Personal and Professional Practice: November 2015

Why did you chose to study on this course?

Leeds college of art is a specialist art college and that kind of purely creative environment is something that really appealed to me. The chance to live and learn with other creatives, and the potential for cross disciplinary collaboration was something that excited me. I found the course itself is a much broader graphic design course than others that I applied to and seemed to give students a lot more freedom within the field; students are encouraged to extend their practice far further than just commercial design. Personally I was keen to stay in the North of England as that’s where I grew up. The art scene in the North is still emerging but is highly unique and far more diverse than most people realise, so one of the main draws to this course was that it just wasn’t London.

What do you want to learn during your time on the course?

One area I've always been keen to explore is curation - having gained some minor experience through curating my own small exhibition in August 2015 I am excited to gain more knowledge in this area and perhaps extend this through further personal exhibitions and/or launches. During an open day at LCA I was introduced to the letterpress studio and since then I have been keen to learn these techniques and how I might utilise traditional printing methods within future briefs. One of my main interests within graphic design is publication design, both the digital design and the physical printing of publications, so I'm eager to learn as much about this as I can during my degree, and alongside this book binding is also an area I would like to extend my knowledge in.

Identify and explain 5 things that you think are your strengths

Thanks to my foundation course last year I learnt a lot of skills which have been invaluable so far at LCA. I'm now able to work in a broader range of mediums, from screen printing to glasswork, which has allowed a greater diversity within my work. Because of this I feel I am also quite a diverse thinker when it comes to resolving briefs, as I already have pre-existing knowledge of many processes and therefore know how I can utilise them within different projects. Public speaking has never been an issue for me and I can be confident in front of an audience, so formal presentations aren't usually a problem. Whether it's considered a strength or not, I can be fairly stubborn, meaning I pursue issues that come up in my projects and work through them, resolving problems in a way that works for me. I'm also an organised person in both my personal projects and when leading and working in group projects, so work is delegated and evenly spread and deadlines are aways met.

Identify and explain 5 things you would like to improve
There are a few key skills that I would like to improve on during my time at LCA, the first of which is screenprinting. It is a medium I already enjoy but would relish the opportunity to expand my knowledge of screenprinting techniques and practise these within future works. I would also like to improve my knowledge of the Adobe programmes as I have not yet had the opportunity to use the full range, and I am aware of how much a good knowledge of the software will aid me in creating my works. Furthermore I would enjoy extending my knowledge of publication design - having produced a number of publications through self-taught methods I am sure that my proficiency in producing future publications would be increased through further knowledge of layouts, colour theory and printing methods. Another crucial area that I feel I need to improve on is my ability to network. Although this is not necessarily something that can be taught I know that working in a professional environment will naturally aid these skills and bring many opportunities to network with both young and experienced professionals within the creative fields. As an extension of this I am also keen so improve my self-promotion as being able to exhibit and market my skills is essential in being able to successfully enter the design business.

Identify and explain 5 things that inspire you
I find it very difficult to fully determine what inspires me - I don't have one source that I keep going back to because lots of things inspire me, but there are general topics and areas that I find inspirational, the first of which is people. I find people to be my most valuable and interesting resource because there are an endless number of people to talk to and all of them have different experiences to me. Space is another than that I find infinitely inspirational, quite literally. I've always had an interest in the universe and as a kid I wanted to be an astronaut, and I've found that I use it a lot within my work as a way to explore the human interaction with the world around us. This love for space could be tied back to the upbringing I had - although I lived in a creative household, half of my family were also scientists and this somewhat informs my work. Whenever possible I like to look at how I can use experiments within my work and tie what I create back to understood scientific ideas. As an extension of this I've often found that time is a common theme within my work, whether that's looking at how time affects processes and people, or simply that it takes time to produce whatever it is I'm making. Either way it's something that I enjoy utilising in my creative practice.

Identify 5 examples that demonstrate your fields of creative interest

Harrison and Wood

Harrison and Wood are a performance duo who explore how the human figure navigates the world in terms of physical sense, architecture, and the objects we interact with. Through short and humorous single-channel and mutli-screen videos, their works maintain a strict internal logic where play is encourage and action is allowed to happen for no apparent reason, as exampled though the below work entitled 'Board'. In this sense, performance art is a field of creative interest to me. I'm interested in how we can use our bodies and our actions to convey ideas, humour, or emotions, or evoke some kind of reaction. Harrison and Wood's work demonstrates pure, unadulterated freedom, as both a physical and a creative human and that is always something that I search for within my own work.

Katie Paterson
Katie Paterson's work 'As The World Turns' is comprised of a turntable that rotates in time with the earth, one revolution every 24 hours, playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons. If performed from beginning to end, the record would play for four years. The movement is so slow it isn't visible to the naked eye, yet the player is turning, imperceptibly. Personally, having come from a musical family and been musical all my life, I have an inherent interest in art that incorporates sound in some way, whether that's through a sculpture that emits sounds, an installation that uses sound or a purely sound based piece.

John Baldessari
John Baldessari is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and text. His extensive body of work revolves around simple ideas and observations, and the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language. They are endlessly thought provoking and often humorous and this is the kind of simplicity I would like to strive for within my work.

Josef Albers

Josef Albers is a German-American artist, painter and educator. His 'Homage to the Square' works are very influential as to how I look and perceive colour within my work, but I also find his educational career highly inspirational. His teachings formed the basis of some of the most influential and far-reaching art education programs of the twentieth century, and I've become very interested in his practical way of engaging his students in the physical world of art. Although I myself might never reach such heights I find it motivational to become a 'teacher' in some capacity within my career.

John Cage
John Cage was a pioneer in conceptual and immaterial art, and is famously known for his 'silent score' work 4'33". Cage has done many pieces that involve the creation of essential nothing, but use only ideas and concepts to create the pieces. Personally I am very interested in this form of conceptual art - using the absence of something to inform and create art. Many other artist also use this form within their work, including Yves Klein and Carey Young.

4′33″, John Cage (1952) - The piece is a three-movement composition, composed for any instrument or combination of instruments, and the score instructs the performer(s) not to play their instrument(s) during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements. The piece purports to consist of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed.

Yves Klein, Zone of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility (1959-1962) - The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking the form of a cheque, in exchange for gold; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the cheque, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine. The ritual would be performed in the presence of an art critic or distinguished dealer, an art museum director and at least two witnesses.

Missing Mass (2010) is a sculptural work featuring dark matter particles and a legal disclaimer which proposes the particles as the only truly free entities in existence.

A studio presentation that invited us to reflect on our current aspirations and where we might envision ourselves in ten years time.

I found this presentation rather challenging, as I don't tend to plan too far ahead, but ultimately I concluded that for my future, I wouldn't ever necessarily have a specific job title in mind. I've had a (somewhat unachievable) dream of becoming an astronaut for most of life, but if in ten years I'm in some kind of creative job then I would be satisfied. I would never like to box myself in with labels and specific job titles (graphic designer etc), but a job that would allow me to follow whatever creative interests I have, whether that's publications, printing, exhibition, would be the most productive way of working for me. Collaboration is also important for me in the way I live and create, so I would perhaps work as a member of a collective, with the freedom to pursue solo projects if and when I pleased. Ideally this future creative job would be situated in the North of England, either Newcastle or Manchester, but I would also enjoy spending some time in Berlin and Amsterdam. Whatever I end up doing, I am certain that I would like to avoid working for 'the man'. My only real goal is to become self sufficient in this creative job, because if I'm able to sustain myself by doing what I'm most passionate about, then I'm pretty much set for life.

Personal and Professional Practice

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Adana Letterpress Induction

Thursday, November 12, 2015

OUGD402 - Study Task 02 - Why Am I Here? What Do I Want To Learn?

Thursday, November 5, 2015

OUGD402 - 10 Years Time (I'm Still Not An Astronaut)

OUGD402 - Time Planning