MA-Ness Year 2 Term 1 Week 4: 'it's the most wonderful time of the year..', crap kids digital, making an exhibition of yourself, coimetromania, returned unsold work, words and lovely old cameras.

this weeks post it notes with spoils from last weeks trip to Manchesterford

home made work carrier - didn't fancy struggling with A2 folder on bus but A3 just bit too small so made one out of carrier bag and chopped down cardboard - did the job and much easier to manoeuvere   

laying prints out on bed - as only space in house that was nearly same size as exhibition space but beware perils of cat jumping on it....

sneak preview of work at St Johns Church - background looks much redder in real life...

I found it quite difficult to get into the groove writing this last week for some reason and I had to force myself to sit there and finish it - hence my writing MUST FINISH BLOG POST BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ELSE' and I think I'm going to have to be equally strict with myself over the next few weeks as I'll have to balance doings things I'm not especially keen on (like starting to write dissertation, ironing, washing up) with things I am keen on like taking and making pictures as well as making sure I take some time out to do things which aren't housework or coursework related.

Plus this is in a context of being very busy indeed - and even though the bulk of the things I am busy with are delightful, it doesn't make them any less tiring and I need to remember that too. This week is full of lovely things like festival launches, cinema and theatre trips, exhibition launches and tutorials and so is the following week but then it calms down a little before the Gothic Studies Conference (part of the Gothic Manchester Festival) so whilst last week my priorities were:

1. exhibition
2. paper
3. dissertation 

this week they are:

1. paper - have drafted outline of what I want to say but need to flesh it out now and write it down so I'm hopefully not umming and erring as I speak on the day. I did spend an afternoon last week sorting out the images I want to use and resizing them. A boring task - well the resizing bit is but a necessary one as it makes things so much easier to email and sort out and at least that time consuming bit is done now.
2. dissertation - at least I know what my topic is and what I want to say and I have done some reading on it but I need to do quite a bit more before I sit down and actually start writing the thing. Plus I need to stop thinking about Paul Calf (as created and played so brilliantly by Steve Coogan) talking about 'stewdents' with utter contempt and 'dissitations'...

I like to do as much stuff as I can in advance as possible as I hate rushing round at the last minute feeling panicked and stressed. Partly because I hate feeling like that anyway but also because that in turn makes me make mistakes more readily. So fingers crossed I can fit in some reading and writing in amongst the gadding about this week. I'm also hoping to get into a habit of putting into a word document a list of all the things I'm reading and watching in a Harvard Reference style so that job is done too...instead of scrabbling about when it comes to hand in time and I'm panicking trying to find the information...

There was a really interesting programme on C5 last week (and part 2 is tomorrow night - Tuesday 6th October that is at 9pm) and unlike a lot of their so-called documentary output, this was well considered and thought through. It was called Body Donors and featured interviews with people suffering from terminal illnesses who wanted to donate their bodies to science, their families, and the technicians and teachers who then prepare and use their bodies. You can see the details about it here. It was accompanied by a warning that the programme would include 'graphic views of dead bodies' but there was no warning that it would also include heartfelt and harrowing emotional scenes that would make you cry. Not that you should be warned about that as such - but why we as a society are worried about the effects of seeing dead bodies as opposed to talking about the process that leads to that and what emotions are involved struck me as incongruous to say the least.

And that got me to thinking about how skewed as a society our values are - there are rarely warnings that there are going to be graphic scenes of (albeit fake) dissection in programmes like CSI (though there might be one re violent scenes) and that murder is such a run of the mill topic for entertainment.

I'm not complaining about that as most of my tv programme watching for entertainment is murder related and I have often only half joked that if a programme doesn't contain an autopsy then I'm not interested in watching it. I love Columbo - but it has to be proper 70's Columbo with huge angular cars and wonderful 70's fashions. Murder She Wrote - but again the 80's ones though to be fair I watch that more to spot wigs (it has some shockers) and the repeated use of cliches and tropes within it and for the end shot which invariably features Jessica Fletcher grinning inanely. CSI (but not CSI Miami as I find that too much of an insult to intelligence)  Law and Order, Law and Order Criminal Intent (I am ever so slightly in love with Detective Goren) and Law and Order Special Victims Unit. Morse, Lewis....and rarely have any of these programmes carried a warning and most were made to be broadcast and watched in the days before on demand viewing pre-watershed.

The interviews in Body Donor appeared sensitively done and it was quite heartbreaking to see those with the terminal illness and their loved ones talking - not so much about the donation itself - they viewed that as a way of making sense and taking some control back from the illness they were suffering from (cancer and luekemia) but hearing them talk about how it was affecting their loved ones and then listening to those loved ones talk about how they were going to cope without them made tears come to my eyes. Though maybe that's also because various friends of mine have been either dealing with this issue themselves recently or been bereaved and of course it reminded me of all the people and creatures I'm missing too.

It's a world removed from the way bodies were procured for dissection in the 18th and 19th century  with no consent from or respect for the donors - though it would appear that those societies were more open to discussing death. Perhaps because they were more surrounded by it then and it was more of an everyday and less medicalised process. The pain of bereavement was I'm sure no less though - even if you believed that your loved one had gone to a better place (as most of the poetry I've read on tombstones would suggest) and that you would be reunited when you too died, it wouldn't stop the heart rending pain of bereavement and you missing them like hell in the meantime.

Jay Ruby talks about this disconnect far more eloquently that I have in his book from 1995 called Secure The Shadow which is primarily about the practice of non medical post mortem photography in America but it is also about so much more. He talks of how we rarely see a real death in everyday life though we do occasionally see them in news stories (often with a warning that we find it distressing) and yet we  are confronted with hundreds of them in entertainment settings. Plus there was a time when cemeteries used to be designed as not just body disposal sites but also recreational sites - whereas now to most they seem to be places to be actively avoided.

It will come as no surprise that reading more of this book is on my to do list for this week. Plus it also ties in nicely to one of the new words I met this week and is in the title of this post COIMETROMANIA which means an 'abnormal attraction to and desire to visit cemeteries'. It is nice to have a diagnosis at last.....

I've been using my crap kids digital again this week - technically it's one of the worst cameras ever. Fixed focus, no zoom, no internal memory (I've added black insulation tape to the the battery cover so as to avoid a repeat of the batteries becoming dislodged when you take it out of your pocket/bag and so losing my pics of St George's Field in the gloom) warped lens, inability to capture colour properly, room for only 24 pictures if you want them at anything even vaguely approaching a reasonable resolution but ---- it's also the one of the most fun I've ever used even if I can't really see much on the stamp sized screen on the back and it's light and small. Plus I love the slightly warped off colour pics it produces - they have an other worldly quality to them that I really like.

I bought another camera this week - the one pictured above. It is a Zeiss Ikon Cocarette which according to Camerapedia was made between 1926 and 1930 - making this a Weimar Republic Era camera (I also have an AGFA Billy Clack from the mid 1930's making it a Nazi Era camera) I spotted this in a charity shop on my way home on from college on Friday and went back the following day to have a closer look at it with my much more knowledgeable about the technical side of things when it comes to cameras husband. It goes without saying of course that we decided to buy it. Mostly because it looks in really good nick and usuable (it takes 120 film which is still readily available and developable)  but also because it came with handwritten on german notepaper instructions. I wonder who wrote those, when and why? The leather case is in really good condition too - the purple velvety inside is still vivid and threadful. It is stamped with the sellers details Photo-Porst Nurnberg - a photographic suppliers chain which is still going and was founded in 1919. I cannot wait to use this camera but am going to wait til the weather is at it's brightest as previous experience tells me this will work best in 'sunny 16' conditions.   I am also wondering what pictures have been taken on this camera, who looked at what through it's viewfinder and how it ended up here in Leeds...plus it was nice to overhear one of the sales assistants say to the other when we were leaving that the camera was clearly going to a good home and would be used as well as looked after and how she liked when that happened.

A couple of other things caught my attention this week - namely phrases like 'vectors of infection' though I'm not sure where that was from now, and thinking about the social purpose of pictures - portraits in particular after watching Simon Schama's programme about portrait paintings. It's on BBC2 on Wednesdays at 9pm  and you can read about it here.

Last weeks episode concentrated upon paintings of the powerful - Churchill, Elizabeth 1st, Charles II and Victoria amongst others. He talked about the role photography had in promulgating Victoria's image and ideals but there were a couple of points when I found myself tutting at the television (and not just at the usual unnecessary hagiographic reverence used for the members of the House of Windsor) - he said something about Victoria understanding that she needed to be visible by her subjects. I appreciate that it was a programme primarily about portraiture and you cannot fit everything about a subject into an hours long programme but one of the problems with Victoria during her reign was the fact that after Albert's death she didn't go out in public for a long time - Albert dies in 1861 and she isn't publicly seen again until 1866, in spite of the clamouring of some of her subjects and the attempts of prime ministers to persuade her that she needed to. So it is a bit disingenuous to say she that she understood she needed to be visible by her subjects - she did, but she ignored it for a long time and it was only after a lot of cajoling and badgering and seeing the albeit shortlived success of the Paris Commune in 1871 which boosted republican sentiment that she went out and about again.

I find myself shouting and tutting a lot at the television these days - a bit more in depth knowledge and more rounded view than is being shown or explained in the programme is a difficult thing (and anything that deals with the victorian period, bodysnatching, photography are those kinds of programmes for me as those areas are of such interest to me and central to my own research) and it makes me wonder how much has been missed out of programmes that I've watched and thought had taught me something when in actual fact they've probably barely skimmed the surface and as a result I'm nowhere near as well informed about a subject as I thought I was....

The other thing you can see in big capital letters on the post it note are PERILS OF NOT HAVING A BIG FLOOR SPACE AND USING BED - CAT! which refers to my trying to get the images ready I had made for the Out of the Shadows exhibition at St Johns Church (full details of all the Love Arts Festival happenings available here and Out of the Shadows is on page 23 of the brochure) or rather deciding where abouts in relation to each other I wanted to put them. Me and a fellow exhibitor had measured the boards we could use and the only comparable space that was nearly big enough for me at home was the double bed. So I decided to use that and started laying them out and making a plan of what I wanted where when Mapp jumped up on them and put her back paw through one of them - something I hopefully unobviously fixed with black marker pen and invisible tape. It's the perils of not having a dedicated studio space - and not closing the door but as she normally stears well clear I didn't think it necessary. Oh well lesson learnt for future.

The other lesson I learnt was - check the double sided tape you buy in advance and think you're being all organised with by attaching it to the edges of the images you want to use, because if it's like the tape Wilko's sell as double sided it won't work. It will instead have you tutting and swearing and pulling at it trying to see where the backing tape is - but theirs has no backing tape and is instantly sticky both sides (WHY?) and so there is no point attaching it in advance to the images as then they'd only stick to themselves. Cue getting to college the following morning as soon as library and shop opens and buying double sided tape there which does have backing tape so it can be affixed to image and then taken to where you want to to stick it without mishap...I took advantage of the tables in the library to cut the tape to fix to the images but by then I was getting a bit flapped as I felt like I was running out of time - even though I wasn't really but after the previous weeks key related confusion I didn't want to be the last person at St Johns Church. So it's not always as straight as I would like but as it's mostly invisible - hopefully you'll won't be able to see where I went a bit wonky with it.

Believe it or not - I did use a spirit level to attach the pictures to the board but as the board wasn't entirely level this became a bit of a moot point so I ended up doing things more by my probably just as wonky eye. Oh well. It's not perfect but overall I am pleased with it and that is the main thing plus as a chum said people have different expectations of art in spaces that are not like todays traditional white cube gallery space and the difference too between those exhibitions which are well funded and those that are done on a comparative shoestring. So now I just have the nervousness of whether or not people will go look at it and what they think of it and whether or not I'll get to hear of those thoughts....

But it did make me think of how in come circles curating has become somewhat of a pejorative term - I heard someone say 'oh you can curate a paper bag these days' - showing no understanding of how difficult it is to put things together in a way which works - either in a way to help bring out what the artist is trying to get across, or to highlight the connections between objects or illustrate a narrative.

To say nothing of the practical skill of trying to ensure things are level, visible, and exhibited in such a way as to show them at their best - for this exhibition we weren't allowed to attach things directly to the existing information boards in the church but to material that has been hung over the boards.

Initially I thought I would attach them to the material by way of pins, black ribbon (in a nod to victorian mourning customs) and bulldog clips but then I realised that whilst this would not only be fiddly - it would also detract from the clean-ness of the images I was using.

I still want to use that as a hanging arrangement but in a space where the images would be hanging like that in mid air from the ceiling so that their see-through-ness would also be visible rather than use it to hold them directly against something. So in this instance I went for double sided tape as it was a cleaner and less fussy way to present the image. The ribbon bulldog clip arrangement would add in other circumstances but detract in this one I fear.  


The title of this post begins 'it's the most wonderful time of the year' - a line from a xmas song. Well bah humbug to xmas (though there are aspects of it that I am very fond of) I am of course referring to Halloween and the shops are full of wondrous skully goodness at the moment which I may have purchased bits of over the last few days. Coco Chanel said a woman could never be too rich or too thin - I say you can never have enough skulls.    

I got my unsold work back (all 3 pieces of it) from Woodend gallery in Scarborough this weekend. I'm a little bit disappointed but not surprised as I don't think they were especially commercial in the grand scheme of things - though some of the most commercial of my work. It's kind of nice to have them back though really as I can put them in something else now. And it's nice to know that they have been on show in one of my favourite seaside towns.  

I'm sure there was something else I wanted to write about but I have forgotten what it was and I have ticked off all the things on my post it note and draft post plan so that's it for now. And so will begin this next weeks thoughts....oh no actually I've remembered - it's almost the happy accident/serendipitous* nature of my studies at times - like thinking 'oh I'll just have a rummage through the books the library are chucking out and finding a quote from someone's diary in which they talk about putting black ribbon through their underwear, or like today when my work is in an exhibition called Out Of The Shadows when the book I'm reading (after finishing The Help last night for WI Bookclub - a thought provoking and interesting read) The Tattoed Girl by Joyce Carol Oates has a character in it who has written a book called The Shadows....

*though for some reason I hate the word serendipity as it has too many hippie connotations for me..







   

MA-Ness Term 3 Week 9 Show, Talking, Drinks Tokens and Tat.

this weeks post it note - again not so full as others but this flanked by some gloriously tacky fridge magnets brought all the way from the home of Dracula himself - Transylvania............

A lovely chum of mine has just come back from a Dracula Society trip to Transylvania and along with some other goodies - a prayer card featuring St George,some holy perfume and a mug featuring a lady with not very much on and a blood splattered knife between her teeth she brought me back these gems. Both featuring an image of Vlad the Impaler - they are gloriously badly executed and whilst ostensibly the same differ in the way the vines and the grapes, his imperial headgear and his blood ravaged lips have been painted. I like also how both have come from the same mould but thanks to the different placing of the magnet on the back of each one they look as if he is facing in different directions. Utterly wonderful and I look forward to placing them on the fridge later.

Otherwise this last week has been overshadowed by lurgy (again!!) and I am bored of coughing and aching and feeling so under the weather plus my heart is still breaking and broken from the death of my beloved Lucia. She would often keep me company in the work room - either sunbathing on the windowledge behind the computer monitor or in her favourite cardboard box which she used to squeeze into (it's sides are bowed) on the landing just outside. Mapp has spent some time in all of Lucia's spaces apart from this one - I hope she takes over this one too at some point.

So although my heart isn't really in it 100 percent I have made myself carry on doing things and there's been time when I've been able to be distracted enough by what I've been doing to put heartache aside for a bit or like on Thursday night when it was the delightfully dark musings and stories of David Sedaris read by the author himself which provided much welcome distraction and laughter. I doubt there are many people who could describe having a benign tumour removed and wanting to feed it to a snapper turtle with a growth on its head and part of its foot missing with such wit and warmth. He was very wonderful indeed and if you haven't read anything by him then you must and if you can go see him give a reading then you must do that too. He's also not a fan of people taking pictures of anything and everything on mobile phones and had signs up saying no photos please at his book signing table and as far as I could tell people abided by his request.

His use of words is exquisite - scalpel like in their exactness and words are something that I keep coming back to time and time again as part of my studies which both amuses and bemuses me seeing as as my work is mostly in a visual format as in I take photographs and then make the resultant images into cyanotypes or try copying them onto canvas using pva glue - without much success so far but I suspect that is refinement of technique/materials needed as opposed to the actual technique itself not working as the image did transfer - just not  as well as I would have liked...

And now the formatting of this blog is going skewiff again - part of the reason I use blogger (aside from it being free) is because compared to wordpress I find it easy to use but it can be a right ball-ache sometimes when it comes to formatting, it doesn't always insert pictures where you ask/tell it to so then you find yourself moving text around and it then centres the text when you actually want it justified to the left and no amount of highlighting the text and clicking that alignment makes it align that text but it does for the text after the picture......and then the 4th time of telling it to do it it does.....oh FFS - why can't things just work first time when you tell them to?

This kind of technology fail - either of the person attempting to use it or on the technology itself drives me witless. It happened last week at college when I tried to log out after doing some printing - it wouldn't let me and I had to go and disturb the computer chaps in their lair to get it to let me to log out (force quit apparently) and yesterday my lovely fridge magnet donating chum and I had similar issues trying to get the chromecast thingy to work as she had bought a copy of the Skull (1965, F Francis, Amicus UK) for us to watch online and it took us ages to get it to work - made me realise why I prefer having a physical in your hands product as opposed to a streamed ethereal electrons malarkey.

As I've said before you know where you are with physical stuff and it's often much easier to spot the reason why it's not working....anyway we did get it to work on the laptop at least - it juddered so much when 'cast' to the television that we gave up watching it on there as it was making us feel sick. And it was worth it - both Mr Lee (RIP) and Mr Cushing gave very fine performances and the story though unlikely was at least true to its own logic and I really enjoyed it.

So got sidetracked there - was talking about words and their part in art - in what is usually perceived as a visual medium and whilst I do write a bit and have performed semi autobiographical monologues at Headingley Literature Festival I think of myself primarily as a visual as opposed to word artist but so much of art is reliant upon words - either on the words used to describe it, the application you make to get the chance of being in an exhibition, the grant application, the publicity.....plus a fellow artist talked on Saturday about artists statements and asked the question 'are they an insight or a barrier?' which is something I think about a lot - my immediate reaction on reading some artists statements is often one of bewilderment or on occasion ' oh ffs get over yourself' but it's a treat when I read one that I can understand and offers insight too. She also talked about looking at artists sketchbooks too and how insightful that can be - she'd just bought one of Frieda Kahlo's and I'm still plowing my way through the Derek Jarman one I bought at the Whitworth - it really is wonderful and if you get chance to peek at an artists sketchbook then you should....

Plus all this is feeding into the ideas I've got for my dissertation which is due in December which might sound like a long time off but it isn't really and the sooner I get started on it the sooner it'll be in a draft version and I can begin to refine and polish it...this course is about academic hoop jumping after all and I want to jump those hoops as well as I can. John Waters and his comments about art being an elitist club and having to learn the language to take part is one I keep thinking of. That plus his wonderful speech on being given an honorary doctorate which if you haven't seen you must for it is wonderful - warm, inspiring and witty - and you can see it here.

The other article I read this week which also made me think about the accessibility of art is Stewart Lee's interview from last June with Julian Cope - and you can read it in full (should you wish to) here but the bit that stood out for me was the section in which he says of his book 'It's demanding but great art is demanding' and I can certainly see his point.......but.....still not sure.....

I had a tutorial last week , and I showed my tutor some of the pieces I've been working on for the past few weeks and as ever my tutor gave me some useful feedback and ideas on how to develop them - I'd been very pleased with the 'happy accident' when putting away some acetate copies away on top of the original images and making images from that but I hadn't developed it further - but I have now by layering acetates and photocopies on top of one another and so creating new images and then layering that new one upon the existing acetates and copies - so that an image of two cross topped memorials from Undercliffe Cemetery has now become a multi crossed image with 5 layers of crosses - it would make a lovely pattern for fabric (an idea from a chum commenting on an image I posted on Farcebook of me stood next to my work in the windows as part of the MA end of year work in progress show) and I can't wait to make it into an acetate and then make a cyanotype with it......

.....the process also reminded me of a film about WG Sebald (called Patience After Sebald) which I half watched a while ago in which someone described his process of creating his distinctive b+w prints was take the pictures on colour 35mm film, get them developed at Snappy Snaps, then photocopy them in b+w and keep photocopying the photocopies til they have the right level of murkiness. The images I've made aren't murky - well I don't think they are but I am really liking them and they are made from multiple photocopies...

The other thing which I thought about a lot this week was a meme which went round Farcebook from PetaPixel in which it showed 3 different image formats 120 film, 35 mm film and an sd card with the tag 12 exposures 6 are awesome, 36 exposures 6 are awesome hundreds of exposures 6 good results and it made me nod and go 'yep' - me and my husband refer to this as 'the money shot' and there is a good definition of it here - we use it in its non pornographic definition and it's true - amongst the many pictures we take - there is usually (hopefully!!) a few that stand out and so are referred to as 'the money shot'. My current money shots are mostly coming from the pictures I took in St Mary's Churchyard in Whitby, Cleethorpes Cemetery, St George's Field and Undercliffe Cemetery...can you guess what they all have in common? 

Curation and curating are also words and actions playing on my mind - there's a school of thought that says they have been so overused as to become meaningless and I'm not sure what my thoughts are on it as yet but the interview I read with Richard Boon (manager of the Buzzcocks and a librarian) in which his response to the question: 

'As a librarian you are a custodian of words. There’s a lot of misuse of language in the media. One that irks me is ‘Curator. ‘What do you think?'
was 

'It is a hugely misused word. It should have an academic context and imply knowledge, expertise in a given field. My daughter is assistant curator of a collection at the Science Museum; some hipster with a beard in Shoreditch is NOT curating a coffee bar, he’s selling coffee. Do you curate your oranges in a supermarket in the green grocer display? No! It’s really sloppy use.' and I can't help but agree....you can read the rest of his interview here

I don't know where the phrase 'surviving memorials' on the post it note comes from or to what it refers exactly though it does make me think of an Ausonius quote I have used - namely that 'death comes even to stone monuments and the names upon them'.

So onto the main events of last week - the end of year show opening and giving a talk on Photography and Victorian Death Customs to Darling Roses WI. I'd finished putting up my work last week so only had to do a couple of finishing touches - eg putting away a ladder, putting the empty drinks can I'd left on the windowledge in the recycling and that kind of thing. It was good to see the MA room and ante room filled with work and I've never seen the college so full with people looking at stuff - it was far too hot and far too crowded at times and I am looking forward to going back in and having a proper look at some of the things that caught my eye on Friday night, I did manage to have more than one glass of wine too thanks to chums of mine not wanting to use their drinks tokens and it was lovely to see lots of my chums making their way to the college and down the corridor to see some of my work and massive thanks to all those who came - learning points for next time are: try not to have lurgy...and know that tracing paper attached to windows with double sided tape in sunshine warps slightly so that what was absolutely flush to the window edges when you left it the previous week will look a teeny bit saggy in places when you come back to it.....still A2 tracing paper and a free lightbox ie window are a good way to guage what things will look like if you have them blown them up to burial plot size instead.......plus it is lovely when people tell you how much they like your work.....

The other thing which took up a lot of my time last week was preparing for the talk I gave to Darling Roses WI group on Saturday morning at St Johns Church Hall - a lovely slightly musty smelling hall next to St Johns Church which fittingly enough has some very lovely victorian gravestones and they listened very attentively to my talking about cyanotypes, the meanings behind some of the symbols used on gravestones, the social etiquette of mourning, the history of cemeteries in Leeds and focusing in particular on the history of St George's Fields and a bit about the bodysnatching scandals in Leeds and the Anatomy Act of 1832 and the shame that is the laying flat of the subscription graves in St George's Fields to be used as lining for pathways....I was struggling a bit - lurgy-wise and my voice was very croaky but it held out and I got lovely feedback and have been asked back and asked by another WI group to talk too so it's all good.

Well I think that's enough for now - got lots to do this week and here's hoping this lurgy will let up and let me do them....
and I really must sort out the white balance on the digital camera - those walls are actually white....but here is a pic of me in front of my work in progress called Mourning.

MA-Ness Week 10 - Ongoing Deliberations Of A Happy Accident, Symposiums and Thinking.....

this weeks post it note -
found some yellow ones and thought I'd use those for a change

The eagle eyed amongst you may notice there aren't as many scribbles on this weeks post it notes and unlike the last couple of weeks when I wrote this blog post at the end of the actual week in which it took place I'm back to my more usual Monday. I've been both really busy am symposiumed (and if that isn't a word, it should be) out and also distracted by mundane everyday stuff like the fact that the boiler has gone on the blink and this is both inconvenient is also disruptive and potentially extremely expensive....oh well.

So I shall start with the development of a happy accident instead - whilst putting away the prints on top of the copies of them I'd made on acetate so I could use them as negatives for cyanotyping (as I have said before the irony of being a self proclaimed goth and lover of all things dark being reliant upon sunshine to create images is not lost on me) I put one away upside down and as I looked at it I realised that I loved how it looked (you can read about it here) and so I have been further developing this happy accident by deliberately placing the acetate copies on the original printed images in different ways and then photographing with a digital camera the results, cropping or enlarging the bits of the resultant overlaid images that I really like and then making them into prints and copying them onto acetate to make new cyanotypes with. But when it's been prime cyanotyping weather I've been inside listening to papers so I haven't made any yet....

first cyanotype of this image

example of overlaid and further inverted in photoshop version

But I've also been experimenting with these resultant images in photoshop, the image above started out as one my husband took of me a while back at the Hepworth on film which I scanned the negative of into the computer. I didn't have the scanner set quite like we normally do and I preferred the vividness of the scan I did though sadly I cannot replicate it for other scans as I'm not quite sure what I did.

Initially I converted it into a negative for a cyanotype by inverting it and upping the levels and used that to make the cyanotype on tracing paper on the top, but by relayering the acetate on the print and then inverting that image I made the bottom one. I also discovered that if you then played with inverting it again and again - what was originally a b+w image on b+w film becomes a kind of yellowy or blue colour.

Obviously it's blue as a cyanotype but it's only been electronic versions of b+w images that I've been messing with in photoshop...might then try and make some further cyanotypes with those or print the resultant prints on fabric or tracing paper - must do some more lumen prints too.

So last term I was angsting more about doing more reading than doing, this term I've been angsting that I've been doing more doing than reading but it is great to be doing more doing. Though of course with this weeks symposiums I haven't been doing much doing either - other than listening and thinking.

Am hoping to rectify this inbalance of doing this week though and fingers crossed there will be some lovely sunshine soon instead of this not very bright grey murk...I could balance the light box on top of boxes of cat food again but I prefer to do it and get better results with direct sunshine. One of my fellow ma-ers told me he'd bought a sunbed for cheaps off Ebay and could do a cyanotype in about 4 minutes. And as tempting as that is I a)haven't got the money for that at the moment even if it is cheaps and b) I like the slow contemplation and ability to go off and do other things that ordinary sunshine cyanotyping takes and c)no room to store one - house already looks a bit like Steptoes Yard (though I would love and make room for a human skeleton and a bear) and last but not least d) buying a sunbed would be a step far too far for this darkness loving goth......

So the symposiums I went to - the first was an afternoon in the Treehouse at York University. Organised by the British Art Research School it featured papers on the memorialisation of anglo indian royalty, the visual portrayal of suttee in visual culture, the Fawsley Family representation in heraldic terms, an analysis of the role of animals in art - or rather the lack of analysis and appreciation of the role of animals in the creation of art, an analysis of some of the work by James Thornhill and his possessions and the 2 papers which made the most impression on me: the depiction of death in late medieval funerary sculpture by Dr Christina Welch and an analysis of the relationship between modern spiritualism and sculpture by Michelle Foot.

They made an impression partly because of the obvious enthusiasm of the speakers for their subject and the engaging way in which they talked about it and used slides which showed various aspects of what they were talking about well and partly because of the subject matter. I am visually drawn to cadaveric emaciated representations of bodies in burial shrouds atop of graves and the reasons why this representation was chosen by and or for the deceased memorial, the different symbols within them, their massive expense and how and why they rose in and out of fashion. 'Transi Barbie' will stay with me for some time as will her description of the work she is doing with anatomical artist Eleanor Crook - and you can read about it here.

I'm not sure when I first read about the work of Harry Price into the alleged haunting of Borley Rectory but it was that that got me interested in spiritualism (to read about - I have never participated in a spiritualist session) and again its popularity and comparative decline and it was interesting to hear an overview of this and see images of a very striking sculpture featuring a woman medium and her veiled spirit guide by George Henry Paulin but sadly I have no images for that - the speaker was given special access to view it and I cannot find an image on the web but you can read about his other work here.

The second symposium was practice led research phd ones at Leeds University - there were 8 in total and some were really heavy going word/jargonwise and I both struggled to follow and to understand them. Plus a couple of the presenters committed what is a big no no for me - namely read out some of their slides, I don't like this as I don't find it very engaging as I can read something quicker than someone can read it out to me (though not necessarily understand it) and I found myself doodling more and more in my notepad - a sure sign I'm not completely engaged with something. And I found myself writing a poem too - something I have not done in age, it needs a bit of work til I feel able to share it though.

I'm not sure how much of this was the presentation skills of the presenter or my misunderstanding/un-understanding of what they were saying, but there were a few good bits that stood out - Louise Atkinson's overview of her most recent curatorial projects, John Rooneys research into his Journeys on the A664 (which included pictures of the orange buses on my childhood and reminiscences on my part about Manchester...)

and most local Adam Stone's Site Orientated Investigation which included tantalising details and glimpses behind the scenes at the Merrion Centre (which also gave me the opportunity to see a copy of the Merrion Centre 50th birthday book with my name in it - though it contains none of the photographs I took though hopefully some will figure in the upcoming exhibition...as a celebratory commercial document I knew they probably wouldn't be interested in my uncommercial photography style but they used the phrases 'we will pay you whether we use the images or not' and 'you retain full copyright' plus it was worth it for a nose about behind the scenes though sadly I couldn't persuade them to let me into the old Odeon cinema...) there were also intriguing images by Fillipa Dobson and Jo McGonigal. It also gave me food for thought as to whether or not to pursue the research led phd route myself.....but am really getting ahead of myself there as need to get my MA first.

And then Friday was the most enjoyable of the symposiums (though of course you could just be forgiven for thinking that that is entirely institutional favouritism on my part - but it wasn't) namely the one at Leeds College of Art on The Process Continues which included presentations which looked at the teaching of art and creation of undergraduate art syllabi, the work of Tom Hudson in Brazil which included footage of a person being in/being an art work whilst smoking a fag (oh the days of being to smoke on the job) an overview of the National Arts Education Archive, Writing As Archive, and my two favourite presentations - Embodied Dreaming In The Archive by Sheila Gaffney in which she talked about the work she created and the inspiration for it when she was artist in residence at Cliffe Castle and which looked at how memories can be made tangible. My other favourite was Personal Archives and Oral History by Paul Bennett Todd - beautiful photographs of objects treasured by his grandfather which he curated after his death and words about those objects and what they meant. Both were heartfelt, revealing, moving and inspirational.

All of which is giving me (as ever) much food for thought - in terms of the work I do, how I present it, how I explain it to others, what form it takes, and how much to deliberately reveal of myself and how much you unintentionally reveal too...and how I've still not rearranged the archive visits I've been planning (I was beset with abcess related toothache and tooth removal and so had to cancel my visits) and that must be top of my to do lists for tomorrow.

Other thoughts occurring to me are to do with coincidence - namely last week when my fellow ma-ers were doing their presentations one of patterns inspired by urban graffiti made me think of some of the designs revealed at the 1951 Festival Of Britain as they share a similar liveliness and optimism and both are lovely and as a throwaway remark I said I was a teeny bit obsessed with Skylon. Because I am and you can see images of it here.  And then another fellow ma-er talked of his childhood and his memories of Skylon and its influence upon his sculptural work - I am envious of his experience of Skylon in the flesh as it were. What a fabulous thing it was.

The other thing I've been thinking about (again thanks to a fellow ma-er) is plumbers block or rather the idea that only artists and writers get a block as people like plumbers or nurses don't have the luxury of developing a block and just have to slog on through and whilst I think that's partly true I also think people can fall out of interest with their job (and some people never have the luxury of having a job they are enamoured with to begin with) and so slogging through is what you have to do. I have got into a much better more productive habit of starting work (and I have lots to do over the next few days as it is portfolio hand in time in couple of weeks) and keeping notes and planning to do work but today I have really struggled with it - it took me til after 3pm to get settled to do this and it's taken me over 4 hours to write - as I have been so distracted by non art other stuff going on which is hopefully resolved now....

And if you've got this far - thank you.....

   

MA-Ness Week 9 and a half - Happy Accidents, Experiments in Hemming and Curating-Ness

I try to be organised and get things done in a timely and sensible fashion eg going to post office on same day as going to supermarket as the post office is on the way and that kind of thing hence today when I'd finished ironing my husbands work shirts I left the iron plugged in and had a quick experiment at using wondaweb or rather generic instant hemming material from local shops habadashery section and magic tape as hemming device on the silk organza I did some practice prints on last week.

Getting ready to cut and iron 

end result on sample piece from edge of test piece

Tis fiddly stuff but so far the wondaweb/generic instant hemming material is winning as is it the least visible, most flexible and least fraying - but of course it does mean that I will need to account for this when printing images so as to leave a big enough edge around images so it can be hemmed this way. It's still slightly fiddly but I think it will be better for both my sanity and fingers than trying to hem it either by hand or by machine.


 

Happy Accidental Layering - please ignore reflection of light bulb....

I was putting some of the images I've been using for cyanotyping away last week in A4 plastic wallets in a folder when the image I had taken of a chum dressed in a Marie Antoinette inspired costume applying lipstick and by accident I put the see through acetate the other way round on top of the original image and this created another image which I love the look of and I hope to make another cyanotype of it soon - when it stops raining that is and I get to a photocopier to copy it onto acetate. You can just about see his ghost face either side of the image. Can't wait to get started on that one......

And last but not least for week 9 and a half thoughts on curating-ness, went to see an exhibition at the White Cloth Gallery on Saturday featuring photographs of urban exploration by emerging photographers. Some of the individual images were beautiful - especially ones of abandoned factories where nature was reclaiming the old machinery and winding green tendrils round no longer used wheels and cogs by Jemma Roe, I also especially loved the one by Joe Stenson of an autopsy table and the one of a skull diagram and old siemens manual by George McConville but I suspect I loved these because of their subject matter as opposed to their actual aestetic. It got me to thinking about the overall space and how it had been filled - it's not quite the traditional white gallery space as it has columns and windows in places you might not expect and it is also a bar that serves food so there are sofas and tables and chairs in one of the rooms. Not all the pictures were the same size, the bulk were in the same black with cream mount frames though and as far as I could make out they weren't put up in a all by one artist first or all one location together. It made me think about how I would have put them up in the same space - if finances weren't a factor then I would have have had a few of the images blown up massively and put alone on main walls and then filled the surrounding walls with a victorian style salon approach of everything on wall at once. But once again it got me thinking about context - not just the context in which images are made and then how you show them......