MA-Ness Week 7 - Identity, Running To Stand Still, Trains and Coaches, Spray Mount, Camera - PHEW!! Busy, Busy, Busy

this weeks post it note, conference programme and poster - I supplied the image and they did the design and of course a University of Warwick pen...
I have pens from lots of different institutions now...

I normally write this on a Monday (I cannot thank first year me enough for getting into such a settled habit of writing this research jounral aka blog up each week as not only is it a way for me to collate my thoughts, it's also so much easier to click 'print' when it comes to hand in time) but it's now Wednesday and I'm only just about catching up with myself after the busyness of the past few days.

This time last week I was making lists of what I needed to take with me to the Materiality of Mourning Conference at the Univeristy of Warwick and ticking things off those lists as I put them into my bag - I travelled as light as possible. I was also avoiding breathing in large amounts of spray mount by mounting the images I was taking with me in the garage. I had the images i;d taken on film digitally printed on tracing paper and as I knew it was a dark board they were going to be shown on I mounted them on white card - but this time instead of trying to centre the image in the middle of the A4 card I put each image up to the corner of each iece of card so when placed opposite one another there is only a border all the way around them as a whole. I think they look better that way.

I didn't do as well at not breathing in spraymount though when I was covering the box to hold the words for the collaborative piece I've been working on for the Pedagogy Research Cluster exhibition...think I could have opened the garage door a bit wider as well as made time to do the box earlier so I wasn't so flapped doing it. The exhibition is on til mid June I think - in the basement of the Leeds College of Art campus opposite the university so go see it if you can. The piece I made was in collaboration with a colleague - Karen Tobias-Wood and it features a blackboard, chalk and words and you are invited to take the words and use them to make comments/drawings/interactions/found poems with on the board. I am fascinated by the use of words in/around/about art but it is a world away from my usual visual image based practice.

But as I didn't get back from Coventry til late on Saturday and was determined to have a well deserved complete day off on Sunday (went to the Friends of Hyde Park AGM and watched the very wonderful Our Man In Havana (1958) Reed C Columbia Pictures UK) and was busy with meetings all day on Monday, - including a really interesting meeting about the format of the conference/conversation part of the Love Arts Festival which will be on October 19th and then a really positive, energising and validating tutorial with my personal tutor so Monday evening was the first chance I got to cover it....repositionable spray mount is wonderful stuff - I love that I can repostion stuff if I'm not quite happy with it, even if it does stink a bit and make my fingers sticky - as I was spraying the insides and outsides of a photocopier box lid with lots of pieces of paper as opposed to just single A4 or A3 sheets I was using lots more of it. So much that I got it all over my fingertips and had to scrub it off with a pan scrub afterwards - a more sensible chum than me has suggested that I wear latex gloves next time I use it - it's a good idea and I have loads of them as I use them when doing cyanotypes (haven't done any for ages - must do some next time it's sunny and I have the time) or dying my hair ....but the box looked okay and people seemed happy last night taking words from it to make a conversation on the black board.


But I'm digressing - this time last week I was sticking bits of velcro to the back of the images I was taking to Warwick Uni (note to self invest in some Sellotape Velcro Dots as they are slimmer and so images would look flusher to the board surface) so that I wouldn't have to take pins - or hurt my thumbs pushing pins in to recalitrant boards) so that when I got there it would just be a case of peeling off the backing paper and putting them where I wanted on the board. As I was travelling light the only camera I took was the one on my phone and it doesn't have a big enough zoom to take all the  boards with artwork on in at once - plus the way the room was set out it was too difficult to stand far enough back to fit it all in - but this will give you an idea of what work I took and how it looked:

I was quite pleased with how it looked and it was also good to see one of my images as the basis for the conference poster - I had forgotten I'd been asked for an image and had sent one. But next time I must take titles and descriptions too - so that people can see a bit more about how and what it is made of.

I didn't design the poster though. I didn't sumbit an abstract to the conference for a paper as I knew I would be so busy with preparing for the Gothic Creative Showcase at Sheffield Uni, the Victorian Representations Conference at Leeds Trinity Uni and the first walk and talk I did for Darling Roses WI round St George's Field in the previous days so I just suggested bringing some work and they were happy with that. And though I was nervous - it didn't feel as onerous as it would have done if I had been delivering a paper as well. It was much nicer to just display my work and answer questions about it informally over lunch or coffee.

The conference was very full on - packed with papers on all sorts of different topics (though all connected to material culture and mourning in some way) from all sorts of different academic backgrounds, artists, funeral celebrants. It was absolutely fascinating and I learnt lots - came home with my head swimming with both new facts (learnt a bit more about the mythology surrounding chinese hopping ghosts) as well as new ways of looking at things I already knew a little about - the state power exerted over ways of dealing with the dead for instance, the way headstones are reused in Denmark, the survivor tree from Ground Zero in America, the common signs people often say they've seen after a loved one has died eg feathers, birds, the role of the authorities after the Hillsborough disaster and many other things.....my reading list never gets any less.....

I was very anxious indeed about going to Warwick Uni as it involved going somewhere completely new for me, getting a very early train (had a lovely chat all the way to Birmingham though) and having to be up at 4.45am but thanks to an online chum of some years who is now a real life chum part of this anxiety was minimised as she not only kindly put me up for a couple of nights but she also picked me up from the station and took me to and from the campus as luckily that is also where she works.

Having done it though it has reminded me that just because I find it rather stressful it doesn't mean I can't do it, and it wasn't that bad and it was well worth it...somoene please remind me of this when I am flapping about getting to Lincoln which all being well will be next February.

But as fab as this busy-ness is in lots of ways - learning new things, making new connections, it has also been absolute bliss today to not have to go anywhere or be anywhere by a certain time. I'm sad that folks feel they have to take strike action (not because I don't think they should strike but because they feel they have to in order to make their point) but I am also relieved as it meant the appointments I had today in college have had to be re-arranged, meaning I get a lie in and a chance to catch up with myself and stop feeling like I am 'running to stand still'.

So not only am I feeling a massive sense of relief because I can have a bit of a breather (but not too much as portfolio hand date in gets ever closer and I have a LOT of work to do to get the work I've been making into a state good enough to hand in) but also becuase my beloved Canon film slr that I got from a charity shop and which has become my go to camera only needed new batteries - it wasn't broken PHEW!!!!

A couple of other points I'd made a note of - there was a programme on Radio 4 last Tuesday - other than making a note that it was Tues am I didn't make a note of its title but it was post Today and pre Womans Hour and was talking about identity - and the point was made that identity is made of memories and memory and how it works or doesn't is something I'd like to work with a bit more...which makes me again think there just aren't enough hours in the day....

The other thing I noted from last week was I was chatting to a colleague about how much writing I'd done over the course of the course (approx 292,500 but with this blog post approx 294,500) but how much I had struggled with the dissertation - and I had thought that my struggle with it was because of the events surrounding it - I was still intensely grieving for my beloved Lucia and my sister in law died suddenly and unexpectedly - I am still grieving for them both but it is not quite as all consuming as it was at the time, but my colleague pointed out that something like a dissertation has a very strict laid down format and academic conventions which you have to adhere to, wheras a blog is much freer and only limited by the software you use to create it really. This makes me feel a little less scared when it comes to applying for potential phd places - or rather the writing I will have to do when it comes to thesis time.

So busy, busy, busy but it's all good :-)

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.