MA-Ness Term 2 Week 6 - Anniversary-ness, Motivation, Art-Speak and Inspiration

Cameras used this week - including crap kids digital with added security of black insulation tape over battery compartment, bit of torn notebook and coaster with seahorse design from the Midland Hotel In Morecambe 

View from Midland Hotel dining room over breakfast on crap kids digital - you can just about see the building on the end of the Stone Jetty which was the railway terminus for the line which took you to get the ferry to Ireland or Scotland in the 1850's..which lead to me wondering how many women had come over on the ferry from Ireland to look for work/service in the Victorian era and how much homesickness and heartache there was - and how much excitement at starting a new life...

Pic of Midland Hotel in Morecambe taken on crap kids digital (I love the lo-mo blur and right hand side lens distortion, it is its own other worldly filter) earlier this week - me and my husband got engaged here in 2008 just after it reopened after its refurbishment after falling in love with it when we saw it in a very sad and decrepit state in 2001. It seemed appropriate somehow to spend our 7th wedding anniversary here amidst its restored art deco splendour - plus Morecambe also has Brucciano Ice Cream Parlour with beautiful wooden art deco pannelling and the best Knickerbocker Glories outside of Pacittos in Scarborough. Fact. It also has a terrifyingly cramped secondhand bookshop and  bits of old fairground rides - tatty, sad but also very beautiful too but it is somewhat sad and scarey that the public toilets on the front each have a sharps disposal bin - admirable in terms of minimising harm but sad that it is needed in the first place.

The eagle eyed regular readers of this blog will also notice that the words aren't many and not written on a post it note either but a folded over bit of torn out notebook paper, that's because I've been in Morecambe and so far away from my desk and post it notes and so notebook had to suffice. This is also why this is being written up on a Thursday as opposed to my usual Monday - as Monday I was braving strong winds, heavy squally showers trampsing about the sea front taking pictures (also fitted in a trip to a cemetery but alas it wasn't Victorian like the lady in tourist information said it was but Edwardian and it was really interesting in places not least because it has a plot devoted to workers from the Cinematograph Industry ) before heading back to the hotel for a lovely hot bath in a bath so big I could almost have done lengths in it (except I can't really swim) and then lovely fish and chips in the Midland Rotunda Bar whilst listening to the building hum in the strong wind - the Midland is semi circular so it kind of sets up its own resonance in the wind - I thought it would stop me from getting to sleep but it was actually quite comforting (plus gin makes me sleepy too..and I'd had quite a bit in a celebratory way.) The rain was also lashing against the windows and watching the waves crash up and down the beach and see quite how terrifyingly quick the tide comes in reminded us both of the sad story of the cockle pickers who drowned in 2004.

So what have I been up to apart from picture taking at the seaside and basking in full on beautifully restored 1930's art deco splendour and imagining I was one of the minor non murdered characters in an Agatha Christie - you know the ladies who have silk pyjamas, an allowance and beautifully painted red lips and nails. Well laughing when my husband pointed out that I looked rather more like a Crowleyite loving bright young thing (technically 1920's but hey ho - I don't mind a bit of historical inaccuracy in the cause of paying me a compliment) due to the fact that I was wearing a necklace made of red plastic skulls...so lots of picture taking, lots of imagining, bit more reading of Silent As The Grave by Deanna Raybourn (a murder mystery set in the victorian period which is very enjoyable period detail accurate hokum) and mulling over the feedback on work in progress from a silent crit last Friday and an email from a chum in which he said ' You're a historian. Proper. You may not like it, but it's plain for all to see. Your use of primary source material always gave you away'.  This is making me think am I an artist, a historian or a writer or some kind of hybrid of all three. Though this feeds into my 'jill of all trades, mistress of none' fear....though my tutor did point out that my writing - either about my work on my blog or for academic papers is just as much a part of my practice as my visual image making....

The feedback from the silent crit was very useful and also very edifying, I showed images I'd taken of St George's Field (no surprise there then eh? ) in the recent snow. I'd been experimenting with printing them in colour and in black and white on my usual favourite medium - lovely, translucent, cheap tracing paper and then superimposing them one of top of the other but slightly out of sync with each other so there is a slight tremor in the image. I think it makes it look quite sinister. I put them up against the window as it is such a useful and free lightbox. As it was a silent crit I couldn't explain what they were about until the others in the group had finished discussing them but I did put up a label 'Time Slippage, Work In Progress'.  One person said the words 'gothic and reminiscent of Wilkie Collins' - high praise indeed to my Victorian era gothic fiction obsessed ears. Other words used were' quiet and atmospheric'. ' slightly underexposed but that adds to the atmosphere of them'.

I hope to refine the images further by chopping off the borders and layering them one upon the other - either with a gap between each sheet with the colour versions at the back and the black and white ones at the front, or by layering them out of sync but directly on top of one another or in direct opposition to one another and taking a picture of the resultant image on a light table and so making a new image altogether - this looked especially sinister with the broken angel. It really motivated me to want to make more out of them.

Motivation was something I've been sorely lacking in today though - I sat down at the computer to write this about 11am this morning but it's took me til late afternoon to get properly started on it. I have done a lot of filling and planned my diary a bit though and sent some emails so it's not entirely been clicking refresh on Farcebook (deliberate misspelling) but I could have done a bit less of that and more of this instead....ho hum. At least I'm doing it now - plus I'll need to be a bit more organised next week as it's the deadline for calls for papers for a couple of academic conferences I'm interested in. I think I'm putting down my lack of motivation down to being back amongst my comparatively really tatty sadly no original features left cluttered late 1940's semi after the glamour and splendour of the Noel Coward patronised Midland and to being somewhat in awe of Katrina Palmer after being at her Uncoupling performance at the Henry Moore Institute last night.  I really enjoyed the piece and I adore her Necropolitan Line which makes me smile - especially at the line 'a handful of lingering goths'. I hope to use similar lightbox lighting for my images. It's an immersive piece - using lighting, physical objests, images, soundtrack - verbal and musical and I'm slightly in awe of it. Plus I had a slight wobble as she is also working on St George's Field but then I realised that shouldn't really be a cause for concern on my part as our approaches and resultant work though similar in some ways are different in more.

Mmm as ever lots of food for thought there. Also providing food for thought are the exhibitions I went to at the South Square Gallery in Thornton last week. You can see what's on here  - I especially enjoyed Madeleine Piri's cyanotypes and liquid photo emulsion images of life in a russian village - the potatoes look so real and vibrant that you feel you could pick them put of the picture (she is also the lady who taught me how to cyanotype) and Mariel Borst Pauwels transferred images on wood and paintings. Both had a thematic consistency - a phrase I used when discussing which of my images to take in for the silent crit with my husband. He suggested some images which weren't part of the St George's Field sequence and I said 'but there's no thematic consistency' than paused and howled 'shoot me now '- I'm being slowly but surely subsumed into using and speak 'artspeak'....which is a mix of both 'argh' and 'yay' on my part.

Other things which are making me think are end of year show - had my first look at the space (Studio 24) on Mabgate last week and bits of it would be perfect for the burial plot sized hangings I'm hoping to make and I also wondered about its history and what was made there. I know a little of the history of the area - well specifically the Quarry Hill disinternment case of the early 1840's and it was nice to be able to tell the gallery owners what Mab means and the unfounded but persistent rumours of tunnels between Leeds Parish Church and Mabgate so the priests could visit the Mabs (it's slang for prostitute) without being seen en route by their parishioners.  I like it as a space but am concerned about how our work is going to look together in that space as we all have very practices and approaches but maybe some thematic continuity will become apparent as the time comes nearer....

 So that's where I've been and where I'm at...off to go and eat some food now and think about stuff some more over dinner.




  

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.....