HELLO back at UCA!
After an encouraging Freshers Week last week, tomorrow morning will see us meet for the first time in our tutor groups. I'm a full-time student for the 1st time in my life (mature, just like good cheese!), feeling strange and still trying not to feel guilty. Who would have thought...?

First impressions of our first week:

Our small group of 3 tried to combine 3 summer mini-project briefs into 1:

Uli's task was to pain a picture of moon, sea and evoking emotions

Mel had to choose a random book page and use the
1st word caught by her eye

Tom had to cut up an image and re-assemble it to a new one.
He did well by pulling all 3 briefs together!

And this was our result: A Scottish (National) Bird

Finally we decorated our new studio space walls in white. A great team exercise which helped to not only get to know new co-students and some of our tutors, but also to get a sense of the space which will house us for the next eight or nine months.

What a busy and excellent end-of-year exhibition we had yesterday! It was amazing how many people came to the campus to see the graduation show as well as our Further Education exhibition. Well done everyone!

This was also the end of our assessment and evaluation period. I've been thinking a lot about the meaning of it all, and decided that I don't really like the word evaluation. It reminds me of e-valuation or the de-valuation of something. How can one assess or evaluate art when a) it is highly subjective and personal, and b) one doesn't really know the journey someone has travelled before the final exhibition piece was finished?

One of the ways I can definitely assess my own journey of the last 9 months is this:

I used at least 12 tubes of glue, more likely 15 or more!

I'm so happy to have seen two words in connection with each other in this week's news: Cornelia Parker and embroidery! Parker took a screen shot of the Magna Carta Wikipedia listing on its 799th birthday last year, divided it into 87 sections and sent it to 200 people around the world for embroidery. The result is a 13-meter hand-stitched work of art, exhibited in the British Library until 24th July.

Artists include the famous and the unknown, prisoners and academics. They are united by their love for embroidery, and it very much reminds of the V&A's Quilts 1700-2010 exhibition. Maybe I should finally finish my 'old' embroidery project over the summer?

It was such a busy week, with a good ending though!
Here are just a few of the amazing works of art to be exhibited, together with their creators:

Jacqueline

Mel

Ian Number 3

Deanna

Bev

The remains of the day

 It's been a privilege to be part of the course!

Productive day today, preparing our studio/classroom area into an exhibition space.

First white...

... more white!

Then making grey...

... in a huge quantity (for 3 floors)!

Great team work, folks!

Last workshop this academic year, especially tailored for the completion of our journals or/and sketch books: printing with foam stencils, taught by the fabulous Sara Wicks!

I was reminded how quick and versatile printing can be. The other lovely quality of this kind of printing is that any 'mistakes' can be corrected, or beautified, by carrying on printing on top of it. So, any accident becomes a new opportunity for something new and creative. Thank you, Sara.

Last, not least: the simple stencil shapes remind me of HAB Grieshaber's prints even though his preferred medium was woodcut. I can see something almost 'primitive' in these shapes and figures, and yet they are very striking and telling a clear story.

It's strange to see one's work in a different context! My 'sphere' looks suddenly small, compared to when it was hanging high up in the studio space. Can I detect a hint of disappointment?

By sheer chance I saw how the light transformed a couple of ripped off and curled up Sellotape scraps into intriguing layers of grey tones. These are just a couple of quick and rather blurred snapshots to capture the moment:

 

The simple and cheap pleasures of life!

Trying to be productive at home: organising files, preparing and binding book, catching up with journal work, emails and much more.

 

I wish I'd done this long time ago! Typical procrastination, but better now than never.

Time has flown by, including Easter and a time being unwell. However, one of the highlights has been a visit to a tiny gallery in a small country town in the south west of Germany. The Hirtwirtscheuer in Künzelsau exhibits Josef Hirthammer: Alles Natur.

I had never heard of Hirthammer before and very much liked what I saw. One of his main concerns is our lost sense for nature. For his sculptures, he often uses two different kinds of media together, eg flower petals and wax, wax and concrete, wax and wood.

Ergänzung 3 (Complementation 3): wax, concrete, nature (2015)

The petals are sorted and preserved, either in wax or in clear fluid.

Colours of nature (2011-2013)

His seed pods are enormous in size.

Big nature: styrodur, 300 cm x 200 cm x 40 cm

One of my favourite installations was this:

Blue pieces of happy nature: wax and flower petals (since 1995)

Detail

The hues of blue and grey, including seeds and petals cast in the top layer of each block of wax, looked like a precious collection of metal. The shape of each piece, long and rectangular, gave the impression of something man-made, which seems to contradict the fact that the focus and concern of Hirthammer's art is nature.

The exhibition encourages me to carry on experimenting with the combination of different materials.

Whitechapel Gallery visit:
As the ADVENTURES OF THE BLACK SQUARE: Abstract Art and Society 1915-2015 exhibition draws to a close next week, I had the pleasure of visiting it this afternoon just for an hour or so. It is superb, and I urge anyone who likes abstract art and hasn't seen it, to go asap!

Coinciding with the Adventures of the Black Square exhibition is a room full of David Batchelor's 500 photographs, Found Monochromes, featuring white rectangles and squares he discovered on walks through cities all over the world.

David Batchelor's photos on light box

My own white square: window in staircase of Whitechapel Gallery

Difficult week, with a funeral and a relative in and out of hospital. I haven't been able to do as much work as I intended, but that's life!

One highlight was the printing workshop with Jennifer Price on Thursday. I had worked with her a couple of weeks ago, when we inked up the old printing press and took impressions on fabric sheets (now hanging in the corridor on the way to UCA's student union). Here are a few snapshots from this week's mini-session with Jennifer:

stencils, made of match sticks & beautiful just the way they are

objects which have been used for printing

foam next to print sample on fabric

test sample: two colour print marks next to black roller 'trace' and finger 'dabbing'

A-letter stencil underneath fabric, having been flattened by roller

Google honours the Kent-born botanist Anna Atkins who produced cyanotypes publishing them in what is thought to be the very first entirely photographic book. Good timing in relation to last week's International Women's Day!

More cyanotype printing for today:
after rummaging around the scrap yard and finding some interesting treasures...

... after some prep and 120 light units of exposure (who knows the exact definition?)...

 ... the chemical gets washed off the paper and...

 
 ... a new print emerges.

Voila!

An empty FA studio - a sheer joy!

My first cyanotype print! (inspiration from Walead Beshty's exhibition at The Barbican)

One of the reasons why I like the cyanotype photographic process is that the deep (or not-so-deep) blue reminds of my textile days, experimenting with the indigo vat.

The other is, of course, the x-ray like image which appears like a ghost on the page. Mysterious, yet obvious.



Cyanotype is an old monochrome photographic printing process which gives a cyan-blue print.

The English scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel discovered this procedure in 1842. Though Herschel is perhaps the inventor of the cyanotype process, it was Anna Atkins, a British scientist, who brought the process into the realm of photography. She created a limited series of cyanotype books that documented ferns and other plant life. By using this process, Anna Atkins is regarded as the first woman photographer. (from instructables.com)

Comparing dry paint with the cyanotype print

The texture of both the dry acryllic paint and hard alginate build an interesting contrast strong midnight blue/white print. I prefer the light blue alginate. The mixed colour pallet of acryllic paint seems too much for my eye. Where do I focus?

Dried alginate sample on cyanotype print