lack of antibiotics, consumption (of the disease as opposed to material kind) uncontrolled industrial expansion and lack of rights for women and workers behind thanks.

The eagle eyed amongst you may notice different handwriting on the post it note this week - that's because I was in the bath when I thought of those things and so asked my ever patient and supportive husband to write them down before I forgot. So I didn't forget who gave me the wonderful phrase 'bathing in nostalgia' I wrote down Kevin's name next to it. Bathing in nostalgia was how he described his process of going through old photographs of him and his siblings when they were little and uploading them to Facebook and they are glorious. Evocative and reminiscent of the wonderful bits of my childhood too - ice creams at the seaside and t-bar clarks sandals, stripey windbreakers (which I always lusted after but never got so we had to put up with even more sand in our sandwiches) and acrylic jumpers that gave you electric shocks. 

Ice Cream Parlour Cleethorpes Kodak Colour Plus Iso 200 7.2.15
 - and they charge 10p extra for red sauce aka monkey blood...but it was so cold and stuck in the bottle that the lady making it for me did earn that extra 10p squeezing it out.....

Though I'm sure ice cream wasn't as expensive in them days - and in turn they made me think of the sheer joy I felt when seeing an exhibition of Daniel Meadows photographs of living rooms in Salford at the Media Museum and for the first time in a gallery space I felt not only an appreciation of what I was looking at on an aesthetic level but also an emotional connection and recognition as they looked like the living rooms I was familiar with - they had ornaments in like the ones I had grown up with!!!!!! Martin Parrs retrospective also at the Media Museum some years ago had exactly the same effect on me - walking into the living room recreation with the soundtrack of South Pacific playing was just wonderful.

Anyway I've been trying to read and get to grips with some theoretical perspectives (so far aside from feminism which has been a given in my life since I was very little and I can remember arguing with the headteacher at my primary school about the unfairness and silliness of not letting girls do the same job as altar boys though in retrospect I am pleased I never was an altar boy) Roland Barthes is in the lead so far - partly because I find his translated works more immediately accessible than others I have tried but also primarily because he talks about his emotional response to things. And for me an emotional response to my work is what I want and what I can most relate to - though any kind of response is welcome if I'm being entirely honest as to not be noticed at all would be worse than being disliked or dismissed I think and what I want when I go into a gallery space of any kind is to have an emotional response to the work on show...but again any kind of response even one of revulsion is better than none....

But my love of all things oldy worldy and bygones is according to a Baudrillardian interpretation of things (or rather what it says in Introducing Baudrillard by Horrocks and Jevtic Icon Books 1999 as my approach at the moment is to start with an Introduction and see if it seems like it's going to appeal to me) is according to page 29  ' a desperate narcissitic attempt to to regress to childhood and to find Mother (origins) and Father (authenticity)'. And having household pets is a sign of 'failure of human relationships and narcissim' and wristwatches 'absorb anguish of death'. 

Mmm even if he's right on this basis he's not the theorist for me - as having undergone and still undergoing the pain of bereavement I can only wish that wrist watches did absorb the anguish the death as in my experience so far they definitely don't. And what appears to be his interpretation of womens role in society is not something I can agree with but I am enjoying other aspects of his work and interpretations of things so may well cherry pick some bits but this is a roundabout way of saying something has to resonate with me on an emotional level  for me to want to get to know it further. Hence the sentence on page 9 of Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes Vintage 2000 leapt out at me:
'that rather terrible thing which is there in every photograph: the return of the dead'.

Which is both literally true as in a photograph captures a moment which is gone and can never be refound/recreated and as a morbid zombie film loving person a phrase like 'return of the dead' has me instantly sold. Which is not to say that I won't critically look at his work but it is looking good for me so far. Plus I've been given some suggestions of other people to read like Annette Kuhn, Patricia Holland and Valerie Walkerdine whose work I shall hunt out in the library later this week.

Oh so much reading and it feels like so little time to do it in - even though I do have an abundance of time compared to most as I do not have to go out to work as all my work is done in the home and can be fitted in comparatively easily round other things as the admin work that I do for my husbands business does not require regular 9-5 hours and housework can be fitted in as and when (3 loads of washing have been done in the time it's taken me to put this post together) but I am still struggling to get back into habit of gym classes.....and with a few things on this week and a presentation to create and practice for Friday I'm feeling a bit 'argh so much to do this morning' but it's now 10.40 am and I have made good progress with this post,  and replied to some emails and been less distracted by social media as I have started using my husbands kindle to look at farcebook and social email first thing in the morning so that when I start working on the main computer like I am now I can concentrate more on study type things as opposed to getting distracted by pictures of cute kittens and invites to events and pictures of other peoples breakfasts...

Though it is thanks to social media that I heard about the Arts Council for England briefing session on how to apply for grants at the Tetley last week which was very useful and provided an impromptu reunion of some of the Place and Memory Artists, and Mourning and Morbidity in Art at York University next month, it also reminded me re the opening of the Transistions exhibition at Inkwell at the moment which I went to the opening of on Friday night. Some gorgeous thought provoking work on show there - go see it if you can but it was an old school paper flyer in the foyer of Trinity Church on Boar Lane which told me of the very interesting lunchtime lectures by Leeds Civic Trust about the history of Leeds.

What else? watched The Black Cat Ulmer E 1934 Universal 1934 USA yesterday afternoon with a fellow horror loving chum. And it is a sumptuous film to watch - the art deco sets are gorgeous, its direct mentioning of the mass slaughter and horror of the First World War (poignantly referred to as *the* war as at that point thankfully there had only been one world war) and its cinematic signposting, the acting is somewhat mannered to our 21st century eyes but if you want a monochrome feast for your eyes and a creepy thought provoking film then you could do much worse than watch this.

Friday saw us split into different groups and do a socratic crit - I took advantage of this by doing two versions of the same images of dead and dying flowers in wintertime at Temple Newsam gardens  - one in its original colour and one post processed to black and white and with a difference in borders - though all the borders are a nod to victorian mourning traditions. It was very useful and I have some really good ideas for developing them further (note to self save all petals from every bunch of flowers bought or given from now on)  but I did also have a massive pang of angsty doubt re my work as I felt it looked somewhat unprofessional and unfinished compared to the other work on show plus my lack of technical photography knowledge is preying somewhat on my mind and it was a mix of both giving myself a talking too and talking to a fellow MA-er who is a photography graduate that made me remember and reinforce that these are WORK IN PROGRESS and not the finished items and the actual photographs which form their core I am really pleased with and as ever it's not so much the technology that you use (though that is important too) but the eye with which you take the picture that is most important.

Which in turn makes me think of this quote from Elliot Irwin which I have pinned to my noticeboard which I am going to try and make a habit of reading every day and making my mantra (especially as my other mantra of 'everything looks better in black and white' is possibly undergoing some qualified re-evaluation....I know, I thought hell would freeze over first but what would be the point of doing a course like this if all I did was redo things in the same way I have been doing? plus I can confidently state that NOTHING will ever change my mind about my preference for black and white films) but here it is:

Photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in the in an ordinary place. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with how you see them.

I'm not very good at getting my hands dirty - literally, I've never been one for playing in mud or fingerpainting but I have been enjoying the little bits of painting I did last week and have got my hands dirty in another way by using *whispers* photoshop as til now I have resolutely avoided using it out of my belief that it is horrifyingly complicated compared to the very basic and free with operating system that I have used up til now and that it is often used to polish turds and if I have to do more than crop/adjust balance/contrast then I haven't taken a good enough image in the first place and I need to go and retake the photo if possible. 

I do appreciate the use of photoshop for creating new images composed of other images or using it to restore old damaged photographs but otherwise mmmm it seems to me kind of cheating (though that is not a fair or realistic thing to say about it) but it is very definitely part of the ever increasing homogenisation of facial features software like Portrait Professional which frankly make me flinch and feel anxious though of course I would want anything to be used on any pictures of myself so that the image portrayed looks as good as the one I imagine and vainly hope that I actually resemble...

Thanks to an uncomfortable mix of vanity and insecurity I really don't like having my photograph taken and so any and every opportunity to make me look as good as possible I would grasp at with both hands - though I would prefer if it was done primarily with sympathetic lighting and soft focus.....another reason Barthes resonated so closely for me - his description of how he feels on seeing images of himself rang many bells for me....however as I studiously avoid having my picture taken this is somewhat of a moot contradictory point.

So contradictions is/are something else I am thinking about.....and this and many other things are things which my personal tutor, fellow MA-ers, husband and photography chums are helping me get to grips with....slowly but surely......and I'd best crack on with this presentation or else I'll be umming and ahhing and that won't do.  

MA-Ness Week 5 Anniversaries, Comfort of Ritual and Non Sticky Sticky Stuff

I've been busy these last few days - both in terms of doing and in terms of thinking plus it has been an emotional time too. A week last Saturday it was the moving and beautiful memorial service for my friend Henry Tickner who died just over a year ago. To say I miss him lots is an understatement - he was the only other person I know who liked black and white silent german films as much as me and his knowledge of classical music was (amongst my chums anyway) unequalled and I would have loved to have talked to him about this art and cultural studies malarkey as I'm sure he'd have provided both valuable insight and a useful sounding board. Plus we both loved scumming it at the Olympic Cafe opposite the Corn Exchange as their spam fritters are the best in Leeds (if not the only ones left in Leeds thanks to the rise of corporate crap coffee shops or hipster central places...)

Plus it was mine and my husbands 6th wedding anniversary and we have had a fantastic weekend away enjoying the wilds of Cleethorpes - lovely food in a french restaurant, long walks along the salt marshes watching the tankers in the Humber and wondering what it would be like on one of the Humber forts, playing the twopenny falls and I won a lolly, having our picture taken by a disembodied american sounding Van Gogh Studio Picture Booth and seeing a very good amateur production of The Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde and of course visiting one of Cleethorpes victorian cemeteries (the one on Beacon Avenue) and last but not least having ice cream in the bitterly cold wind on the front....and of course taking lots of photographs and in an somewhat unusual departure for me in COLOUR as I wanted to capture midwinter bleak and thought that would be better done in colour and having had the pictures developed I can say it has.

But I've also been thinking about the comfort of ritual and why we do what we do when someone dies, and what the apparent social niceties are surrounding death and I am still working out how to incorporate this into my artwork in a coherent manner. As ever - lots of food for thought for me......

I also took part in the Cultural Heritage Show and Tell event at Leeds Museum and it was good practice for me to make a powerpoint presentation in front of (mostly) strangers but there was one friendly face from the MA course and my husband and chum Penny also came along to give me moral support - though the glass of wine beforehand also helped. It seemed to go down well as I got a couple of offers from people who would like to model for me as faux victorian widows or corpses and the offer of a perusal of a collection of condolence letters (albeit from the 1930's but am sure they will still be very interesting and it'll be interesting to see what habits and social norms from the victorian era were still in effect then) and the contact details for the chap in charge of the anatomical specimens at Leeds Medical School.....and also at the risk of sounding big headed my slides looked the best in terms of design and layout - but then as I was the only artist presenting it would have been a poor show if they hadn't really.

I said I'd been doing lots more doing - not least because we had to take some work into college last week for a 'silent crit' which is where the artist says nothing but listens to what others are saying about the work and the way we did it was to not make any response or explanation for at least 10 minutes. It was a bit nerve-wracking but also really interesting as it's amazing to hear what others see in your work which you don't and also to find out what others are up to and what their motivations are. Anyway my doing last week was mostly along these lines -

trimming up pictures and gluing them into a notebook somewhat self aggrandisingly covered with a reflection self portrait - reflections are a recurring motif in my work, as I don't like being in pictures or having my picture taken but feel much more comfortable taking them myself - ideally in a dirty window. 

But I also take lots of other reflection style photos too. I did some research into reflections and portraits and I must dig it out so I can refresh my memory of it. 

This week it's a socratic crit format - and I need to take in something else so I am going to take in my initial copies of some dead flower portraits I am working on, and they look like this at the moment:

What else do I need to cover from my badly written post it note....well I've been trying to get to grips with some Baudrillard and am still halfway through an introductory guide which is providing much food for thought and interest, and rereading the feedback for the two assignments I handed in before xmas which thankfully I got good marks for - a massive relief as it has been so long since I did anything academic and it was good to realise I was and am jumping the academic hoops correctly...so far that is. 

I also went on a gallery tour of Leeds Art Gallery which made me look anew at my favourite victorian paintings in the Ziff room - I need to learn to really look at paintings slowly and carefully and not just immediately think of how the artist made a piece of work as opposed to why and how the kind of art an artist makes may also depend upon such straightforward practicalities as how much the artist could afford for materials at the time.

I've also got a new found respect for Tracey Emin after looking at her film about her growing up in Margate and love of disco dancing and Jeremy Millar's self portrait of himself as a drowned washed up corpse. Fascinating thought provoking stuff. I am also really enjoying the work of Ian Breakwell and his book Seeing In The Dark featuring people's memories of cinemas is an absolute joy.

Also on my post it note are the phrases 'tangential discovery' and 'wank flick and a cold bath' and I have no idea what the latter of those pertains to, except it's making me chuckle. There's also a note about moral qualms - as in I would have no moral qualms about showing a chums human remains (this is of course with their full permission in advance) but what about the feelings of their relatives? should they be taken into account to? 

I am slightly changing the way I work - though still research and photography based and in muted almost b+w colour but as I am increasingly mindful that I have so much to do and little time in which to do it, I am trying to switch off social media whilst I'm working so I don't get distracted by it and it's mostly working as is my habit of getting up and getting washed and dressed straight away and then putting the computer on and not the other way round.....still not quite worked out how to fit in more exercise though and I really need to get back into a decent gym habit too but for the time being this week is going to consist of lots more reading, more sewing, more gluing, a tutorial with my personal tutor and some film watching.

And last but not least my fave grave from Cleethorpes in which a voice from the tomb no less exhorts us to examine our foundations which is more or less exactly what I'm doing....... 

edited to add - the phrase 'wank and a cold bath' was in response to my post on Farcebook (delieberate sp) in which I said I'd watched a Frank Langella version of Dracula (it's beautiful to look at in places but otherwise dreadful so don't bother unless you want to see vampire finding horses and a Dracula with v Billy Boufant hair) and a chum told me of how she'd sagged off school to see it a cinema that usually showed 'mucky films' and a couple of people in the queue had bags with green towels in them....my increasingly poor memory is getting to be a bit of a concern....

MA-Ness Week 4 - Slippery Slopes and Painkiller Hazes....

This is this weeks post it note which like last weeks makes some kind of sense but not completely but that is no surprise as last week I was in the midst of dental woe (an abcess which led to tooth removal) and on v strong painkillers indeed and in fact today is the first day I've not had to take any painkillers in well over a week. RESULT!!!!!

However such was my state of pain, soreness, painkiller out of it -ness and last but not least swollenfaceness that I missed last Friday's workshops at college which is a shame as looking at the notes the tutor has put on the college website - it looked like I missed an interesting and thought provoking discussion....oh well I hope to catch up with it all properly soon.

Anyways - here's to my post it note scribbles....

This is a public as opposed to friends only private type blog (though is anything really private on the internet? no - not really) and I started it many moons ago before the reality of college attendance was even a pipe dream. My first post was back in July 2012 and in it I said I wanted to talk about 'photography, my collection of kitsch items, knitting and stuff like that' and that's how it was until I decided to use it as my research journal to hand in for college - though I also have a paper sort of one too and some of the feedback I got from my assignments was to talk about the ideas I have art-work-wise and to show them on here - something which I haven't literally done so far - partly out of a no doubt misplaced fear of being copied - yet I happily post photographs I have taken both on twitter and on farcebook (deliberate sp) without a 'copyright' notice/name superimposed on them and I should really a) learn how to do that and b) get into the habit of doing it. 

And also because I've not been doing so much 'doing' but more 'thinking and reading' - the latest book I'm ploughing through is Death,Grief and Poverty In Britain 1870-1914 by J M Strange which is a very interesting book - especially as it is looking at the more working class approaches to mourning in victorian and edwardian Britain and interestingly she draws on literature (among many other sources) - namely a work from 1897 called The Nether World by George Gissing to evidence her arguments. I doubt this approach would have been approved by my history tutors back in my undergraduate days. A creative work is not the same as a piece of legislation or electoral registers but does this a) make it any less valuable or reliable as a resource? After all newspaper and diary accounts are often used as evidence to support arguments or even to show timelines and aren't these just as subject to author bias as 'creative' work? Mmm lots of food for thought there....not least the often blanket assertions by historians and social commentators that really get my goat - like if anyone was to look at the newspapers of September 1997 when they were dominated by saturation coverage of the death of Diana Spencer and phrases like a 'nation was in mourning' are bandied about - er me and a lot of my friends are part of this nation and we definitely weren't in mourning but hey ho.....I'm going off at a tangent but one which I keep thinking about.....  

So in the meantime I'm also still thinking about the best way/place for me to show/talk about the work I'm working on....maybe I should set up a new blog and just not publish it and use that as a record. Or maybe record it entirely in a paper notebook instead - or maybe a mix of the two but however I do it, I'd best get on and do some as this term is all about the handing in of work either completed or in progress so I really must get on and do some.....as opposed to just writing and thinking about it.

And speaking of actual creative work - aside from trips to the dentist I left the house for what felt like the first time in ages on Saturday to both pick up some books from the local council library (the Rev Richard Coles autobiography which I am v much enjoying and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd which is the next Buns and Roses WI Book Club choice) and to pick up the film I'd left in for developing at the ever helpful and reasonably priced Photo Shop on North Lane. I'd used Kodak Colour Plus ISO 200 and I am v pleased with the results - though I am not going to show them here yet as a) they need a little bit of editing and by that I mean a bit of cropping, and I might convert one or two to monochrome and b) I'm going to get them printed out and see what they would look like as a narrative photo book....

I might also use the new graphics tablet which my husband bought last week - I've had a little go of it and my initial thoughts are 'ooh the possibilities' along with 'really am going to have to get to grips with powerpoint' as that has more options available in it than my usual microsoft viewer or paint, and also 'christ almighty, it's really fecking fiddly' as you don't look at where your pen is going on the paper like I normally do when drawing but where the cursor and pen are on the image on the screen so in some ways it feels like I'm drawing blind as I'm not looking where I normally look when drawing....I think it's going to take some getting used to. But it's very exciting....

I did manage to put together a presentation though last week - and with my new found trick of taking a screenshot of the slide once I'd put it together and then copy and pasting that image it is a) easier to email as it is a fraction of the size and b) it doesn't matter what fonts they have at the other end either - result!! This is for a Cultural Heritage Show and Tell event  (details here ) and I need to practice it a couple of times before I need to deliver it but it is a mark of how much I have progressed as if you'd told me even 12 months ago that I would VOLUNTEER to stand in front of people and speak I'd have laughed in your face and thought you were rambling. Which is just as well as I think we have a couple of presentations to do at college-wise this term - am feeling a bit out of the loop college-wise as I've missed two weeks this term due to illness so I have emailed my tutors to make sure I'm back up to speed - especially with what needs handing in when.

Although this term is 'doing' in terms of handing in - workshop wise it is much more about theoretical perspectives which I am still trying to get to much better grips with - I really must read Barthes Camera Lucida properly as opposed to just skimming through it and I also have Baudrillard's Consumer Society to plough through and Danesi's Of Cigarettes. High Heels and Other interesting Things and whilst those are interesting books they just don't grab me in the way that Death Grief and Poverty does.... note to self - quit procrastinating and get down to some serious study....

I've been collected phrases which I find inspiring - either as springboards to ideas or potential titles or just because they make me smile, I handed them in along with this blog and I think 'dated confines' which is ion the middle of my post it note must be another one to add to the list as it doesn't make sense otherwise.

Which brings me round to the last two points on my 'blog post it note' that I want to write about. Namely what to do with human remains and what is the purpose of a memorial? I have been offered human remains by two of my chums - or rather part of their remains in the event of their death to use in my artwork as I see fit. This is both an incredible honour, a logistical conumdrum as in which medical school can help me with this and also in all likelihood an unrealised semi pipe dream as a) I don't want them to die and b) I might be too squeamish to do this.

I did ask the dentist for the bits of my broken tooth though - he looked at me funny but said 'yes of course, it's your tooth' and put them in a little blue envelope with a picture of a tooth fairy on it so am guessing they were designed for children as opposed to morbid adults. I've a vague idea to make them or rather have the bits made into jewellery but I will need to clean them first as they are still somewhat gory and they make my stomach go funny each time I look at them - though I suspect that is somewhat of a pavlovian response as they make me think of the really rather unpleasant procedure I went through for them to end in the little blue envelope and I was never a big fan of the dentist anyway.

Don't worry - I wouldn't show you the bits of tooth - not til I've cleaned them up at least....

Plus I have been offered these remains freely - not through a deal with coroners to use 'unclaimed' bodies from morgues so I have no moral qualms about using them - my qualms are can I do them artistic justice and how squeamish am I really? And how much stamina and cash do I have for fulfilling the legal requirements of the Human Tissue Authority?  As you need a licence to display human remains and they're not cheap - though you don't need a licence to show photographs of human remains....mmm legal loopholes to work my way through and round...

But what do you do with remains? I have the cremated remains of my beloved first cat who I adopted from the RSPCA when she was just 3 months old and she was my constant companion for 17 years. She died  6 and a half years ago. Her cremated remains aka 'cremains'  (or rather what we think are her cremated remains as I have not opened the beautiful wooden box that came back from the vets to verify this) now 'live' in the cupboard above the stairs where she used to demand to be given a shoulder lift to along with one of her favourite catnip mice but I don't know what I'll do with them if/when we move house. Does having actual remains (in this case feline) stop you from moving on grief-wise? I don't feel I need them now yet equally I couldn't imagine parting with them but when she died I did want them very much indeed or rather I wanted her back, still alive and purring but as that wasn't possible I made do with her cremains instead. Now however I take comfort in my memories and photographs of her - and a little video I took of her asleep and she was making little sing song snoring noises.

Also apparently there is a new process for dealing with human remains which involves your remains being put in a chamber which then fills with chemicals which dissolve the flesh and bone and the resultant sludge is chemically inert and can be flushed away - am not sure how I feel about this approach -  although on paper it seems the 'cleanest' and most final - but I think I'm still liking cremation best but am not sure why.

Which in turn leads me to think about stone memorials and what do they mean? and what are their function? I ask this partly with a victorian funeral monument afficiando head on - I adore them to look at in all their angelly over the top mawkish emotional expensive symbolic wonderfulness but even if they are all of those things they are also physical manifestations of love, regard and affection and the stonemasons art.  A marker of a persons life to hold onto when they physically have gone and all you are left with are the memories and possibly photographs and maybe some of their possessions and in this day and age their digital trace and a heart turning reminder from social networks when their name and face pops up....

As ever - so much food for thought.....