Like a kid in a sweetshop

Having got my first brief I am now siting here with two more. Strangely, although they represent a lot more work they have also helped me to understand how my painting practice can fit in with drawing and theoretical studies - I think.   I just need to be sure I manage my work so I can get everything done and still have some time and energy left over to spend with Chris.

I want to continue with using photographs of me and my mother as the basis for my drawing practice - I am starting to think of drawing in thread. See works by Egyptian embroiderer Ghada Amer.  I am thinking of emulating the style rather than the content!!

http://www.cheimread.com/artists/ghada-amer/

Visited the college library again today.  Wow.  I was like a kid in a sweetshop.  So many interesting books and topics to discover.  I am currently enjoying Roszika Parker's The Subversive Stitch which looks at how embroidery has come to embody the ideal of the feminine.  As a former City and Guilds person this is a fascinating read.  I never used to be quite such a feminist until I started creating art works.

First Semester Brief: Still/Moving

Well there you go what can I say.  My very first brief.  Too broad and too constraining all at once.  How can that be? Why am I never satisfied? Or do I need this discontent to be there to provoke me and make me think laterally just like the oyster needs the irritation of the grain of sand in order to create a pearl. 

We need to find our inspiration from a work of art and develop the idea in terms of our own practice.  I am strangely drawn to work by Oscar Munoz:

He is a Colombian artist.  His work comemorates and celebrates the "disappeared" political prisoners.  The poignancy and the ephemeral nature of the works created in water that evapourates in the heat such that we are never allowed to see the whole picture really moves and excites me about the work.  I love the way in which it raises questions on so many levels for the viewer. 

Induction Week - The Plinth

As well as working with colleagues in a group we had to create an individual piece called "Bradford on a Plinth" Here is my effort.  I thought I liked my idea but the outcome seemed rather boring and literal once I had finished:

However others showed real talent and humour.  Here are just a selection:

Don't you just hate talent??



Induction Week

I was so scared going to Big School for the first time.  I have waited so long to fulfil my dream of doing a Fine Art degree and here I am at last doing it!!!!

Induction Week is rather awkward as you get to know people. This is especially so if you are a doddery old fart (DOF) like me.  Bradford College however doesn't have all of the airs and graces of some Art Schools and it does understand mature students.  I was lucky and both the group I was in and others on the course have been very friendly.

We started off with my particular bete noir: being given a very limited set of materials and being told to make something in our group.  I have had to do this so many times during boring management and team events that I loathe, hate and detest this exercise.  At least we didn't have to build a bridge this time.  So paper, paint (black), string, tin foil and plastescine turned into waterfalls and ducks for us

Typically however when one looks around everyone else seemed to have had some really funky and interesting ideas leaving our ducks looking a bit sad.  Hey Ho.