first ever real life exhibition!

I have been a part of the sainsbury centre art club for over two years now and have made some brilliant, creative people who have allowed me to gain confidence in my work and explore techniques in a constructive and fun environment. I am going to miss it a lot. At the end of this term however we put together a exhibition of all our work at St Margarets church, St Benedicts St, Norwich. Below is a picture of me with my long weaving. 

the worst, tired, cheesy smile ever 

I was and still am blown away by Brian saying he wanted to make it the focal point of our space. 

my best pal callum showcasing his amazing photography and etching on a skateboard :-)

other pieces for unit 4 inspired by Grayson Perry and gender binary- I could rant on for a very long time about how much I respect Graysons work but instead I will paste in my responses and work.

my final piece for unit four (alongside my pots!) Overtly feminine pot, exposing the multifaciated nature of the female form and personality. 

directly pasted from my evaluation: 

"By looking using the form of pottery I developed 3D textile responses which referenced the same ideas. Loom weaving is very flat and very tactile, especially when you are constrained to a loom. I experimented with different sizes and shapes of looms and also adding more three-dimensional elements to the piece, such as large hand-knitting and french knitted pieces to create something aesthetically more interesting. My coil pot work lead me to experiment with coils again but with coils of french knitting which I bound one on top of the other two produce a knitted teapot. Each individual line had to be stitched through the top and bottom of the pot to seal it completely. Interestingly- this piece as a reflection of domestic life in a overly feminine form is something that is ‘unusable’. Knitting is not waterproof, so unless it has an influence from another substance, a plastic lining or another thick lining, it cannot do it’s job. Contextually, this can be liked to the idea of the ‘Cult of Domesticity’ and how women in America were fighting ‘A problem with no name’ -( Betty Friedan in the 1950s) because of the stifling conditions in the domestic sphere. One of my final experiments was a very tactile pot made up from different media, cross stitch material, knitting, weaving, felting and manipulation of other fabrics. I decided to control the colour scheme to being pale colours, beiges, light pinks, (overly feminine)- but also added much bolder areas with darker pinks and light blues. On observation the pot is full of juxtapositions, with it’s colour, form and shape it is ugly and clumsy but I also see it as being soft, subtle, gentle and delicate. I like different textures which sit side by side and the different patterns they create. "

unit 4

a goal I was keen to achieve during A-Level was to gain a new skill every project and in unit four (my final unit!!) I decided the new skill I was going to learn was......ceramics! Prior to this my experience has not gone any deeper than painting gaudi-esque figures in art in year 7 and how half of the clay pieces in my class managed to explode in the kiln. I was motivated purely from seeing Grayson Perrys beautiful clay pots when I went to his exhibition at the victoria miro in summer.

school was really undermining, restrictive and tried to do everything in their power to put me off. "we dont have any of that clay" "we dont know how the kiln works" "this is going to be harder than you think" "you aren't in degree you know" "we threw out all the oxides" ECT repeat x10000 it was ridiculous and saddening and disheartening and nothing like how teachers should be. the school system and my teachers let me down big time and now they are really excited about my pots and really like my work and taking all the credit for helping me which makes it even worse.

regardless, i rung up a bunch of places asking for help, guidance  anything and one late sunday afternoon Karen called me and answered all my questions. 

I obviously had loads to learn, slips/oxides/clays/the kiln/etching ect ect here are my results

i coiled my pots and they took a very very long time but with good results, I then mixed up a bucket of red slip and dunked them both in before leaving to dry. For some reason some grog appeared on the surface of the slip (the horrible sandpaper texture you can see on the top of the pot above) so i had to remix and reslip both pots which is difficult as you can only do half at once to combat getting yr fingers on the slip.

rubbish phone pictures but once eched through the white clay is exposed. Influences + inspiraton: agony in the garden combined with the modern social issue of the misrepresentation of women in the media. Depicted is a woman on a cliff-face preying to a cosmopolitain magazine whilst her peers lay exhausted, unable to live up to the ridiculous  unrealistic expectations of women. Surrounding them are the words "DO YOU FEEL LIBERATED" as well as "Happiness" "Beauty" "Sex"

women shouldn't have to put their happiness on the line to be considered beautiful and sexual to men.

Agony In The Garden - Giovanni Bellini 

little things

playing around with brush-o-dye and washing up liquid with callum created the cool backgrounds to these images, I really want to try marbling next.

little red cap

A2 art and design:

I wrote an essay which I found really interesting on Margaret Kilgallen and the influences of folk art. I'm a massive fan of the art documentary beautiful losers and this was merely an extension of this, Margaret was so fearless and held so much motivation even in the latter part of her life, her premature death makes me cry everytime and even made me well up whilst studying her work. Folk art is so interesting especially how global it is as an artform. I was engulfed by the poem- Little Red Cap by Carol Ann Duffy which led me to study Eric Carle, collaging and childrens books. Like Kilgallen, I encorperated found objects and parts of my room, scanning and manipulating. Little Red Cap looks at the traditional folk tale but subverts it, the female is not prey but striking, manipulative and more of a modern femme fatale character than a passive female role model. Duffy subverted her language where as I subverted the traditional sterotypes of textiles, which, would traditionally be work for 'women'. Using knitting, something that still seen as being feminine and using it in an untraditional setting subverts its meaning also. I helped at a craft club knit-a-thon at the local picturehouse cinema and I will always remember the grandmother and grandaughter I met. The grandaughter looked at  the man in the fronts long knitting and said "why is that man knitting? men aren't allowed to knit!" and her grandmother turned to her and said "knitting is not gender specific, anyone can enjoy it as with everything" that might not of meant anything to the young girl, she didnt think twice before aspiring to knit longer than the mans, but it will have taught her something very important.
(anyway) these are my outcomes-

initial planning:

image of development for portfolio

sketchbook manipulation

sketchbook manipulation

early days

i painted lots of tissue paper which make up each individually cut brick for every house you see above. All the textures, so the sheds, the caravan the foliage ect was individually cut and manipulated into shape from loads of film photographs I took. It took hours but it was so worth it to see it finished.

Final Product; in the form of a concertina book, I wanted the whole book to represent one journey that the protagonist takes through the forest and out the other side. The idea originally was that the first and last stanze (ish) would be represented by the cover image. In the poem she walks into the forest and at the end she leaves the forest, but constructing a concertina well was difficult without a GOOD printer and professional printing. I want to invest/pitch the final image to some companies because I am really proud of it, probably one of my favourite things i've made to date.

you can read the poem here