so it's now nearly halloween and i realise i am a bit useless at writing about what i've been up to on here
first things first we went on a trip to the liverpool biennial exhibitions... there was a lot to see but in my group we managed to see 4 of the exhibitions: the john moores painting prize at the walker art gallery, 52 renshaw street, scandinavian hotel and a foundation liverpool. highlights for me included a performance by sachiko abe, i liked thgis becuase of the simplicity of it and the calming nature of the performance.
painting being a medium i enjoy to work in i liked seeing the exhibition at the walker art gallery, seeing where painting as an art form is today. i liked a range of the works on show especially the work by jon braley, elizabeth mcdonald, nick fox (one of the prizewinners), annabelle shelton and cara nahaul. these works especially gave me ideas on how i could move my work forward.
after seeing the exhibitions n liverpool we went to see the anthony gormley statues on crosby beach. thankfully the tide was out so we could actually see them. i'm still undecided about whether i like gormley's sculptures or not but this i liked i think more becuase of the day we went on, it was very cold, windy and a bit grey! this added to the isolation felt.
back in manchester i've been doing some of the inductions on offer. everybody has done woodwork and i have chosed to do screenprinting, letterpress and plaster casting. i think of all of these i will be using letterpress the most. i didn't realise the variety of materials that i can print onto and i really liked the result from printing on a leaf.
the mary greg project is still going well and i visited platt hall on tuesday afternoon. i was feeling pretty ill that day so i was not as enthusiastic about the objects as i normally would have been but i still loved seeing the variety in her collection. i loved the embroidery on lots of the objects and i am thinking of incorporating the letters into some embroidery pieces of my own. i also liked the collection of dolls there, i used to play with dolls when i was younger and i liked seeing what children would have played with in mary greg's day. there were also a lot of doll's accessories, an old version of barbie! these included beaded handbags, necklaces, shoes and even umbrellas and fans. as i said earlier i'm thinking of using the letters in my work possibly with embroidery or doing something with the letterpress. mary wanted people to be inspired by her artwork and her own creations so i want to make something myself from what inspires me in the collection.
finally i recieved my sketchbook from the sketchbook project tour. all the sketchbooks entered will go on a tour of america and finally end up in the brooklyn art library and be catalouged there. i have the theme 'make mine a double' for the project. i'm still thinking about what i could do for this but i want to focus on the mary greg project for now and do this later.
Saturday 30 October 2010
Wednesday 20 October 2010
start of a new week...
so here i am at the start of another week, been living in manchester for over a month now... crazy!
still working on the mary greg project, continuing to sketch some of the objects that are on the website. i have also revisited manchester art gallery to do some drawings of the objects i like there. this time going with a friend so i didn't feel as stupid drawing in the gallery (yes i'm an art student but i still feel stupid drawing in a gallery... slightly too look at me for my liking!) the drawings turned out better than i thought they would, loving getting back into drawing properly again after having a year off from the usual 'school/uni' side of art.
yesterday i started to read the letters from and to mary greg and other people around her in terms of her collection. ive now nearly finished reading from the year 1922. i can now really see how much mary greg loved what she was doing, she wasn't just donating objects to the museum then leaving them she was very interested in helping to set up the exhibition and in the details (yesterday reading a series of letters about changes made to the catalogue for her exhibtion). she was keen for children to like her exhibitions and even asked mr batho if a he could find some footstools so smaller children could see into the cases properly.
my book with notes about the letters is mia at the moment but ill comment more on the letters soon...
still working on the mary greg project, continuing to sketch some of the objects that are on the website. i have also revisited manchester art gallery to do some drawings of the objects i like there. this time going with a friend so i didn't feel as stupid drawing in the gallery (yes i'm an art student but i still feel stupid drawing in a gallery... slightly too look at me for my liking!) the drawings turned out better than i thought they would, loving getting back into drawing properly again after having a year off from the usual 'school/uni' side of art.
yesterday i started to read the letters from and to mary greg and other people around her in terms of her collection. ive now nearly finished reading from the year 1922. i can now really see how much mary greg loved what she was doing, she wasn't just donating objects to the museum then leaving them she was very interested in helping to set up the exhibition and in the details (yesterday reading a series of letters about changes made to the catalogue for her exhibtion). she was keen for children to like her exhibitions and even asked mr batho if a he could find some footstools so smaller children could see into the cases properly.
my book with notes about the letters is mia at the moment but ill comment more on the letters soon...
Thursday 14 October 2010
start of mary greg project
after starting a new project on mary greg's collection earlier this week i decided to have a look in manchester art gallery at the parts of the collection they have on display. i loved the diversity in her collection and you can see how she was interested in pretty much anything.
i'll be visiting again soon but here are some parts that stood out for me:
a doll's house with stuffed frog 'people' playing billiards and sitting down to dinner - liked the comical side to this
tabacco tampers - making something functional beautiful. especially loved the leg shaped one.
miniature circus theatre - shows her love for childrens objects and again the fun in her collection
glass birds - especially the spun glass tails
chatelaine - again something very functional but in my eyes beautiful, it seems women always have needed to carry essentials around with them whether on a chatelaine or a handbag!
after doing some research on the project website http://www.marymaryquitecontrary.org.uk/ i liked a quotation from one of her letters to mr batho
'if a number of any set of things are put together they at once become more interesting'
i like the idea that you could put a few objects from her collection together and they at once show a part of her life and her interests and so become more interesting.
the rest of this week i'll be doing more research into the life and collection of mary greg including her letters to mr batho
i'll be visiting again soon but here are some parts that stood out for me:
a doll's house with stuffed frog 'people' playing billiards and sitting down to dinner - liked the comical side to this
tabacco tampers - making something functional beautiful. especially loved the leg shaped one.
miniature circus theatre - shows her love for childrens objects and again the fun in her collection
glass birds - especially the spun glass tails
chatelaine - again something very functional but in my eyes beautiful, it seems women always have needed to carry essentials around with them whether on a chatelaine or a handbag!
after doing some research on the project website http://www.marymaryquitecontrary.org.uk/ i liked a quotation from one of her letters to mr batho
'if a number of any set of things are put together they at once become more interesting'
i like the idea that you could put a few objects from her collection together and they at once show a part of her life and her interests and so become more interesting.
the rest of this week i'll be doing more research into the life and collection of mary greg including her letters to mr batho
Saturday 9 October 2010
summer project and party project
for my summer project i had to create a board game for 6 people based on my interests. honestly, not too happy when i got this brief! but after mind-mapping etc i decided to create a game based on ethical living.
i created a spiral board with question marks every few squares. if you landed on a square you had to pick up a chance card and move forward of backward depending on the card eg you take a shower and not a bath to save water move forward roll of die
when playing the game although it went well it went on for longer that i thought it would. to make this better i'd just have to create a smaller board or use 2 dice instead of one for the game.
in my first week i was teamed with 1st and 2nd years to make a party. the theme we got given was 'a party with no guests' in our group we toyed with the idea of having a non-party eg people playing music and drinking on buses... although not a party with official guests it has all the elements of a party (drink, music, chatting) but in the end we decided on having a party that noone could go to. we put a guest list and a dress code on a sign outside the party. the invitations for the people on the guest list were inside the party, unsent, and the dress list was for things that nobody could do. we finally covered the door in cling flim to stop anyone even getting inthe door.
i created a spiral board with question marks every few squares. if you landed on a square you had to pick up a chance card and move forward of backward depending on the card eg you take a shower and not a bath to save water move forward roll of die
when playing the game although it went well it went on for longer that i thought it would. to make this better i'd just have to create a smaller board or use 2 dice instead of one for the game.
in my first week i was teamed with 1st and 2nd years to make a party. the theme we got given was 'a party with no guests' in our group we toyed with the idea of having a non-party eg people playing music and drinking on buses... although not a party with official guests it has all the elements of a party (drink, music, chatting) but in the end we decided on having a party that noone could go to. we put a guest list and a dress code on a sign outside the party. the invitations for the people on the guest list were inside the party, unsent, and the dress list was for things that nobody could do. we finally covered the door in cling flim to stop anyone even getting inthe door.
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