Happy Sun-day - Grotto Print Done

 Got three copies of my Grotto print gilded and ready to go:

Overall I'm pleased with how it's turned out, and it makes me want to explore a series of very constrained variations, preserving many of the original features (e.g. the size and position of the circle, the use of perlin noise warping, the use of gold), but seeing how many different variants I can make before I get bored and/or boring.

Instagram loves a regular 'feature' so, given they remind me of the sun reflected on water or obscured by mist, I plan to post one every Sunday with the tag line 'Happy Sun-day'.

My Article on Art as Play published in the Postgraduate Community Newsletter

 The Postgraduate Community were kind enough to share my survey on their newsletter, so I thought it would be fun to write-up the results and share them as an article, which they were happy to also publish:

https://www.arts.ac.uk/study-at-ual/postgraduate-study/postgraduate-community/stories/subjective-experiences-of-art

It was fun to be a small part of the postgraduate community, and I figure it's good publicity for the course, and potentially for me also ;)

Exploring and arriving with the Grotto print

 I feel like I've been on quite the journey with this print! It's been frustrating at times, but it's actually been a great learning experience. Having freed myself from the pressure of having to 'perform' and produce a print that was beautiful, and sensitive, and funny, and epitomised my art practice, my instinct was to fall back on humour. Funny prints sell well, and there's a lot of my sort of pithy humour out there. 

However, remembering my manifesto, my focus shifted to something a bit more authentic. I thought I could draw on the space-filling pattern I did for the book illustration, plus the skull I was messing around with before. I wanted to share something around finding joy in life, before it's too late, so I conceived something a bit like a memento mori - sort of like a grave rubbing:

I quite liked the 'poster' style, and I quite liked the slight dark ambiguity in the proclamation - clearly it could be read as 'seize the joy in life, before it's too late' but it could also be interpreted in darker ways e.g. seize the joy of death. However, sharing it with a few friends, I got the vibe that they didn't like it. They didn't like the ambiguity and double meaning. I also began to worry I might have inadvertently tapped into a bit of 'nazi-aesthetic' with skull-on-a-poster vibe...

Having seen some blind-embossing on instagram, and having studies the prints on the walls of various institutions I happened to be in, I decided to go for something radically simpler, and lean-into the computer art connection, almost bringing me in a full circle. Keeping the set-up above, I moved eventually to:

Which I am really pleased with. I did experiment quite a lot with e.g. different sizes of circle, shading behind vs no shading, different arrangements of whether the lines cross the circle edge, etc etc One particularly tricky decision was whether to include a slight warp to the positions - this code was implemented originally but turned out to be switched off. I liked the more organic nature of the warped image (whereby the positions of the lines above are pushed around slightly using perlin noise), but I also liked the cool precision of the un-distorted image. Eventually I implemented a very slight distortion, which I think brings it to life.

The aim is for the centre circle to be gilded, but the prints only came back today, the day before the deadline for submitting the thumbnail for Not Just A Shop. However, I was able to reuse some code from a previous experiment, to create a mock-up of the gilded poster in Blender:

It's not great, but not awful either! Hopefully it will give people a decent taste of the real thing...

Having got the prints today, I now have to do the gilding for real... I hope I don't mess it up!

Funnily enough, having refreshed my interest in computer art, I read this very interesting article about computer art pioneer, Lillian Schwartz, in Art Forum.

Pushing on and pushing back on The Grotto

 Ugh.. I'm not throwing in the towel on "After the Fire", but I'm giving up the idea of it being a print for the Grotto... I just can't get it to look the way I want it to.. But it does fit into my practice, so I do want to try to get it into shape (literally) without the pressure of the Grotto deadline. I was pleased over-all with my 'mark making' computationally, although getting basic results took way too much time. I think the time aspect is interesting, and I was pleased to hear William Kentridge talking about the benefit of slow art on our lecture. I definitely think having to work slowly allows the ideas to marinate, and for the picture to evolve and 'breath' naturally - I feel like being able to work too fast might 'freeze in' many of my initial ideas before they have time to be properly be considered.

"After the Fire" is basically plagued by composition issues that I am too inexperienced to fix. It's been too long since I've done landscapes, and I was probably a bit 'green' even when I did so regularly. After a lot of dicking around, I got to this:

Which isn't hideous but is definitely not worth £50. I have a fair idea how it could be improved, but actually I wanted to produce something very minimal and very organic, and I haven't achieved either, so I think I park this, and come back to it when I can start again from scratch...

Meanwhile, I was all set to get "This Homeland" ready to print when a slightly silly (in a lovely way) exchange on Insta with Catherine, followed by a fun conversation on Dead Critics WhatsApp, made me change my mind... I'm going to just stick my tongue firmly into my cheek and make something unashamedly commercial and a bit bawdy! I can make serious art when I'm dead... ;)

Collaborating with Roz on Exhibition Proposals (and the power of planting acorns)

 This week I have been slowly biting down on the bullet and realising I need to act on the feedback from the Research Paper, or risk not getting it done. I lucked out and got my survey promoted in the Postgraduate Community newsletter (who were great), and by the Fine Art comms team, with the consequence that I have 80+ replies, yay! To soften the blow of picking through the Research Paper, I offered to write up the results of the survey for the Postgraduate Community Newsletter, so I'm doing that first, which is fun, but involves me turning my 3500 word paper into a 700 essay... Challenge accepted, cut hard, cut often, cut deep.

Meanwhile I've also been exploring putting together exhibition proposals, collaborating with Roz. We started by making a proposal to use the SU space, with an exhibition called "Below the Frost" about hope and regrowth after trauma. We heard today that this was rejected, which is a bit of a bummer, but not unexpected. In some ways it's maybe for the best, as it's hard to get into CSM, and the space was a bit 'mid', as my GenZ offspring would say... Discussing it with Roz, we were agreeing the best bit is that we have the proposal done, and can potentially submit it again elsewhere.

We are also working on a proposal for The Good Rice. The proposal would be for an exhibition about shelter and community, centred around a participatory piece that invites viewers to create a 'shelter' and then incorporate it into a 'community'. Exactly what the 'shelter' consists of, and how it's constructed, is something we are working through. We are collaborating with Catherine and Alba, from the year below. It's at a very early stage, but a few things are coming clear - firstly the way The Good Rice is organised doesn't work great for us, and secondly, we need to test out the idea in a safe way, perhaps with the Dead Critics, perhaps through the MA Fine Art Digital posse.

This week I went to see my work at "The Beat" in the Kaleidoscope Gallery in Sevenoaks. The gallery is a community gallery in Sevenoaks library, but is a fantastic space, and run by the Sevenoaks Visual Artists Forum.

Accidental forced perspective, I am not actually Hagrid's younger brother

When I was there, I was lucky enough to talk to Ros Barker, who runs it on behalf of the SVAF, and who is lovely! She was very interested in the idea of my organising an exhibition, so perhaps we go were we are wanted! She also suggested I join the SVAF. Tomorrow I'm helping the chair of the Ashford Visual Artists (who is formidable but also lovely) to de-install the exhibition.

While none of this is a 'success story' in terms of getting what I 'want', actually it's a lesson to me in the power of making connections and getting involved - in the power of doing as an antidote to waiting for things to come to you. In the power to honing your skills through doing and failing. As Roz says, you have to plant acorns, and you have to be prepared to water them and wait to see if they grow.

Idea for The Grotto (do I need an idea?)

 We need to submit a print by the end of the month for The Grotto print sale. This is actually a great opportunity to try selling stuff. However, it does beg some questions for me:

• Do I focus on something that represents my practice, or make something I think people will buy?
• Do I go back to looking at 2d when I am currently very focused on 3d?
• How do I do this in the 25-ish days left before i have to submit?

My current thinking is to use my Homeland picture as a plan B - it's colourful, not too challenging, and hopefully Roz would be cool with my using it ;)

Which leads to Plan A. I think I want to do something bespoke, and something that is within the fringes of my practice, but which people could have on their wall, look at each day, and not develop a neurosis as a result... I'd like to do something that speaks to hope, that looks like it's worth £50, and I'd like to do something algorythmic (because I think it's different and under-appreciated).

I was going to say "after a lot of soul searching", but actually I've not had much time for soul searching, so after a quick soul temperature check, I think I want to do something quite pared down and organic, based on these pictures I took on the local heath:

I want to call it "After the Fire" (the amazing black 'structures' are the charred cores of gorse bushes burnt in a fire a couple of years ago). 

Putting aside (very reasonable) questions about whether this is a smart thing to even try, I think it sits somewhat inside the limits of my practice, since it relates to grief, but also hope and healing. It takes me back to 2d algorythmic work, but I think that could be fun and refreshing. I think it will be a big challenge to work out how to make it feel organic and appealing without making 'fake charcoal', to decide what to include, and to work out a composition that's balanced and peaceful without being boring... 

Currently prevaricating between Blender and PyCairo... Ugh, so many pros-and-cons.. I made a simple start using Blender, but I am leading back towards PyCairo - broadly Blender gives me more 'for free' at the cost of less control, but PyCairo gives me plenty of control at the expense of having to code everything more-or-less from scratch....

Of course, even without the ability to draw, there are a bunch of ways I COULD do this non-digitally - direct printing or photo-manipulation of ready-made items like twigs and grasses being an obvious starting point.

"Reaching Through 1" rejected from "Awakenings" :(

 Heard today that my piece wasn't selected, but the message was sweet. I might try and get to see the exhibition anyhow. Probably going to try putting the piece into the canal boat miniatures open call...