The story of stuff - an idea for my first formal illustration project

On the A30 driving back from Falmouth on the 11th of March, following the Illustration forum
it occurred to me that I could use my next illustration project to explore 'where this book has come from and what it is there to do'.

To expand a little, it would be - a book which says somthing about itself, it's personal and particular history and it's reason for being - a bit like a diary, a bit like a family tree, a bit like a biography, a bit like a map of a supply chain, or a piece of genetic code, or a bit like a letter to a friend. It would illustrate a network - become a hub for a network and a token of connection and belonging. It could explore subtly, the reasons how and why it exists

It makes sense for a variety of reasons (and I always like it when stuff makes sense :-) )

1. I'm doing an illustration MA partly as a way of exploring how to produce published illustrated material - so, an exploration of the book's supply chain would help me to understand that process better. As part of that MA, I will have to produce a 'diary' or 'notebook' which creatively and conciously maps the progress of the work. So, it seems to me to make sense that a similar logic exists within the record and the work itself.
2. Understanding parts of the supply chain for the organisation I currently work in ( Regen SW) is vital to our ability to understand what to do in helping develop the sustainable energy sector. This sort of information can be very helpful to businesses- so it seemed that as I've had some experience of that, that it would make sense to follow this type of process in an illustration project.
3. In Thailand, Alicia Page told me about 'the story of stuff' and I could see that there is potential in this sort of illustration to communicate something political
4. I really liked the film Catfish because I like the documentary feel, and the road trip / social networking vibe; which has the sense of authenticity, & adventuring into the unknown and using an art project as a process of discovery
5. I watched a talk on TED the other day about 'when ideas have sex' by Matt Ridley. This talked about how innovation has changed society so much that we now live in a completely interlinked world and none of us knows everything about anything. None of us is self-sufficient - and I found myself thinking that very few of us really understand the value of the connections that we have with others....it makes us somewhat unappreciative of the value of each moment and the extent to which we could be grateful to the many many others who directly but unrecognised play an important part in our lives.
6. This links very closely with the thought ' None of us is as smart as all of us' which I heard at the Pegasus NLP course which I blogged about earlier.
7. I really need an adventure and I have always had a particular facination with treasure maps,  my husband and I have recently completed the game 'Lego Indiana Jones' for our new xbox (a new foray ... I've never really played computer games before) - it seemed to me that this sort of project would give me a very clear and defined set of perameters for exploration which I'm sure defines any good adverture. (I wonder whether or not I could ask WCTF to pay for any of the travel)
8. At one stage a few years ago, thought it would be fun to do a map of marmite - It always seems miraculous to me how stuff gets to be what it is and how many people and processes are involved in it. It seems like a very human and playful desire to take stuff apart and put it back together again.
9. To me, books are symbols of themselves - they represent much more than what they are. and yet, they can also seem so 'throw away'. I think I could make somemthing which would highlight the preciousness of books and play with symbols, but also to be really grounded in direct experience. I want to create a story which is aware of the symbolic, but is grounded in reality (I really can't bear stuff when it's too 'meaningful') 
10. Somehow I need to create a network of people who are interested in this work and it seems to me that one of the best ways to do this is to make the work relevant to them. Many of us are interested in how we link to others, where we sit in the world and in relation to others, so something that is personal and actively builds a network would have integrity

Other thoughts
Aesthetic - explorer / treasure / trails and maps / the internet / forwards and backwards in time
Aesthetic - my granny's trek diary and outfits / victoriana vs contemporary
People - printers, makers, suppliers, manufacturers, farmers,
Materials / resources - paper / leather / glue / thread / ink
Processes - marchinery / manufacture / travel / companies / recording
Places - journeys

The point / messages
Degrees of separation
Fluke / chance / serendipity
Self determination
Intrinsic links with others
Comfort and encouragement
Wonder and amazingness and learning

The dangers

1. Even though this is defined, it could get too big, it could get exponential- I will need to plan it clearly
2. Maybe I'll get lost in the reserach and not do enough illustrating - I will need to make sure I have enough time
3. Maybe my style won't suit it exactly - I might just have to be okay with that!
4. Maybe it will be too dull - I will need help editing
5. Maybe it will be a challenge to interest people - I will have to find a way of exciting the people who I engage in the project
6. Maybe the travelling could be too expensive - I could explore funding options (WCTF) or I could try and raise some money - perhaps find sponsorship for the people and companies involved?

NLP course with Pegasus pt1

Pegasus NLP website

So, I've just completed the core NLP course at Pegasus. we were asked in advance of attending; 'why do we want to attend the course?' I think that in the main - I wanted to use it for:
Figuring out whether or not anything we learnt on the course could help me develop my arts practice
In particular, I have been struggling with writing to go with my pictures...could i use anything in this course to help me do this?

I don't think that I could easily encapsulate everything I got out of the five days right here in one go, so I've decided that over the next while, I'll try and think about it bit by bit.

Hurray -

I'm so happy I've been accepted on to the MA in Illustration: Authorial practice at Falmouth College of Arts.
Course details

I have to decide whether to accept the place in 14 days and pay my deposit.

Things I want to do before starting at the begining of October:

10 things in 100 days - 20th Feb to 24th May

1. Tyger Tyger book
2. complete 2 mosaic commissions
3. weekly cartoon / image
4. exhibitors all year at the centre
5. set up creativity group at MakeArt
6. NLP course
7. photography project
8. ceramics project
9. 10 days of silence
10. Allotmenting

Laptop & Adobe software

10 things in 100 days - 25th May to 2nd Sept

1. Explore travel bursary
2. In design course
3. find out how to do illustration for New Scientist
4. Develop idea for back project
5. 4 Christmas cards
6. Beastie & the Golden Cat Calendar
7. Fundraising event / mailing for course
8. Make Art creativity group
9. weekly cartoon / image
10. Allotmenting

I like this: Todd McLellan disassembled

Todd McLellan makes disassembled work - his website is http://www.toddmclellan.com/. 

Reasons I like this:

• It makes all the elements of the assembly stoundout. Sometimes it can be hard to see something - taking it apart helps you to see it
• It makes each element seem precious .... more precious somehow than the clock on its own!
• It shows up the craftsmanship and seems to highlight how objects are the sum of the efforts of many people over time, striving for 'better'. We all stand on the shoulders of others....we can aim to be a good shoulder to stand on too.
• Many people have produced many new things - we are all inventors and our inventions and their history are embodied in the everyday objects around us.
• Wood, metal, glass - where has each piece of material come from? who's handled it? who put it all together?

Luminous Earth Grid

Luminous Earth Grid

ImechE Cardboard Boat Race 2010

This was organised to persuade people that engineering is fun. And it is! The challenge was to make a boat from cardboard, gaffa tape, varnish and sealant, within a few hours to carry two of the four team members in a 200 meter boat race.

It didn't matter that none of us were engineers, or had any experience of it, or had ever even considered designing a boat of any form....It did matter that we could swim though!

Rather than create designs in advance we prepared by having a chat about it in the car on the way to Plymouth with a bit of input from google on the iphone. the key things we discovered were that the boat must displace more water than the weight of contents of the boat. We also discovered that it was good to keep the weight relatively low in the boat to prevent it from toppling over.
Advice from googling suggested that we should refrain from folding or damaging our cardboard, we should triple layer the cardboard varnishing each side and that we should spend significant time on the folds and seals to waterproof our boat.....so that's what we did!

There were 6 teams in total and each boat was so different! When we lined up on the quay, none of the boats had been in the water and none of us really knew if they would float or sink let alone get accross a 200 meter course. And some of them did do it!....some of them didn't :-) 

Somehow, who knows how, our team managed to win the heat we were in and also the race in full! Google's advice was brilliant....but even more useful was discovering how important oars are....they experience much more stress. It would be worth focussing a lot more attention on them in the future.

Affinity - Laura Medler workshop

So, One of the things that you can get out of art school....I project....is an experience of other people's creative processes.

With the Beastie series, I found that I liked to create visual narratives....I started with one picture which I felt epitmoised a feeling (not a whole story) and once I'd finished that picture, I looked at it, tried to see it from a different angle, and wondered what would happen next....at some point, usually within a day or so, I would feel like I knew what hapened next and I drew that image, then I'd start the process again and in this way I built a whole world around the central character Beastie.

I worked on three series since 2008 when I re-started to make pictures again and each series went through a similar process....the symbology developed and the techniques developed somewhat, but at some point I found it difficult to know how to continue. Hence recognising the need from some external input at Slade summer school. Partly I was blaming my lack of technical skill, partly I felt I wanted to move on and didn't know how to.

Following my two weeks of drawing into painting, I was given the opportunity to assist on Laura Medler's  and John Hilliard's photography workshops at theend of August. Despite the fact that I'm not a photographer, I leapt at the opportunity as I saw it as the perfect chance to see how real artists work and learn anything I could about their practice.

Needless to say, I was very nervous, I had no idea what to expect, and wasn't sure that I would understand or appreciate the work so I decided to try and prepare as much as possible.

Laura's workshop was first, and this is about that workshop.

I started off looking at Laura's photos on her website. Immediately, I liked the look of her images. The first I saw were deliciously lush gardens with women on swings. The images were distorted somehow and gave the impression of falling and were somehow reminiscent of magic and myths and childhood. Once in Laura's workshop, we had the opportunity to see a chronology of work which she produced and understand how she got there which I'll talk about later.

One of the other pictures which stood out for me in Laura's website was an image entitled 'still isodorable'. Firstly it jumped out because it was quite different from some of the rest of her work and I was interested in the fect that it was about another artist (Isodora Duncan), secondly, at school I attended dance classes and had been compared to Isodora but didn't really know much about her and never bothered to find out...But the synchronicity was so enjoyable that I decided to pursue it further and try and find out more about her.

Some stand out stuff about Isodora Duncan (for me!)

• She lived with her lover Paris Singer for a while at Oldway Mansion - just down the road from wher I grew up
• When I googled 'Isodora Duncan Devon' the website for Guy's Cliffe holiday flats comes up at the top of the list...this is where my husband was living when I first met him
• Despite being 'blousey' or older and embarrassing the public of her day by having a sexual appetite, she was still an excellent dancer who changed people's views of dance irrevocably
• Her signature dance moves were often prolonged stillness withonly small movements - as suggested in Laura's images

Obviously there's masses more about her which is fascinating, and I felt like I came to the workshop with some source material, which if a bit cheeky (would Laura be irriatated by my developing work derived from her ideas?), was at least really interesting for me. I felt like a detective....or perhaps that was just that google also threw up loads of links to Agatha Christie whenever I googled.

Needless to say, there wasn't really any time to develop the work I wanted to while helping out on the workshop, we were learning new techniques and didn't have masses of time to develop work from them, but I could and perhaps will in the not too distant future.

Laura's approach to photograhy is firstly and necessarily analogue, it is technique or materials based...wheras I work from an image or idea with what materials I use to produce it being secondary, Laura like an intrepid explorer has taken the photographic technique and explored the options and limits of her own unique technique and this has helped her to formulate imagery who's narrative or symbolic content has its roots in the experience of the material process. I don't think I'm quite able to do it justice, but can only encorage you to take a look. It all makes sense and it still looks great!

I think that what really attracts me to her work is the internal logic. The work hints at grand themes without being airy fairy; there is a strong sense of the symbolic and is quite 'readable'. The work also seems to reference Laura's personal experiences and sense of place in her world and therefore has a sense of integrity which is very refreshiong....you don't feel like you're being given a dose of bullshit! and I think that the work is quite conceptual and (yet...because some people hate conceptual work) I think it works it it's on right, tilting the viewer towards interpretation but without requiring the viewer to know about x y and z in advance, finally, I like the fact that the work is clearly a female view of the world without being painfully political or feminist or angst ridden, this was really refreshing and I found myself hoping to find more work like this to look at!  ....For this reason I think that Laura's work is very very clever and I feel really priveliged to have worked with her.

Sandra Smith told me when she gave me the opportunity to assist Laura that she thought I would resonate with her approach...   It feels a bit stalkerish to say so, but I would say that I really felt a sense of affinity and I really hope to have the chance to follow her carrer.
The participants of the workshop were all attending Slade's foundation programme. The background and skills was very varied and in order to build up the group, the first day explored photograms.

On the following day time was taken up with some distractions - having to attend a meeting, participants dropping in and out and trying to convey the technique which Laura uses generally. The afternoon gave everyone the chance to stage an image/event and then try the process out for themselves.

The final day consisted of learning how to develop black and white film and then creating contact sheets with the intent of producing enlargements if desired.

I think that each student got results which is good, but it occurred to me that one of the downsides of a foundation is that one experiences a very wide range of distractions and also perhaps an overload of input without the time to develop what you produce. Also, the broad range of student needs is very challenging for any tutor and groups can be swayed off course by the dynamics of powerful individuals.

Really valuable tips from Laura about making art-work

1. Work and keep working even when you totally hate what it is you are producing - starting to work after a gap is very very hard
2. Most artists struggle with how to continue to work, especially after producing really good work - it can be hard to follow it up
3. When you work, you don't have to produced 'finished pieces' or ;real artwork'. the process of engaging with you material or technique throws up ideas and content as you progress