Mind collage

The frustration of struggling to visualise complex organisations of ideas and things has caused me many struggles through the years but it is only very recently I have realised the connections between these various challenges and how I choose to overcome them.

As a child writing never came naturally and at secondary school the struggle was so frustrating I sometimes resorted to cutting up my essays and joining them back together with sticky tape to help me organise my ideas. I was reminded of this during the week as I wrestled with the writing up of the Prince's Shirt Project. The result was a kitchen wall covered in print outs, post its and washi tape, the only way I could move the ideas around where I wanted them.

As a keen gardener I only took on my first garden two and half years ago but have found it surprisingly difficult to design with plants. I struggle to visualise the effect I will get without putting them in and then moving the poor things about at a later date.

So perhaps it is unsurprising that in the studio I find it hard to plan out and execute a piece from scratch. Instead inevitably something is started, cut up, moved around, placed and replaced until the componants seem to fit.

I wonder do I have to always struggle, can collage be a way of life?

More Progress

I think the process of signing up for the Bradford Open has galvanised me into action. It has been a long time since I have felt so productive and the work seems to be going along without much of a hitch. Just this week I have made four small finished pieces that I reasonably happy with; remarkable! I am also pleased to have been working a lot with stitch, and have been finding this a lovely fluid process.

The work I have been doing recently has a strong connection with the work I did as an undergraduate but with the benefit of a richer understanding of my subject matter. The work uses found objects and materials to create responses based on walking and observing the local landscape. I have been doing this for some time, but am only just now starting to combine this methodology with something that is accessible and has the look of a finished work or composition. I am really pleased to be getting back to this way of working as I have often wondered how and why I came to veer away into the world of cute and quirky? Staying true to your artistic vision is hard, but I need to continually question and push my practice so that it doesn't slip away from me. Students take note!

Liquid lubrication

It proved to be good advise to have a drink and write a stream in consciousness. It certainly made me suspend judgement for a while and make observations based on gut instinct instead of what I think is correct or acceptable.

In the week since I did this I have reviewed the words I noted down, making further connections and observations. Here are some of my reflections:

• keep things simple
• make them beautiful
• if I can bring the images in my head into reality I may be able to communicate my ideas
• if the work has honesty & integrity it will communicate to other people
• don't worry about the format of the work
• the subject of my work is elusive, personal and spiritual
• the elusive quality of the work is interesting in it's own right.
• many of the images I have imagined have religious connections: cupped hands, washing / cleansing, dappled light. This is interesting!

• I would like to create a series of images / photos
  
• they could become a book or series of some kind
• I would like to consider larger scale collages of images building up tactile layers and surfaces.

Questioning

        

I had a bit of a disappointing tutorial on Thursday that left me feeling a bit baffled and confused. I thought my work was progressing well and that I was beginning to explore some interesting ideas but I didn't really get any feedback. At the time I was a bit fed-up but with hindsight I realise I probably wasn't that well prepared for my tutorial. Perhaps I needed to be clearer about what I am doing, all the background research I have explored and where all my ideas came from. So I was going to grumble but in fact it has made me realise that I need to take stock and try to clarify my research question; if I can explain what I am doing, other people will be able to respond better to my work.

I'm going to ask John to ask me about my work so I have to come up with some answers.

J: What's it about?

H: It's about place, my relationship to certain places that I feel a connection with.

J: How can you produce a piece of work based on a place? I understand how you can go to a place and take a photo or draw a picture, but how can you create a textile from this?

H: I think what I want to do is research the places; find out about the history, spend time there; finding out what it it feels like to be there. From doing this I want to create lots of responses, a bit like sketching but using lots of different methods like collecting colours, making pinhole photographs, moving in the landscape and making marks. I also want to add background research to this. How this is all combined together I'm not sure yet, but I suppose it might all be curated rather like the different elements within a museum exhibition - articles of evidence.

J: Will your work reflect the place or your feeling about the place?

H: I suppose it will be a bit of both. All places are seen through the context of personal and cultural references, places cannot be independent of our responses to them.

J: Why are you using the textiles that you are? Is this influenced by the dye-stuffs you have started to use or something else?

H:  I have begun to use quite a lot of textile lately, and using plant stuffs to create stains and marks. Some fabrics do seem to respond particularly well to these colours and the silk Habotai has a beautiful luminosity which corresponds to the light qualities I love in woodlands. However I have recently become interested in the local textiles industries around my chosen places, so worsted wool is something I have just started exploring because of it's connection to the Bradford area.

J: Your work seems to have changed direction recently, would you say it is your method or subject which has altered? Why have you taken this new approach?

H: I don't really think my subject has changed that much although I have definitely refined it. I started out looking at my emotional responses to 'quietude' and 'busyness' and relating these to urban and rural environments, but now I have defined some specific environments that I feel an emotional connection to and I am exploring in greater depth how I feel towards those places. I did some thinking about why I liked being in the beech woods around Bingley and realised it was because they reminded me of where I grew up. So I decided to investigate two woodlands; one near Bingley and one at 'home' in Bucks, not necessarily as a direct comparison. I suppose I really see this work as another starting point, something to research and investigate without worrying about what the result might be.

There are a variety of different processes I am using, some involving cloth and others that aren't, I don't think that is important at the moment. What I want to do is collect information and explore the process of research from a creative perspective. My work is crossing boundaries between industrial archeology, meditation, alchemy and play. It's fun and I think it's probably okay to do lots of different things for a while and then after a while see what you have. I think scientists collect information and then look for the patterns within their findings. I think I have always enjoyed research so these ways of working are intuitive and really exciting for me. I think by understanding more about the places I feel in tune with perhaps I will find out more about myself too.

J: Although scientists do use empirical evidence to look for patterns and answers they are usually attempting to answer a well defined question or hypothesis with a view to either proving or disproving that hypothesis. To me it seems that you are using research methodology, but what question are you trying to answer?

H: Thanks John, I think that's what I need to do next; devise a well-defined question upon which to base my research.

Reflections

Following a tutorial on Tuesday a lot of questions have been raised for me. I have been doing a lot of thinking, discussing, walking and writing to sort out some of my thoughts. I think this blog is a good way for me to summarise those thoughts:

• The sun prints (cyanotypes) have a beautiful quality and seem to capture a moment, something very ethereal. This is definately something to pursue further

• I should not look at my project as pursuing two different, opposing subjects (over-stimulated versus quietude) instead I should explore my emotional responses to a sense of place and time
• There is a danger in making work purely on aesthetic grounds (pretty pictures), which is instantly gratifying but has no lasting creative satisfaction
• Serendipity is an important aspect of my work
• The information I have collected on various artists and designers may well be relevant but I need to take the time to understand what I can learn from it; how does it relate to the work I am doing?
• My journal needs to be useful for me. I should not be concerned about how it might be viewed by other people.
• My journal should be a visual tool, at the centre of my practice and is probably closer to a sketchbook than anything else
• I need to be myself and stop trying to be everything I think is expected of me
• I will try to make emotional responses to a sense of time and place through observation using whatever media is most appropriate; paint, drawing, stitch, working with found objects, etc.

I haven't worked out how to start on this yet but I feel quite relieved to be finally understanding what I want to do. I think the trick is not to think too much about what it might look like, just have a go.