Rob Ryan- Papercut

Rob Ryan is a fine artist working in the medium or paper cutting and printing, Ryan’s associates himself as a fine artist but his work is very interdisciplinary as he has explored using ceramics, home wares, textiles and even jewelry.

Rob Ryan himself is a British artist living and working here and has written three books and had his work featured in many galleries such as the ‘Yorkshire sculpture park’.

Rob Ryan’s work is a particular interest to me not only because I have seen it first-hand but it is also a medium that I wish to explore when it comes to my ‘sense of place’ brief as I believe I can explore with setting and place while experimenting with a new form of medium.

Intro’s and Abstracts- seminar

For this seminar we were introduced to the prospect of an abstract which is a brief summary of context, the reason for this is to show us how to condense our work into meaningful impacting visual or written work so that it is more effective.

For our first task of the seminar we were tasked with writing a condensed sentence describing what is happening in various sections of a scene within a movie called ‘Withnail and I’ and my response was :

 

"men discover a mess in the kitchen then one of them proceeds to burn his hand on the kettle"

From the exercise you can see that condensing information to make it more meaningful can be a great asset in delivering important information fast. This process on condensing is called ‘clipped writing’ which can include Page, Context, No pith and every word having purpose/meaning.

Seminar- Expanded genealogy

For this seminar lesson we were recapping and reinforcing our knowledge on genealogy and start to begin questioning things that appear to have no history to us such as e.g. Colors, sexuality or the ideals of good/evil.

Genealogy- is the fabrication of concepts and appears to be something subjective because we are a part of the study of it.

The interesting thing about a genealogy is that you can have many viewpoints but you can never know the full story and that is why is described as the ‘Eternal Truth’ something that does not exist. The idea behind genealogy is to question the truth instead of seeking the truth.

For the power point we were also given four steps in assessing our methodological thinking:

         1) Establish the parameters of your research

         2) What are the contingencies/conditions of the space of the inquiry?

         3) What has occurred?

         4) Analyse the new fabrication- what does it mean?

Following these steps when analyzing my work can help me better understand my work and what methods work best for my thought process.

Eternal truth- Rooted and out of history, unquestionable truth.

Methodology- The method and understanding of solving a problem and knowing how it was done.      

Subjective- Influenced by or based on personal beliefs or feelings, rather based on facts.

Contingency- something that might happen in the future that might cause a problem or making further arrangements.

Steph Marshall

Steph Marshall is a freelance illustrator living just outside London, her medium consists of printmaking and illustration based work and she has a particular interest in maps and travel. All of the work produced consists of bright colours and a playful/light-hearted design, all of her designs are created on her own printing press with ranges or original and digital work.

Due to the nature of Steph Marshall’s work I believe that I can use this to relate to my work and brief of a ‘sense of place’ due to the themes of maps and places. These particular pieces of work interest me due to how simplistic they are on their own to produce but how complex they appear when brought together, the light-hearted feel of the illustrations may suggest the tone and environment that the artist experienced while in that place which is something that could easily be explored.

Sophie Ryder- Sitting

This piece of art from Sophie Ryder has been an installation at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park for many years and for reasons unknown I find it rather enchanting to study, the piece itself features a woman with the head of a hare being intersected in the middle. To me the Piece simply titled ‘sitting’ gives on many emotions such as calm and serene due to the nature of the posture and the animal represented, I also get a sense of there being a void or disassociation with it because of the intersection and not being able to distinguish if it’s a man or animal.

Due to my fondness of this piece of art I tried to capture my own visual response to it using graphite pencil, i also tried to replicate the look of wire mesh so that you get a better sense of what it was like to see first hand:

Self-Reflection Exercise- Theory

For my seminar we were tasked with self-reflection as a means to improve our constructive thinking and to teach us to critically assess everything we are doing on how well it works and what we could do to improve, for this exercise I chose my experience for my first studio task and this is my response:

‘’As part of our studio practice we were tasked with capturing Huddersfield town in art from with the aid of drawings. We did this exercise in order to gather inspiration for our main brief.

Reflection-

·         I felt lost at first but eventually found inspiration in the architecture

·         I believe that I was able to capture certain themes related to the brief

·         I should continue to photograph and draw inspirations from Huddersfield in order to build up work and a better understanding of a ‘sense of place’ brief

·         This experience has made me more aware of my surroundings and to look at different places for inspiration’’

This exercise as a whole can help me to be more conscious about my decision making and assessing strong and weak points within my work.

PETROS AFSHAR

Petros Afshar is a freelance illustrative artist situated in London and has worked with a handful of well known brands. The style of work that I like from Afshar is his precise line work illustrations and in particular his map/ place pieces as they relate to the work that I want to produce. In this piece he takes into account lettering and typography along with influences from the place that he is illustrating, something that I want to use from his works is the ability to showcase locations through imagery in a simple form.

Approaching Research- Theory

For our seminar this week we were looking at ways in which we can tackle researching information and what processes would be more effective, for example our first task was to group up and write down 10 questions in order to determine what object the other person was thinking of, this led to be quite difficult as our pre-written questions only answered overall themes and nothing specific

Because we were not able to hone our questions depending on what we were told we were unable to guess what each other’s objects were.

For our second task we were now asked to think of the object first and then proceed to ask each other questions as we went along which turned out to be much more of a success then the first task.

As you can see I was able to think more clearly, this is an example that can also be used when researching information as it it much easier to assess thinks then and there than having a fully revised plan on what you are doing because it may be subject to change.

SULAMITA CRUZ

Not much is known about Sulamita Cruz other than her being a primarily  being a fine artist living in Brazil, sao Paulo to be more precise. A lot of her main study is on the human form but every so often some more interesting pieces crop up, such as this piece for instance. The reason I chose to write about this piece is because It relates to my topic of frames and this piece shows how the artists is thinking outside the box when she produced this piece of work, it shows that she was not confined to a certain space for her work.

ANDREAS LIE- Double exposure

Many artists have experimented with Double exposure images but in my opinion non have captured the beauty of nature and a sense of place as well as Andreas Lie. Her works consist or  amazing landscaped merged with the wildlife presented in each area and because of this I can be informative yet eye-catching at the same time. Andreas Lie is a Norwegian photographer and fine artist  who’s majority of work consists of double exposure photography. In terms of why I have picked these pieces is because they are frames, not in a literal sense but due to the double exposure they hold within them an image and to me this idea of not being constrained by conventional rules is something I would like to explore in my own work.

Creative Process- Theory

For this seminar we were tasked at looking at our own creative process and outlining what we do to get our ideas, this was taking into account what we need for ideas and where we get them, so for my creative process I chose to represent a very simplistic way of expressing it:

All in all this wouldn't be the true extent of my creative process but it gives enough information to assume there are other factors that would change the outcome and help the idea be more creative.

From this task I feel it helped me look at how I think of ideas on a daily basis and to understand that I need to be analytical with my own work.

Lecture- How to have an idea

This lecture helped me understand creative practices and ways in which we can process ideas using models and thought processes, the lecture outlined how ideas can come from unlikely places and a small idea can be developed into a larger subject. Something useful that I can take from this lecture is that it is important to self asses everything we do and judge how useful it is to the grand scheme of our work. We were given information on iconography and where it can be used and applied, for example the ‘IBM’ logo designed by Paul Rand.

As you can see I was able to write down several notes and key words relating to this lecture some of which I can use to better myself and focus on being more analytical.

Lucas Simões

Lucas  simões is a freelance artist living in São Paulo, he has a background in architecture as well as design, the medium in which he used is of a large range consisting of maps, books, photographs which have been burned, cut, distorted and diluted, all of which are capable of destroying the subject. His most known works are his series of heavily layered photographs which make use of cutting and oscillating.   - ’’there is a kind of perversion of it, to take the meaning out of place’’

Martha Rosler- In the Place of the Public: Airport Series

This series of work truly reflects the state of post-modernism and my brief which is a ‘Sense of Place’ due to the lack of unified space which is replaced with a self-enclosed world. These particular photos interest me as they offer a much deeper meaning that appears on the surface, offering idealisms such as consumerism and being cut off from society. 

This particular photo speaks for itself as it is an advert featured in such a place that uses images and consumerism to offer experience, as opposed to you seeing and experiencing something first hand which can be described as living a ‘fragmented existence’. Ideas generated from Rosler’s work include being able to take into account post-modernism and how it effects our lives wither we notice or not, looking at how culture is shaped and what makes a sense of place.

Observation Drawings #1- Production

First production task- Process and production

For our first task we were taken into Huddersfield town in order to create visual impressions and observations in a fine art format, there were several topics that we could use as a starting point such as People or reflections. For this task we were given a range of different mediums to explore and use in order to create some interesting drawings. Going into depth with my drawing I will talk about my ideas behind each observation:

This was my first drawing where I tried to look at architecture, the drawing is simple and only picks up on one theme.

This drawing was inspired by people walking about the streets, I tried to quickly sketch the outline of people I could see so that they would appear to be vague and lifeless as opposed to what people actually are.

This brief sketch was focusing on line work and how buildings have their own intricate line structures, in this piece I believe its simplistic in design but has potential to become complex from completion.

Future Genealogy – Theory

For our seminar we were given information on the idea of a ‘Future Genealogy’ which is the creative formation of histories and in this case the future. For our seminar task we were ask to come up with a solution to set topics of our choosing in order to give examples of ‘Future Genealogy’ and make us think about a design process. For our genealogy my team chose ‘It snows all winter’ so for our initial ideas we wanted to think about a product that would make it easier to live in these conditions but give it a commercial look, so in the end we decided to stick with the idea of a ‘Heat ray’ in order to help the ice in order to stick with a future theme.

 

    

As you can see from these crudely drawn concepts that the idea was that you could melt the snow with the ‘SNOW BLASTER 3001’ and this would bring forth a solution to the genealogy.