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 Term 2 Week 8 Presentation Writing, Light Box Using, MIni Studio-Ness, Abstracts, Practice and Below Parr

This weeks post it note and some failed instant pictures but I'm intrigued by the half Mapp which appears in one of the images, was given a Fuji Instant camera by a chum having a big photographic clear out and the camera had been in a box under the bed, then out in a family members garage for a very long time so no surprise that the film didn't work out right....plus a couple have almost entirely come out so I think it's a problem with old film not being kept in optimum conditions as opposed to something being wrong with the camera itself. Will get some more instant film and have another go soon.

My habit of getting back into writing this on a Monday has gone out of the window again this week, because instead I spent this Monday using the big light table at college to take photographs of images I'd had printed on tracing paper. I'm experimenting with layering them over one another to make new patterns and images following on from useful feedback from the silent crit a couple of weeks back.

I'd started experimenting last week at home using the small light box I have at home but I needed a bigger one plus the one at college also has additional lights at each side as well as the one underneath. Am really chuffed with some of the new images so hoping to get them printed but lessons learnt -
trim off the borders before layering
the lights are quite hot and the heat makes the tracing paper curl up a bit at the edges - so need to work out a way to stick them down that isn't visible under the bright light....

I then met a chum for lunch and then bought some magnets (to experiment with using them to display my work) and grave candles from the big shop that is like a soft furnishings free version of Ikea on the Headrow and then came home and worked on a presentation I have to give later this week.

College has asked us to do a 5 minute presentation on what we're up to. It's quite timely really as I'm increasingly thinking about how to categorise what it is I do. I can describe it fairly easily but seeing where it fits/how it fits in with other disciplines is something I'm finding more difficult...partly like I said last time it's a mix of navel gazing and worrying I'm a mistress of all trades and Jill of none... 

So what exactly is my practice? what is my work about? I make images primarily using analogue methods. I take pictures on film sometimes of objects I've collected and posed, sometimes of existing spaces. I often  make cyanotypes and sometimes anthotypes of the images I make but I most often print the images I make digitally on tracing paper. Print making in the darkroom other than cyanotype prepping doesn't make my heart sing. And how much a process makes my heart sing is the basis on which I judge how much I want to do something. 

The subject matter is often inspired by Victorian mourning culture which means I spend a lot of time reading about the period and its customs, reading literature from the period - currently reading The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins which I am absolutely loving. According to a quote from The Times on the back of the book it is 'a pleasingly nasty affair' and I'm about halfway through and I am in agreement with the Times summation. Plus I am loving Collins description of the difference between the classes, servants and 'people of quality' in particular as well as the feisty plot involving inheritances, marriages, death, revenge and of course a wonderfully described Haunted Hotel.

I also spend a lot of time taking photographs of Victorian monuments in graveyards or of Victorian cemeteries and looking at burial records, mourning ephemera and such like in archives. I find looking at original items from the period very inspirational plus it makes the historian part of my heart sing too. Another thing I've been thinking about is whether or not this blog is part of my practice too, it is definitely a tool for this course as I am using it as my research journal for assessment and I wonder if I will keep it up in the same way when I finish this course....

Anyway I also like using different kinds of camera - I have a number of film SLR's which I use if I want to take 'proper' pictures and a number of fun cameras if I want to experiment and take less 'proper' as opposed to 'improper' pictures. I never take improper pictures - I don't even take someone else's picture unless I've asked them first and got their permission.

My 'improper' pics at the moment are most often taken on the 'crap kids digital camera' with its warped lens and inability to capture colour remotely correctly. I love its lomo crapness though. This week I also had great fun using a lomo fish eye lens camera and lessons learnt from using that particular camera - you can never get too close really with that kind of lens, and the resultant images look even more striking when they've been greyscaled. It's an F8 lens and you have no control over the length of exposure so to get best results you need to use it in bright light with high ISO film.

I took advantage of the bright sunshine and used a colour ISO 800 film to take pictures of all my favourite bits of St George's Field earlier this week. I then got them developed at my usual place - The Photo Shop in Headingley who as always did a speedy and professional job of developing them.

I had loaded the film in the comparative darkness of the toilets at college but hadn't quite put the film rewinding bit down far enough so it wasn't turning - leading me to wonder about 16 pictures on if I had wound the film on properly. It felt like it had as there was tension winding the film on after each exposure but as I once took a whole roll without actually taking any pictures at all (but at least the film wasn't wasted and I could use it again when I had actually wound it on properly) I wasn't entirely sure. As soon as I noticed I made sure it was down properly and it did go round. In the case where the film never ran out - I only realised what I'd done when I got to the 36th picture on what was a roll of 24, but in this case the film got to 36 and then ran out so I was fairly hopeful there'd be something on it and there was thankfully. Am reet chuffed with some of them and going to get them printed.

But note to self - check camera through thoroughly before starting to take pictures. It's just as well I'm not an event photographer at a blink and you miss it type event as it's quite likely to have finished by the time I've got my arse in gear properly and realised what I'm doing....

So there's been a lot of playing - partly with new cameras but also with new toys as I have also been playing with the present my lovely ever supportive husband got me for our recent wedding anniversary - namely a mini studio. It works best for photographing very small things like pieces of jewellery but I have got some lovely images of flowerheads that I've been collecting in a big plastic pot. I decided to collect all the flowers I've been given or bought since I started the course as I knew I wanted to use them in pictures. Plus I have a bit of a thing for dead and dying flowers anyway.

It's a portable easily put up and down white plastic box that fixes together with magnets and has interchangeable different colour backdrops and two strips of led lights that you can control the brightness of. It's ACE and I am loving using it. Though I was defeated by how to attach the backdrop, I was struggling with how to attach it for ages - even thinking I might have to use blu-tack to attach it, until I had the bright idea of looking at the instructions when all became clear. Note to self - reading the instructions before you use something is a really good idea...

I also spent quite a bit of time last week cleaning and tidying - not my workroom so much as the rest of the house which meant I felt better about spending so much time playing and experimenting with filmy stuff.

I also went to two art things last week - a lecture by Nigel Llewellyn at the Henry Moore Institute on the Art of Death and the latest photographs by Martin Parr at the Hepworth featuring Yorkshire grown rhubarb.

The lecture was wonderful - Nigel told us of the inspiration behind the book he wrote on the subject and the exhibition he curated at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1991, or rather 1992 as due to the starting of the first Gulf War and the worries of the trustees that patrons would be offended by such an exhibition at a time of war its opening time was rescheduled. It was a fascinating glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes at big museums, a look at some of the artefacts in the exhibition and it was very engagingly delivered. It made me want to read his book and my lovely husband has ordered me a secondhand copy off an internet site that sells more than books and doesn't pay much tax.

I was quite disappointed by the new Parr pics though - a chum has described them as 'being phoned in' and I agree, they just didn't grab me in the way that his other work has. The colour seemed kind of off to me - not full on glorious technicolour but a kind of garish faded (if you can have such a thing) plus the method of display didn't add to them for me. It's a huge high ceiling space in which one wall is taken up with some from the Consumer series which look beautifully garish in comparison. The new images are not framed but printed in different sizes and attached to the wall by magnets, some have buckled and are no longer flush to the wall. (A problem I know only too well from hanging my own work and it reacting to the changes in temperature and humidity in the room) and it looks kind of amateur for an organisation like the Hepworth which I'm guessing has a lot more money for displaying work than I do. One way of minimising the buckling is to leave the paper in the same atmosphere for a good 24-48 hours prior to hanging it or to put it two or three magnets width from the wall in the first place. I did love seeing my old favourites of his again though - especially some from the Last Resort series.

Last week I was writing about putting together and sending in a proposal for an academic conference and I was pleased to get back a reply to say my proposal had been accepted. I say pleased but I am also a little bit scared too - as I'll be amongst Victorian specialists - but then as a chum pointed out I am a Victorian specialist too. And I am - but I am a bit concerned that I'm not quite specialist enough....see above re mistress/Jill feelings.

I have also hopefully scored a trip round a coffin factory too - I emailed to ask if they had any coffin linings offcuts I could have to print on and they asked me to phone them to discuss it so I put on my best telephone voice, took a deep breath and rang.

Exciting but also a teeny bit scarey times....and fingers crossed I'll be back in my usual Monday blogging habit again.