Module 527 - Studio 2 - (Blog at Bottom of Page)

Studio 2 is what I would imagine in an educational concept as my "main" project and most traditional in the sense or creating , making and experimentation with a focus on sketchbooks and blogs and final pieces. I'm excited for this module because as well as it being the most comfortable and familiar I'm excited to be expanding my own practice and finding out what I want to focus more on as an artist as I'm still exploring myself. And whilst I know I find this module comfortable in terms of what I'm doing during it I'm looking forward to pushing myself outside of my comfort zone too and I'm hoping to sign up for new workshops and attend more artists talks and explore more mediums as I still have those opportunities.

Project Ideas

When I found out that I could explore any concepts or themes I wanted to for my main project I was stumped, momentarily. Being able to go down any path was ironically overwhelming but with support and advice I chose to look at themes I was passionate about or that I was really interested in, so I began to think a lot about mental and physical health, communication and emotions and the human experience and a lot of other things in my mind map below.

As I was mind mapping and exploring, a theme that came up in my mind that interested me was the fear response or the idea of Fight or Flight, Freeze or Fawn, the latter which are less well know. I think this idea came from an evolving thought, mental health to trauma, trauma to fear and reactions and responses and instincts that come from fear, and then the fear response or more formally understood as the acute stress response. This concept captivated my interest because it is about the human emotion, experiences and psychology all rolled in one, and something relatable to everyone as anyone can and probably has experienced this. This is only a "beginning" idea dated 12/10/23 and I wont be surprised if my project evolves or changes but for now this is what I plan on and hope to investigate. I think I will start by trying to find some books in the library relating to this acute stress response and the psychology surrounding it and see where that takes me in terms of how I want to develop my concept and what the meaning behind my project will be.

Lino Print Idea

Some sketches I did planning out an idea for an A3 lino piece. I want to represent the four responses during the acute stress response as people (Fight or Flight, Freeze or Fawn). I will probably redraw these to perfect the proportions but I'm unsure if I'm happy with the composition or if I'd prefer the drawings in a line opposed to  a grid. Or maybe I could print out a few as a whole A3 grid piece and then cut it into 4 individual linos which I could then print separately and also in a lino to cover all bases of what would look good. 
Going forward I also want to experiment with being more shapely, textured and experimental with shading in my lino prints opposed to my simplistic line work I have been comfortable with.


Research for my Fight or Flight Project

Artists Reseacrh

Jill Mulleady - 
"Drawing on the history of SI’s location at 38 St Marks Pl, originally built in 1954 as a bank, Mulleady has created a group of new, interrelated works that weave a speculative allegorical fiction. Centered on a monumental painting, Fight-or-Flight roots out fantasies, motivations and fears hidden in the building’s walls in order to depict a mythological landscape of polarization and crisis. The physiological stress responses of the exhibition’s title are enacted by a number of characters in Mulleady’s paintings and woodcuts, who either adopt extreme or violent survival methods, or retreat into isolation." - https://fitzpatrick.gallery/artists/jill-mulleady/fight-or-flight#:~:text=Centered%20on%20a%20monumental%20painting,landscape%20of%20polarization%20and%20crisis.

 

"Upstairs, woodcuts introduce a rat figure, embodying a desperate fight for life in diminished urban infrastructures. Four of them ride horses over a cityscape: vermin as contemporary harbingers of apocalypse. Ancient mythologies and recent histories are reanimated in the exhibition with an enduring, twisted force. And yet, opposed and extreme, the characters in Mulleady’s feverish works also point to futures in which beings are pushed into marginal spaces, suggesting an ominous threat at civilization’s center."


Lino Printing for The Acute Stress Response Project

To continue working in my project on The Acute Stress Response, I decided to go back to lino printing as I thoroughly enjoy the process. I wanted to focus on experimentation his time and looked into use different kinds of ink to layer with and also composition of how I laid out the prints, for example layering some on top of each other. I really enjoyed the process and the outcome of this, I thought some of the colours i worked with really conveying the concepts I was trying to put across.
Going into the future with the recommendation of my tutor but also with my personal curiosity i want to try learning and experimenting with different printing techniques. After talking to Helen, the print technician, she recommended me potential learning dry point or just learning a mixed array of printing methods to carry forward, and I very much look forward to learning these after Christmas.

In these prints i was focusing on presenting portraits of people in a fight or flight response, I was trying to demonstrate and convey feelings of urgency and more specifically feeling fighty, flighty, fawning and freezing. Down below you can see my experimentation with colours composition and layering. I also attempted to cute them and collage them almost to create a more nerve-wrecking effect. I think this looks quite successful in terms of trying to convey a sense of fear, anxiety or stress.


Dry Point Printing

Here I've done more experimenting with dry point, I still absolutely love the atmosphere and the aesthetic of dry point. the way the lines and strokes look alongside the depth the ink gives and the way the colours work together, I just feel this style of printing looks very detailed and finalised and I will definitely be doing more of this style of printing in the future.


Artist Research

Anita Taylor

“The beauty, light and scale of her surroundings all form part of the dialogue central to her work through the use of color, gesture, process and material combined with an observation and play on pictorial tensions.”

 

https://anitataylorart.com/biography/

Paternity -1994

Louise Bourgeois

 

(Would be useful for Marks writing task.)

“I need to make things. The physical interaction with the medium has a curative effect. I need the physical acting out. I need to have these objects exist in relation to my body.” Louise Bourgeois

Childhood Trauma – “Whatever materials and processes Louise Bourgeois used to create her powerful artworks, the main force behind her art was to work through her troubled childhood memories. These memories were not specific, but a layering of emotional responses to the complicated relationship she had with her parents and their relationship with each other.”

(For Writing Task) Body Parts - Our own body could be considered, from a topological point-of-view, a landscape with mounds and valleys and caves and holes. So it seems rather evident to me that our body is a figuration that appears in Mother Earth. Louise Bourgeois

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/louise-bourgeois-2351/art-louise-bourgeois

From her earliest paintings to her later Cells and fabric works, Louise Bourgeois explores the human body. In the 1960s, the body forms and body parts in her sculptures became more organic, very different from earlier sculptures in both shape and the materials she used. She began to use materials such as latex, plaster, marble and bronze. She also used and repeated rounded forms suggestive of male and female genitals and breasts.

(For Studio2)Louise Bourgeois began to make her self-enclosed structures known as Cells 
in 1989 and they became an important part of her output for many years. In these works she explores themes of being trapped, anguish and fear. The word ‘cell’ can refer to both an enclosed room, as in a prison; as well as the most basic elements of plant or animal life, as in the cells of the body. This is how Bourgeois described how she saw the Cells:

“Each cell deals with a fear. Fear is pain... each cell deals with the pleasure of the voyeur, the thrill of looking and being looked at” LB

The many mirrors create a profusion of reflections and altered perspectives which disrupt any sense of direct perception the eyes would seem to propose. Enclosed within the cage-like structure, the eyes are themselves trapped in a space which offers them for viewing by other eyes – those of the viewer. Bourgeois has stated:

The subject of pain is the business I am in. To give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering ... The Cells represent different types of pain: the physical, the emotional and psychological, and the mental and intellectual. When does the emotional become physical? When does the physical become emotional: It’s a circle going around and around. Pain can begin at any point and turn in any direction.

(Quoted in The Secret of the Cells, p.81.)

Bobby Baker

Despite our proudest cultural and medical advances, mental illness remains largely taboo, partly because the experience of it can be so challenging to articulate. But when performance artist Bobby Baker was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder in 1996, followed by a breast cancer diagnosis, she set out to capture her experience and her journey to recovery in 711 drawings that would serve as her private catharsis over the course of more than a decade.

I think mental illness is the worst of anything. The hierarchy of suffering is sort of bound into our society. But my personal experience is that the isolation and anguish of severe mental illness was much worse than…having something physical that people could understand better.”

https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/01/04/bobby-baker-diary-drawings-mental-illness-and-me/

Jill Mulleady

“Drawing on the history of SI’s location at 38 St Marks Pl, originally built in 1954 as a bank, Mulleady has created a group of new, interrelated works that weave a speculative allegorical fiction. Centered on a monumental painting, Fight-or-Flight roots out fantasies, motivations and fears hidden in the building’s walls in order to depict a mythological landscape of polarization and crisis. The physiological stress responses of the exhibition’s title are enacted by a number of characters in Mulleady’s paintings and woodcuts, who either adopt extreme or violent survival methods, or retreat into isolation.”

https://www.swissinstitute.net/exhibition/jill-mulleady/


Sketchbook Progress

I've been working steadily in my sketchbook, further a long in my project, I've been using my sketchbook mostly for drawing out ideas, experimenting with concepts and planning my installation and how my pieces will go compositionally.


Evolving Paintings

Here you can see some of the developments from drawing to painting but also rushed concept to finalised piece. I think I do a good job of finalising ideas and details from my rushed concepts (top left figure) to (top right figure). But when it comes to translating drawings into paintings, I feel like I could be more careful with not losing details or emotions.


Critical Evaluation for Final Project Studio 2

Blog

End of Year Exhibition

The end of year exhibition, it was very tedious and there was a lot of work to put in, I attended 2 out of the 3 days of install, as well as the whole day of the private view, and invigilation and the deinstall, so it was a lot of work but in the end it was worth it, I'm pretty proud of how our exhibition came out and we had a lot of people show up for the private view and the public view too. The venue looked pretty nice, but the walls were very hard to work with, there was experimenting with command strips but eventually we made it work and I got my work up. There were a lot of things to consider with composition for example I was buy an electric box thing on the wall as well as above a fireplace, so I took extra consideration in aligning all my paintings so everything was framed nicely and it looked aesthetic. In the end i really like how my pieces looked, they had enough space each so they weren't taken the attention from each other ad I had some interesting and fun conversations about the work with people looking at it.

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Naming Final Artworks

A while back I had a tutorial and some peers mentioned how I named my pieces and how I name my work quite blatantly and how sometimes this work but I was urged to consider naming my pieces more creatively to in a  way make the viewer work a bit harder to decipher my piece or be more intrigued. I personally like understanding or having assistance knowing what I'm looking when viewing art but I do agree that being mroe creative with naming is a good idea so I've decided to spend more time on naming my pieces. Unfortunately this has caused me to find a lot of names I really love for my final pieces and I'm struggling to decide which is almost amusing.Currently I'm trying to name my 5 individual pieces for my "The Fear Response" project. Some current ideas :

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Artist Statement

During a session I learnt more about how an artist statement is made and the dos and don'ts of a successful artist statement. I understand more so now that an artists statement isn't necessarily about your projects or a specific artwork you're working on, there is more of a focus on general practice and interests. A task that was set by my tutor was for people to get into pairs and learn about each other practice and then write a proposal for someone else. I thought this was genius way to approach an artists statement as when writing for yourself there is an element perhaps of self doubt or insecurities about your work and project whereas when you are writing for someone else you tend to just be truthful and sincere. I felt that overall that helped improve the artists statement that both my partner and I made as there was just a sincerity in the explanation of the artist being written about and their practice. And because of the prior conversation and questions asked about the practice there also wasn't a loss of understanding or depth about the artists practice.

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To have or be a body - Inspired by Karen's Workshop

In the workshop I attended with Karen Abadie, she said something during it that I found sort of profound and I cant stop thinking about, she proposed the ide or debate of whether or not we as people "have" bodies or we "are" bodies. initially I had an immediate response, the ide that of course we have bodies, that's how we phrase usually I have a body, a body that is mine. But the more I thought about this the more it felt wrong or at least not so black and white. I felt like maybe the possessive nature of being human was what was making me feel like I have a body as well as the capitalistic conditioning of society that reminds me of how important owning things is, but my body is not something I own. one of the things that changed my mind about this is what we feel, our senses and sensations, the butterflies in our stomach, the anxiety I can feel in my blood, the way my hairs stand on end when I'm scared, the thing is these are all things that we think are in our brain or head they bleed into our body, the anxiousness in my head makes my stomach hurl and my hands shake and my head spin, my anxiety is in my body like I am. this reflects in so many instances for example, I am neurodivergent I have a lot of extreme feelings about sensory experiences about the sounds and touch of things, but the thing is the brain making me feel this way, the sensory discomfort an euphory I can feel throughout my body, in my finger tips and in the gritting of my teeth, its not just a response its an entire embodied experience. I feel in a certain way we still have bodies, but I have to believe my body is both myself and mine, but I think this way of thinking is mostly beneficial when it comes to looking after ourselves though. For example I have a body to look after it needs the right amount of water and love but at the same time its important to remember yes my body needs things but I am still my body, it needs as much care as i do because we are one and the same, but I think its something hard to remember.

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Drypoint Print Workshop

Recently I attended an induction workshop for dry point printing and I feel like it was a revelation for my practice. during the induction I was very excited as I was learning about the kind of printing that it is, its more of a sketchy and looser style of printing compared to Lino printing for example, but I felt that I could be more precise with the process than when using monoprint. I really like the freedom of potential materials to carve into, as we had the option of using cut open cartons or slightly "fancier" plastic sheets we can buy form the paper store. I like these options because if I want something bigger and sturdier for a final piece of work I have access to it but for the most part I can use recycled cartons I bring in or that are provided and I believe its good to recycle and reuse when possible, also I really love the effect I can get from etching into the cartons so its very much a win win situation.

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Paintings and Processes

I've had a lot of fun experimenting with painting styles and whilst I struggled at first to figure out what I wanted to depict specifically when it came to the characterisations of the fear responses, I eventually figured out what animal characteristics, colours and other details to include in my paintings and the more I painted the more I understood what I wanted to do compositionally. For example I've learnt that I've struggled with having multiple characters in the same painting especially interacting, so I've focused on having paintings with just one character in at once, but maybe I should also work on this more in the future.

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Gestural Monoprint Workshop

On Thursday (01/01/2024) In attended a gestural monoprint workshop, I was really excited about this as I had been meaning to book more print workshops and learn about more printing techniques. I really enjoyed this workshop as it was primarily about being gestural and loose with creating the prints, it was impossible to focus on details and i mainly concentrated on being loose and mark making. I was able to make some really intriguing prints with beautiful marks, the technician also spoke about chiaroscuro, so i tried to focus on light and darks and shading in a lot of my prints, (as typically i am very line and shape based), It was a brilliant experiance and i feel like with just one workshop it has opened my eyes in terms of how to approach making a piece of work. I also plan to attend more printing technique workshops this year.

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BODY/LAND/OBJECTS Workshops

Land Workshop with Molly - In this workshop we focused on molly practice and her work which involved a lot of about where she lived and using found objects like rocks and moss etc. she also uses a lot of symbols and sigils in her work and for this workshop we were to create our own symbol out of sand and also draw with sand. This was fun and interesting, working with such a foreign medium was a challenge but vey enlightening as I never thought I could draw or make art with something like sand. I really enjoyed meticulously making shapes and flattening out the sand and making all the grains of sand neat and I feel like the end product was quite unique at least in terms of what I'm use to creating. We were also giving the options of a lot of objects to include from the land majoritively , such as moss, seaweed, rocks etc. I decided to include some graves which molly had brought as I felt my symbols looked sort of witchy or gothic and I felt the graves and desaturated moss would help and a spooky atmosphere.

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Sound

In todays session my lecturer spoke about phenomenonology and sound, and how sound is an underrated medium. The instructions for this session and task were to grab ink and paper and some sort of utensil and to make marks in response to the sounds my lecturer was going to play (a mixture of music and sound pieces created by my lecturer). There was a big emphasis on really listening to and feeling the sounds whilst mark making. It was an interesting experience to me, initially I found that I made associations with the sounds I was hearing and I felt I should be responding. I felt like when gentle piano music was playing I had to respond with dainty and gentle mark making and vice versa. I noticed this and tried to also repel that notion and see what would happen if I just felt the sound and put brush to paper and tried to make marks in terms of a response that I felt made opposed to the associations my brain was making. These images are a result of this task. I especially like the piece on the left, I remember that the noise that was playing whilst I was mark making on this piece was shockingly loud and the speaker wasn't a super high quality so the sound wasn't necessarily pleasant. and it created such a visceral and immediate response from me I almost didn't have to think about the marks I was making, I just did. And whilst I don't know how I feel like the urgency of the brushstrokes does successfully convey how I felt when I made them as well as the nature of the sound piece that was playing to an extent.

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"The Straight Line" A Task Set by my Professor

In a recent session with my professor we discussed what makes a "professional artist" and this discussion led to a lot of ideas. For example is a professional artists someone who makes art for their career and makes money out of it or are they only a professional artists if they have a degree and qualifications or does none of that matter. After this as a class we were told to go out and make a piece of work responding to the "straight line" I didn't know whether this task was related to the previous discussion or not but either way my brain was churning and i decided to interpret the task in a metaphorical way. What I mean by this is I was think of what the straight line could mean and my thoughts led me to a place of thinking that "the straight line" could be the directions society leads us in our whole life. For example how every child is encouraged to go to school and get grades and then go to university and get a degree and then work and then family, arguably there is this set of ideals to what we should all be doing this "straight line" we should be following.

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