Tuesday 23rd OCTOBER

Place- location, site, scene, position, setting, space, emotion, area, presence, absence 

When I first read the brief, I initially thought of places that have sentimental meaning to me and spaces I've not visited for  a while. I reflected on childhood places, places I feel have shaped my character and helped formed who I am today. Beginning to think about the idea of a home away from home- for me, this is Suffolk and Norfolk. 

The countryside reminds me of the romantic movement and the idea of the sublime/ finding peace in nature. Blake is one of my favourite poets in general and one of my favourite romantics- he tapping into his childhood self which plays with the of pre-existence.  

I decided to focus on the place Norfolk, a place that holds sentimental meaning and defines from my past, present and future. I had serval initial ideas surrounding my place. Norfolk, Wells next the sea is a place that my family have been going to before I was born, we obsessively go every summer in the same week and stay at the same cottage- it obbesive the way we go the same week every year and the check in and out times have never changed at this cottage. I had another ideas to represent the obsessive time and dates through and installation of clocks. It's interesting that my family have decide to make it a tradition going to this location beaches we have no family there, in a sense we created a family. 

Some of the sketches below play with the idea of my temporary presence in this place and the affects or lack there of. I was interesting in using temporary/ material that could decay to illustrate the physicality of my coming and going on the effect it leaves on the location. I had a urge to create a beach house as its my form of a home away from home out there, perhaps combining my toe world (urban and rural). 

While thinking about this place, I was thinking about how different places can conjure the same emotions (feeling at one, centred, balanced); these are the emotions i have every time I visit Wells next the Sea- that feeling when you sink you hands in the sand. Thinking about all the conniption is have with Norfolk helped me beginning to experiment with methods and materials- the five senses make the place being observed more real for a viewer, puts them in my shoes to feel my emotions for that place. 

During my talk with Hannah, we created a list of artist and readings to help form and polish my ideas:

• Richard Long- listing art 
• Richard Mabey | Nature Cure
• Robert MacFarlane | Old Ways
• performance piece- phyciasly typing the road names
• exploring different views- street view 

Wednesday 24th OCTOBER 

 Thinking through doing 

 These blank stripes of paper communicate ideas of un known or new beginnings. I wanted to represent the roads of of the map and turn a flat 2D thing like text and road lines into something that could be physical held; therefore, o experimented with changing the form of the by curling them to produce a chaotic-looking cluster. The paper is left to imply that I don't know the names of the roads, how every time I go back there is new stuff that I didn't see the time before. The bare roads reminds me of the egoistical thinking of a child when they think they the whole world is centred around them- like how when you turn the TV off and children think the characters stay frozen until you turn it back on- relating this to Norfolk, how when I leave the location, nothing happens until I go back next year. 

I wrote the names of the roads all the top of my head to demonstrate the roads I know. The in-adhesive paper I used and the liquid ink made the roads produce a bloody/burry appearance- emphasising the my temporary presence on that road.

Thursday 25th OCTOBER 

Sculpture Ideas 

The contoured of the paper creates movement in the jar, similar to the waves of the sea. The paper roads are pouring out the jar, like a flood of emotions maybe an explosion of antipication of revisiting the place next year. Again they link to the location of the sea (movement of waves). The mixture of the blank and written on strips create that balance I feel when by the sea- links to the romantic ideas of the sublime. The choice of the material of paper emphases this place being temporary and fragile to me. 

Friday 26th OCTOBER 

Creating models 

The framework of the house is made from bamboo and the opaque baking paper emphases the location being temporary and fragile to me. Additionally, the baking paper produced a blurry glow to demonstrate how I have memories from my childhood and how some memories are artifical and fuzzy. Its interests me how you can't always tell if you really have the memory or if you just concocted it in your head from seeing a photo or something.

The warm glow produces a homey feel- again home away from home- and the contrast against the black background produced some nice photography where anyone apart from me cant really tell what the scale is. I would have loved to make the scale extreme  and shift the sculpture into an installation, however with time, money and space this couldn't be risk assessed. Initially I thought about creating a bunch of little houses to produce a little town of glowing houses like a child-like memory.

Monday 29th OCTOBER 

Further Experimenting with materials  

The texture of the string juxtaposes the texture of the paper and produced this wire shadow. I stuffed the balloon with the curled of paper roads and them wrapped the ballon in string and submerged it in glue to hold its shape. The sphere created encapsulated the roads in a suffocating way and in a protective way. Suffocating in the sense the words are trapped in a ball of wire-like materials and protective in the way the road names tucked safely in the middle- sentimental importance of this location is protected. 

I thought how it would be interesting to represent a sense of absence and temporariness with a material are permanent as clay. Clay is metaphorically temporary and permeant; temporary as when it set its flimsy and unstable but once its dried it becomes solid and permanent. After, with experimenting with the clay it produced connotations of fossils and preserving something- figuratively preserving a memory/ the emotions. I struggled to create a generic house/beach house model with the clay, it was easier with a more rigid material like the bamboo sticks. 

Tuesday 30th OCTOBER 

Resolving my final ideas 

The curly paper makes the roads look at though they are worming out from the centre of the house. I was thinking of covering the whole clay house to create this giant cluster of roads; however, that wood lose the definition of the house, this lead to think about making the roads removable so that people could take. road with them or add one in the slots. A couple of the road names like Park Road are very common roads that are found all over. 

I prefer the paper roads being straight opposed to curly, it produces a more balcnced appearance. Additionally, paper can't literally shot through clay with makes it more interesting. I noticed that the clay made the ink on the paper shift, the caused a bigger issue on the curls paper as the paper stuck close to the clay house. From practicing these model I decided that the final sculpture shouldn't look so chaotic and that that paper wouldn't just be placed in the the clay, but would physically go though the clay to create a mirror-like image on all sides of the clay house. 

Wednesday 31st OCTOBER 

Foundation show/Crit Session

During the crit session, many of my peers were intrigued by the scale of the clay house. From a photograph, you can't really tell if you have it against a white background. Its the same sort of size that a beach hut souvenir would be, which is appropriate as its something that represents what I take away from my holiday or where I leave off to resume next year. 

-To some, a few of the roads were roads local to them and no could guess there location that had roads called Jollysailor Yard.

-Many commented on the presence of the palette knife I front of the piece, they add it adds another texture and acts as a metaphor for how I create my memory with. A couple peers asked if it was a fictional memory as they thought that the palette knife was there to represent the fact that I constructed the memory like the sculpture. 

-My piece communicated the right things and opened my eyes to some new interpretations of my own piece.

- The idea of turning the TV on and off, and the idea of how when I leave Norfolk everything is put on hold until I go back the following year. 

Positive Comments 

• the simplicity of the house and the words, highlighting that it's about the simple things in life
• the blank central structure leaves room for individual interpretation 
• the lack of colour/ chaotic compositions makes room for freedom for viewers 

Improvemmets 

• could experiment more with the road names, maybe they reveal something, maybe create more of a map structure to reflect the purpose 
• experiment with wire and paper paper-machete 

MONDAY 8th OCTOBER

Initially hearing “altered spaces” I thought of Escher and creating illusions and manipulating perspectives. Escher uses three-point perspective to achieve relativity, he play with this concept to accurately distort the viewers perspective. However, I didn’t want to take a physical/literal way of thinking- I wanted to recreate/relive a space that had sentimental value to me

I thought of spaces that mean something to me and how I’ve altered them by having contact with them or how I could further change them. I was raised as a catholic and have been gazing at stain glass windows since I can remember, especially as a young child and not being able to understand the sermon, the visuals of the stain glass narrated the stories for me. I’m always in awe of the colours, particularly when the sun shines through, it feels surreal and whether you are religious or not, you can feel a presence of wonderment. I have visited over 40 churches so far, most in the UK, I’m fascinated by each and find the different designs in the windows and the reasons for arranging them how they are in the space extremely interesting. 

The image to the right is from one of my favourite churches in Norfolk in Cley

These were two 5 minute paintings where I was exploring the colour palette of stain glass. there is an abstract quality to these sketches as the lack of detail and blurry colours, however I incorporated a generic stain glass shape to provide some context to the splash of colours.  

I was grabbed by David Schnell's linear perspective and how the colours and expressive brushstrokes make the viewer's eye travel into the piece at speed (almost exploding and imploding at the same time). I tired out long brushstrokes and blotchy ones to experiment with the amount of light that comes through - maybe challenging the norm of stain glass and their original function - it would be interesting to create stain glass that wasn't transparent. 

TUESDAY 9th OCTOBER 

After learning about the historical context of stain glass I remembered this church I central London near the river that was blown up in the war, this image sprung to mind as I was thinking if it would be interesting to take away the context of the stain glass as the church is only left with the ruins of the window frame.

This lead me on to consider creating stain glass that was aimed for a particular religion. I asked a few of my friends what they felt when looking at these satin glass images and they only could really comment on the colour as they struggled relate to the religious teachings behind them. This confirmed my thinking of creating stain glass without imagery and just colour to have to same level of communicate to everybody.

By experimenting with collage, it allowed me to create new narratives out of combined stain glasses. The first two image is constructed of several different Biblical stories, the way I layered the images creates a quite harmonious image despite the chaotic ensemble of all the different characters that don't belong in the same story. additionally, while dissecting the images and rearranging them I could find patterns in designs and colours, espically the designs during the medieval period.

For the last image, I limited myself to using the same image only which forced me to find different methods to create a seamless image; instead of layering images with similar designs and colour, I experimented with the scale of the image of the single image.       

WEDNESDAY 10th OCTOBER 

Intrigued by the detail within stain glass, I created a stencil to travel a generic design in an non-obvious sort of way. I purposefully cut around the angel so the image would only really be revealed in the form of a shadow- mimics the light coming through the stain glass, however, the lack of colour produced quite and eery, even gothic appearance, which is fitting due to its Lancet window shape (very common in gothic architecture). 

WEDNESDAY 10th OCTOBER

I practiced a couple of paintings to warm myself up and was playing around with it I wanted to create an abstract piece or not. At first, I was playing with the colour sound in stain glass and by using oil paints, it allowed me to layer the paints and scrape them back to merge the colours seemlessly and appear slightly transparent on top of each other. I used a palette knife to load the page with the paint which despite creating a chaotic array of colours, I don't feel like they are attacking each other nor is it a quite image to look at. The way I used the knife produces texture but not a pattern which is what I intended as I didn't want to use specific relgious imagery.

However, in the painting below, I wanted to include the typical shape of Christian church windows to represent my background and provide some context for the viewer, whatever religion they may or m ay not have. I tried to create the reflection of the stain glass as if the sun was coming through it, however, I feel the glass and the reflection are too similar is opacity, which unsuccessfully distinguishes between the window and the reflection/shadow. 

THURSDAY 11th OCTOBER 

Crit session 

-During the critical, many of my peers commented my colour scheme and how the brushstrokes are engage the viewer and focus their perspective in the middle where the light shinning through. 

-To some, the window appeared as a door and the white strokes of the light coming through invites the viewer in and made them intrigued to know what lay behind the door. 

-They commented on how the contrast between the vibrant stain glass against the black background exaggerates the colours but not in artificial way.

-Despite my efforts to remove religious imagery to allow everyone to engage with the piece, a couple of peers said it much resembled the colours off the stain glass from their different religions 

-The texture I got from the palate knife intrigues my peers 

What my peers liked in particular:

- the concentration of colour

-texture produced by the oils

-flatness of the black colour on the outskirts which allow the dimensions to be created from the cluster of colour in the middle

-conveys emotions of pain and wanting to escape a dark world, a cup half full attitude

What I could improve: 

-experiment with 3D medium to bring more surface to the piece

-flip the image so that the black is the centre and the colour is blasted from out of it- almost  representational of the big bang/explosion of universes/new life/death

-could have used a lighter shade of black to create a less immediate jerk from the black to the colour/ stop it being so solid on the page or add more streaks with the background- more of a gradient to cooperate with the light shinning through the window. 

I tend to be most successful when I’m thinking through doing, which often results in happy accidents in my work. I used a material and a method of fusing them together that I felt was appropriate for the sign’s representation to me. For Aries, they are commonly associated as confident, suborn, fiery and energetic; I feel as though my sculpture represents these traits and provides fitting physicality and visuals.

            The combining of the rigid metal with the metal spring provides lovely juxtaposing textures just like the character traits; it creates a balance to the sculpture and a wholesomeness.

TUESDAY 2nd OCTOBER

What interesting about horoscopes is that they are so vague and worded to relate to everyone, so you believe as the reader they its really talking about you, I find this slightly humorous; however, I didn’t want my sculptures to satirical and making a mockery.    

Astrological signs-not a science- but relates to alignment of planets and how the exact moment your born affects and almost plans out your whole future. This reminded me of DNA and comments on our differences and commonalities as humans. 

I had a discussion with my grandad asking if he believed in star signs and fate, his answer was “I strongly believe in coincidences”. He told me few stories where he’s experienced coincidences at their extreme and how even those experiences haven’t changed his way of thinking.

A coincidence is a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances that have no apparent causal connection with one another. The perception of remarkable coincidences may lead to supernatural, occult, or paranormal claims. Or it may lead to belief in fatalism, which is a doctrine that events will happen in the exact manner of a predetermined plan.

WEDNESDAY 3rd SEPTEMBER 

After creating these abstract sculptures, I played around with the shadows the produced. Through doing I learnt have certain. Materials and methods pf spacing the materials produced more intricate shadows. The shadows made out of wire or string was more successfully that denser materials like metal; w,hereas wire produced shadows that reminded me of graffiti or calligraphy writing. the creation of shadows allowed me to experiment with scale, making the sculpture tower over the viewer or forcing them to bend down- controlling their participation. 

For the rose gold metal wire, I simply used my hands to bend the metal, having full control of the shapes form. The sculpture -for me- embodies the character traits of a Leo, strong, protectors, fiery, free-hearted and slightly egotistical.

 THURSDAY 4th OCTOBER 

After I had created all the sculptures I experimented with all the shadows, investigating if they worked together or contradict each other. The shadows merged in interesting ways and produced one massive chaotic shadow, busy with loads of shapes due to the diversity of textures and materials in the sculptures. During the crit session, I found it interesting with how people with the same star sign identified with different sculptures, and not always the one I associated it with when I created them; for this reason, I didn’t label the sculptures as it opened up this discussion between me and the viewer. Many of my peers. Commented on the sculptures’ scale and its hand sized nature, this invites the viewer to pick up the piece and participate in the art.

TUESDAY 25th SEPTEMBER

Pulp fiction intrigues me, the film consists of many narratives within one story. The gestures used to edit my found footage was erase, remove and arrange; I erased the all characters from my edit apart from Ma Wallace, this completely changed the narrative to demonstrate drug abuse and create awareness for it and adding a new importance to the footage. I further exaggerated the new narrative by removing all other characters from my edit. The gesture of arranging completely confuses the viewer, my edit begins with some of Mia’s scene from the end of the film, helping to separates my edit from the original. I wanted to consider if the language had more importance than the visuals, therefore I removed the original audio which completely changed the tone of the visuals. At first, I overlaid some grime music on top of the edit to contrast with the gritty film. Wanting to exaggerate a contradiction, I made a sequence of all the dancing moments in the film to be incongruous to the grittiness of the film. 

This particularly interested, how by changing the music’s tempo or pitch can affect the whole meaning. While editing pulp fiction, I changed the sound track to a modern song which created a dance-like rhythm, this is quite incongruous to the grittiness of the film.

The concept really intrigues me, the idea of making someone see something as if for the first time and maybe seem more real than the first time. It would be hard to achieve this, as a person’s first exposure to something is normally most affective; especially with an iconic film like pulp fiction.

During the whole project of re-reediting found footage, I was wondering about boundaries and how far one could take it. Is it copying? Is it theft? Is It recycling?These questions stuck in my mind for the whole week and echoed the words of Picasso and how “good artists copy, great artists steal” []. In my opinion, “tweaking” matches Picasso definition of “copying”; paradoxically, a great artist gains knowledge and absorbs the original artists doing before taking “possession” of it as such to stimulate their own creative thinking- transforming something to now belong to you. 

Not what you steal, how you chose to steal it!!

Its virtually impossible to think or create something that’s completely unique as there is always something that has influenced your thinking or method of doing.

“Great artists steal” is at its root about finding inspiration in the work of others, then using it as a starting point for original creative output. Artists may recontextualize, remix, substitute, or otherwise mashup existing work to create something new. Sometimes it’s as simple as calling something art (Duchamp’s “Fountain” being the sort of ultimate example). []

THURSDAY 27th SEPTEMBER

During today’s crit session, my piece was received and communicated well. My peers liked the idea of changing the narrative of a film like Pulp Fiction which contains many narratives/ different angles. The hidden message at the end about suicide awareness and drug abuse was unexpected and completely changed the tone and intention of the original footage. Additionally, my choice of music in the background- Silence by Marshmello ft Khalid- contradicted with the time the film was made but linked to the context of the new narrative I was creating.

MONDAY 17th SEPTEMBER

Road signs intrigue me, the idea of what would happen if they weren’t there or if they were altered. Road signs generally have a well-known shape and image on them, so my initial sketches involve experimenting with their form and visuals to alter the meaning/twist designs and creating a sense of narrative in the collection. I began rephrasing the words of the signs in subtle ways and removing certain aspects of the sign that provided the context for its function.

TUESDAY 18th SEPTEMBER

Today was all about methodology and presentation. I began experimenting with collages and jumbling up the image of the road sign to further confuse a driver. I wanted to heighten the viewers confusion which juxtaposes the true, primary purpose of a road sign, after creating chaotic collages I thought about making a 4D piece of videography that included a flashing animation of signs. The flashing images would leave the viewer unable to read and absorb the information, therefore mimicking the positioning the viewer as a driver. However, after researching Clet Abraham’s, I didn’t want to take such a literal approach and I idea of things being jumbled up interested me and immediately made me want to make my piece interactive- the idea of a Rubik’s cube suddenly came to mind.

WEDNESDAY 19th SEPTEMBER 

From my recording session of signs, I did on Monday, I selected images that I wanted to include on my Rubik’s cube. I deliverable selected images that involved a lot of texts and instructional language that when jumbled on the cube would prove a tremendous problem when trying to decode it. The jumbling up of the cube with well-known signs allowed my work to be interactive for a viewer to try and unscramble the hidden signs. I had to carefully measure, print and cut the images to ensure that the cube looked sharp and neat. Before I physically made the object, I wondered if it would appear unfinished and inconclusive; it took me some time and a bit of switching for me select the images of the cube as I wanted some of the texts to line up and the colours to work- I went with a red, white and blue (union jack) colour scheme with small pops of yellow to have a cohesive finished look when jumbled up.

THURSDAY 20th SEPTEMBER

During today’s crit session my piece was well received, it was described as modified, solvable and interactive. My fellow students liked the idea that, as the viewer, they could try solving in or just look at it. One student described my finished piece as a personified puzzle in physical form which nicely summed up my thinking. The metaphor of the difficulty it is to navigate through a city was communicated clearly as the concept and media link well. They found the aesthetic visually pleasing and recognised the balance between the text, image and colour. Another student related my work to a manifesto in elite pop’s “November Wind”- “we don’t believe in standard art, we don’t believe in anything else”. This was a useful reference as my piece and got me thinking about what’s standard/typical and how my cube of signs communicates something that isn’t standard.  

TUESDAY 11th SEPTEMBER

During the second day of the ideas factory project I finished up my initial sketches and began thinking of the next step; I wanted to take my drawings 3D, so I researched artists and concepts involving air tight art. During the afternoon, my final ideas began to emerge as I focused my final sketches on the silhouette of the lung and started to think about layers, textures and the physically of the sculpture, (for example, I used wire, tape, tin foil and baking paper as experiments). The ideas behind my experiments was how feminism is a movement against inequality, I used the literally and figurative meaning of a lung to represent how society oppresses and control the voices of induvial: the lungs of a feminist. By vacuuming sealing a lung, it sinisterly emphasises this societal oppression.

WEDNSDAY 12th SEPTEMBER

I wanted to represent and verbalise the issue of voices being suffocated and silenced by society. I had been thinking of creating a grotesque aesthetic to communicate a sense of urgency with the piece; however, I took a slightly different approach after playing around with some sketches, I made a less abstract representation of a lung as I wanted the viewer to identify with ease- perhaps make them feel out of breathe as they see the lung expend and contract, feeling the suffocation physically as well as emotionally. By using quite neutral colour with the red running through as the veins it shows the struggle of the blood trying to get around the lung. I am wondering if I should have made the blood in the veins blue as blood doesn’t turn red until oxidised; nevertheless, the red is a commonly recognised and associated with blood, therefore I stuck with it as it didn’t sewer my message.     

THURSDAY 13th SEPTEMBER

During the mini exhibition where we presented all our work, it was interesting the different outcomes everyone had, even other students who had the same combination of words as me all produced extremely diverse pieces. The ideas factory project was a great way to set the tone for the rest of the year, by assigning such vague and obscure material and methods, it encouraged me to think outside the box from day dot. The idea of producing an outcome in a few days was quite daunting and even though my piece was very hypothetical it got me churning out ideas.