The Word Becomes Art

For Assignment 7 we are given the task of bringing our work from some or all of the exercises in this Project into one collage. I was a bit dismayed when I read the instructions for this assignment because I had no idea how to combine these desperate elements into a unified image. I wished I had read ahead to the assignment and planned my responses to the exercises a bit more coherently. Then I stopped thinking that. I remembered my response to the collages I studied in the Research Task, and my resolve to try using what is to hand rather than over-planning my work. This is an ideal opportunity to put this into practice. I began by bringing together my images onto one page so that I could consider them collectively rather than just as a series of unconnected images. This helped me to see connections. Bringing together the holiday accessories, spectacles and ostentatious shoe, I could see a collection of things people wear. In the Childhood sketches I noticed again the drawing of wellie...

The task here is to research the collage art of: Max Ernst Hannah Hoch John Heartfield Linder Sterling John Stezaker Julie Cockburn Eugenia Loli Isabel Reitemeyer Romare Bearden and to select two of them and write 100 words on each of them. Collage has been a big part of my creative practice over the years so researching these artists has been interesting. Much could be said about all of them, but as I must choose only two, I chose the two which I found most appealing and which relate most to my own practice. These are Julie Cockburn and Eugenia Loli. Julie Cockburn (born 1966) Julie Cockburn. If, 2018.  https://www.artsy.net/artist/julie-cockburn Julie Cockburn, Zephyr, 2022,  https://www.artsy.net/artwork/julie-cockburn-zephyr Process : Gathering vintage portraits and scenes and embroidering/collating onto them, thus creating palimpsests which decontextualise the photos and create new imagined characters.  Image sources : Second hand shops, eBay  Collage method : E...

In Project 7 there is a task inviting further thought and 150 words on our Critical Review. This seems excessively laborious, so I have gone ahead and written my Critical Review.  …   Do Indexical Images Tell the Truth? “In both documentary and video journalism, the indexical power of cameras can be harnessed as weapons for truth and shine a light in the darkest of places.” — Sara Merican, Forbes, 24 Feb. 2021 During my childhood in the 1970s-1980s it was often said that a camera never lies. The assumption was that a photograph reliably recorded the subject matter as it was. Subsequently, image manipulation has become increasingly accessible, so that now anyone with a smartphone and a few apps can do it. The idea that a photograph is always true to life has rapidly become outdated. However, the appetite for objective photography remains, as evidenced by the quote above.  In its introduction to Project 5: Photography 1, the OCA introduces “…the idea that a photograph...

Whereas the previous exercise was to draw a realistic drawing, this one is to make a more subjective response. Going back to the list of objects from Exercise 4, where I chose a pair of spectacles, we had to choose a different one, and I chose a shoe. As this was to be a subjective interpretation, I decided to work with a shoe that is not my own. My Mum and I share a general dislike for having to dress up, either for a formal occasion or for a party. We just about manage to get it together to sort out some appropriate clothing, however uncomfortable and awkward it makes us feel, but shoes are another matter. We both have the sort of feet that will really only put up with clunky shoes. The footwear tends to undermine the whole ensemble! For years we’ve had a running joke about the party shoes we would wear if we had the feet for them, becoming more fantastic by the year. I decided, for this exercise, that I would lay claim to such a shoe. I began a Google image search for red high heels...

The instruction to make an ‘objective’ pencil drawing is something I haven’t done for a really long time. Years ago, all my drawing was like this, and it was nostalgic to revisit this way of drawing, and quite satisfying to produce. I chose a pair of spectacles as my subject.  I used different ways of making marks to try to convey the different textures of the reflective yet transparent lenses, the plastic frame and the softer shadows (not sure that shadows have a texture as such, but these shadows had a softness about them in contrast to the hard plastic texture of the glasses). I was interested in the way the lenses reflected light but also had an effect on the shapes of the shadows, and the way that the arms of the glasses had a slightly shiny surface. I tried to convey these things by extending marks and white areas ‘on’ the lenses in order to clarify that they sit above the folded arms of the glasses, which are below, resting on the paper. I’m not sure that calling this an obj...

While I felt more at home with my camera in this assignment than I did in Assignment 5, I didn’t feel very confident about how well I’d done. I did enjoy this assignment more. It was less technical and I felt I could express myself more as an artist rather than a technician. I appreciate the fact that Assignment 5 was a good grounding in how to use different camera settings though, and perhaps it was because I had to some extent got to grips with the more technical aspects of photography in Assignment 5 that I was more able to enjoy my photography in Assignment 6.  For many artists, drawing is an essential tool as it helps them to produce a better painting, embroidery or mixed media piece, whereas for me, drawing is an end in itself. Conversely, with photography, for many people the photographic image is the end product, and while that can be the case for me, more often photography for me is an investigative tool that I use as part of the process towards creating work in another me...

This exercise is virtually the same as one I did earlier in the course, when we had to illustrate the synonyms of ‘shape’. This time, I chose the word ‘childhood’ and sketched out on a sheet of A3 paper all the images I could think of to do with childhood. This time I used a more bright, rainbow colour scheme rather than the black, white and red on a brown background that I used for ‘shape’.  The exercise asks whether I begin to see a personal style emerging. The answer is no, not really, because this is merely a more sketchy version of the personal style I’ve had for the last 7 or more years. Really when I enrolled on this course my aim was to move further beyond where I have been for all this time. I think there is one thing of note though: for this and the ‘shape’ drawings I drew more quickly and sketchily than I have usually done for ‘finished’ drawings. There is a looser feeling to these drawings, where there is no need to perform or get it right. I think that, perhaps, I coul...

This exercise on viewpoint is reminiscent of some of the photography exercises, but goes on to develop images into drawings. From a choice of themes I chose the word ‘holiday’. The task was to gather and arrange a few objects suggestive of the chosen word and photograph them from different angles, including from underneath. That last one was challenging as I couldn’t work out how to get underneath my items. In the end I taped up a picnic blanket around an alcove and arranged the items so that at least the hat could be seen from underneath if I held the camera near the floor. Here are the contact sheets for my photos. For my thumbnails I decided to use an elongated rectangle in contrast to the standard photo dimensions. This gave me the opportunity to try a range of compositions from taking a slice of a zoomed in photo to creating areas of space around or to the side of the chosen objects.  Whilst most of the thumbnails were horizontal, I did create some vertical compositions. Becau...

This is a very interesting exercise to begin Project 7. The first part was to draw a line drawing of one of a selection of subjects. I chose the sea. There was a suggestion to brainstorm ideas, but I’ve drawn, embroidered, collaged, printed etc the sea dozens of times as it’s a major part of my artwork, so I just drew. Just before this I read a poem which included the words “the long haired sea” (The Last Verses of Beccan in R Simpson, “Celtic Daily Light”, (Kevin Mathew Ltd, Stowmarket, 2003, pg 24 June). This inspired me to create passages of jagged lines under the froth of the waves, to give the sense of movement and wildness of “the long haired sea”.  Next we had to invert the image so that the line drawing was white on black. I then printed the two images so that I had the original, a spare print of it and the inverted version. The next part of the exercise was to cut out parts of the inverted version and stick them onto the original. This was quite fiddly, even with my little...