13.06.11 Home Sweet Home

It's all finished and in place. We ended up eating half the tin of flapjacks and having a cup of tea in my 'home'. Jude and I made ourselves very comfy whilst Vince sang along to my home soundtrack in the background, all very domestic!
It all feels very familiar and comfy - I could have quite happily settled down with my book for the rest of the day but there was a serious danger that I'd eat the rest of the flapjacks.

Couldn't get any sound but here are a couple of pics.

10.06.11 Becky Adams

Just one more contextual artist which I thought was really fun and captured a child-like view of her world.
I love the combinations she uses both of materials ie fabrics, texts, her own words which have come from a captured moment and subjects where she brings different things together to make them real as a single object within her world.
I can relate to illustrative forms and the layers she builds up , they are a lot more detailed than my work but maybe that's something that will develop with time and also confidence.
The colours are very soft and the shapes and lines are defined which works for me.
They're domestic and fun in content and have a nostalgic feel which I love.

http://www.beckyadams.co.uk/

Watching her video you can see the qualities in her work , reflected in her so I need to embrace the qualities that are intrinsically me and enjoy them . This way my work will develop with more integrity , creating my own style and improving my confidence.

10.06.11 Detail

The final presentation needs a bit more homeliness, it lacks clutter unlike my home !

As the work is also being shown, there is a requirement for it to represent the college and so the way it's displayed has to work for both them and me.
I'm happy with the paintings grouped as they feel like a view through a window which is what I wanted not just a collection of paintings on the wall.
The other wall feels calm and balances well against the strong paintings, with a feeling of space echoed in the layout of my work and the detail of the domestic items such as the pegs that hold the work.

This is all good and looks presentable but it needs to feel more homely so I think a few more props are needed to block out the fact that it's a couple of pieces of board within a college room.
I'm going to try a rug on the floor to section my area off , giving a break from everything else around me, and a few bits on the table to make it feel lived in.
I also have some sounds from home which I couldn't play as there's no cable yet in my area, so fingers crossed it's getting there.

I taped family within my home , me cooking, the noises in the garden and overlaid them with some of the songs that I listen to when sitting in the kitchen. It was an epic achievement as I am not particularly good with tech things and as I'd recorded onto my phone I then had to find a way to get them into I Tunes so that I could dump them onto disc. I quickly found out that I Tunes doesn't accept the type of file that the phone creates ! So  I took my usual approach of where there's a will ( even a desperate need !!) there's a way - went through I Movie to Garage Band and finally to I Tunes - HOORAH .
Finally feeling very proud of my achievement I realised that unless I put this on a loop and drive everyone nuts with the same song over and over I was going to have to create some more ...

So a very short album later... it sounds more quality item than it is !.. I have brought the sound of my home to my presentation , which was important as it needs life and laughter. I just never thought it would take me over a week, it's always these types of jobs that absorb more time than you think.

Photo, maybe with sound to follow , if I can get it all working !

09.06.11 Bringing it all together

Had a really fun, busy week playing with more tea , it's becoming a bit of a fixation.
Preparing for the assessment so sorted work , made sure books were up to date, etc but as my work has always been exploration with no determined final piece I took the opportunity to explore further. I felt that as my final piece was going to be a collection of images to give my feel of home , continuing could only increase my choice.

I used wet tea bags to stain paper in a random way and then having studied it decided to try a line drawing on the top. I used the drawing of my daughter and whilst I like the effect , it needs more layers and even though we've now finished I'll continue to play with some of these images as I'd like to see what I can get out of them.

I think it needs further small images or text to give it depth - maybe to do with my feelings for my daughter or how I see her.

Continuing with tea I have cut shapes through the card as I like the embossed tea leaves, they're simplicity, the shadow created by light hitting them but this in itself causes a problem as if the light isn't right it looks flat and you can't really see the design. The shapes cut give a similar clean ,  simple but can be seen much more easily, particularly when I then feel the need to put a tea bag print into one !
I love the fact that when using print you always have the multiple images so you can play with putting different pieces together finding new ways of looking at them, this can then take you into a whole new area of exploration that you never would have come up with straight away.

The theme continues on , I used tea bags to get blocks of colour as I like the feel of the tea bag prints,very structural holding the emotions through colour and a single word. I wanted to see whether I could achieve this using the direct colour of the tea bag as my printing source.
Having played with this I tried two ideas , one was to over print with a further element of the source material ie. the tea bag and the other was to put something entirely different on.

I took a print of three tea bags and then overprinted with a relief of the tea bag, I chose a vibrant colour as my natural palette tends to be quite muted but with the odd small use of something vibrant to lift the whole thing. The natural tea colour is quite red/brown and I wanted something to lift this so used a strong pink - I was thinking of the combination of orange and pink you see in some Indian saris, as long as one dominates in quantity the combination can be really uplifting and this was the feel that I wanted.

I like the feel of the image but it still need something further.

I've chosen text which applies to my home and the way I live within it, I don't want it to dominate as I want it to draw you within it, just as my home does - wraps you up and nurtures.
The word 'eat' , 'laugh', 'love' sum up in a very basic fashion the essence of my home both for myself and those that within.

Again I like the simplicity of the image , the space that it sits in and the warmth that both the image and the text imply.
The material used ie the tea is also very important ,  as a substance it's used socially to share, to comfort, to make contact whether through work or domestic life. It's a custom - ' come in , would you like a tea ? ,  a bizarre gift amongst friends out " you go and sit down I'll get us a tea'. It's intrinsic in everyday life pretty much regardless of who you are.
My Aunt was talking about it, having dropped in to have a cup of tea and then seeing my pieces of work was discussing the uses . She went from refreshment and comfort, to tea dances, how valuable it used to be, and how it was used in hospitals to collect dust. Apparently the damp tea leaves used to be sprinkled on the floor and then swept up, by which time they would have attached to the dust and so cleaned the floor particularly under the beds.
I'm looking at it very personally within my home but the possibilities as a subject seem to be huge.

Back to my work, I wanted to create quite a different image with the tea prints , more of a view than an emotion. I spent ages wandering around my home looking at it trying to determine which bits hold the key. There were lots of individual objects such as a mirror which my Great Grandmother had painted and given to me when I was very young, strange little sentimental objects that over the years I have acumilated but nothing really felt right. I then wandered around the garden waiting to come across the thing - no luck. I had the kettle on the Aga and so to  check whether it was boiling looked in through the window - perfect , it was a view of the space that everyone migrates to when they visit, the place I cook , sit , work, paint, eat, listen to music, talk. It was the source of my homeliness.

I did a quick sketch as I don't want the image to feel overworked, I want it to be a moment , like a glimpse through the window , very personal - someone's life , the kettle boiling , supper could be in the oven or even a cake !

I put the squares on after as I decided to transfer the image in sections to lino - to give a broken image partially as I didn't want a replica but also as it echoes the panes in the window so like looking through.

Lots of lino cutting later - I'm really pleased with the image, it's not a clear view of my kitchen as it wasn't about that , it's a feel of it . There are recognisable shapes but not an overall image as I wanted to create something different - a piece bringing together all the ways I've experimented with the values of what I've learnt throughout my year.

The choice of print was important  as there's a lot of pattern created by the lino which is what I wanted, if it had been an etching the image would have been directly transferred but with lino the material sometimes dictates a feel and direction. I like this added element which gives a further dimension to the image, it's more about the lines and shapes of my home with the tea behind giving a lovely soft , glowing colour. They are like the building blocks of the drawn image , a glimpse through a paned window into a softly lit kitchen .

Oddly the colours are the same as that piece of kitchen , which I didn't realise until I sit here now writing this , which don't really occur anywhere else in my home - the subconscious at work !

Having used so many tea bags I wondered what I could do with them after , so carefully undoing them I discovered lovely little bits of paper . I printed onto a few with the theme of tea at Emma's with cake and cats in mind using etching . 

I loved the antique feel of these , I'm going to keep playing with this idea as it makes something very ordinary feel like something quite precious and nostalgic just because of the colour and the fragility.

Who would have thought there was so much fun to be had out of the humble tea bag !!

Finally it's time to put up the show. I feel quite disappointed it's the end of our year, it's been so much fun and knowledge has crept up on me whilst I've been enjoying experimenting , the work generating further ideas.

My chosen pieces are hung, I've just got a few additions in order to make my space feel more homely. Now I've got to catch up on the ironing and weeding that I've abandoned in favour of this fantastic learning experience or maybe I should start a new journal and see where that takes me - weeds are simply flowers in the wrong place and who needs flat clothes anyway !