MA-Ness Week 14 Motivation, Cameras, Changing Ways of Working, New Books, Reading and Film Watching

this weeks post it note along with big sort of mind map to do list, new toy camera and lovely old book

Not been doing much coursewise the last few days - though I have taken a few pictures on my phone whilst I've been out and about the last few days. However I am both still somewhat distracted and am easily distracted. Today it's taken me til 2.45pm to start writing this, in spite of sitting down at the computer to write this at 1.30pm. Distraction a result of always being  the kind of person who is easily distracted but also because there are distracting things going on at the moment.

One of the things I am being distracted by today are the Archers groups I am part of and there has been a huge amount of messaging thanks to last nights episode in which Helen stood up for herself and child against her abuser. Anyway to try and get round this understandable distraction I've closed the email tab and am going to try and get to the end of writing this without looking at social media which is still agog with the goings on in Ambridge.

I did manage to finish reading one book last week - Julien Litten's excellent English Way Of Death The Common Funeral Since 1450 by switching the computer off altogether and just using my Little Oxford Dictionary from 1978 to look up words I didn't understand and that worked well - except it is better to be able to look up paitings and engravings via google images to get a better look at them. Anyway I intend to do the same bookwise this week and get another couple finihsed and so be able to take them back to the college library instead of getting them repeatedly renewed.

Reading-wise I am also reading (in fact nearly finished) a book called The Clothes On Our Backs by Linda Grant which is quite a searing read in places - beautifully descriptive - even if the things being described at times aren't pleasant or easy to read. It's about identity, background, how that can be unconsciously or consciously signified with clothes and hairstyles, keeping history secret, racism, anti semitism and leaving home. It's the second modern book I've read recently - think I shall be escaping back to some Victorian sensation fiction after this as I feel the need to escape to the past. Especially after hearing a lovely adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskells Mr Harrison on R4 Extra yesterday, I've still to finish her epic North and South though so maybe I should read more than the opening chapter which is all I've managed so far.

I also need to get more done on the Victorian Representations paper I am giving at the Victorian Representations Conference at Trinity University in May, last week I was determined to at least make a start on it and I have got together most of my notes and sources into separate folders - both in paper and on the computer and written a draft of the opening papragraph but that was as far as I got and I want to get the bulk of it done this week if I can.

I did however like a big girly swot submit my abstract to a conference on death and art to held at York Uni in September a whole two days before the deadline - undergraduate me would have been fainting with shock at this (and listening to the Archers!) good time management. I've had a reply to say it's been received and looks interesting but have not had a definite yay or nay yet and probably won't for a while.

It was a chums birthday last week and I sent her both a card and a copy of one of the cynanotypes I've made that I'm most pleased with  and am pleased to report that she loved it. I am interested in how different the same images can look depending on what process you have used to create them and then how different they can look depending on how you copy and print them. Am going to try embroidering one of them next - the actual image that is rather than trying to make an embroidery of the image, my sewing skills are not at that level of skill. Anyway the copy I sent her was an image I scanned and printed on the home printer rather than the fancier scanners and printers at college and I kind of preferred the more lomo version I made at home. I wonder what Walter Benjamin would make of the methods of mechanical reproduction today and what effect our image saturated culture has on us.

Aside from the comfort of the sound of other people's voices which R4 provides is the things I've learnt and pick up from it - last week I especially enjoyed In Our Time which was about Agrippina The Younger which was a mix of the known facts about her and the times in which she lived but also a discussion about history itself and the reliability of sources - a lot of that which is known about her is known through layers of 'hearsay, rumour and literary crafting' .  This made me think of how giddy I get when reading my beloved Victorian sensation fiction epics when there is direct mention of funeral customs and how lovely it is to have confirmation of what the historical textbooks say was the custom in a piece actually written in that time.

There was also an article on Womans Hour about military knitting in which they interviewed Joyce Meaden author of Knitskrieg A Call To Yarns which told me that during the Crimean War (1853-1856) you could book a holiday with Thomas Cook to go and watch the war from Sebastopol Harbour or from up in the hills. There was also a book of military knitting patterns was published which cost a shilling so it was done by ladies who could afford the price of the pattern book.
I knew it was a war of firsts in lots of ways - first use of telegraph, by the standard of the times 'live' embedded reporting, railways, and of course the changes brought about in nursing by Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale but I didn't know you could go and watch it as a tourist. I can remember a chum during the First Gulf War of 1991 watching it on CNN but I doubt he would have physically travelled to the area to watch it happen in front of him.

The military knitting being talked about was the knitting of balaclavas, socks, scarves and long johns by the wives left behind and how during the First World War the Archbishop of Canterbury gave dispensation for women to knit during church sermons and socks were the most popular item - as soldiers were only issued with two pairs and when they were sent a pair apparently it was the done thing to give one of the socks to a friend and only keep one for yourself and you just threw away the worst of the socks you had. You didn't throw two away at the same time. Fascinating stuff.

Cameras wise - I got a new one yesterday from my lovely husband and it's in the photograph above, it's a point and shoot 35mm but with a difference as it is see-through (apart from the bit which contains the film itself that is) and it's lovely to see the inside of a camera and how the wind on mechanism works, where the battery goes and its connections. I am looking forward to using it. Plus it does panoramic pictures too. I have also been offered a proper underwater film camera and I am really looking forward to using that though I shall have to get a new pair of wellies so I can stand in puddles/edge of lakes, I don't mind getting my hands wet to use it but I don't want wet feet as well.

I also got the (new to me) book in the picture - still in its original dust jacket. First published in 1958, this is the 1968 reprint though I'm guessing that this edition must have been sold after 1971 as the price sticker from F Warne and Co Ltd lists it as 45p. I'm quite rubbish at working out inflation rates but 45p in 1971 would have been quite considerable. It's a hardback and has a beautiful smell of old about it, but it doesn't list abstract in its glossary nor does it list surrealism. I love books - I can't imagine a life without them...and reading stuff online is good but it doesn't sink in in the same way and nor is it a haptic feast for the senses in the way that a physical book  is.

I've been watching a far few films recently - the spanish version of Dracula (1931) George Melford Universal which was longer winded than the english version, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2015) which was written and directed by Ana Lily Amirpour -  a beautifully shot and realised tale of a female vampire in Iran who has a somewhat gruesome but lovely way of getting rid of an unpleasant drug dealer, a love of western music judging by the posters she has on her walls and who strikes up a relationship with one of the drug dealers victims, she is also a skateboarder and it features a very compliant cat too. It was in black and white and quite haunting but I wonder how much of it I missed due to not knowing the iranian cultural references in the film.

This weekend I watched Underground (1928) Asquith with live musical accompaniment at the ever wonderful Hyde Park Picture House, The Innocents (1961) Jack Clayton and Idle Hands (1999) Rodman Flender. Underground was a tale of 4 working class people - who are in relationships and one of whom works on the underground as a guard. The chap who is a womaniser and works at the powerplant which powers the underground is bored with his dressmaking girlfriend who lives in the flat above him and sets his sights on the underground guards fiancee instead - not taking no for an answer in a way all too reminiscent of the kind of unwanted male attention women still get on public transport today. Suffice to say it ends with murder and a very exciting chase across London which looks very smokey and dirty and there are also wonderful glimpses of the posters alongside the escalators, beautiful cloche hats, lots of smoking and scarves. It was lovely to see it with a live score - especially when the guard and his fiancee are having a picnic and a vagabond child plays a harmonica for them and there was a harmonica being played by one of the musicians. I've seen The Innocents before but it is such a wonderfully creepy and disturbing film it can bear repeated viewing - Deborah Kerr's gowns are wonderful, the haunting song and music, the creepiness, precociousness and cruelty of Miles, the drowned governess, the shadows, the fact that it is a huge house but feels so claustrophobic, the is or aren't they there nature of the ghosts, what exactly did Miles do to get expelled, the wonderful housekeeper, the undercurrent of unwholesome relationships.....I really must read the original story. I have a couple of anthologies with it in and it's not particularly long so I have no excuse really. I shall be watching it again though.

I didn't see Idle Hands when it came out - I saw a clip of it as part of a montage documentary film about american teen and high school culture films called Beyond Clueless (2014) Charlie Lynn and thought - wow, a film about a demonic possessed hand sounds like it would be a good giggle and it was exactly that with some excellent lines from the bottle impaled Seth Green character, an awesome soundtrack and some kick ass female characters too. I'd probably watch that again just because it made me chuckle so much.

The sun has come out now and I'm hoping there will be enough sunshine to do some cyanotyping this week, I also want to have a crack at some chemigrams too - once I've worked out the best way to do them, I also need to drop off a piece of artwork for a show and sort out a couple of bookcases so I can get to the books I need more easily. So best crack on with that then.....

   

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MA-Ness Term 2 Week 10 - Weak being the operative word....

As you can see not much going on on this post it note - thanks to a deluge of snot that started last Sunday afternoon on our return from watching Victim at the Hyde Park Picture House.......

Thankfully the abundance of snot side of things didn't last too long (lying in bed with a tissue stuffed up your nose to stem the tide because you are bored of blowing it is not a good look, nor is it especially healthy I suspect either) but I am still suffering with a sore throat and limbs and joints that feel more achey than if I'd spent all day at the gym - which I haven't for a while as I've been feeling so ropey. So that explains why the post it note for last week is comparatively empty and it mostly consists of my annoyance at having to cancel and rearrange things - things which included going to an phd open day at Leeds Met (I emailed to apologise and also to ask a couple of questions and I have had a positive response and am going to set up another meeting with them) a talk on the rise of the Victorian Underworld at Kirkstall Museum, Show and Tell at Leeds Library, a showing of Rams at the Hyde Park Picture House, a tutorial, a lecture on proposal writing, an appointment in the print room and a dinner date with chums I don't see very often that I was really looking forward to.

Bah to snotty lurgy coughy illnesses and a pox upon them too.

I don't use much photo-editing software as a rule, it doesn't make my heart sing (the measure I use as to how much I want to do something - though it is not to be confused with things that *have* to be done) to sit in front of the computer and mess about with images - other than a bit of cropping/contrast/brightness altering. And until I started cyanotyping that was all I did, I now use photoshop though to boost levels and invert images to make negatives suitable to be used to make cyanotypes - a process which is relatively simple and straightforward. I have also used it to get rid of a 'modern fucking bin' which was otherwise ruining the view of a beautiful avenue of gravestones. 

I have tried to use it a couple of times to put watermark copyright notices on images I'm emailing - I'm increasingly reluctant to post images of mine without this. Last week I spent most of an afternoon getting increasingly frustrated that in spite of following the same instructions I've used before (I have to use them as I do it so infrequently that I can never remember how to do it without them) which has worked successfully, I couldn't get it to do it again.

There was a lot of 'oh ffs just fucking work' frustration on my part - following the same instructions I got it to work on one image but not the other before I gave it up as a bad idea. I emailed off the abstract for another conference with just the one image instead. I shall have another go at this copyrighting malarkey business....I might even just open it in paint and write on it directly. It's probably much easier than photoshop which I find to be extremely unuser friendly and unintuitive.

I find the free as in comes as part of the windows operating system photoediting software much easier to use and aside from inversion it suits my needs admirably. Though part of me worries at my comparative ludditeness and that I could have learnt a bit more about current software over the last few months at college - what other opportunities have I passed by....I'm aware that my time at Leeds College of Art is coming to a close (I have til mid August officially - but then there is the end of year show as well in late October/early November) and how much I still want to learn/do.

Oh well - am still awaiting replies to the abstract proposals I sent last week and I did manage to read a few pages of the Art of Death by Nigel Llewellyn last week too, I also watched a bit of an adaptation of the Woman In White - though I only got about 10 minutes in before I fell asleep. In fact today is the first day in a week that I haven't fallen asleep again by lunchtime.

So last week was massively disrupted by poorliness though I did spend a few minutes playing with a camera and an inexpensive fly eye like lens which creates a sort of kaleidoscope effect and multiplies images. It's a bit fiddly to hold it in front of the camera lens (used digital as it was easier to see on the back of the screen if it was in the right place or not) and attaching it with elastic bands didn't work at all well, but it's less fiddly if you place the camera on a tripod first. It still fecks me off though that cameras are made for righthanded and right eyed people....

Radio 4 Extra is a special treat at the moment - there is an adaptation of the Wilkie Collins story Who Killed Zebedee, an adaptation of Shirley Jackson's beautifully sinister We Have Always Lived In The Castle and the omnibus of the current Womans Hour adaptation of Jane Eyre. Utterly Wonderful.

I'm listening to these whilst trying to get my head round what I need to do this week and what I've got coming up and how to try and balance them all..... Mason has just visited and Mr Rochester is off to fetch the surgeon whilst Jane Eyre staunches the blood from where Mason was bitten.....ooh it's gripping, even if Rochester himself is an entitled selfish knob. 

MA-Ness Term 2 Week 8 Presentation Writing, Light Box Using, MIni Studio-Ness, Abstracts, Practice and Below Parr

This weeks post it note and some failed instant pictures but I'm intrigued by the half Mapp which appears in one of the images, was given a Fuji Instant camera by a chum having a big photographic clear out and the camera had been in a box under the bed, then out in a family members garage for a very long time so no surprise that the film didn't work out right....plus a couple have almost entirely come out so I think it's a problem with old film not being kept in optimum conditions as opposed to something being wrong with the camera itself. Will get some more instant film and have another go soon.

My habit of getting back into writing this on a Monday has gone out of the window again this week, because instead I spent this Monday using the big light table at college to take photographs of images I'd had printed on tracing paper. I'm experimenting with layering them over one another to make new patterns and images following on from useful feedback from the silent crit a couple of weeks back.

I'd started experimenting last week at home using the small light box I have at home but I needed a bigger one plus the one at college also has additional lights at each side as well as the one underneath. Am really chuffed with some of the new images so hoping to get them printed but lessons learnt -
trim off the borders before layering
the lights are quite hot and the heat makes the tracing paper curl up a bit at the edges - so need to work out a way to stick them down that isn't visible under the bright light....

I then met a chum for lunch and then bought some magnets (to experiment with using them to display my work) and grave candles from the big shop that is like a soft furnishings free version of Ikea on the Headrow and then came home and worked on a presentation I have to give later this week.

College has asked us to do a 5 minute presentation on what we're up to. It's quite timely really as I'm increasingly thinking about how to categorise what it is I do. I can describe it fairly easily but seeing where it fits/how it fits in with other disciplines is something I'm finding more difficult...partly like I said last time it's a mix of navel gazing and worrying I'm a mistress of all trades and Jill of none... 

So what exactly is my practice? what is my work about? I make images primarily using analogue methods. I take pictures on film sometimes of objects I've collected and posed, sometimes of existing spaces. I often  make cyanotypes and sometimes anthotypes of the images I make but I most often print the images I make digitally on tracing paper. Print making in the darkroom other than cyanotype prepping doesn't make my heart sing. And how much a process makes my heart sing is the basis on which I judge how much I want to do something. 

The subject matter is often inspired by Victorian mourning culture which means I spend a lot of time reading about the period and its customs, reading literature from the period - currently reading The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins which I am absolutely loving. According to a quote from The Times on the back of the book it is 'a pleasingly nasty affair' and I'm about halfway through and I am in agreement with the Times summation. Plus I am loving Collins description of the difference between the classes, servants and 'people of quality' in particular as well as the feisty plot involving inheritances, marriages, death, revenge and of course a wonderfully described Haunted Hotel.

I also spend a lot of time taking photographs of Victorian monuments in graveyards or of Victorian cemeteries and looking at burial records, mourning ephemera and such like in archives. I find looking at original items from the period very inspirational plus it makes the historian part of my heart sing too. Another thing I've been thinking about is whether or not this blog is part of my practice too, it is definitely a tool for this course as I am using it as my research journal for assessment and I wonder if I will keep it up in the same way when I finish this course....

Anyway I also like using different kinds of camera - I have a number of film SLR's which I use if I want to take 'proper' pictures and a number of fun cameras if I want to experiment and take less 'proper' as opposed to 'improper' pictures. I never take improper pictures - I don't even take someone else's picture unless I've asked them first and got their permission.

My 'improper' pics at the moment are most often taken on the 'crap kids digital camera' with its warped lens and inability to capture colour remotely correctly. I love its lomo crapness though. This week I also had great fun using a lomo fish eye lens camera and lessons learnt from using that particular camera - you can never get too close really with that kind of lens, and the resultant images look even more striking when they've been greyscaled. It's an F8 lens and you have no control over the length of exposure so to get best results you need to use it in bright light with high ISO film.

I took advantage of the bright sunshine and used a colour ISO 800 film to take pictures of all my favourite bits of St George's Field earlier this week. I then got them developed at my usual place - The Photo Shop in Headingley who as always did a speedy and professional job of developing them.

I had loaded the film in the comparative darkness of the toilets at college but hadn't quite put the film rewinding bit down far enough so it wasn't turning - leading me to wonder about 16 pictures on if I had wound the film on properly. It felt like it had as there was tension winding the film on after each exposure but as I once took a whole roll without actually taking any pictures at all (but at least the film wasn't wasted and I could use it again when I had actually wound it on properly) I wasn't entirely sure. As soon as I noticed I made sure it was down properly and it did go round. In the case where the film never ran out - I only realised what I'd done when I got to the 36th picture on what was a roll of 24, but in this case the film got to 36 and then ran out so I was fairly hopeful there'd be something on it and there was thankfully. Am reet chuffed with some of them and going to get them printed.

But note to self - check camera through thoroughly before starting to take pictures. It's just as well I'm not an event photographer at a blink and you miss it type event as it's quite likely to have finished by the time I've got my arse in gear properly and realised what I'm doing....

So there's been a lot of playing - partly with new cameras but also with new toys as I have also been playing with the present my lovely ever supportive husband got me for our recent wedding anniversary - namely a mini studio. It works best for photographing very small things like pieces of jewellery but I have got some lovely images of flowerheads that I've been collecting in a big plastic pot. I decided to collect all the flowers I've been given or bought since I started the course as I knew I wanted to use them in pictures. Plus I have a bit of a thing for dead and dying flowers anyway.

It's a portable easily put up and down white plastic box that fixes together with magnets and has interchangeable different colour backdrops and two strips of led lights that you can control the brightness of. It's ACE and I am loving using it. Though I was defeated by how to attach the backdrop, I was struggling with how to attach it for ages - even thinking I might have to use blu-tack to attach it, until I had the bright idea of looking at the instructions when all became clear. Note to self - reading the instructions before you use something is a really good idea...

I also spent quite a bit of time last week cleaning and tidying - not my workroom so much as the rest of the house which meant I felt better about spending so much time playing and experimenting with filmy stuff.

I also went to two art things last week - a lecture by Nigel Llewellyn at the Henry Moore Institute on the Art of Death and the latest photographs by Martin Parr at the Hepworth featuring Yorkshire grown rhubarb.

The lecture was wonderful - Nigel told us of the inspiration behind the book he wrote on the subject and the exhibition he curated at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1991, or rather 1992 as due to the starting of the first Gulf War and the worries of the trustees that patrons would be offended by such an exhibition at a time of war its opening time was rescheduled. It was a fascinating glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes at big museums, a look at some of the artefacts in the exhibition and it was very engagingly delivered. It made me want to read his book and my lovely husband has ordered me a secondhand copy off an internet site that sells more than books and doesn't pay much tax.

I was quite disappointed by the new Parr pics though - a chum has described them as 'being phoned in' and I agree, they just didn't grab me in the way that his other work has. The colour seemed kind of off to me - not full on glorious technicolour but a kind of garish faded (if you can have such a thing) plus the method of display didn't add to them for me. It's a huge high ceiling space in which one wall is taken up with some from the Consumer series which look beautifully garish in comparison. The new images are not framed but printed in different sizes and attached to the wall by magnets, some have buckled and are no longer flush to the wall. (A problem I know only too well from hanging my own work and it reacting to the changes in temperature and humidity in the room) and it looks kind of amateur for an organisation like the Hepworth which I'm guessing has a lot more money for displaying work than I do. One way of minimising the buckling is to leave the paper in the same atmosphere for a good 24-48 hours prior to hanging it or to put it two or three magnets width from the wall in the first place. I did love seeing my old favourites of his again though - especially some from the Last Resort series.

Last week I was writing about putting together and sending in a proposal for an academic conference and I was pleased to get back a reply to say my proposal had been accepted. I say pleased but I am also a little bit scared too - as I'll be amongst Victorian specialists - but then as a chum pointed out I am a Victorian specialist too. And I am - but I am a bit concerned that I'm not quite specialist enough....see above re mistress/Jill feelings.

I have also hopefully scored a trip round a coffin factory too - I emailed to ask if they had any coffin linings offcuts I could have to print on and they asked me to phone them to discuss it so I put on my best telephone voice, took a deep breath and rang.

Exciting but also a teeny bit scarey times....and fingers crossed I'll be back in my usual Monday blogging habit again.   

MA-Ness Term 2 Week 7 - Cyanotyping Rescue, Dissecting a Heart, Making Stuff Out of Cast Offs Prevarication and Words....

this weeks post it note - along with papers I'm trying to work on but am actually putting off looking at, the most magnificent gift of an old coverless book from one of my fellow MA-ers who rescued it from a skip, some paint, and a bookmark made out of some acetate leftover with some skeleton stickers and my photocopying experiments using multiple copies of acetate negatives overlaid and reinverted on the photocopier.

overdone cyanotype in the wash - think I left it in the sun too long, got distracted with my time keeping...

and in the wash again after a rescue with a bit of a soak in a bleach solution, not brilliant but slightly better as in you can at least see some of the image on it - an image of the subscription graves down the side of the chapel at St George's Field 

lumen prints in progress resting on the towel rail in the bathroom as that gets the best sun first thing in the morning - using  very old Agfa Brovira paper both gloss and matte given to me by friends, not sure how old it is except it is at least 30, maybe even 40 years old. Those on the bigger pieces of matte paper worked better than those on the smaller gloss paper  

having fun at Thackray Medical Museum at their Anti Valentine's Event - I was living my wannabe Viktor Frankenstein fantasies by dissecting a sheeps heart, I could do this as a) it had already been taken from the sheeps body by a butcher b) I had gloves on c) it didn't smell and wasn't significantly decomposed d) it wasn't given to me with a face and e) I wasn't expected to kill it.  I have nothing but awe/admiration and a massive feeling of eeww and revulsion at the 18th and 19th century anatomists who did this without latex between them and their subject and without the benefit of refrigeration either, I also cannot cannot help but admire and feel revulsed by their ability to go against the perceived moral teaching of their age ie stealing bodies, preventing lawful burial, etc....
Photo taken by my ever supportive husband

end result of one of the lumens - need to try and fix it with uv resistant gloss spray and see if that works but as the spray is potentially toxic am going to keep it in the dark and wait until it is a little bit warmer and spray it outside, and in the meantime have scanned it and taken a digital photograph of it and boosted the levels digitally to get more of a contrast.

Lots of pictures in this weeks post - back to its usual Monday posting now anniversary related gallivanting has ended. As you can see from the above pics I've been up to heart dissecting for Valentines Day, lumen printing and cyanotyping over the last couple of days and it's somewhat ironic that this post is so full of pictures as what I'd actually been mostly thinking about last week was words.

Last Friday's seminar was given over entirely to words, and we were set tasks like writing about our work without using the words we usually use. For me this meant phrases like 'being inspired death culture in general and victorian death culture in particular were out as were practically descriptive phrases like 'analogue photographic processes' or 'gothic photographic artist'.

I found it quite difficult and my friends description of me as an historian is making me think even more about what it is I actually do and what it is I am most interested in - not just out of navel gazing reasons but also out of possible phd applications. Anyway what I came up with was:

Eclectic re-image-ing of years gone by, hoping to evoke in the reader/viewer a wish to accompany me on my journey ferreting out the stories of the past that run alongside the present.

Distortion, fading, fixing fading memories, writing up the contrast

Am I really a writer? I'm definitely a reader.

Feelings/Fears of not being taken seriously if I call myself a writer as well or am I actually a historian?

Re-enactments of personal/impersonal histories

Words spoken and forgotten, details lost/blurred but feelings remain extant.

Narrative

Are you sitting comfortably?    
Then I'll begin.


I found it really interesting to listen to other peoples descriptions of their work and quite scarey having to read what I'd written out after hearing the eloquence of the others in the seminar as well as very thought provoking to think about questions like 'who do you write for?' and 'do you show courtesy to your audience?'. I use this blog as my research journal so it is both a record of what I've been up to and so a document for assessment for the research journal assessment part of the course but I make it public so it is also a broadcast platform. A broadcast platform for me to in some ways brag about what I've been up to - eg heart dissection as well as to question/record what's going on coursewise and what I'm thinking about....am back to the navel gazing point except at least it is navel gazing with an end in sight (ie a Masters qualification) as opposed to just navel gazing...hopefully.

The conversation turned also to why we do the work we do in the first place and questions like - is it important if people like it or not, does it matter if it is understood, is it automatically a bad thing to be misunderstood or misrepresented? What happens in the space between the image maker and the receiver? And my first thoughts are - yes it is important if people like it partly from an ego stroking point of view, partly from a practical point of view as in people aren't likely to hand over cash/time for something they don't like or at the very least appreciate in some way, and I don't like being misunderstood or misrepresented....though in some ways you might never know if this is happening and in others it's all too evident but you might not be able to do anything about it.

Hmm as ever lots of food for thought - as were the opening exercises in which we had to write our signatures in different ways but only after swapping pens with the person next to us. I went from using a wooden pencil to using a rollerball type pen. Until I had to loan my pencil to the person sitting next to me I hadn't realised how much I was enjoying the feel of its wooden-ness as opposed to the plastic casing of the rollerball pen. We had to sign our names using the hand we don't normally write with - I am lefthanded and my righthanded signature wasn't so a signature as a squiggle seemingly made during an earthquake. It went very small and not making much of an indent on the page when I was trying to disappear and quite bold and flowery when I was trying to be a celebrity. I did suffer somewhat from 'blank page anxiety' - which is the same anxiety I feel when starting a new notebook or trying to decide which notebook to use for which purpose. Choosing a new diary/journal is something that always takes me an age - currently using one I bought from John Rylands Library which looks like an old fashioned library card, but I haven't written in it since December 30th 2015. It's on my list of things to do update though...and when I do write in it it will be in black ink - from one of those disposable fountain pens. I've written my diary using one of those for a long time now and whilst I don't like the throwaway nature of them I find they suit my lefthandedness best.

The eagle eyed amongst you might have noticed some of my reusing rather than just throwing away tendencies by my making of a bookmark using some leftover acetate from making a cyanotype negative and some stickers in the top image on this post.

Along with lots of thinking about words I'm also thinking a lot about opposites and how they can't exist without one another - negative/positive, absence/presence,permanence/impermanence and how it is the spaces and gaps between words that help them make sense, without them it would just be a constant stream of letters. 

What else? well chuffed with some of the film pics I took in Morecambe so now looking over them deciding which ones I want to print/get printed, happily playing on the photocopiers at college with overlaying negative copies, acetates and copies of copies and watching how images degrade and evolve, also having lots of fun looking at and re-watching films like the 1935 Hitchcock directed version of The 39 Steps, Young Frankenstein - the Putting On The Ritz dance scene with the Creature is one of my all times faves and snuggling up with Mapp who is being very snuggly at the moment and lovely company when you're watching such beautiful monochrome goodness.

I also spent a very chilly hour in the garage aka pop up meth lab yesterday afternoon developing some black and white 120 film I took on an Ensign Full Vue from the 1950's back when St George's Field was partially snow covered in January. There isn't much room so it's just as well that me and Mr Pops get on so well as we quite often had to swap places - I was mostly in charge of the thermometer and mixing the chemicals and getting them to the right temperature, pouring them in and agitating the tank, he was in charge of threading the film onto the spool (something I find fiendishly difficult unless I can begin to spool it in/on in the light - though I have managed it in the complete dark on occasion, I find that easier than sweating it out using a darkbag) and fetching a big water carrier. And it seems to have worked - as in there are very definitely images on the film and I just need to scan them in - which is my next task, not that I'm putting off working on my abstract submission....oh no....not that the thought of it being rejected or accepted is giving me pause....

 

 

MA-Ness Year 2 Term 2 Week 2 Relaxation, Enervation, Affirmation, Very Old Newspapers Indeed and Taking Photographs

this weeks post it note - much more filled in than last, current reading which is an excellent and thought provoking book and an appropriate bookmark made from medium format film backing paper

Front page of an original copy of the Leeds Intelligencer from July 1836 as perused in Leeds Library - utterly wonderful...and aside from design, change in language and attitudes not much has changed really - newspapers in 1836 were full of gossip - who had attended what ball, international events and adverts for hair dye, and the latests in fashions with economy

What became known as 'the bastard dissertation' all safely printed up, bound and handed in - now awaiting it being marked with some trepidation but fingers crossed it'll be okay.....

Had a much more chilled week last week, life seems so much easier when there isn't a scarey deadline hanging over you. It was a delight to get back to work in a gentle way - I did some picture taking in St George's Fields, did some playing about on the photocopier (am interested in the way you can degrade the quality of images by photocopying them and then photocopying each subsequent copy - think it is an interesting way to explore how memories can change over time) and some colouring in too with oil pastels as well as quite a lot of thinking about why am I doing the course and what am I doing it for and why I love the things I do.

This thinking was partly as a result of a conversation with my husband and one with my tutor. I want to do as well as I possibly can on this course and the predominant way I had been measuring this was by the marks I'd got for assignments which on reflection seems a rather narrow and reductive way of looking at things, plus it runs the risk of me thinking it hasn't been worthwhile if I don't do well markswise. Which would be silly really - it's taught me a whole new way of looking at other people's work and my own, I've learnt a whole new vocabulary, met all sorts of interesting people and been able to use some really wonderful resources...so even if I don't get the overall grade I really want it won't have been wasted at all. And I need to remind myself of this more often when I am getting worked up over marks and the academic hoop jumping side of things.

I got the Photographers Playbook  (Fulford J and Halpern G 2014 Aperture) out of the college library last week after seeing it listed in the bibliography for an abstract for a paper called 'Botanizing On The Asphalt': Wandering as Generative Interpretation by Bonny McDonald and Ruth Laurion Bowman.  And I fell in love with it instantly after reading this quote which is just inside the cover:

'But it just happens, every so often, that something very ordinary seems beautiful to me and I'd like it to be eternal. I'd like this bistro, and that dusty light bulb, and that dog dreaming on the marble and even this night - to be eternal. And their essential quality is precisely that they aren't'.  - Raymond Queneau Witch Grass.

This completely resonated for me (so much so my own copy of the book is on its way to me via a large online tax avoiding company...) and made me think of the times I've stood on Whitby Pier watching the waves crash against the pier wall and wanting to be able to bottle that sound, smell and moment and be able to return to it whenever I want - especially in times of distress (oh how I wish I'd have been able to bottle the smell of the fur behind Lucia's ears as it was so lovely) and no amount of photograph or video taking can relive that moment in its entirety but it can at least boost your memory of it. I've also wanted to 'bottle' moments of peace amongst the remaining stones in St George's Field - I'm trying to make it into a habit that every time I go to college I also pop across the road too so I can resoak myself in its peace and calm.

I'm not sure why I find such peace and solace in what used to be a graveyard - it's partly an aesthetic thing and because it's peaceful and quiet. But I am also very aware that in its past it will also have been a place of great emotional pain and torment, for even if you do believe (like many victorians did) in an afterlife and that once dead provided you have lived a good life you will ascend to heaven and so be in a 'better place' those left behind still have the trauma of missing and grieving and sometimes I worry I'm possibly being a bit ghoul-like when what I want to do is promote the practice of honouring lost loved ones.

Along with lots of thinking, and a bit of reading I also did some research this week - I looked at original copies of the Leeds Intelligencer held in Leeds Library. The very splendid library which is next door to and above Paperchase and very wonderful it was too. You can read all about the library here and if you get chance to go/join then do for it is very lovely indeed. I was in a room marked with signs saying things like 'you are requested not to talk' and 'this room is for silent study' and aside from the ticking of a very wonderful Potts Clock and the distant noise of a clock elsewhere in the library chiming the hours it was beautifully quiet. No chatting, no people tapping on mobiles, or tapping on laptops and the noise from the outside street only became noticeable as the lunch hour began.

I was looking at copies of the Leeds Intelligencer from 1834-1836. In that time it was published once a week on a saturday and you also had to pay a penny tax on top of the cover peice when you bought it. Each copy was stamped somewhere on the front cover with a red tax paid stamp. Initially it consisted of two folded pieces of paper so 4 sides in total and it was adverts on the first two pages. then  reports from the 'imperial parliament', local and national news and gossip. All in very small densely packed typeface, no illustrations though some engraved logos - though not sure they would have called logos then. Very different in tone and look from todays newspapers but not all that dissimilar in terms of content. By 1836 it was 4 pieces of paper folded in two and the first 4 sides were of adverts.

Utterly marvellous adverts for places like the Lounge - 17 Boar Lane Leeds whose proprietor '[respectfully begs to announce that he has just imported a beautiful Assortment of GENEVA WATCHES and several elegant GILT TIME PIECES (15 days movement) with many choice and Beautiful Specimens of Foreign Manufacture, adapted either as Presents or Articles of bijoutire for the Drawing Room'. Capitalisation exactly as in advert.

This advert makes me smile so much - and later on in the period I was looking at, there were adverts for hair dye, wax flowers and 'newest fashions in beaver bonnets' and of course PROFESSOR STEHELINS BOTANICAL PILLS which came complete with a treatise on syphilitic and venereal diseases with 'observations on seminal weaknesses arising from early abuses'. An immediate cure was available with 'secrecy and safety' from 11 Albion Street Leeds for just 2s 9d a box.....

But perhaps best of all the newspapers smelt of old - not just the old cold of being kept in an archive but the almost 200 years of being stored, they were beautifully creased and torn around the edges and were covered in fine black soot from candles and coalfires. Utterly wonderful and captivating. I could have looked at them all day but after a couple of hours and finding the article I wanted to - namely a report about the first funeral to be held at St George's Fields or rather Leeds General Cemetery as it was known then and the calls for subscription to the monument for Michael Sadler (still there alongside the Chapel in St George's Fields) as well as an advert detailing the burial charges I called it a day. Reading such dense type is hard on the eyes and I had to wash my hands more than once to get rid of the dirt of the centuries, as much as I love 'old', I don't want 'old' on my sandwiches and by that time I was very hungry indeed.

I took lots of photographs on Sunday in St George's Fields before heading to the Hyde Park for the afternoon showing of The Lady In The Van. I've never known the ground so soggy and boggy at St George's Fields - the annual reports often complained of poor drainage and there were lots of puddles, not just on the paths of subscription graves laid flat but also on the grass. I took the opportunity to take pics of reflections in the puddles though alas the repairs I'd made to my wellies with gaffer tape aren't as watertight as I would like...but they don't leak as much as they did so at least I only had cold as opposed to wet feet to watch the film.

And what a glorious film it was - heartwarming, poignant, heartbreaking and funny. I'd read the story many years ago and seen a production at Leeds Playhouse many moons ago too so knew the story. Maggie Smith was utterly wonderful as Miss Shepherd. As was the chap who played both Bennetts Alex Jennings. I absolutely love her assertion that as it was holy water that she put in the battery it had no need to be distilled, and the keeping of the air freshener behind the Virgin Mary by the confessional. The unhelpful lay secretary at the convent was a small but also very revealing part about just how miserable and restrictive a religious life can be. I want to watch it again.

So this week is going to consist of more photograph taking, more reading and a lot of thinking about what format I want my final project to take as I have no hand in until the middle of August when I have to hand in my portfolio and I need to focus (pardon the pun) on that but alas no trips to the oldy worldy splendour of Leeds Library again for a while...just my overcrowded workroom instead..... 

Ma-Ness Year 2 Term 1 Week 7 - Gothic Manchester, Papers, Picture Taking, Attempts At Reading and that kind of stuff...

this weeks post it note - looking a little emptier than previous ones as been concentrating upon one main task - namely getting paper ready and practising it for Gothic Studies What Lies Beneath Conference - hence rather snazzy wristband - not worn anything like it since going to Infest way back in 2008, also note clear promotional glasses case given away by high street chain of opticians - painted over their logo with black metallic acrylic paint - but I doubt it's very permanent - think the paint used on model kits might have been better (and would certainly smell nicer), then stuck a skull image on it and then covered with gloss medium...way better than walking round as an advert for somewhere I don't especially want to advertise for nothing.

Pic of me in action at What Lies Beneath Conference - very relieved that it went so well and my classic anxiety dreams of losing shoes so being barefoot and because they were high heels too short to reach microphone didn't come to pass - also met lots of lovely peeps, learnt some new stuff, heard of work by two artists I'd not heard of who I need to find out more about, ate amazing necromonicon cake as well as dirty but delicious clown food at lunchtime and took some pictures of reflections in mancunian puddles   

ongoing attempts to capture colour/image from begonia and african violet flowers - not quite the colour I want but liking the marks left on the page anyway, next stage is to varnish these with gloss or matte medium

Last week I was mostly putting the final touches to my first proper grown up academic paper 'That's About The Bones Of It' for the Manchester Metropolitan University Gothic Studies Department Conference. I had written the bulk of it a week last Sunday and so had time to print it out, practice it, and refine it. I decided to take out certain bits - I was on the Sickness and Death panel and it was clearly labelled and described as such in the programme but even so I erred on the side of caution when it came to discussing certain aspects of the death of named individual newborn children in the burial records as I didn't want to unduly upset anyone in the audience - this is because a chum of mine has recently gone through a similar bereavement and I would hate to be unintentionally insensitive. I know that could be applied to any bereavement but the details of these children was so especially heartbreaking I changed my mind about talking about it - I would however be more comfortable about including their details in a paper and might still do so - with a suitable disclaimer that is.

So I took out specifics and talked in generalities instead. Aside from my loving the aesthetic of victorian graveyards - one of the other reasons I love using such spaces as background and inspiration for artwork is whilst there may be descendants there are no living relatives and so my chances of offending anyone is lessened. Plus by using a no longer active as burial ground as a background for my work I am not going to interrupt or disturb any services being held there for the newly bereaved and grieving families.

But even though I had left myself plenty of time to get it finished it still felt quite stressful getting it ready - I think that was mostly because a) I'd not quite done anything like that before  - I mean I had done presentations at college and for WI groups and read work at Headingley Literature festival but in my head this was something bigger and scarier than that as it needed to have 'academic rigour' and b) the self imposed deadline of having it ready a day or two before it was actually needed - as I wanted to email it through - I took a paper copy of my accompanying speech but I wanted the powerpoint slides I'd put together (all 36 of them containing specially resized images - which I'd individually resized using Paint but thanks to a conversation in the Print Room and my moaning that doing it individually had taken for-effing ever, I know now of a way to do images in bulk using Photoshop....) emailed through in advance as that way I knew they'd be available on email - as well as on my little memory stick shaped like a little black rubber skeleton that my lovely ever supportive husband bought me last xmas. I have a horror of technology not working...and this time I didn't spend hours either using exactly the gothic typeface I wanted as last time I did that - it wasn't supported at the other end and so showed in an ordinary font, I took the view that as long as it was legible it would be okay. And it was.

I also wasn't sure how big the audience would be or what the room would be like I would be talking in - in the event there were some 120 tickets sold for the event and it was deep in a former cinema with little stage in the basement of 70 Oxford Road - an address which may be more familiar to some of you as the Cornerhouse. Plus as a member of the panel I had to sit on that stage with the other paper givers until all three of us had delivered our papers and answered questions. I hope I answered the questions I had okay - and I had that uncomfortable contradictory feeling of relief when a question wasn't for me mixed with 'oh,no-one wants to ask me a question'....and then panic when they actually did...

Plus as I am from Manchester - or rather Manchesterford as I prefer to call it, and used to go to 70 Oxford Street when it was known as the Cornerhouse - there was something especially lovely about having my artwork on show in there - even temporarily in a resized format on a screen.

But I must be honest I did reach a point on Thursday evening where after working on it almost solidly for two full days that I was sick of the sight of it - my paper was just over 3,000 words (I was told it could be no more than 20 minutes so I looked at the word count of the timed 10 minute presentations I'd done for college and they were 1500 words so I just doubled it) and perhaps this doesn't bode well when it comes to a) writing my dissertation which has to be around 8,000 words and b) articles to be published - the most obvious opportunity for me are looking for articles that are 5,000 and c) if I do go on to do a practice based phd that's going to need at least 40,000 words along with a solo exhibition...maybe it's just because I was tired and because it's the anniversary of sad occasions and well anyway it's certainly something for me to think about.  I copy and paste each of these blog posts into a word document and print them off - so it can be easily handed in as my research journal and they have got a lot longer each term. The amount of paper they take up seems to be doubling each term - the second term was twice the thickness of the first and the third twice the thickness of the second. Not sure how thick this term is going to be but it is already looking longer again...

It reminded me that this time last year I was doing a similar sort of thing and tearing my hair out trying to email through my first presentation that was going to be assessed - though thankfully I hadn't fully realised that at the time - I had just realised I had a deadline to meet and the presentation which was my first attempt at using powerpoint was too big to be emailed!!  Hence once of my first powerpoint lessons learnt was resize images before inserting them....

I also remembered what a lovely chum from the WI said to me earlier this year that I was the expert on what was I was talking about and that I speak in an engaging manner. And this helped a lot, although I don't think I am *the* expert but I am certainly *an* expert plus I got laughs in the right places - as even though it is a sad miserable subject it also has humour and I got a big round of applause and quite a few people coming up to me afterwards to tell me how much they enjoyed it so I know I must be doing something right.

My slides were a mix of images of my own photographic artwork and copies of pictures I'd taken of original artefacts relating to St George's Field in the Special Collections Unit of the Brotherton Library at Leeds University ( I had their permission to show them in this context but if I plan to publish  this paper with those images then I would need their permission again) - some of the images were from the crap kids digital but the bulk were from the fancy medium format camera I borrowed from college over the summer and a couple of appropriated but credited where from images of All Saints Park and the Sisters of Mercy.

It was fun putting them together to try and make a kind of over arching narrative - my format was bit of why/how I do gothic art, use of graveyards in gothic art, film and fiction with a few examples, specific differences between All Saints Park (also a former cemetery) and St George's Fields - the role of victorian mourning culture within it, class and economics and a brief history of some of its more famous residents - I picked the wife of Pablo Fanqo who was killed in March 1848 at one of their performances when the audience seating collapsed on her head, and Atkinson Grimshaw, a brief overview and analysis of some of the diseases listed as cause of death, the fact that occupations for dead men are listed but not dead women - they are only described in terms of their marital status, and the tombstone and records of Francis Henry Vant whose stone always intrigues me as is has on it 'deeply regretted' and it's not clear if that's his comparatively early death or his actual existence and the in my opinion desecrational relandscaping carried out on behalf of the university in the late 1960's to make it into the park space it is today.

I can't remember if I wrote the words and then found images to match them when I did the ones I had to do for college or if I found images and then wrote the words to match...think I did them in conjunction as opposed to completely finishing the words first and then looking for images to go with them like I did for this one.

I also had some printing done - am absolutely loving the otherworldliness aka shonky focus, warped lens and inability to capture colour correctly that the crap kids digital camera (renamed lo-mo digital camera for the purposes of sounding a bit more professional at the conference) captures - took some more pictures on it today around the woods and I am looking forward to getting them printed too - tracing paper remains my favourite paper to digitally print on. It has such a lovely translucency - as well as being comparatively inexpensive. I really must get those letter written to coffin makers though to see if they have any leftover bits from lining coffins that I could use to print on as well as trying to fins a way to get stuff printed - or rather find the money to get stuff printed on silk/satin in burial plot size pieces.

I took my work down from St Johns Church this week as the Love Arts Festival came to a close - it's so much quicker taking stuff down than it is putting it up and whilst there a couple of things I could have differently - could have rotated one of the skulls through 180 degrees so there could have been one facing one direction and the opposite one facing the other way and scattered them about a bit more randomly too, I was pleased with it overall. It also makes me want in a meglomaniacal way to have a show entirely made up of my own work and fingers crossed there is a possibility of that after xmas so watch this space.

I am in the process of thinking about attempting to combine some of my photography with some embroidery and I was delighted to find some old photos I'd done in the darkroom a while ago that will be just right for this - especially the test prints as I kept those along with the ones that didn't work at all. Plus some of them I am really pleased with as prints - should get them framed really, I'm reminded that it's good to a) not throw things away as they can be repurposed and b) looking at stuff again with fresh eyes is useful as you can see where it might be improved but also where it is good enough after all.

I also went to a couple of things last week that were fun as well as thought provoking - Head by The Monkees complete with introductory talk at the Hyde Park. I had seen the film before but it was interesting to see it again with some new insight - partly provided by the interesting talk given by Peter Mills but also because since doing this masters malarkey my close reading/observing things skills are slowly but surely being honed and Head is an excellent film to closely analyse as well as having a rather wonderful soundtrack - which reminds me I must get a copy of it. It consciously includes familiar set tropes from westerns, horror films, science fiction, romances whilst also making subtle and none too subtle digs at fame, consumerism, pro war tendencies and  it is quite shocking in places - especially the bit where they show the footage of a summary execution by a vietnamese general of a communist fighter (you can see the footage and information about it here) and it is disturbing viewing - not just because you watch a human being get shot for real as opposed to special effects plus the circumstances as to why he is being shot in the first place. I loved the set piece with Davy Jones dancing in black and white and white and black beautiful too. I think I'd like to watch it again and would definitely want to listen to the soundtrack again. The studio related shenanigans to get it made and the choice of actors to be in it was also very interesting.

I also went to see a version of Nosferatu at the Carriageworks by the Proper Job Theatre Company. I enjoyed it on the whole - but I was a bit thrown by the fact it was a musical version of the tale - the claustraphobicness of being enclosed on a ship with something killing off the shipmates was nicely portrayed and there were beautiful visual pieces - where blood appeared to rain down the cabin doors, Orlok's shadow flits across the stage on its own, a blood spattered hand appears at the cabin door, and a face appeared too but it was marred for me by not caring about one of the central characters when there was only 3 (well 4 if count Count Orlok too who you don't really see) - there was the rational captain, the superstitious mate and the fervently christian mate. I didn't care what happened to the superstitious mate and wanted him to fall overboard quite early on, but he didn't. 

My to do list is getting ever longer - and I really must knuckle down and get some quality work and reading done for my dissertation, and I must finish reading Secure The Shadow by Jay Ruby as that is on loan from the British Library and can't be renewed as easily or as often as the other books I have out from the library.

I mentioned last time I had sent off an abstract to a call for papers at a conference in York and I was waiting to hear back, as I hadn't heard from them I emailed to chase it up and was disappointed that my abstract hadn't been picked but then excited as they have offered to pay for an academic poster for me to stand by during the conference and suggested a couple of people to contact about their upcoming conference as they think my research and work will suit it better. So swings and indeed roundabouts.

Think I'd best crack on getting this list written too.....so I don't forget everything that is on my mind...

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