Tag Structure

Who Are You?

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

Structure seems to be the word of the moment.

After the video feedback session this week, we discussed some of the structures around art that aren’t the actual art making. One of the areas we discussed in our group was social and online media. Eleana told us a story about her practising a pitch and one of the people giving feedback wanted to know more about the rest of her work so that she could see it and decide on the piece being pitched in context. So, people being able to see the bigger picture of you is important.

Sorting out a website has been something that I’ve had on my list of things to do in my head. I think it’s inportant going forward, after the end of the course.

Four Little Words

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

I’d be lying if I said that I don’t get moments of anxiety about the End of Year Show and what I will be showing. After all, the plan is not to have a plan, as I’m treating it as a snapshot and the continuation of my becoming, as opposed to the big finale, the culmination of something. But it’s very difficult when all around me are so far advanced in their own work and I also need to give an idea of what I will be showing from a space planning and curation perspective.

At the very least I will have the book – it was ok to have that as a plan as it seems the most natural thing for me to do, it is something that can continue to develop because it is made up of volumes and also the process of making it has been one of learning and development. After my trial run I decided that I need to have some sense of progress and that I would crack on with the second volume before returning to remake the first. So, I’ve made the book cloth that will be used for the cover and the end papers. I’m currently halfway through formatting the blog – the resizing of all the images to a higher resolution suitable for printing and the creation of QR codes for the videos takes up a lot of time. Hopefully I will have finished it sometime this week and so can get on with making both volumes.

I’ve been thinking about my conversation with Jonathan as to how to display it. I want people to pick it up and have a read of it but at the same time treat it with care. Placing a pair of white gloves like those used by archivists next to the books would indicate that care should be taken – I don’t necessarily intend for people to actually use them and I’m sure that there will be some who would be reluctant to anyway. Hopefully, there will be three volumes, so the idea of two being arranged on a shelf and the third being placed on a separate surface, open and an invitation to be read is a good one, but it is also open to being seen as being on display, something to be looked at, not touched and read. So, I’ve gone with Jonathan’s idea of a student table chair/ conference chair as a possible option. I’ve sourced one – it has a fixed writing tablet so nothing has to be moved or flipped up for the reader to be able to sit down.

I’m also intrigued by Jonathan’s idea of using a video screen as a table and placing the book on that, as well as his comment about watching videos through layers. I had in the back of my mind that I would probably make a layered piece rather like the one in Layering. I tried experimenting with the burnt mulberry paper just to get a feel. I also used some mulberry paper that I had cyanotyped on and decided to burn holes in that to see how a patterned layer would work – a health and safety risk assessment beforehand probably would have alerted me to the risk that paper that had been chemically treated would probably burn quite enthusiastically – let’s just say that it was a bit quicker and harder to blow out than the plain paper. I put the paper on top of an acrylic sheet for the purposes of this exercise and so at times you can see my reflection.

Link to Video 1

Link to Video 2

I’m going to have a look at making some new videos and perhaps re-editing some of the existing ones, taking on board all the really helpful suggestions Jonathan made in my tutorial. I’ll keep playing around with layers and see where it takes me.

I also want to try working at a larger scale. I’m still thinking about microchimerism and the piece with the three foetal forms (The Accidental and the Incidental). I still can’t believe how randomly drawing a shape resulted in a form which I now see as having such a strong identity. I could use some of the processes that I have been experimenting with, such as bubbles and ink. I really enjoyed making the paper using the syringe ( Layers) – it feels organic and biological and maybe I could incorporate it in some way into a larger piece or even a layered piece. I can only make it in A2 but I think that I could easily attach sheets together to make a larger sheet. The only question is how I would transport it, but I think that once it’s dry it is quite flexible and more robust than it looks although it would probably be better to take in sheets and then join it together in situ using paper pulp which would have enough time to try over the install period. Failing that there’s always PVA glue.

I’m feeling positive and excited that I have a loose idea – some soft structure – let’s see where it takes me.

Life

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

As I sit here looking out of the window in need of a good clean, my husband is cutting the overgrown grass. The glass table has turned opaque with dust and the dog is giving off an overly ripe odour (well, at least I think it’s the dog).

And this is how I know that the way I have been working, particularly recently, is not sustainable. The ‘it’s for my course’ has been both a blessing and a curse. It has validated me spending time making art but on the other hand, as usual, I have gone all in and seen it as a permission to be totally selfish and to allow my head to be somewhere else for most of the time and, to be fair, I did warn them that this would be the case. There have been times when I’ve been so caught up in the intensity of making that I’ve emerged at the other end feeling like I’ve binge-watched a box set or had one too many chunky Kit Kats. I’ve needed a break after such episodes, which probably explains why my rhythm of making is not consistent but in sporadic bursts.

Everything in moderation – isn’t that the key? Well, perhaps not necessarily in moderation, but certainly with more attention on life in general. It’s getting to the stage where I’m finding it difficult to hold more than one thought in my head at a time – road taxing the car and whether I should try cyanotyping on tracing paper. I used to think that I should allow myself to be submerged in the making process for as long as I need to, at the expense of whatever else was going on; to seize the inspiration and run with it. But that’s not the way forward. Once this course is over I won’t be able to say that ‘it’s for my course’.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently and I have recognised that I need a little structure, nothing too rigid but with enough strength to support my practice in how, when and where I make. For the first part of this course I went full on into experimenting to try and rid myself of the product driven perfectionist self. This approach worked as I immersed myself in the process not worrying about results but simply making and responding, although I realise that I can never be truly free from that side of myself. It felt so liberating, but having broken out there was so much out there for me to try and I suddenly felt the urge to try everything. But I don’t do well with overwhelm – even the process of deciding on a research question overwhelmed and subsequently paralysed me. In the past I have reacted to overwhelm by going to the extreme of trying to take control. In retrospect, I now see that didn’t work either, so there must be a half-way house.

Because of the contentment that I felt when I started making the line drawings at the beginning of the last term, I now realise that whilst I my practice is still very firmly rooted in the experimental and the process, I do need some soft structure to keep my perfectionist goal-driven self, quiet. This soft structure in how I make takes the form of repetitive mark-making, using the same patterns and motifs such as the contour lines, my father’s silhouette, automatic line drawings etc. Just recently I’ve also found that working on more than one thing at once has also been beneficial. When I get fed up of formatting the blog for the book, I go and do something else and whilst that is drying I move on to another. I also think that the concept of soft structure will also enable me to make work which is capable of fulfilling a brief as opposed to being solely the result of experimentation, which has been a concern of mine in looking towards the future.

In terms of where I make, I am in the process of sorting out an outbuilding where I will be working. I have been sorting it out for the last two years, but up until now I haven’t really needed it. I need it now to create a separate physical space to work where it will be more difficult for everyday life to encroach. Getting a studio somewhere would probably be the cleanest solution, but then what about those days when I’m not really in the mood? At least this way I’ve only a short walk.

As for when I make, the making the most of the moment approach will have to change because of its impact on everyday life. I need to decide how much of my time is to be spent on my practice and when. Making a rigid timetable won’t work – my work plan to my Study Statement proves that. Maybe a general aim to spend x hours a week, or a number of half days. I think that’s something which will emerge in practice. So, from now on, as an experiment, I will spend my mornings during the week on art making and course related activities. After lunch I will then concentrate on everyday tasks and once they have been completed, I’m free to return to art. Obviously, I’ll have to fit in other activities so there will have to be some adjustments.

The irony of having to separate my everyday life from my art practice which is grounded in everyday life, doesn’t escape me.

Chasing My Tail

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

I’m conscious that each time I post I’m creating more work for myself in terms of making my book. But there’s so much to think about, to process and to make at the moment.

We started this week’s session by reflecting on the response we had to the prompts last week. It’s quite interesting in that I didn’t, and still don’t, feel concerned about my identity. Maybe it’s because it can’t be defined, because it exists in and is created by my work. It doesn’t seem important to me – I live, I make.

We then looked at adjusting or disrupting our practice, considering whether there is anything we can do which might create new possibilities. We looked at placing ourselves on a line between two points and considering what would happen if we shifted our position between those points.

Material______________________________ Conceptual

Iterative Making ______________________________ Research-based

Intuitive ______________________________ Structured

Continual ______________________________ Periodic

Process ______________________________ Outcome

At first glance I placed myself clearly to either end: material, iterative making, intuitive, periodic and process. But thinking about it more carefully, and discussing the concepts with other members of my group, I began to see that it is not as simple as that.

  • I’m very much about materials, but then again I often have a concept in mind eg experimenting with combining specific processes
  • I make iteratively, but often there is a period of time in which I consider the work, research how other artists have approached it etc
  • I would say that I work intuitively but often that intuition is grounded in the structure of previous experience and knowledge
  • I have periods of activity in physical making, but then I’m thinking about things all the time
  • I think process v outcome is the only one in which I can say that I am possibly on the side of process although it could be said that outcomes are important in the sense that they feed back into the process of iterative making, and that outcome does not necessarily carry a sense of finality, in the same way as product does.

In a way, for me, they are more like recursive loops than linear continuums (or continua?). It was a helpful exercise as it highlighted to me that I’m neither one nor the other.

We then considered, what are the most important things to do that are not directly making art. In addition, to continuing to be part of a creative community, making space and time is important to me. In The End I talk about my concern that my time will be sucked up by everyday life. This last week has been busy and I’ve been making every day. The consequence is that tasks in everyday life have not been done and are now mounting up, and quite a few meals have been eaten separately. My art making has had a direct impact on home life and it’s not sustainable long term.

Having developed a way of working, I now need to put in place a time and place for working. By having a dedicated work space away from the house, I can try to develop a regular routine of making, physical or otherwise, in which the boundaries are clear and which minimises disruption to everyday life.

What immediately comes to mind is the Ad Reinhardt quote in After Everything Else:

‘one paints when there is nothing else to do. After everything is done, has been taken care of, one can take up the brush. After all the human social needs, pressures are accounted for. Only then can we be free to work.’

The End

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

This week’s session centred on the Unit 3 assessment and the end of year show.

It was interesting listening to others talking about their planned pieces and how they could be displayed within the space. I can’t deny that I had a small flicker of panic that I don’t have a singular large finale piece in mind. But on the whole I felt quite calm and relaxed about it. Fingers crossed, I will hopefully have my book which is A5 in size. I would also like to show a larger piece but I think that is yet to come. For the time being, I’m feeling confident that something will emerge from my ongoing experimentation over the coming weeks. I just need to be mindful of elements that might be time dependent such as drying etc.

Josh then said it out loud. He acknowledged the end of the course. We then had a moment reflecting on how we feel about it. Eleana commented that she had asked herself whether she would want to repeat the experience (yes) and Rebecca mentioned that she is dealing with it by having plans and making work which go beyond its end date. Personally, I wouldn’t want to repeat it. There was a time when I wondered whether I could apply again, but on reflection I wouldn’t want to go back to the beginning – I have made so much progress. What I would like is for it to continue because I like the structure and I like the people, but that’s not possible, although we can always stay in touch with each other and use the structure and the way of working which we have developed within the course to carry us forward.

I feel that I now have the tools to continue to develop as an artist beyond the end of the course. The problem is time. My fear is that once the structure has gone I will slip into old ways, of allowing the everyday things and the needs of others to suck up my time. At the moment, others accept that I spend periods of time making because there is a reason – the course. But when it is gone I need to find a way to ensure that I keep that time for myself and that others respect it. I think carrying on the blog will be fundamental to this. One can’t really post about the making of work without making it. I also need to think about my future goals and how I might achieve them.