Cath Bond - Art Online
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Project 4 – developing design ideas, Stage 4 – What have you achieved?
Friday, 17 February, 2006 - 11:28
Making space move
I really enjoyed this exercise because it was so abstract, and involves looking at space so directly. It’s amazing how the whole box changes when you move the square around. There is a different dynamic in the relationship between the black squares and the space in the box, depending on if the square is tipped diagonally, how near it is to other squares, where it is placed in position to the edge of the box or even if it is over the edge of the box. I also enjoyed placing straight lines in different positions in the box. It helps me to understand abstract art so much more by doing exercises like these.
My stage 3 drawings
I’m not very pleased with the drawings I did in stage3 and 4. I didn’t feel I could engage fully with what I was doing, but I did enjoy using my PC to change the colours and sizes of the images, and to focus on specific areas of the images. This was really exciting, as it meant I could work in a quick way, especially in terms of inverting the image and changing the colours.
I think my lack of enjoyment of the design project is directly related to my motivation about the course at the moment. I have found it difficult to engage fully when I feel I should be getting out into the world and engaging with people rather than working alone at home. Certain changes in my personal life very recently have contributed to this change of perspective, and perhaps given time things will settle back down so that I can feel more balanced about dedicating time to the course.
I enjoyed working on developing design ideas from the cacti photograph. I felt I could engage fully with developing design ideas from it. Why was that?
The visit to the Barbara Hepworth museum made a big impression on me, especially the conservatory. It reminded me of when I lived in Portishead, a peaceful house full of succulents and cacti. I think that my emotional relationship with the image helped me to engage more fully. I am also seeing a theme emerge in my work, in the style of dots and repetitions of circles. It’s shown through my depiction of pebbles, different sized circles grouped together that live in a cohesive group. This image is a powerful one for me to work from because it already encompasses a theme that is developing in my work.
Gordano Textile Artists exhibition, 10th Anniversary, Ashton Court – Bristol
Sunday, 25 September, 2005 - 19:35
George (Georgina Goodman, my best friend) and I visited the exhibition this afternoon. I was really looking forward to going, as I saw them exhibit there 2 years ago and was completely awe inspired by their work. This exhibition was absolutely stunning. The works gave me so many ideas, and I spent a long time looking through the sketch books. I find that I enjoy the sketch books much more than the finished works of art. There’s just so much creativity packed together, so many themes, colours, and many different ways of playin with media to create different effects.
I also love the room that the work is exhibited in. The walls have their own textures. The room is old and worn, and it enhances the pieces much more than a modern plain room would. It makes me realise how important the choice of exhibition space is.
After the exhibition, George and I discussed what we saw. We discussed how much textile work is about capturing memories, ingraining them into the paper. It seems so much that the act of creating a piece records the intangible emotions. I said to George that I saw a piece of work on a website last week which recorded conversations through the pieces of woven string.
Exhibition theme
There was no theme for the exhibition, but most of the artists were influenced by natural forms such as the sea or flora and fauna. There was a lot of natural colours and interpretation of textures in the natural world, e.g. stone patterns, leaves etc.
Explanation of exhibits
Some of the exhibits had words of poetry as their titles. The artist explained that the word itself was a sufficient choice to assist in adding to the inspiration around the piece. Some of the exhibits captured the thought processes behind the inspiration for the piece e.g. a woman using merino wool to create 3D profiles of faces. She said that the act of felting/ working with merino was the closest that she could get to being at one with the medium. It lends itself to whatever you are thinking in the moment.
Analysis of exhibit
This handbag was one of a number of handbags, all employing the theme of shapes inspired from nature. The functionality of the handbag is second place to the design itself here. I can see the inspiration from nature in the leaves. The artist has stitched beads around the edge of the leaves, and it looks like felt for the leaves themselves. Machine embroidery gives detail to the bag, and the merging of similar colours gives the whole piece a vibrant energy.
I like the idea of capturing tone, energy, emotions, words, thoughts in a piece of work. Also, remembering the time when you created the work is also bound into the final piece. e.g I’m working on a garden collage which has my memories of the summer and thoughts I was having about my partner woven into it.
After the exhibition, George and I went foraging for Autumn seeds. We collected lots of things, and I found that I was looking at the things I picked up in a different way after seeing how found objects were incorporated into sketch books at the exhibition e.g. rusty nails tied into material. I love rusty nails.
Logbook - Discovery of OCA
Monday, 19 September, 2005 - 19:29
I have just received my course folder for Textiles part 1, and am very excited about the whole course. Over the last year I’ve been thinking more and more about how important it is to make art a major part of my life, but I have struggled finding a way to do so. I was wondering how I could give up my job and go to college to study, but how would I still be able to have a mortgage? I couldn’t bear the thought of going into debt, but I just couldn’t work out a way to incorporate studying art with needing to work as well. Discovering OCA while surfing the internet was a real godsend. I was just about at my wit’s end when I found it. I feel like I’ve found the missing piece of the jigsaw, which means that I can now study and work. I can start my personal journey, building a degree in creative arts and I can put all my artistic self into a disciplined route of study. I feel like I’ve found my way at last! The course has also given me the confidence to look at my working life from a different perspective. I am currently looking to work part time so that I can create a healthy work-life balance, and have enough time to dedicate to my studies. It has also given me the motivation to earn less but have more time, because I know that the time will be used effectively to contribute to my degree. I am currently still working a 5 day week, but have applied to do a 4 day week... am not sure whether that will be accepted.
My artistic journey
I have always been on an artistic journey, and so in many ways there isn’t one to “start” on. But my fascination with textiles is a relatively recent thing. I started to crochet in 1997, and found immense therapeutic satisfaction in the act of crocheting. When I studied my OCN qualification in creative textiles last year, I was introduced to other textile media, and it opened up a whole new way of looking at textiles. I am very much drawn to textiles existing in their own right without needing a practical purpose. I am drawn to the purpose being simply to recreate emotions, memories, enjoyment. I am also drawn consistently to the fact that the act of creating is a therapeutic act. I would like to explore this further during my course of study.
My influences
My greatest influences are the beach and found items which I pick up when beachcombing. I also love the textures and colours found in rock formations, algae, beach flora etc. Another major current influence is my garden which I designed and created over the last year. As an artist, I am dedicated to the exploration of architecture. I haven’t yet related architecture to textiles in my personal work, but I did visit a local exhibition in Bristol which was about textiles and architecture. I was inspired by a piece of work which involved crochet and fired pieces of clay. It led me to thinking about textiles as a three dimensional form. I have recently been exploring how to create free-standing boxes from crochet and natural materials.
My hopes
My hope for the course is to continue my artistic journey, and to hone it to the discipline of a set course. I hope that the course will take me to places of artistic exploration that I haven’t considered before. I also hope that it will introduce me to media that I haven’t used before or haven’t used in a long time. Currently, I tend to work a lot using an ink pen and watercolour to capture my creative thought processes. I am excited by the idea of being invited to use other media such as coloured pencils, charcoal, gouache etc.
Weekend influences
I visited Porthcawl to see my family this weekend. I was really excited about going to the beach for the first time since I received my course material. It led me to thinking about my whole environment in relation to my studies, and now I am beginning to see patterns and colours everywhere all the time. It can be quite overwhelming! I took a pot for collecting, and picked up thing such as bladderwrack (cream coloured seaweed), shells and pebbles. I stuck some of them into my sketchbook at home, and did some detailed studies of the patterns and textures. I was amazed to find one pebble had a perfect white swirl in it.
My family have a beautiful garden, and so I took some time to explore this with my camera. I also picked some leaves to put into my garden sketch book.
My family
I introduced my family to the course I’m studying, and explained how the credit system works. I invited my dad and my nana to collect things for me, as they may be able to pick up bits and bobs that I may not have access to e.g. cut outs from magazines. My dad mentioned that he knows of a place to pick up green coloured “slag” from the quarry. I’m looking forward to that! My nana started straight away and gave me a piece from a magazine! I showed my parents my sketch books and textile pieces that I’ve been working on, and they thought they were very creative.
Monet and Light
Monday, 19 September, 2005 - 19:32
I was surprised to hear that Monet hung Japanese prints in his house which influenced his work. His work seems so far removed from detailed prints – I’ll have to look into this further. I noted that Monet said he wants to paint what he “feels” rather than what he sees. His subjects also seem to become an obsession – painting the cathedral over and over in order to capture the different light showing. The same with the seascape and with the water lilies. He painted them over and over, and he mentioned in his diaries about his desire to be at one with nature – a movement away from war into another world. Beautiful colours and impressions.
