Promise Sticking, More Image Transferring, Colour Boosting, Boosters In General, Where Are Memories Held? Film-ness

 

Matte medium image transfer piece in progress - still need to remove last few bits of paper, trim and sew excess fabric, wrap outside of embroidery hoop in bias binding (possibly purple) and decide on a title - I usually draw on chapter titles from novels by my favourite nineteenth century authors - Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins...this one is in monochrome as monochrome is my preferred colour-scheme to work in.
Examples of other matte medium transfers I have done can be seen here and here

this weeks notes, the nail varnish I'm going to paint my nails with later whilst watching Drag Race - I much prefer Dragula as its inclusivity and menu of drag, filth, horror and glamour are some of my very favourite things...so whilst my heart and soul now belong to the Boulet Brothers there's still a bit of it that has space for RuPaul...also pictured is a bag of a shower cap I bought in a beautifully old fashioned chemist in Buxton in the 'before times' because its sombre old fashioned-ness really makes me smile. 

It's still early days but as this is the third blog post I've written in the last three weeks I'm feeling cautiously hopeful that I am getting my blogging mojo back. I'm certainly finding it a good way of marshalling my thoughts again in these ongoing uncertain and frightening times, and aside from it helping me I've also had positive feedback on it which is also a boost.

Boosts of whatever kind are still very welcome as anxiety is still kicking my arse. I've not got back my going out to indoor places with lots of other people mojo as yet but am hoping getting my anti covid booster jab is going to help with that along with still taking things slowly but surely - baby steps, baby steps.  

Speaking of boosters - my current mood boosters are: watching or listening to the Boulet Brothers, the rather wonderful selection of ghost and uncanny stories on BBC Sounds and I-Player, going for a walk, reading a book that completely distracts and transports me - currently enjoying A Single Thread by Tracey Chevalier very much and painting my nails. I love nail varnish and tho I'm not especially skillful about applying it but there is something very mood lifting looking down to see shiny colourful unchipped nails.

Due to being a dyed in the wool old school goth almost all my clothes are black and often the only pop of colour about me is my fringe which is blue or my nails (if I've painted them) or my lips if I've got make up on. I don't find black a miserable colour to wear or look at or be surrounded by but I'm reminded of reading something Brix Smith Start wrote about bright colours being a form of prozac for her but annoyingly I cannot find the quote. I don't have to surround my self with colour to cheer myself but a bright pop of it somewhere along the line is nice.

Houseplants also brighten up the space around me and my mood - a chinese money plant I bought during lockdown has produced many offspring which along with spider pants (also very bountiful offspring from one plant) a few prayer plants and a very exuberant boston fern make me smile lots as do the constants of Spongebob cartoons at the weekend and daily glimpses of Hacker T Dog and his handler's other characters. As ever being able to walk in the woods and go to the gym also helps massively.

I'm also really enjoying podcasts - be it the Boulet Brothers Creatures Of The Night or Peaches Christ's Midnight Mass or No Heathen Lands eerie stories of Yorkshire. 

But back to nail varnish - my Nana always said that nail varnish was the sign of a woman who didn't do any housework and chipped nail varnish was the sign of 'a slattern' and painted toenails were a sign in her opinion of very dubious morals and the person with painted toenails was likely to be a sex worker tho she would not have used that term. I doubt she could have countenanced the idea let alone the reality of men wearing nail varnish like a few of my friends do - I think she'd have connuptions like the time she went to see Hinge and Bracket and was appalled that the man sat next to her had a handbag. I don't think she realised Dame Hilda and Evadne were actually characters played by men. 

So whilst I don't miss her sheltered and restrictive views I do miss her and frankly would give anything to be able to talk to her again and I'd get her to teach me how to crochet whilst making sure that my nails were as impeccable as I could make them and I'm not sure whether or not I'd paint them bright red - which was according to her the sign of 'a harlot'. 

Knitting is more of a mood stabiliser for me tho really as I find it quite meditative after a while and sometimes I pick projects because they involve quite a bit of just plain knitting. Though at the moment it's less meditative as I am currently working my through various projects that are destined to be xmas presents for family members. I've got 5 that I want to finish before the start of December so that there's plenty of time to get them posted off in time to arrive for Xmas. So far I've finished 3, made a start on one (a nice simple one thankfully) and then the last one is a little bit more complicated and so will require a lot more concentration. Am being deliberately vague on the offchance that one of the recipients might come across thisblogpost.

One of the things I've been thinking about recently is memories, both reliving them or what we think they were, where they are held - are they in the object, diary entry, a space somehow embedded into physical structures and my/the fear of losing them if I lose the objects that are associated with and evoke those memories and how photographs are (their lack of smell and noise aside) such excellent memory holders/provokers. 

It also makes me think and wonder about matte medium as a medium (every meaning and association of the word intended) for transferring and holding images and how I want to work on refining the physical process of working with it but also reading more about the philosophical implications of it.

I'm hoping that some of the pictures I took on film with the very lomo camera will be good enough to make into transferred pieces. I finished the roll on Monday whilst walking through the woods, I also had the usual 'ooh will I get more than 36 pictures out of it' as you often get 37 or or rare occasions 38. The camera I was using is very lomo but it does have an anti double exposure feature and so as I continued to frame, click and wind on past 36 I was at first 'yay more pics' and then 'oh no, maybe I didn't wind it on properly in the first place - all those potential photographs lost' when I clicked without really framing and it really was the last on the roll and then of course as is always the way I saw what would have been a beautiful image opportunity. Oh well.

                                            Thank you for reading.

Mirror Mirror, Matte Medium Transfers, Lomo Film Cameras, Proustian Computer Paper, GI Blues And That Kind Of Thing

Post it note-ness, camera am currently using and a piece  'Story Of the Past Part V - as on show as part of the 2021 Arts and Minds Network Online Exhibition (which can be found here ) and which was made using a photograph taken with the (very) lomo camera pictured next to it.

I am trying to live up to my promise in my last but one post that I would try to update this blog more regularly and so I tried to get back into my old MA habit of writing things that I had done, thought about or encountered on a post it note which I keep in front of my computer in my work room in the hope that will prompt me to write more regularly.

I also wanted to make sure that there was something up to date for people to read if they came here via my instagram account (which can be found here ) in turn via my inclusion in The House of Smalls current exhibition Mirror Mirror On The Wall which can be found here.  Plus one of the things I find the biggest compliment as an artist aside from someone wanting to buy a piece of my work and live alongside it in their home is that they want to go and see a space for themselves after seeing my images of it or hearing me talk about it or want to try out a technique for themselves. 

A couple of weeks ago I loaded a camera (the one pictured above) with film - 35mm ISO 400 b+w  Kino film from Lomography. I had primarily been using lomo digital over the last 12 months or so using either a kids watch camera or my non smart phone camera so I had forgotten how exciting it is to tear open the cardboard box, flip the plastic lid and get that faint chemical whiff from the unexposed film. I did however struggle a bit at first to remember how to load this camera - as it has no auto windo on features at all.  I'd forgotten I needed to pull out/up the wind on bit as well in order to fit the cartridge in. But after some fiddling and worrying I'd break a nail but I didn't I got the film loaded and I am currently on  shot 24 of a 36 film.

I decided to use one of my most basic film cameras that I bought from Primarni in the before times as I wanted something to use something with no electrics that only needed me to have wound the film on properly, enough light to make a picture, a press of the shutter and a wind on and was easy to fit in a pocket and light to carry round.

It has no film speed setting, is fixed not very sharp focus and the daft passion fruit pattern makes me smile every time I look at it. You can't do accidental double exposures with it though as you can only press the shutter once before you have to wind the film on. I forget how much it cost exactly but think it was either £6 or £7 and I have taken it out of  the waterproof casing it came with as I won't be using it underwater for the moment.  It was an impulse whilst standing in the queue kind of buy.

Tho I haven't used it underwater I have used it next to water - all being well  I will have captured with it views of the Seven Bridges Valley* near Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, Meanwood Beck, the canal near Bramley Falls Park which I am looking forward to seeing once I've finished the roll and developed.

I won't be developing it myself in the garage aka pop up meth lab as a) it's far too cold and damp and miserable in the garage at the moment and b) despite my best efforts I always end up with either waterspots or cat hair on the negatives so my plan is to give it to someone far more competent than I am and hopefully I will have lovely clear albeit not very sharp focus negatives to then print from and make matte medium image transfers with. Plus I hate scanning negatives - it's one of the most boring processes in photography for me and if I can avoid doing it I will. 

I suffer from imposter syndrome at times when describing myself as an artist as I primarily use a camera as my paintbrush rather than actual paint and paintbrush, so in part to assuage this doubt I do use an actual paintbrush to transfer an image I have taken and printed onto another surface. The one above is a transfer onto canvas but I also use fabric of various kinds including poly cotton, muslin and coffin lining material.  The doubt re materials and methods used and a hierarchy thereof is not one I apply to other artists of any genre but I find it very hard not to apply it to myself at times. 

The transfer is created by painting a layer of matte medium (I use Windsor and Newton's Galeria range) on the printed image (reversed or flipped so that when transferred it is the right way round) - printed using the printer I have at home which is just an ordinary domestic use Hewlett Packard kind that I often find myself swearing at a lot. Once I have printed or photocopied the image and it's dried I then decide what surface I'm going to transfer it onto. I then paint a layer of matte medium onto both the surface and the image and then sandwich the two together making sure there's no air bubbles, letting it dry completely (usually by leaving it overnight)  and then wetting the paper and rubbing the paper away gently and hey presto the image has transferred itself...hopefully.

Sometimes it lifts off a bit, or has patches where an errant air bubble has escaped my attention but  I think this adds to it, making it more of an accurate material recreation of a memory which is basically what a photograph is. 

The more keen eyed amongst you may have noticed that the post it note, piece of work and camera have been photographed against a background of proper old school computer paper, the kind that has a smell all of its own, an ever so slightly furry texture, sprocket holes either side and numbered green and white lines, the green stripes being made up of 6 thin green lines.

This was the kind of paper I made revision notes on when I was studying for my exams and most proustian of all this was the kind of paper my Mum used to bring home for me when she was a cleaner at IBM back in the early 70's. On occasion she'd let me go with her and I'd sit and draw on it whilst she emptied bins and polished tables. A friend of mine had inherited a big pile of it from a relative who never throws anything away and kindly sent me a huge pile of it - it makes me smile every time I look at or write on it. 

Happy memories brought back as were the ones that watching GI Blues (1960) on Talking Pictures TV yesterday afternoon brought back. My Mum loves Elvis and had this album which she played on rotation with Johnny Cash's Live From San Quentin on a portable orange Dansette until early December when out would come Perry Como's Xmas Hits and an album of xmas songs by others including Andy Williams and which was probably some kind of K-Tel compilation. 

I'd forgotten how much I loved GI Blues as a soundtrack and I might have to ask Santa for a copy for Xmas...and by copy I do mean actual physical copy as although I do listen to some streamed music I'd far rather have an actual copy. Though as it's only an old secondhand copy complete with some slight scratch noises and hissing and creased cardboard cover that would make its proustian capabilities strongest.

Talk of the dreaded c-word (ie xmas) makes me think of the only acceptable xmas album namely the John Waters Xmas Album which is packed full of the most gloriously twisted and bizarre xmas songs ever. However despite the adverts assaulting our ears with xmas songs from before Halloween I won't be playing it until at least the start of December. That's a reasonable time to start playing that kind of malarkey I think - not months before. 

Thank you for reading. 

*misnamed as it only has 5 bridges apparently - I think I crossed them all on the walk and also got as far as Sam's Seat which has a beautiful view across to Ripon Cathedral in the distance. 

What am I doing now part 2

I've been keeping myself busy
- reading, making, doing and listening.

Reading wise - I've been struggling to concentrate at times but the last couple of days I have been really enjoying Have A Bleedin Guess (2019) by Paul Hanley - the story of the making of Hex Enduction Hour by The Fall. It's always interesting to read about others creative processes and Paul writes the best footnotes. I only got it on Sunday night - after the Brix and The Extricated gig at the Brudenell and it was really nice to be able to buy it directly from the person who wrote it and to be able to thank them for their previous book Leave The Capitol. I'm not sure how much you'd enjoy it if you weren't a Fall fan, but Fall fan or not I'm sure you'd enjoy Paul's descriptive incisive smart witty writing and his truly excellent footnotes.

I'm also reading Anne Tyler's Searching for Caleb (1975). I've not had the time/state of mind to get completely lost in this like I did with when I read her Back When We Were Grown Ups (2001) and A Spool of Blue Thread (2015) but am hoping to get lost in it some time soon. I became aware of her work after reading an interview with my beloved John Waters in which he praised her work so I determined to read some for myself. And I'm glad I did as I have really enjoyed the ones I've read so far.

Other books I'm dipping in and out of when I can include 17 by Bill Drummond (2008) which I bought recently from Oxfam in Headingley, and Cursed Britain A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic (2019) by Thomas Waters borrowed (like the Tyler) from the Leeds Library. I treated myself to membership when I became a student and I have continued to treat myself to it.

I was a fan of the KLF back in the day though I can remember feeling indignant about their burning of a million quid,  you can listen to a dramatisation of that event here and I recently went to see him and the documentary about him called Best Before Death (2018) at the Hyde Park Picture House. In that perfomance he questions whether or not he is suffering from White Saviour Complex and ruminating that he probably is, but like Waters, he makes me laugh and think which is my favourite combination.

Speaking of John Waters, I went to see him speak in Birmingham at the beginning of the month and he was as ever - funny, filthy, thought provoking and inspirational. Alas this time I didn't get chance for him to sign my book and so have a filthy blessing but having had afternoon tea with him this time last year I think it's safe to say I remain in a state of filthy grace.

Making wise I've been knitting - I've made some booties for chums who have had babies, they are my default de-stress knitting, I've also made some presents for family members (xmas is only a month away) and I've finally got round to making over an old turkish delight balsawood box, knitting a kind of skull creature and I'm still in the process of making some matte medium image transfers. I just need to wet the paper and rub it away and hopefully the image will be remain intact on the material. 

I didn't see lots at the Leeds International Film Festival but what I did see I really enjoyed. It included Haxan (1922) the scenes in which nuns are infected with devil worship are brilliant, but my favourite film seen as part of the festival was also the film which won my 'What The Actual Living Fuck Have I Just Seen?' Award for 2019 was Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway (2019) and as I'm still not sure how best to describe it other than mindblowing, instead I shall link to a trailer for it here and you can make up your own mind. It's worth watching for the trailer alone.

Other things I've been listening to have included Drift Series 1 by Underworld which includes the very excellent 'Low Between Zebras whose opening lines of 'drift liberation, a happy wanderer journeying without purpose,travelling directed by intuition not target to move through places with no other objective than to experience the moment' really speaks to me.

I'm also mostly still watching the Horror Channel or Talking Pictures TV as it is a treasure trove of interesting films and listening to Radio 4 Extra as it has no news it is much less painful to listen to than regular Radio 4. The news is still mostly bringing me out in hives and other than looking at front pages of the news sections of the BBC and the Guardian I'm mostly trying to ignore it as it makes me feel so sad and helpless. 

I'm still gym-ing and am hopefully on track for my goal of being able to deadlift 100kg by xmas. 

Housework is a boring thankless sisyphaen task, I know I am better off by doing it as the end result is of benefit but the process of doing it is just boring and frustrating and so by writing this I have put off doing the dusting. Alas however I can put it off no longer and must get to it...

Thank you for reading.

 

PhD-Ness Part 8 Year 2 in a weekly ongoing series - sticking and gluing, experimenting, re-drafting, reading and writing

More image heavy post this week showing bits of what I've been up to - the top picture shows a matte medium image transfer in progress. I'd printed the 35mm image I'd taken of St George's Field on ordinary printer paper, cut it out and also cut a circle of cream muslin and put it in an embroidery hoop. The hoop keeps the material nice and taught. Then I paint a layer of matte medium on the material, then on the cut out image and then put the image on top of the material and smooth it as flat as possible to ensure minimal creases or bubbles. I leave it to dry overnight and then using tepid water make it all damp and then slowly and carefully with my left index finger start to rub away the paper in a circular motion - thereby hopefully leaving the print from the image caught in the layers of matte medium.

The second image is also a matte medium image transfer in progress - this time a colour 35mm image I'd taken of Ann Carr's grave on what would have been her 235th birthday when I left a yellow rose on her gravestone as a tribute to her and her work with so called 'fallen' women. Women who had children outside of wedlock were often made to wear yellow in the workhouse as a way of marking them out from other workhouse residents. I have not read of the fathers of these children being made to wear something similar to mark them out.

3rd image is of the same image when the paper has been rubbed off for the second time - it usually takes a couple of goes to get as much of it off as possible - all the while trying not to rub so hard that you rub off the image too. Sometimes though the bond between image and material underneath isn't that good - especially around the edges. I am especially careful on those bits but sometimes to no effect. Sometimes it really annoys me when the edge lifts up but other times I think it adds to the image as it a)shows the human touch in the process and b)imitates/recalls the way glass plate negatives can look - either the person painting it missed the edges in the darkroom or it has become damaged over time.

Ways round the edges coming up include: only using muslin to transfer images onto as that seemed to grip the image best or making the border of the transferred image a half inch wider and then cutting it out with a neat solid edge...

The third image also shows some of the experimenting I've doing with kinetic drawing/mark making on paper which involves putting paper in a tube along with a marking medium, in this case chalk, pastel and crayon. The tube is then sealed and placed at the bottom of my rucksack - these are the results of a walk to Meanwood and back but it's not made much of an impression on any of the papers. So I'm going to ask an artist friend of mine who does these for any tips she might have in the hope of making something more definite - maybe I just need to do it for longer or make the ends of the chalk/pastel/crayon more pointed.

The last image shows the finished image transfers - I've rubbed off as much of the paper fibres as possible and added a layer of gloss medium to finish them off. Without it the images can still look quite flat and a little bit fibrous. It also shows this weeks post it note - which as you can see isn't over full but it has been a busy week with quite a lot of reading and doing and listening and seeing and watching.

The reading has mostly been of the psychogeographic variety as I have made a start on On Walking by Phil Smith - especially useful as he references The Rings of Saturn by WG Sebald which I (finally) finished last week. Huzzah. I also re read the introduction of  Photographs Objects Images edited by Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart and I have ploughed a bit more of the way through Adam Bede by George Eliot. I also picked up a copy of  Walking Inside Out by Tina Richardson.

Part of my rationale for reading these is part recommendation by tutors but also part methodology writing as to write mine up is part of my homework from last weeks supervision along with a redrafted research plan for year 2.

It was also the launch of the festival brochure for the Love Arts Festival last week at which I chatted and caught up with folks. I also made a collage which was great fun. It's been a while since I've made something with just the joy of making something in mind as in I wasn't consciously trying hard to create a particular effect or feeling or end result. It felt good. You can find out about all the events, exhibitions and happenings of the festival here  including my contribution Once and Now at Kapow Coffee 15 Thornton's Arcade and fingers crossed the framer will have finished framing them by then so that I'll be able to put them up at the end of the week.

So lots of doing of all kinds and I'd best get cracking on with my to do list for this week but first off I need to get something to eat, and to tidy my workroom a bit.

PhD-Ness Part 1 - as in a new hopefully weekly series of posts - Supervision-Ness, Experimenting and Reflexive Academic Writing...

Works in progress balanced on top of a light box - matte medium image transfers of 35mm film image of the Chapel at St George;s Field taken with a lomo fish eye lens camera  - trying out different materials (from l-r off white muslin, white muslin, light grey poly cotton) to see which takes and shows off the image best - am currently leaning towards the off white muslin as I like the air of 'oldy worldy' it gives off. I also asked chums on Farcebook and the Twitter and of those who replied most agreed with me - one said it was because it makes the sun shining through the columns look more sunshine-like.  I plan next to try making these again either on material soaked in graveyard dirt or with a wash of graveyard dirt or dried powdered flowers. I also want to make bigger versions - these are only 10 centimetres across. 

No post it note this time as the one I have just says 'getting back to work' and nothing else. I haven't been working very much as I a) needed a considerable rest after my viva and b) I have also been stretching out the celebrations of a significant birthday with a zero. The celebrations have included all manner of loveliness ranging from going to see Dusty Springfield The Musical at The Lowry - I really enjoyed it and have had a bit of a Dusty earworm since, staying at Lindeth Tower where my beloved Elizabeth Gaskell used to holiday and write (see previous blog post) and amongst many lovely gifts being given a wonderful medium format camera by my husband, it's the kind with a viewfinder you hold up to your eye as opposed to look down into and I am really looking forward to loading it up and taking some pictures with it.

I did go back to work a bit last week - I went over to Huddersfield for a meeting with my tutor in which we discussed the feedback from the external examiners at my viva and what steps to take next - in terms of reading and in terms of writing. One of the things she suggested was to work on reflexive academic writing and one way to do that is by updating this blog at least once if not twice a week and properly referencing it as I go along. I'm definitely keen to do this as at the moment referencing in particular is not an automatic habit and I have to write with the uni leaflet 'a quick guide to referencing' by my side. So I'm definitely going to try and do that. I'm not sure if I will keep these more frequent posts public though, I might do private ones and just one public one a month instead. I haven't decided that yet though. I find I write differently about things depending on whether something is public or private. The aim of this more regular writing is twofold - increase my skill as a reflexive academic writer and to see if any patterns start emerging.

But one thing I might do is to try and write things in a more standard way each time - with the same headings. Throughout my Masters I used my blog as my research journal and I wrote it once a week (usually on a Monday) using the notes/reflections/ideas I'd jotted on a pad kept in front of the computer in my workroom. That was a good habit at the time but I think I need to refine it with categories/subheadings - and maybe ones like these:
Programmes/Films Watched
Books Read
Pictures Taken/Pieces of Artwork Made
Exhibitions Attended
I'm open to suggestions for others....

Programmes/Films watched: in the last week it's been - Before Stonewall, Schiller (1985) - a documentary made in the USA which interviewed lesbians and gay men about what life was like for them before the Stonewall Riot in New York which lasted from June 28th 1969-July 1st 1969. It was a mix of people talking about their experiences as well as news footage from the time. Almost all the contributors mentioned how being in the military during WW2 had enabled them to feel less lonely as they met other people like themselves, some mentioned books and how they had realised they weren't the only one as characters in books were also feeling the same way. I found it heartening and fascinating but I was also struggling to stay awake to watch it because I was really tired and the heat in the Hyde Park Picture House was making me really drowsy. I could do with seeing it again really.

I've also seen Psycho, Hitchcock (1960) which was a real treat to see on the big screen at the air conditioned Pictureville in Bradford. I've watched Psycho a few times but this was the first time on a big screen and with a proper big sound system, which made me realise that it isn't just the wonder of Bernard Hermann's intense score that make it such a powerful film but also other elements of the soundtrack like the sound of water - which is used not just in the shower sequence but also the rain preceeding it which leads her to the Bates Motel in the first place but also the sound of the swamp as it swallows up her car. I am also rather fond of Anthony Perkins so it was especially lovely to see him on a big screen. Then for some light relief we watched The Producers, Brooks (1967) another film I have seen before but not on a big screen. It was a delight to see Gene Wilder's face writ large as he evolves from honest accountant into drunk swindler and theatre impressario.

Books Read
I must be honest I've been struggling to concentrate because of the heat and also because my attention span is of a wandering kind unless I get completely absorbed by what I'm reading. I found the biography of Alexander McQueen by Andrew Wilson 'Blood Beneath The Skin' (2015) really interesting, as well as saddening. It was very much a reportage of what people had said to about McQueen in interviews with the author or from interviews as opposed to in depth analysis of either the clothes he made or the runway shows he created but nevertheless I found it engrossing. I am very much on a McQueen kick at the moment, having seen the recent  documentary McQueen(Ettedgui 2018) about him and his work at the Hyde Park. I found the film very powerful and moving as well as inspirational in terms of his designs. I treated myself to a book about his designs for my birthday and it's next on my reading list.

I did try reading an extract from Foucaults 'We 'other Victorians' which I came across in the Cultural Studies Reader (Munns and Rajan 1995) I picked up secondhand for a quid from Brodsworth Hall the other week but I just couldn't get into it, the words either swam on the page or made individual sense but didn't as sentences and after a while instead of forcing myself to continue with it I thought I'd read something I could make sense of so I started The Butchering Art (2018) by Dr Lindsay Fitzharris (a birthday present from my brother) which with its extremely graphic descriptions of bladder stones which made me feel rather faint and very glad to live in age of pain relief,antiseptics, and antibiotics. I asked for that as I thought I'd find it interesting but its subtitle 'Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine' also tells you that is at least related to my studies too. As is the 'Who Do You Think You Are? tie in to the tv series book I picked up from Oxfam in Huddersfield on my way back to Leeds. I'm not especially interested in the stories of celebrities families covered in the book but the tips about how to get the best out of official record sources like birth and death registers are excellent and will come in very handy as I try to trace more details of some of the otherwise unrecorded women buried in St George's Field.

I came back somewhat laden with books from Huddersfield last week, as I also picked up copies of some of the reading suggestions made for me after my viva. I have an awful lot of reading to do over the next few weeks and I've still to get the balance right between reading,doing and writing. I am also very glad that I am continuing with my weight training sessions or else I would not have had the strength to carry home the mighty tomes I picked up. I did feel very stiff the following day though.

One other thing that is going through my mind and fermenting are the concepts of authenticity and proximity. As in why is it so important for people (myself included) to go to or see wherever possible the actual or original place where someone lived or died, or the original piece of work someone made rather than a copy. Mmm lots to think about there - as ever......


Bibliography
Schiller G, Rosenberg R (directors) (1985) Before Stonewall (film documentary) USA First Run Features
Hitchcock A (producer/director) (1960) Psycho (film) USA Shamley Productions
Brooks M (producer/writer) (1967) The Producers (film) USA Embassy Pictures
Wilson A (2015) Alexander McQueen Blood Beneath The Skin UK Simon and Schuster
Munns J, Rajan G (1995) A Cultural Studies Reader - History, Theory Practice UK Longman
Fitzharris L (2018) The Butchering Art London Allen Lane
Waddell D (2004) Who Do You Think You Are? London BBC Books  

Ma-Ness Week 5 FINAL TERM!!! Tiredness, Excitement, Planning Ahead, Silky Goodness, Steamyness, Reimagining The Monstrous and that kind of thing...

Quite a full post it note this week - a mix of what I've been up to and what I've been buying...

Me posing next to my board at the Gothic Creative Showcase - part of the Reimagining The Monstrous Gothic Conference at Sheffield University on Saturday 8th May

It's been a really busy few days and it's going to be a really busy few days too - one conference down, two to go and one guided walk still to do. Hence this blog being written on a Tuesday instead of my usual Monday as I took an executive decision yesterday to take the afternoon off after a morning of two loads of laundry, tidying round and an intensive physio appointment on my knee...which thankfully though still twingy and sore and leaving me limping a bit is improving.

But I am pleased to report that the work is all on schedule so far in that I've finished drafting the paper I'm delivering this Friday so all I've left to do for it is to polish and practice it, and I'd finished mounting the digital tracing paper prints I'd had made for the Gothic Creative Showcase on the Thursday night before the showcase on Saturday morning. I really hate running around doing stuff at the last minute - though I worry I might be adding more stress for myself by panicking if things aren't done ahead of schedule as opposed to on schedule. Mmm might need to rethink my to do list so it's not quite as frantic - as after all I've built in enough lieu time to be able to take some...though I am also guilty of putting things off that I'm not looking forward to doing and so sometimes I have to force myself to do it - like the mounting of the prints for the Gothic Showcase.

It had to be done in the garage aka pop up meth lab as that has a big door that can be left open for more than adequate ventilation as I don't want to unintentionally intoxicate the cat on spraymount as she's goes mad enough on catnip and b) my workroom does not have a big enough space to lay things out flat to dry or c) give either me or my husband a cause for coughing.

It says on the side of the tin of spraymount (using the 3m repositionable stuff)  that working in a well ventilated space is very important. Mmm it might make you cough but spraymount does smell intoxicatingly lovely (as does developer, stopbath and fixer) and I'm glad I got the stuff that doesn't completely set straight away as positioning A3 size prints can be a bit tricky. In fact mounting them on white card made me realise and appreciate the skill of the professional framer all the more. More than once I had to peel them back off and put them back down again and I was feeling stressed that they might all go horribly wrong and wrinkle and just look rubbish. Understandable but thankfully not realised fears - there was a teeny bit of crinkling but they looked okay.

I knew the boards they'd be displayed on would be dark hence my mounting them on white card as otherwise the digital print on tracing paper would have been lost and too difficult to see. Plus I didn't want to put pins through the work itself but rather its mount - though these can still be trimmed so that they only show the image itself rather than a white border.

I bought both black and white card and different coloured paper to see which background would look best. Some of the positives looked okay against the black and one of the big ones I've had done of St George's Fields look positively malevolent (exactly what I had hoped) against the pink but all look good against white. And as I'll be exhibiting against dark boards for the next couple of weeks I decided the best thing to use is a white background.

I also made a list this time of the things I needed to bring - pins, sticky rather than sew on velcro, tape measure, mini spirit level, scissors, extra work just in case and put them in a bag by the front door ready and ticked each item off it so I knew I had packed them and so could just pick up the bag when it was time to leave. Undergraduate me would have thought I was being ridiculously anal and so would have been rushing round like a headless chicken having to scrounge things off others to complete the task. As it was it was a case of get up, wash - put on clothes and make up left out the night before and pick bags up and go. I hope I can always be this organised.


Plus being organised helps minimise my anxiety levels to just about manageable...and it is quite anxiety provoking (for me anyway) going to a strange place, and putting up my work on display.  Which of course begs the question - why else make it if not to show it as after all doesn't art need an audience to make it art or else it's just a private hobby. And I don't want it to be just a private hobby - I do want it to be seen and it was very gratifying to overhear someone just as I'd finished putting the board together say 'wow' which reassured me that as well as me thinking that it looked good - so did at least one other person.

Plus planning things in advance made me realise that all was not lost (though it may have felt like it for a few minutes) when I realised I'd not had every image I had planned on printing printed. I must have miscounted when I was putting all the images on the usb stick to take to the printing room and I hadn't added all the inverted and mirrored images I'd made and there wouldn't be enough time to get them redone. But as I had already got all bar two of the prints made I wanted I still had more than enough to make a creditable looking ensemble. But note to self - make actual list of images I want printing and tick them off said list before clicking button to safely remove usb stick and putting it in bag ready to take in.  

Thankfully this time I had my ever supportive husband with me who helped me both arrange the board at the other end and push in the pins as that was really difficult. So much so that next time when I will be doing this solo I am going to put velcro on the back of the prints (but leave the adhesive cover on) so that all I'll need to do once I've decided where I'm putting them is to take that bit of sticky off plus that way there won't be anything like a visible pin to potentially detract from the image. I'd been unable to source enough black or white headed push pins to pin all the images on the board with one or the other - hence the decision to pin printed material (it's thankfully getting much less difficult to write about my work and inspiration for this kind of thing) with black pins, along with negative images and use white on the positive ones.

It was lovely as ever to meet up with other gothicists and chat potential phd plans as well as hear about what they're working on and to hear about other potential opportunities. I am quite fortunate in that my work is interdisciplinary and so fits potentially within art, gothic, and history academic settings.

But although the Gothic Creative Showcase was the culmination of the week there had also been the excitement of getting my first experimental burial plot size printed image back from the digital print room and steaming it which was rather tricky as a) it's so big - approximately 2.14 metres by 1.06 metres wide or 7 foot long by 3 foot 6 inches wide in old money) and b) the hessian backing you wrap it up in to put it in the steamer is as a consequence very heavy. But I am well chuffed with how it looks - the image I had printed is of a lumen print I made of a head on a headstone from a graveyard in Chapel Allerton inverted back into a positive. And that cost £37.80 so now it is all systems go for the next three which I hope will form part of my piece for the MA degree show in late October.

Things I learnt from it are: how to use the steamer facility and don't be a numbskull next time and take in a bag to put it to bring it home and also beg/borrow/steal an old cardboard inner tube from either material or paper to wrap it round to store it once it has been washed so it doesn't get creased.

The other receipt pictured is for black bias binding and embroidery hoops as the experiments using coffin lining offcuts are continuing. Bias binding on the hoop helps grip the material more tightly, plus am thinking putting black around the outer hoop will look good for display purposes - once I've decided what it is I want to put on it and got both the embroidery and the image transfer techniques are good enough. Things I've learnt so far - embroidering straight onto the material puckers it regardless of width of needle used/amount of threads, covering it in gloss medium shows less than matte medium and it puckers less BUT you have to be very careful about placing the needle or else it leaves a hole plus if you pull the thread too tight it then tears through the material....room for more experimentation methinks.

I bought the hoops,bias binding and embroidery thread off the Habiknit stall on Leeds Market - the same place I go to for all my sewing stuff, it's opposite the wool shop at the entrance on Vicar Lane. The ladies that work on the stall are lovely and really helpful and the lady who sold me the hoops said she wanted to buy her daughter a cardigan like the one I was wearing - it's a Banned one with day of the dead skulls either side. Apparently her daughter now has her own room after having to share with her sister and wants to go all out skulls everywhere - and it was really nice to be able to tell her about the matte medium image transfer technique and she said she was going to try it out on some stuff for her daughter. She also said she'd like to come to the end of year show when I explained what I was working on.

So what else? also went to a really interesting talk at Kirkstall Museum on the Victorian Underworld and learnt all manner of titbits about crime and punishment during the Victorian era as well as a really interesting nugget re Victorian novels in that reading was much less of a solo activity then - and the long monologues often found in Victorian serialisations were to give the reader the chance to perform.  

Think that's enough for now - still to make notes on what I've been up to today but now it's time for some tea and a bit of my beloved Eurovision.


   
  

MA-Ness Week 4 (final term - eek!!!) Experimenting, Decisions Decisions, John Waters, To Do Or Don't Lists, Cat Hair and General Witterings....

Experiments with embroidery thread and fabric pens, top piece shows difference between embroidering straight onto the fabric - even with just one thread and the thinnest needle I've got it puckers, it puckers less if I've covered the fabric with matte or gloss medium and gloss is a little less obvious once it has dried.
I've also been looking at how to transfer the design I want to embroider onto the fabric - middle strip shows fabric pens and one of those 'this fades away pens' and it does but it also bleeds a bit which is difficult if you want something to be quite exact. The lower piece shows a piece I did by embroidering (simple backstitch) over a pencil line - it cvovers it up neatly but I need to get better at drawing my design evenly - the design is inpsired by hearts and flowers tombstones from the 18th century in Dewsbury

Not a v full post it note but lots of experiments on coffin lining offcuts, plus I've now wrapped my embroidery hoops with bias binding so that they'll hopefully grip the fabric better, it's slippery tricksy stuff....the patterned fabric didn't work at all well, the pale pink fabric worked okay-ish, used a print of a scan of a cyanotype I made and cut a bigger piece of paper than thew actual image to see if I could get it so it didn't break up so much around the edges but the colour seemed to bleed in a way the black and white prints don't but might experiment with it further....

So as you can see lots of experimenting rather than photograph taking this last week, still somewhat out of action with a poorly knee, saw a physiotherapist who reassured me that although it might take time to heal the injury to the 'medial collateral ligament' it will heal - and she gave me some exercises to try and it does seem to be getting a little easier and less painful and swollen. PHEW!! but getting down on one knee or kneeling is still too painful so it might be a while since I can take some more pictures.

So I thought I'd use my enforced limited mobility to sit down and do some image transfering and sewing instead. And you can see the results above - some I'm pleased with, some I'm not so pleased with and some I want to work further on and refine. I've also tried using different kinds of brush and spatula to put the matte medium on - spatula seems to really get it into the fabric so much so, I have to turn it over and almost put it back through but it does mean an even coverage with less obvious application marks. 

I also experimented making a kind of mud wash out of the small amount of soil I harvested from St George's Fields a while back, it looked okay-ish but still needs some refinement I think. I also won't be rushing to use the pale blue patterned material again as it's too uneven to absorb the matte medium equally and it's even shinier than than the other fabric and thicker. Still I might give it another go, other thing I need to experiment with is freezer paper and seeing if I can use that to print onto the fabric. That method does involve ironing though and I've a feeling that might just make the fabric shrivel up - some careful experimenting ahead then.

I also decided to actively take some time out and spent one afternoon watching kids telly - partly in the hope of seeing Hacker T Dog who never fails to put a smile on my face. He is a dog from Wigan with a love of meat paste, milky brews, puns, irreverence, Cotton Eye Joe, lucky withered legs and pink dresses. I believe his human handler is called Phil Fletcher.

I follow him on Twitter as well and he always makes me chuckle but alas he wasn't on when I switched on but Shaun the Sheep was and so was a new animated series featuring Zig and Zag created by Ciaran Morrison and Mick O'Hara. It wasn't quite as funny as their furry outings on the Big Breakfast and nowhere near as filthy,  scatalogical, lewd, chauvanistic as their creators other characters Podge and Rodge. But it did introduce me to the marvellous phrase 'what in the name of Sir Walter Raleigh's Hedgehog is that?'.

Podge and Rodge are somewhat of an acquired taste and they make me laugh a lot. Their late night 'Scare at Bedtime' halloween tales (which you can find on Youtube - along with their seminal work Colosto-Me Colosto-You) and their homage to Foster and Allen -Fester and Ailin are amongst my favourite things to watch. Though part of the appeal of Podge and Rodge like Zig and Zag is that they have irish accents and the way they speak, and use of  phrases like 'come here to me , you' make me think of my much loved and much missed grandparents. Though neither of them - ever swore either at all or nowhere near as much...

I have always loved puppets - of the cheeky and irreverent kind that is, so Sweep, Basil Brush, Zig and Zag/Podge and Rodge, Hacker T Dog are top of my list of  things to watch if I want to smile, as is Spongebob Squarepants. I often have things playing on youtube in the background whilst I'm working, though it has mostly been Victoria Wood this last week - her work is a never ending balm and source of laughter. I don't know how many times I have watched Julie Walters as the waitress badly serving 'one soup...... *pencil lick* and another one' to the couple played by Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston waiting for trains but I could never be bored by it and never fail to laugh at it. Comic observational perfection performed wonderfully.

Someone else whose work I could never tire of is John Waters - spent part of this weekend rewatching the last film he made in A Dirty Shame (2004) and then Cecil B Demented (2000) and Serial Mom (1994) . I am eagerly awaiting his next book releases too. I like his writing style just as much as I like his film making style. I am still working on my response to his '12 Assholes and a Dirty Foot' (mine is '12 Belle Ends and a Sock On The Door' though it may have to be scaled back to 9 Belle Ends and an Abandoned Pair of Boxers in a Doorway In Dewsbury as I'm struggling to find anymore Belle Ends and the parameters I set myself for the project were: it has to be done on my camera phone and I can't make any of the images, I can only take them....

I've also been experimenting with writing 'done lists' rather than to do lists, in an attempt to feel a bit more on top of things. It did counter the feeling of  either 'I've done feck all' or 'I've not done enough' when in fact I have done loads. But I still need a to do list - for fear of forgetting important things I need to do. Which reminds me I must update the big list I've got so I know what times I need to do what by. This month is especially busy - I have three conferences to attend - one I'm delivering a paper at, the other two I'm displaying work, as well as a talk and a couple of important meetings.

The other thing I'm experimenting with is doing/completing where possible just one thing per day - or rather trying to concentrate upon one thing at a time rather than having a whole list of things and only doing the easy things off them - I'm not above writing things on my to do list that I've already done just so I can tick them off....

Looking at my diary makes me feel a bit sick - partly because the next few weeks are crammed full but then it all calms down again and then it'll be the end of the course....and I still haven't got quite to grips with organising a phd place yet, other than deciding I defintiely want to do one.

It is also coming up to the anniversary of the death of my beloved Lucia - I still miss her so much and I want to find a way to completely distract myself on that day. Anniversaries and dates have such power and significance don't they? or rather we invest them with such - even if we try not to. I can remember taking a flight on September 11th - they first year after the Twin Towers were hit and even though I knew that rationally there was no difference between that day and any other in terms of being on a plane I couldn't shake the  extra feeling of dread - on top of all my usual fears re flying. Fears which after a spectacularly turbulent flight have left me reluctant to take a plane unless I absolutely have to...and so far I haven't had to and long may that continue.

I attended a really interesting talk on Victorian Turkish Baths by Malcolm Shifrin at Leeds Library last week. It was part of the series put on by the Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies - all of the lectures are free and anyone can attend them. It was especially lovely to hear one amongst the splendour of the Leeds Library though as opposed to a modern purpose built seminar room.

But as ever I digress Baths as in Turkish/Roman Steam Baths were primarily promoted in this country by David Urquhart (1805-1877) who was a diplomat and member of parliament and his colleague Dr Richard Barter in Ireland. I had realised that bathing was somewhat of a difficult task to accomplish prior to the time of mains water and sewage, I hadn't realised how difficult. Water not only had to be heated but also carried from the pump. And water is really heavy. He was promoting the use of steam baths as opposed to just ordinary bathing. And there was no end of ailments it could help with according to the advertising. Though he did face tough opposition as well as some medics were firmaly against bathing of any kind - especially for the lower classes as it made them weak apparently.

There was also much made of the class differences - in both access to bathing facilities and attitudes towards them, not to mention the sexes. Male and female bathers were kept separate at all times and modesty protected with either towels or curtain arrangements that dropped from the ceiling as you emerged from the pool. It seems the that the the middle and upper classes were horrified when baths were opened on a Sunday - yet Sunday was the only day most working class people could attend and of course the working classes were equally being castigated for being dirty. (This in turn makes me think of the dreadful old jokes about people in the north using baths to store coal in) It was also fascinating to hear about some of the advertising used for baths at the time of the suffrage campaigns for women - apparently the effect of the baths on complexions were so 'beautifying' that women wouldn't need the vote as they'd be so beautiful men wouldn't be able to resist their requests for anything....and in the days before chemically treated water the fact that some baths only completely changed their water once a week and so it was cheaper to go later in the week when the water was less fresh...
Fascinating stuff.

I also read a bit more of Mrs Beetons Book of Household Management and so can pass on thse handy(!) housekeeping tips:
'wash well a saucepan but cleran a frying pan with a slice of bread' (hopefully you then eat the bread but that wasn't specified)
and the apposite:

'a good manager looks ahead' and 'clear as you go as muddle makes more muddle' - something which is especially true when you're working in limited space as I am - my workroom is fairly organised but very cramped and it would be lovely to have a bigger house with space for a proper darkroom in the basement...

I did toy with the idea of waiting til tomorrow to write this - seeing as it's a Bank Holiday but as it was raining I decided to do this instead as well as tidying round a bit, made a sausage casserole for later and I also did the ironing. And I'm glad I did as it means that is a few less jobs on my to do list for tomorrow...and fingers crossed by this time next week the big jobs on it will also have been done and my knee will be even more healed so I can take some more photographs. I'm getting shutter and lens withdrawl symptoms.....and reading a book by a papparazzi called Shooting Stars by Jennifer Buhl is making me want to go out and take pics. Not of celebrities and nor in an invasive manner but just that thrill of getting exactly the shot you want...

I did get some pics back this week though that I took in Skegness a while back. I used Kodak Tri X ISO 400 and my lovely ever supportive husband developed them in the garage (aka pop up meth lab) for me - we'd both been so busy we'd forgotten they needed doing but he found time this week and I scanned them in yesterday morning before going to see a really lovely uplifting heartwarming film at the Hyde Park - Eddie The Eagle. Even if it did give me vertigo looking at it at times - the footage of the careering down the take off jump was stomach churning...but back to the negatives - annoyingly I must have had a cat hair trapped in the back of the camera as there is a thin cat hair like line in the same place on all the pics (easily photoshopped out - ha! see last week's entry for my feelings photoshop) but that aside I've got some images I am well chuffed with which I hope to get printed in a couple of weeks when I'm next in the print room. For me the wait and delay with film is part of the joy of it - you forget what you've taken and then hopefully you're gloriously reminded of it, or sometimes you realise you didn't get them quite right or missed something or have just got a camera with not only cat hair on the lens but also in the back....

...adds clean and de cat-hair camera to to do list..... 






 

MA-Ness Term 3 Week 12 Tea Toning, Matte Medium, Bookmarks, Show and Tell, Plodding On, Identity and Too Darn Hot.....

Post it note in amongst some of this weeks work - especially chuffed with the cyanotype of one of my dental x rays, the bookmark made out of no longer available Kodacolor X 120 film, and the matte medium transfer onto canvas of negative skull and the oval cyanotype of a grave ornament from St George's Fields...

apparently colouring in is a good destresser but as the so called 'adult' colouring in books were £6 - I bought a Spongebob one for £1.50 -  I love Spongebob, he and Hacker T Dog (who I got retweeted by this week) never fail to make me smile. 

experimenting with toning cyanotypes - initially using ones that didn't work very well anyway just to get hang of technique - from left to right, water bath, bleach solution, coffee but experimentation showed water, bleach (a solution of quarter tablespoon sodium carbonate per quarter litre for around a minute, water, tea, water worked best ) so next step is to get some small litter trays and use them on cyanotypes that have worked well but that I can further improve 

rinsing off.....

It's been another hard week - still missing Lucia dreadfully and the sapping heat of this week hasn't helped with motivation either but the bright sunlight has helped with doing some more cyanotypes (see top picture which also features this weeks post it note) and I've spent today experimenting with toning some of them with both coffee and tea.

I've also made some more bookmarks out of the backing paper that would normally get thrown away once 120 film has been exposed and developed. This came from the camera I bought for my husband as a wedding anniversary present. It was in a Dacora Kamerawerk from the mid 1950's and a quick google tells me this film was last made in 1974. Sadly though not surprisingly when this was developed in the pop up meth lab aka garage it was blank. But it's lovely old nostalgic worldlyness backing paper was far too gorgeous to consign to the bin and it has come in very handy this week as a bookmark in Death, Heaven and The Victorians by John Morley which I have been ploughing my way through when it has been too hot to sit upstairs at the computer...which until today has been most days. I've done whatever needed doing computerwise early in the day and then have either been concentrating upon cyanotyping or sitting at the table downstairs with a book.

Sadly though the lumen print I tried using a mourning blouse I have been lent hasn't worked very well - I am using adapted A4 and A3 glass clip frames as holders and whilst they work fine for cyanotypes they haven't got quite the weight to keep fabric flat enough - even when it's stretched but as it very delicate I am reluctant to stretch it any further so I might have to take it into college so I can use the very thick and heavy glass sheets they have as that would keep it flat.

I've found it quite lovely to sit at the dining table old school style with just a notebook, pen, post it notes and a dictionary (the one I was given when I started secondary school by an aunt and uncle long since divorced) and without the computer screen blinking away in front of me offering me enticing social media distraction. I'm sure I took in more of the content of the books in that way and the words I had to look up (hoydenish, ormolu, panegyric...to name but three) as I was doing it manually rather than digitally - as normally I would just google it and then invariably get distracted by something on said screen. Plus I would do things like see how many pages there left in a chapter and then think 'right, get a drink at end of this chapter or have a look at twitter on laptop once I've done 10 more pages'.  And thanks to this more efficient way of working I've got 3 books out of the pile on my right finished and ready to take back to the college library rather than me keeping asking for a renewal. Result!!

I intend to keep to this way of reading now as I seem to get more done that way than what I had been doing which was sitting at my desk in front of the computer screen...I think it also helped that the main book I was reading was published in the 70's as was the dictionary so they matched nicely timewise, I doubt somehow that a modern dictionary would have included some of the very old words I was looking up as they are now so out of fashion.

I am really enjoying the distraction of the process at the moment as well as the end result (once I've motivated myself to start work) as I can get lost in creating something and so momentarily forget the pain of losing Lucia plus the more hands on a process it is the more exciting I am finding it. Some of the cyanotyping I did this week involved using images I've had digitally printed onto tracing paper as negatives as opposed to my more usual method of printing an image out and then photocopying it onto acetate and using that as a negative and they have worked really well. I've also been transferring images onto canvas using matte medium (it works so much better than the pva glue I first tried with) and the more work I do like this the less fraudulent I feel calling myself an artist - there is something both comforting and fulfilling about the hands on nature of the work I'm doing at the moment - though of course I still love getting out and about with a camera taking and making pictures too and I hope to do some more of that next week.

I am comfortable calling myself a gothic photographic artist and the back bedroom my workroom as opposed to studio these days but I still feel slightly hesitant saying I am an artist as in my head artist equates to someone who does something with their hands eg paints, draws or sculpts. I don't however apply this definition to others so not sure why I apply it to myself....I know John Waters has said that when people tell him they are an artist he says he'll be the judge of that so maybe there is an element of that. The show of his most recent artwork is now on at the Spruth Magers Gallery in London til the middle of August (details here) but sadly I don't think I'll be able to go and see it, I rang the gallery last week to see if there is a catalogue available but sadly there isn't but a chum who has been has very kindly picked me up a flyer/leaflet about it. There is also going to be a season of all of his films at the BFI and again sadly I don't think I'm going to be able to make any of those showings either. I have most of his films on dvd and have seen some on the big screen too - Pink Flamingoes, Hairspray, Cry Baby, Serial Mom (possibly my favourite) Pecker, This Filthy World, A Dirty Shame, and most recently Polyester complete with scratch and sniff card so I may just have to content myself with that - plus I have been lucky enough to see and meet him 3 times so I shouldn't feel hard done to if I can't make it to that London to see him or his work this time.

On Thursday I went to the Heritage Show and Tell at Leeds Museum and very fine it was too - lots of really interesting speakers and projects and I got to meet people from the Centre for Victorian Studies at Leeds Trinity University as well as another person who will be starting at Leeds College of Art in September. I also got some lovely feedback from one of the ladies who runs it whose chum was at the talk I did for Darling Roses WI and who really enjoyed it and was most disappointed that I left without her having chance to talk to me properly. I left not long after I'd finished speaking as I was feeling so poorly (I had been swigging cough medicine straight from the bottle in a rock and roll stylee throughout my talk) but hopefully she'll be able to ask me whatever it was she wanted to as I'm doing a photography workshop for them next week.

I especially enjoyed James Lattin's talk 'New Discoveries From The Museum of Imaginative Knowledge' which really made me smile as did his innovative and groundbreaking research and you can read more about it here and about the whole Heritage Show and Tell process here. Think the next one will be sometime in the autumn and I am already looking forward to it - not only are the talks interesting but the meet and greet afterwards is very useful for making contacts. 

Am well chuffed with todays cyanotype toning experiments - I used cyanotypes that hadn't worked very well and a recipe that I got off the tinternet which involves wetting the cyanotype, then putting it in a bleach solution - this method can also correct overblued cyanotypes, rinsing in water before putting in either cold coffee or cold tea (I used 2 yorkshire tea teabags as apparently it's the tannin that changes the colour)  and then washing them again. The tea worked best - gives a nice colour so the next part of the plan is to buy some small litter trays (we have some traditional photography trays but these are a bit big for the bath plus they'll need a lot more liquid to fill and I  am mindful of both our water usage and water bill as we are on a meter as opposed to rates)  as these will fit A4 pieces of paper nicely and also fit in the bath easily and work on some of the cyanotypes I've done that I'm pleased with. I've tried lots of different kinds of paper - the red and grey make a nice end result and tones down the blue without any need for other chemical interference, tracing paper looks beautiful but is a bugger to process and dry flat but the clearest, most successful end result wise and easiest to work with is water colour paper so I bought some more of that yesterday and I hope to have some time in the darkroom soon to do some more paper prepping. I also have some more images I want to print off to make cyanotypes with as well.

Along with watercolour paper I also bought some new notebooks, coloured pencils, a Spongebob colouring book (see above) a cutting thing, some paintbrushes, some more mini canvases, a cutter and mini cutting mat which should be a bit better and less unwieldy than my existing guillotine, and some ribbon. Think the lot came to about £30.

I also went to see Project Nimbus at Leeds Museum - an uplifting and inspiring tale of how art and science came together via lasers and pilots to transmit Eadweard Muybridge's images of a horse in motion onto the clouds and very wonderful it was too - not least because it reminded  me of the Cornelia Parker lecture I went to in April in which she said the best and most inspiring conversation she has aren't with other artists but with other professionals. It was fascinating to see how it all came together and also that at its heart was the design of a viewmaster disc - I had one when I was little which showed me disney pictures and I loved it - anyway you can read about the project here and very fantastic it is too. 

Think that's all the things I wanted to talk about this week - lots as ever to do and as ever much food for thought and my tutor has given me some useful advice regarding the work I've done so far and what the next steps I can take are, so I'd best crack on really... next hand in date is not far off really.....