Blog 16

"I'm destructing or altering surfaces and passing one thing through another leaving a trace" I quoted in my last blog. I've then rubbed out that trace.

I've looked up the word Palimpsest as suggested to me by Alex. According to the dictionary, palimpsest describes writing material that has been used for a second time after the original writing has been erased.

On the internet the description of palimpsest includes the phrase 'lost texts'. I like that.

Some of the processes I do when making work, I describe as "invisible drawings". When making, there can be a real sense that I am trying to write (or get) something down on paper.

And I keep saying (generally) that I want to write.

The word 'gobbledeygook' comes to mind. I look it up in the dictionary and it means 'pompous or unintelligible jargon'! I actually thought it was a made up word, a word I had grown up with, but discover it really exists, officially.

In centuries gone by, palimpsest was used due to the expensive nature and lack of available materials. It was also less wasteful. Religious and political texts were censored and outdated information was erased and written over. You could apply that to today's environment.

On a metaphorical level, historians are said to use the word palimpsest to describe the way people experience time, like a kind of layering, of the present and a memory of the past.

Architects suggest palimpsest as a ghost, of something that was once there. For example, the silhouette of a fireplace on the wall, or the dust marks of an appliance that has been relocated.

It makes me think of the artist Susan Collis, who incidentally I was talking about the other day at the studio. She actually, meticulously, re-makes traces.

Snapshot from my phone - detail of erased graphite drawing

Snapshot from my phone - detail of erased charcoal drawing

Blog 15

I had my painting session two weeks ago, mixing colour combinations of the primary colours to make new colours. Whilst it was fun at the time it left me more confused than ever. There is too much choice with colour. Which colours should I use? So many colour combinations, each with their own associations. A fellow artist at the centre said she has always worked with blue and orange, and is only now starting to explore other colours. I showed a selection of my finished artworks to the team and it was quite apparent that I am a monochrome artist who works in black and white, and the grey shades in between. I think I shall stick to my beloved black and white for the time being.

I helped the arts officer re hang the shop gallery on Thursday and now have four pieces of my work hung in the space for sale. It is really good to be exhibiting again.

In terms of practical work, I have been pinning (piercing holes) into a white canvas. An all over mass of  punctures which is making the material start to sag and warp. It is brilliant. I need to find a solution for suspending the cloth 'mound' within the space of the frame if anybody can advise please. I was thinking some sort of starch solution or glue? There is a three dimensionality to the work, with the material coming out of a two dimensional surface. The drawing is becoming an object and a debate about the canvas frame.

I have also been pinning into watercolour paper and tracing paper. Two very different textures with one being soft and the other crisp. I have graphite and charcoaled through the holes of each pinned paper, creating dot drawings from the pierced holes. One produces a soft image of marks whilst the other creates a fine mist of stippling. The malleability of each paper changes too, from hard to soft, and smooth to crisp.

I had a pencil drawing morning yesterday and drew into the graphite transferred dots, joining them up, like a child's dot to dot drawing. I then coloured the whole thing in, erasing the drawn lines. By colouring in each minute section, there was the trace of the line drawing underneath. I then rubbed the whole thing out. It reminded me of Robert Rauschenberg's Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953).

Pinning seems to be happening more and more than embossing, and I'm working with more awareness of my materials. It is all about the medium and the process. There seems to be lots of opposites - black and white, in, out and through, negatives and positives, smooth and rough, hard and soft, pushing and pulling, adding and removing, 2D and 3D. I'm destructing or altering surfaces and passing one thing through another, leaving a trace.

In August, the arts centre are presenting an open submission group exhibition of postcard sized artworks calling the show "Poste Restante'.  Loosely themed around the notion of the post office where letters are kept until somebody comes to collect them, An Tobar arts centre will act as custodian of the postcard sized artworks until they sold or returned to the sender. This show is the perfect follow on for me, from Ashford Visual Artists group show 'Flights of Fancy' that took place in August 2010, when I presented my "letters or postcards from another journey". I need to get creating artwork for this show.

www.antobar.co.uk
www.ashfordvisualartists.co.uk



 

Blog 14

Notes to self. (The thinking process whilst making). 


Dot in the landscape no longer.

What are you trying to say?

Do you want to say anything?

Do you need to say anything?

Personal to me. Irrelevant to others?

How connect to others? Do I need to?

No excuses.

Travel. Journeys. Real. Metaphorically.

Invisible Line. Real Line.

Thoughts in Space. Me in Space.

Ruins - but not ruins at all.

Ephemera.

Dots as written language.

Like circles. Untouched & ½ touched.

Mathematical. Not.

Mechanical. The Handmade.

Flaws. Want them.

Joined. Not joined.

Touching. Spaced apart.

Rows. Random.

More than one large circle (not just the one).

The edge of the paper. Problematic.

Infinite space. Just a part of.

Splitting.

I can barely see what I am doing.

Invisible drawing.

I drive 25 miles or so to draw     nothing.

No. Crap.

Thinking maps, distances, travel, text.

Want to write something in pictorial code.

Worlds. Islands. Rain. Mismatched circles. Wallpaper. Plotting.

Can't write. Want to write. Don't know what to say? What am I trying to say? Nothing. Want to get something out.

The edges (are) holding back the work. Pinned whole paper. Had to get it down. An urgency. Out.

What is it with me and language? Text and struggle with pictorial text?

The whole paper pinned. What?

It definitely felt like writing. A message. I don't understand.

(Words) Makes the work too defined?

Maybe its about time.

Get familiar with your materials. Feel them. Be in tune with them.

Skin.
Time.

Pummeling into the dots. Needs force, but controlled. Work with the paper. Try to understand it.
Too much force tears the paper. Machine gun approach doesn't work - that's the easy option.

The piercing into the paper disrupts the rhythm.

The edge of the paper still bothers me. Too straight. A boundary.

The holes/tears bother me. Have pierced into the surface/broken it.

Still like invisible drawing 'cause working on reverse side.

A void, an opening, a slit, a door?...

Wrinkles - a skin. A surface.

Letting in or letting out?

A passageway.

Embossing ⟷ Pinning

Tissue paper wrinkles.
Cellotape wrinkles.
Imprint dots.
Tracing paper dots.

Relationship between ② & ③ ?

Adding/removing.

The mix of black (to make black).

2D plane & 3D plane.

'painted' surface - graphite sheen, charcoal matt, emboss leather.

What works; what doesn't.

Is it the dots or the colour of the dots?

Need to choose what colours I want to work with (how?)

What colours to match up to e.g. am I trying to make a chocolate brown or a skin colour?
An exact or an imagination

Colour is giving me too much choice. Becomes muddly.

Need to set parameters / instruction. Simple yet effective.

Holes or dots?

When you punch holes in what colour do you put behind?

(Colour)
Too bigger jump? Why. In what context? Doesn't make sense i.e. its wrong. Too radical. Doesn't add up. How does this relate to anything? To me. Is it a cry for help in the creative 'wrong' sense?

So many combos of colours - way to go, as in choices. Too complicated. Simplify it or move on.

I know I enjoyed mixing the colours (visually and practically) but then what.

Pinning tracing paper = new needle = pricking noise (click). Edgy as pin pierces the surface. You can feel it.

Shading ✗ or ✓ ?

Like an image forming of it's own accord. Yet should I think more carefully about it?

Should the process be seen as well in the work. Directly? Or should it be more subtle?

Blog 13

I have been in the studio for two weeks now and settling in to the art of making again. Properly. No grabbed moments aware of upsetting the harmony in our small shared space that is the van. Renting studio space has given me much more structure and discipline and a proper sense of purpose again to the business of making art.

The studio is probably the best studio I have ever worked in. It is large, spacious, with one wall of windows, which lets in a wonderful amount of light. It is tidy yet grubby, and full of interesting furniture and paraphernalia for making arts and crafts. But I can move around it freely, able to work independently as I wish. It is also very quiet with the occasional sound of music coming from the next door music room. I've never settled in other studios before. Am I ready for this now, or were the other studios just not right for me?

The main objectives for being in a studio space is the act of making work again, and hopefully some finished pieces. I would like to sell some work but as importantly, I want to mix with other people and be part of a creative environment again.

It is very encouraging for me to see that the type of exhibitions held at this arts centre not only include selling shows, but also they present installations, video art, films and photography. I have a constant internal battle between thinking I should make only work to sell verses wanting to make work that isn't necessarily sellable but still worthy and valuable in the non pound (£) sense. I am developing a great rapport with the arts officer, which will give me an insight into her job role and the running of an arts centre and also the organisation of exhibition programmes and how artists and curators are selected.

There is this idea between perfecting what you know how to make and pushing it further, verses trying out new techniques, materials and processes. I am still embossing (pressing into paper with an inkless pen) and pinning (punching holes into paper with a pin). Two slightly different methods yet somehow connected. It is a methodical process, quite tense yet random, physical, making my right arm ache and my fingers go numb. It is what I know and what I've been 'obsessed' by, particularly the pinning.

With the pinning, there is the sense that I am trying to write something down, a kind of pictorial  calligraphic text. With the embossing, I am playing with the paper more as a material, altering it's structural state.

I have been reading Writings 1968 - 2008 by artist Giuseppe Penone. He writes as he makes, trying to understand his art making in context with his practice. His artwork and texts marry together. As I am somebody who wants to keep writing, I am trying to find a way to join my writing with my art making. I have started a small sketchbook which sits next to me whilst I am making and I write notes and draw sketches as I work. This methodology is going quite well at the moment, with a much more cohesive flow to my thoughts, texts and processes, rather than the more random 'post-its' that I usually leave lying around elsewhere.

Giuseppe Penone works in the landscape located where he lives. He talks very much about the materiality of his sculptures, particularly wood, and how you must really get to know your material in order to understand it and what you are doing. I can feel myself trying to understand the paper I am working with much more.

In 2009 I presented my first canvas, having avoided the aspect of traditional painting throughout most of my art education. Using a square canvas I drew hundreds of black ink dots onto a graphite ground. I have briefly been looking at Lucio Fontana and his canvas slashes and thinking about the idea of pinning into canvas. I have also been looking at artist Vija Celmins who creates images of skies at night, endless white stars on a black background. She paints onto paper before working into the ground with charcoal or graphite adding or taking away the material layers.

I'm curious about painting but it seems a massive area to consider. I work in black or white only but am learning that black is made up of other colours mixed together. Perhaps I can have some 'play' time and experiment with mixing paint to make my own blacks as a beginning way to explore colour and consider a more painterly approach to my work. It may be a five minute wonder?

I'm enjoying myself, quite knackered. Frustrated, anxious, excited, calm, not calm, all the feelings of a enquiring artist. I've made a good start, being back in the studio.

Snapshot from my phone. Embossing paper - detail.

Snapshot from my phone. Pinning paper - detail

I like the idea of altering the structure of the material. Sculpture on a two dimensional plane. There is the sense of a skin. I want to charcoal the paper which will give a velvety texture. Graphite will give a metallic look. What would happen if I use paint, as a ground, or a finished surface? Where does paint fit into this?