New text piece

This piece started out as a base for more collage, I decided against it and left it as it was. Definitely one of my favourite pieces so far, and I'm considering putting this one into the Generator Members Show instead of one of the framed collages.

Collage on board

This past week I have begun a series of collages on found boards (mainly pulled from the skip at the back of our studio). Something about the section on the right hand side isn't quite right and I can't quite put my finger on it (not totally happy with the cardboard text), and as a result none of it is permanently fixed down yet.

I feel I need a day outdoors collecting new items to work with, a lot of what I have in my studio has been there since last semester and Im getting bored looking at it. I did find a particularly lovely rusty and squashed tin can in the road last week but so far it has remained homeless.

Best Bridges

My favourite bridge will always remind me the best times.

Dissertation Hand-in!!

After seemingly endless months of research and writing, 16th January was dissertation hand in day. A lot of people hated writing theirs, but I quite enjoyed it to be honest.

The title was decided two days before it was completed:

Art or Vandalism: The complexities surrounding the classification of artistic expression.

Clinical Collage

For our semester one assessments I began work on a series of collages make from a combination of found objects and photographs I had taken (mainly on a 35mm pinhole camera). The work turned out a lot more clean and clinical than I am used to, but I was thrilled with the end results. I seem to have mis-placed the photos of the final framed pieces, but there are one or two of the unframed pieces. More photos when I locate them!

The photos don't really do this piece justice unfortunately. The paint on the cardboard in the first one is navy blue and there is a burgundy square on the black card in the second. Hopefully there will be better photos soon.

COLOUR!!

The past four months have seen the introduction of colour into my work in a big way. I had previously favoured greys, reds, blacks and grey blues almost exclusively; but I felt I had become stale and bored with what I was creating and the limited colour palette I was working with wasn't helping things.

The boards below were one of the first pieces I attempted after I decided to make the shift towards more colour. I had initially wanted to screen print them so that the text would be nice and sharp against the background, but the print workshop was closed for the day and I lacked the patience to wait.

I made a stencil from card and got painting. The results were less than perfect, and far from the crisp look I had initially wanted. At first I was a unhappy with the visible brush marks, but the longer I sat with them the more I liked the end result. Ive had a few compliments on these two boards, and oddly enough the imperfection and brush marks are what people have liked the best.

I have been thinking over how to get the text a little cleaner and I have a few boards in this style planned for the coming week.

Bokeh

There few things I enjoy more than wrapping up warm and going for a camera adventure at night.

Taken at City Quay, Dundee.

Floor Text

Before Christmas I was experimenting with getting text and words off of the page and into other places. This was a quick, spur of the moment piece I did directly onto the floor of a nearby studio, using water and a paintbrush to remove the plaster dust and leave words in its place.

I had been reading a lot about the black death at the time (as you do) and the words were taken from a written account of it. My work took a different direction after this point, meaning I abandoned the environmental text for a while, but I will hopefully have a few new pieces in the next week or so.

When I checked on it the next morning it had dried, and was very difficult to read which was disappointing. I do know what I did wrong, and next time I will have to rinse the brush in clean water after each stroke of the brush (or use a bigger bucket) to keep it plaster free. I might attempt another one of these this week, I like the idea of confused second years arriving in the sculpture studio to find mysterious messages written on the floor.