MA-Ness Week 10 - last formal week, pop up meth lab fun, tidying, sorting, sad sad news...

This weeks post it note and an experiement in glossing flowers...

I'm writing this on Monday afternoon - trying to get back into the habit I'd got into of writing it on a Monday and I'm struggling to be honest. The ongoing misinformation,scaremongering and barely disguised racism of some of the Brexiters coupled with the truly appalling, depressing, shocking and sad news from Orlando means I'm finding it hard to concentrate to be honest. The news makes me feel not only helpless but also quite hopeless and a bit what's the point of doing anything.

But having said that I must press on and get this post finished and start putting my portfolio together ready for final hand in in mid August. That seems like a bit of a big ask though at the moment and 'portfolio' keeps appearing on my to do list, so really I need to start breaking it down into its component parts - eg write an overview, sort the separate pieces I've been working on into coherent pieces so that it doesn't feel quite so overwhelming. I also need to sort out what pieces I need to get printed too.

The fact that it is coming to the end of the time I have at Leeds College of Art is at the forefront of my mind too - I've had such a fantastic time I don't want it to stop, which is part of the reason I want to do a Phd. I've not made much headway on that score (got a couple more open days coming up) think I might have to put aside definite time to do it (like this blog/research journal) so that I make more progress than just keep writing it on my to do list.  But I have also got a draft copy of a successful phd proposal which is going to be a guide for trying to come up with mine.

One thing I am really going to miss about the college (apart from the tutors, the facilities, the other students) is the library - even if it is the warmest room in the college and makes me feel at times murderously hot. I love libraries - I always have. On my wall is a quote from Anne Tyler about books - 'I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place'. Books are one of my biggest passions and take up so much room in the house - 2 to 3 deep on shelves, in piles both next to and under the bed. More bookcases and how to fit them in the house are also on the to do list...

And in spite of the fact that the house is almost overflowing with them and I haven't read all of the ones I've got (I've had some from the college library on almost permanent repeat loan since last year) I got some more on Friday on the way home from college - a copy of Vanity Fayre by William Makepeace Thackery which began to be published in serial form in 1847 and was published as a collected edition in 1848. Mine is the BBC tie in version from 1998 and was a quid from Meanwood Community Shop (which is in my opinion one of the finest charity shops in Leeds - partly because of the work it does and partly because of the stuff it sells, the books in particular are excellent). I've seen adaptations of the story and listened to it on Radio 4 Extra too but I've yet to read it for myself. Though first I must finish North and South which I am really enjoying now I've properly got into it.

I also got a copy of Victorian Women by Joan Perkin, and The Victorian House by Judith Flanders - so as you can see my obsession with all things Victorian shows no sign of abating as yet. I also got a copy of Nigel Slaters Eating for England which is delightfully nostalgic and makes my mouth water when he talks of such things as Fry' Five Centres and Mint Cracknell.

I did a bit of experimenting with making bookmarks from coffin lining offcuts and bits of detritus I'd collected from the ground at St George's Fields, covering them with sticky backed plastic hadn't worked brillianty well but a fellow ma-er has suggested laminating them instead - think this will work much better so am going to give that a go next. Just need to find a laminator.

I had fun in the pop up meth lab aka garage yesterday developing the Ilford Delta 3200 I used last week - I reckon we need a couple of trips to the charity shop, a couple of trips to the tip and a trip to Poverty Aid to buy a new set of shelves/cupboard or small wardrobe and I'll be able to convert it into a bit more of a darkroom. It won't be so dark that I'll be able to do traditional black and white photograph printing but that's okay as that doesn't make my heart sing but I will be able to cyanotype prep and make and that's okay - because that does.

Am pleased with some of the pics I took but a lot are out of focus, I've taken pics on a film slr before using Delta 3200 and was really pleased with the results but that was on a Minolta SLR and it clearly likes the dark better than my Canon SLR which really struggled whatever settings I used on it. But at least I got some I'm chuffed with plus I quite like agitating. My ever supportive and lovely husband has an app on his phone (I don't have that kind of phone and so would have had to use a pen and paper to write down the times/chemical concentrates needed and then used a clock) which made it all a bit easier. But even a couple of the out of focus ones are so out of focus to be kind of interesting in an abstract way so am counting it a win all round.

I finished reading Brix Smith Start's autobiography last week - it was really interesting to read about someone else's creative process and also about The Fall - a band I have loved (even if it's just Mark E Smith and a granny on bongoes) for almost 30 years. (Writing that sentence makes me feel really frigging old) and of course their drunken rambling shambling but also wonderful leader the aforementioned Mark E Smith. A man who it appears moved his new girlfriend in whilst his old girlfriends dirty underwear still littered his flat. This added to the way in which he treats people so badly that they leave makes me think that song and lyric writing skill aside he is not a very nice man. But as a chum pointed out - oftentimes bad people make good work. The separation of work from character of the creator is something I have often mused upon. Gary Glitter is an utterly repellant and vile individual but he did write some good pop songs.  The Young Gods version of Did You Miss Me is one of my favourite songs and I console myself that even if he did write it - I am not listening to him singing it and as I playing the version I bought on vinyl many moons ago he is not continuing to get any royalties on it from me - apart from a one off payment way before he was charged and found guilty of his offences.

I didn't go to the end of year overview session at the college on Friday but I did go in for a meeting about our end of year show (which will be at the end of October) and a sneak preview of the other end of year shows - I wasn't in the mood for the hustle and bustle of the evening opening and so just wandered about looking at the last of the stuff being put up. There was some amazing work - the kind of work I look at and think wow I wish I had the skill/thought to make that, some good thought provoking work and some work that I look at and think 'mmm, just not getting it'. It's on til June 16th so get down to Blenheim and see it for yourself and see if you see anything that makes you go 'wow'.

I did do something on Friday though that I had been putting off for ages - namely a tidying of my workroom which had become more teetering piles of disorganisation and I was struggling to both find things and get things done. It took me two hours (The Chemical Brothers are usually my cleaning soundtrack of choice though I did also use the soundtrack to Cecil B Demented) and now I can find things again and see what I'm doing - all my library books are in one place ready for me to (finally!) read them and you can see the floor again which is going to help when it comes to portfolio pulling together time.

The sofa bed is still in use as an extra temporary book shelf but at least it is now only one end of it - the end nearest my desk and you can sit on the rest of it. There are still piles of folders under the desk but at least they are now neatly stacked and I can find things again. A box of papers and out of date brochures went into the recycling bin...

And so here we are - almost at the end, certainly at the end of formal teaching though I still have a couple of tutorials before hand in. Not sure whether or not to carry on writing this blog in this way though, I might do though as it's become a good habit, plus I've had lovely feedback on it too and not just in an academic setting. This is important to me as although this blog became my research journal for handing in to be assessed and jump those academic hoops I don't just want it to be an exclusive academic document. The feedback was from a chum who has moved to Australia and she says 'I love the way you write, it's like you're talking to me over a cup of tea' and this added to the feedback from my fellow ma-ers about how much they have enjoyed the talks I've done gives me good cheer. This and Ilford have just retweeted one of my gig pics that I took last Saturday :-)   

MA-Ness Term 3 Week 11 Keeping Going, Tidying, Bookmaking, Catching Up With Myself, Grave Pictures/Rubbings and Modern F**king Bins.

this weeks post it notes with extra post it notes and bookmaking tool for smoothing edges (forgotten name of it and this isn't a bone one but a plastic one...want to get a bone one though )  

mini book made from stuff that would have otherwise been thrown out

cyanotypes in the wash - some worked better than others...

me doing a grave rubbing in St George's Fields - photo taken on 120 fuji velvia by husband on a Rolliecord from 1957 and then processed in garage...

Still finding life heavy going at the moment and generally feeling rather low but have been taking bit more easy by rearranging some appointments and taking time to concentrate upon doing things that make me feel more fulfilled - namely taking pictures and making stuff. And also by having some days in which I did precisely nothing except a bit of washing up and ironing and watching rubbish on the telly or dipping in and out of a book - am reading I Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson (recommended to me by a tutor) and it is very good indeed - delightfully grim and disconcerting and I am about halfway through now and I really hope Merricat and Jonas survive intact..... 

 Thankfully lurg seems to finally completely abated and whilst I'm a bit concerned that I have a few submission deadlines coming up - I think I'm going to be okay meeting them as I have rearranged some stuff for this week to make sure I can meet them without having to get stressed at the last minute though it is a bit of a bugger the college library being closed for staff development this week as there is loads of photocopying I'd like to be doing and I'm loathe to do it elsewhere as it is cheaper and easier at college....but it'll be fine to do it next week....when I was an undergraduate I always left things to the last minute and I was determined as a postgraduate that I would try and do things where I left myself time to do things at a pace that wasn't stressful and I try to be as ahead of myself as possible plus I'm also much better this time round at saying 'I could do with some more help and guidance on this' or 'I need to rearrange things' which also makes things much easier.

One of the biggest and on reflection most productive things I did last week was tidy my workroom - went through all the stuff that had accumulated at the lefthandside of my work desk and put all the out of date flyers in the recycling, sorted out all the pens in the pen pots by throwing out all the ones which no longer work, and so created some better more organised space to work in as well as just generally tidying up and sorting. Plus I can now sit on the sofa and read if I want without having to move piles of books though the end of the sofa is a more or less permanent book pile - but at the moment it consists of a much smaller pile of books I have finished reading but need to add to my bibliography before I put them back on the shelf.

However I have yet to properly sort out all the digital printing I had done the other week into my portfolio ready for hand in and that's a task for later this week I think. Hand in date isn't til middle of August but like I said for reasons of stress avoidance I like to be as far ahead of myself as possible with things.

But once I'd done some tidying I felt like doing something more traditionally creative and as the sun was bright I did some cyanotyping - the sun has changed direction so much since I first started doing it that instead of the kitchen window I now do them in the hallway and on the landing though they do also go in the downstairs back window too. I did 4 and am quite pleased with some of the results - I plan to colour photocopy them and then trim the results - so that I can remove the bits of my brushwork that aren't the best and then blow them up to A4 or A3 size. My brushwork has definitely got better but it still needs a lot of practice/improvement. I must make a date to go back to the darkroom and prep some more paper too. I must experiment with trying it on fabric too....my to do list never gets any shorter.....

I also want to copy onto acetate some of the grave rubbings (see picture above) I made on tracing paper with a big chunky graphite pencil at the weekend and so make them into cyanotypes too. Some of the remaining monuments at St George's Fields have the most heartfelt and laudatory inscriptions on them with phrases like 'fervid eloquence' on the monument of a preacher and I realised as I was rubbing that I could rub words individually and so make found poems in a sort of bastard offspring of the Burroughs/Bowie cut up technique.

Made 28 rubbings in total and discovered that granite monuments make for much smoother end results and it might have been useful to have had some masking tape to hold down paper at the corners when it got a bit windy and I don't like getting my hands dirty and I forgot to take wetwipes. Part of me wonders if I can ever be a really good artist as I am not good at getting my hands dirty - getting my fingers sticky with glue or paint makes me feels uncomfortable unless I can wash them clean again fairly quickly. It took a lot of scrubbing with the nail brush to get rid of the last bits of graphite from in and around my nails when I got home. But I am well chuffed with the results and am keen to go back and do more - on bigger paper this time...and maybe I'll wear latex gloves too....

St George's Fields is one of my go to places in Leeds for both a battery recharge as well as a place for creative inspiration - it is so steeped in its victorian origins and I continue to be fascinated by its overall history as a place and I also want to try and find out more of the individual stories on the names on the monuments there too - not the great big ones but the subscription graves that have been laid flat to line some of the pathways. Luckily my husband loves it too - and we decided we'd go on Saturday to take some pictures and have some lunch there.

I have two big learning points from our trip on Saturday - make list of what you want to take night before so that when you get there you have everything you need and don't have to go home and waste good light whilst you go home to pick the 35mm camera you were planning on using....even if it did give you opportunity to pick up tracing paper and graphite which you hadn't originally planned on taking. I took a little folding step this time too - which helped lots but my other learning point was if you are using props then it helps if you have an assistant to help you move things, help you carry stuff so me and my husband have come to an arrangement where we're going to take it in turns to be one anothers assistant.

I (finally) took 2 cameras my beloved Minolta 7000 from 1985 and shot a roll of Agfa Vista ISO 200 (from the poundshop) which I had developed and scanned later that afternoon at my go to place for ordinary colour film developing The Photo Shop in North Lane in Headingley and I also shot a roll of 120 Fuji Velvia using the very lovely posh medium format camera I've borrowed from college - got a few 'money shots' (see previous psots for definition)  but also learnt that my pale mauve organza sadly doesn't look pale mauve (one of the colours of mourning in victorian times) when photographed and the differences in the end results of the film pictures (didn't take any digital - not even on my phone) are astonishing - different shades of sky and green even though both taken at the same time, this is due to the difference in the quality of the film itself - not just in its original state and its age and storage but also the processing and the fact that they were taken on different cameras and in different formats.

And as for the 'money shots' I took I did have a Kanye West like confidence moment sitting in front of the screen last night looking at the ones I've taken recently and said to my husband 'I totally win at taking grave photos' as one of the ones I took of a victorian monument in the rain in Scarborough and I cannot wait to get printed up and he said it was because they are of something I love and if it's something you love then that love will shine through and so you get good work....and I think he has a point.

The fuji velvia was home processed in the garage by my chemically proficient husband and I then scanned it in. The grass on the velvia looks lush but a bit anaemic on the poundshop 35mm.... I hope to get some of the images printed up soon and some I've already post processed to black and white and inverted to make cyanotypes with....can you tell I like making cyanotypes?

I like it as a process for all sorts of reasons - that it rose to prominence as a technique in victorian times, but mostly that it's such a relatively forgiving process and you don't need to be completely exact with developing times - me and numbers don't get on at the best of times and so I find developing prints in the traditional way in the darkroom tricky where you have to be so much more exact timewise. Plus I have been trying out different kinds of coloured paper to paint the solution onto to try and get away from the all blueness of cyanotypes - am liking both red and grey but I've also been researching (after seeing Sharon Harvey's wonderful work you can read about it here) how to make different coloured cyanotypes so I need to get some washing soda, some coffee and find a couple more trays.....

Plus some of the acetates I've made to make cyanotypes with work really well as pieces of work in their own right.

And before I forget other lessons learnt - clean glass frame before making a cyanotype, and resize images in Paint before inserting them into presentations....and when making bookmarks out of the backing paper from 120 film - cut the sticky back plastic lots bigger than it needs to be as that gives you bit of wriggle room when it comes to putting them together.

Making bookmarks out of backing paper and leftover sticky back plastic aren't the only things I've made out of leftover scrap materials this week - on Wednesday in an attempt to both lift my mood and practice the rudimentary bookmaking skills I'd learnt the previous week I made a little photo book (see photo above) using offcuts of tracing paper, card and thumbprints of images. I'd printed screendumps of images I'm working on for my portfolio but I'd printed two copies by mistake so I cut them out and stuck them in to the little book I made with a drawing pin and some embroidery thread. I have a guillotine at home (got it from Aldi a few years back) and it's not good at coping with more than one or two pieces of paper at a time so instead I trimmed the edges using a scalpel on my lovely new cutting mat - need to work on my scalpel skills as well as my brush skills but for a first attempt I'm pretty chuffed with it. And as a former mentor of mine from the Place and Memory Project pointed out - 'there's not much that is more satisfying than making your own book'. I really need to get working on my memorial book next.

Not sure where I heard or saw this over the last few days (memory is like a sieve at the moment) and it was the point that people make art of what they fear the most - in which case I must fear death and loss the most and I'm not sure I do fear death as such - unless it is painful and drawn out - but I do fear death and loss of loved ones, and I do feel as a society that we should be a bit more open about talking about death - if only in terms of telling our loved ones what we want to happen in the event of our deaths and making a will. Mmm will have to give this more food for thought.

Costs for this week - graphite pencil was approx 70p, purchase and processing of 2 35mm colour films was £12, can't remember how much the b+w film cost to buy as bought it as part of a job lot from someone who was clearing out a load of film they weren't going to use and not sure how much it cost to process either and I'm not sure how much the velvia cost or how much it cost to process (both the b+w and the velvia were done in house - or rather in garage and workroom) and the matte medium and dylon image maker I bought came to just over a tenner. I also bought some mini canvases £3, a new paintbrush £2 and more plastic wallets £2. So just under £30....not too bad considering.....

The other thing I did this week was attend a conference at Leeds Met entitled Gendered Bodies in Visible Spaces - the keynote speeches by Marvina Newton on the Regulation of Black Womens Bodies and Professor Rosalind Gill on 'Love Your Body But Hate It T: Contradictory Subjectivities In Post Feminist Times' were enlightening, thought provoking and depressing. As was the workshop I attended on Subverting Corporate Beauty Ideals by Glen Jankowski and Dr Nova Deighton-Smith which involved looking at magazines and advertising and what a smack in the face that was - I haven't read the sidebar of shame in the Daily Heil for a very long time (weaned myself off it a year or two ago) nor have I picked up a copy of Heat in a long time and wow I'd forgotten quite how dreadful those type of articles and magazines are - with their ridiculously airbrushed figures - women with bits of their thighs missing, arms missing muscles and all manner of airbrushing and nip-tucking with a mouse. I suppose one bonus of most people using applications like Instaglam (as someone without a smartphone who doesn't make if any selfies I am high court judge-like in my ignorance of these things) is that everyone *knows* how readily and easily images are manipulated these days and in some ways this is just carrying on the process that in some ways started with portrait painters painting people in as flattering a manner as possible (hence Oliver Cromwell's alleged utterance of 'paint me warts and all' to Sir Peter Lely) and is in some ways linked to these pictures but even so it is still a smack in the face when looking at this kind of thing en masse - toxic culture indeed. Not quite sure how best to combat it other than to continue what I do for my own sanity which is not to read or look at that kind of toxic nonsense.

As it gets nearer to hand in time and what feels like the real end of the year I've been taking stock of what I've learnt over the past few months, what good working habits I've got into, how my work has changed and one of the things I'm really glad I did get into a habit of doing was this blog on a Monday - and I intend to continue doing it but it is making me think about why it's public and not private and what difference would there be if I made it a private one instead which I might do for year 2.....as ever much food for thought. Plus I usually tweet link to it on a Monday evening as that's when I've finished and published it but I retweeted link to it again on Tuesday morning and got twice as many 'views'. Perhaps this is something I need to be looking at too.... 

I also made some inroads into my book backlog last week - and started reading academic books again and making notes - still got lots left to read but it felt good to at least be making an inroad into the pile again which sits at the right hand side of my workdesk in its own box....and along with the Shirley Jackson book I mentioned I've also started Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon - a victorian sensation novel from 1862 which features bigamy, arson and murder and is very wonderful indeed so far.....

And finally - modern fecking bins, needed and necessary but some of them don't have spoil the views I'm trying to take in St George's Field, there is one at the end of the avenue of graves from the Cemetery Road entrance which is the bane of my photographic life...as what looks like a beautiful victorian vista is clearly not as there is a modern fecking bin at the end of it. Perhaps I shall have to extend my basic use of Photoshop from levels and inversion and watermarks to cropping out bloody bins........