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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re-enactments of personal/impersonal histories

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

Narrative

Are you sitting comfortably?    
Then I'll begin.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Ma-Ness Week 11 Printing, Cyanotyping, Thinking and Stuff

Not such a snappy title this week but a slightly fuller post it note

this weeks post it note on background of openend up envelope that I used to stop the desk getting marked when I was experimenting with paint mourning borders around prints.

This week I have been doing a lot of printing - images, this blog, screenshots of stuff I'm working on, and have just taken advantage of this lovely spring sunshine by doing some cyanotypes too - sadly neither of the lumen prints I tried have worked particularly well (but one day I will succeed at lumen prints!!) and presentation stuff for inclusion in my Practice and Personal Development Portfolio which needs handing in on Friday.

I've experimented with printing some of the same images on different types of surfaces - the cyanoptype format is one I am loving - both as a process as I love its unpredictable and proper old school nature,the inverting of the image on the computer and then printing it on acetate, discovering and creating new images when putting them away, but tracing paper is my favourite paper to print on digitally as it has a translucency to it that I find really appealing plus it is also the cheapest so it's easy to get a good idea of what an image will look like in a large scale format for comparative cheaps before you go for it sizewise or on really expensive paper.

Canvas is the surface I was really excited to try but was really disappointed with the results - I still like the images on it but as a chum said surface-wise it looks like the now mass produced prints you get in supermarkets and that's not the look I'm going for.

I've had less distractions and appointments this week and so have been able to concentrate more upon putting together my portfolio to hand in (PHEW!!!) - and it's been really interesting to look back over the last few weeks and the kind of work I've been making and how my approach to it both in terms of thinking about it and doing it has changed though part of me is still slightly angsty that I haven't been doing enough reading (though I did finish Count Arthur Strong's Memoirs which are brilliantly funny - I especially love his confusion re Robin Hood and Jack the Ripper and he posits that the painter Walter Sick might have been responsible for the killings in 1888 in Whitechapel...) but hopefully I shall get some more reading done over the easter vacation.

I keep thinking about dissertation topics and first of all I thought about the possibility of something about the use of human remains in contemporary fine artwork but as a chum pointed out that might mean having to at least mention Damien Hirst and he gets on my wick so I'd rather not so now I'm thinking more of the portrayal of death in photography - especially since a brief look round the Drawn By Light photography exhibition at the Media Museum yesterday morning led me to fall even more in love with the work of Harold Peach Robinson plus this would enable me to fit in some Barthes quotes nicely thereby fulfilling the theory requirement course-wise so this is looking more likely. It's a long time to dissertation hand in but I'd rather be ahead of myself than horribly behind and trying to do too many things at once....

I was at the Media Museum to hand in my entry for the Drawn By Light competition - I didn't think I would win but I am pleased in that I can now say I have had work on show at the Media Museum, mine was entry 49 and here is a pic of it awaiting being pinned up on the wall: mine is the one in the middle, if a photo could also convey smell you would also be able to smell the strong stench of piss and skunk that surrounded us at the top of the car park but I loved how mine and my husbands reflection looked in the mirror and so stopped and stooped to take a picture......

I might not have been doing much reading recently (aside from Count Arthur that is) but I have been doing a lot of looking and a lot of listening - looking wise I watched the film about Hockney that was on the BBC recently, and I loved it - there were a couple of bits that stood out for me when he was talking about photography - IIRC he said that a photo is taken in a split second and even if you only look at it for 4 seconds that is longer than it took to make and in some ways this is literally true but takes no account of the time it takes to set up the photograph, develop it, print it though I suppose in these virtually instantaneous digital days that is less of a concern than it used to be and Mr Hockney is much more technically advanced than I am - I bet he has a phone that does tinternet for instance, never mind instagram and what have you. I do have a digital camera and there is a camera on my phone which I use to take aide memoire type photos or when I'm trying to sneak taking an image....

The other thing he said was paintings take longer to make than it does to see them and again this is probably literally true and as I'm not a painter I'll take his word for it....he also said that cameras see surfaces but they don't see space and a fellow ma-er also quoted him as saying the view from a camera is 'the view from a paralysed cyclops for a split second' which is also referenced here which made me both chuckle and both kind of agree and disagree with. Again it is literally true I suppose but there have been lots of photographs which may well have been a fixed view of something but they in turn have me me change my view about something...but I am in danger of getting myself tied up in theoretical and philosophical knots here so I'll stop other than to say I do love Mr Hockney and I still have a postcard of his work that I bought as a teenager from the Whitworth many many moons ago 'We Two Boys Together Clinging'. It's quite battered now and smells slightly of the damp bedsit walls it's been blu-tacked to over the years but I still love it both as an object and as a painting.

I am an inveterate R4 listener and have been since I left home really I think initially it was because I was quite lonely and liked the sound of voices plus music radio tends to get on my nerves as they mostly don't play what I want to hear plus I would far rather hear John Humphries relate a tale of national woe than the false most likely drug induced bonhomie of a disc jockey first thing in the morning. Anyway I now can't remember the programmes I heard them in but these points stood out - there was an interview with Helen Sharmer (the astronaut) who was describing the docking with the space station and the relief on both sides of the airlock that it had worked and how that for her 'memories associated with emotion last the longest' and someone else said (but alas I cannot remember in what programme/context) that photography has been a major cultural change as it has changed the way we remember things, which has given me lots of food for thought - including is my love affair of (most) things victorian is because I can see photographs of the people of the time as opposed to paintings or drawings or writings?

Other food for thought this week has come from a chum sending me the link to this blog which is a fascinating and thought provoking read - and I am proud to say I am a morbidly curious person and would like to see more open-ness re human remains, burial sites etc - whilst still being as respectful as possible that is. And whilst I think he has a good point re the treatment of human remains as art in that it can be 'seriously weird or deviant' I would also argue that this isn't always the case plus when people have given their express permission for their remains to be used in such a way surely it is a way of carrying out their wishes.

The other blog post which I read this week but now can't find the link to was about the storing of digital information and what we are potentially losing as formats go out of fashion. The oldest camera I have got is a Kodak Vest Pocket from the 1920's which still works but I have a digital one from a few years ago which works on batteries and does take pictures but it is in effect useless as I can find no driver for it (and the only thing online I've been able to find for it are other people asking if anyone has any software for it - alas to no avail) and so I cannot take the pictures I've taken with it and it has no screen on the back. Though the very helpful and clever chap in the print room did say that MAcs have something called image capture (I am a pc using person and so unaware of what macs can and can't do - all I know is I find them unintuitive to use and had to get the chap in the library to come and show me how to get the mac I was using to print something..which he kindly did, he also had to fix the photocopier for me when the acetate I was copying onto jammed...) which may be able to get the images off it if we can find a cable to connect it with....

Unlike the latest lo-fi digital camera I bought last week - it was £6.99 and has a massive(!!!) 2.1 MEGA PIXEL capacity - it also comes complete with its own photoediting software and it also has a 1.5 inch preview screen and can hold up to 120 photos. It's aimed at children - well actually young girls who are into Monster High as it is emblazoned with logos and characters from it. I am looking forward to using it - if nothing else it should be a giggle.

What else - potential collaborations shaping up nicely, excited about going back to Media Museum for a proper in depth look round the exhibition and to finding out more about Mme Yevonde whose absolutely sumptuous and stunning colour images leapt out at me yesterday and made me go 'wow' as well as the lovely old black and white/sepia images by Harold Peach Robinson... and I wonder if the same gallery assistant will be on duty who saw me looking intently at one picture and said 'you're the gothic artist' from the Cultural Heritage event - it was very flattering to be remembered and we had a good but brief chat about our respective courses - she's doing an MA in Museum Studies and has just handed in her dissertation so fingers crossed both of us do okay in our respective assignments....

Other things learnt this week - cardboard stencils made from cereal packets (circle and coffin shapes) to paint cyanotype solution inside when prepping paper only work well once but then are no longer crisp around the edges so might need to get some made in plastic instead. PVA glue is going to be the way I hem my test fabric pieces - rolled hems are not for me and I am too heavy footed with a sewing machine, and I am so pleased with of my cyanotypes that I cannot bear to part with them so have taken photocopies of them to include in the portfolio to hand in instead.....I wonder what that says about me - I must point out it is not a reflection on the people who will be marking it and is entirely about my haptic possesiveness of objects.

Oh and brain knives - that is knives made for cutting fine slices of the brain so they can be microscopically examined are like very long very sharp palette knives...I got to hold one yesterday at a fascinating event at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery which looked at the way mental health and psychiatry was looked at around the time of the first world war. Fascinating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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