My initial expectations of this project were to explore a deeper and more personal subject matter than I had in the origins unit. By doing this I intended to stay engaged and excited about it for longer, and begin to create a personal style of working that people would recognize. Where this didn't work so well was when I tried too hard to follow a set theme that was deep and sounded intelligent, and I ended up missing interesting ideas and becoming lost with what I actually wanted.
My focus and direction in a project have greatly improved over the past week. From the tutorial on Tuesday, I can look more simply at visual research or and idea and read and pick out the qualities to work from without needing to go so deep into the meaning that I lose my way. In addition, my work ethic has greatly improved thanks to a workshop and project which I relate to a lot more easily.I chose this workshop because machine embroidery has always been something I enjoyed, therefore I felt more comfortable in pushing myself knowing I already had a grounding in it. Also the material and normal machine threads were something I was familiar with, therefore I could push them more than I had the materials I used in the 3D workshop, where I felt I had only just grasped the basics in the time I had.
An example of my work with a new material to me - latex, and how I only just got to grips with it before the end of the project.
Sketchbooks always play a large role in my work processes, and in this sampling unit, I have used two to help in editing ideas. In this way, there has been one large book where the drawings and samples which I have selected out of the rest of the body of work are presented. The other book however, has the rest of the samples presented and analysed so as to glean the most out of all the work I have done.
Looking back, I wanted to try all of the techniques being shown, that i have ended up with too many different ideas been explored at the same time. These were not edited down early enough and I feel like my work has suffered from me spreading myself too thin.
The most exciting discovery for me was using cotton scrim to explore my memory loss theme. I love how easy it is to manipulate and how it has shaped my style of working.
My style has definitely grown into rough edges, organic shapes, and using the material and it's embellishments to draw with. The drawings I have done throughout the project of found marks left on surfaces have greatly influenced the type of embellishments used so more drawings need to be done to feed this.
If I were to start again, I would focus on one idea rather than have two side by side, and pull out and edit down the qualities and themes a lot more. This would push the project on a lot faster because i would have a much simpler idea of what I was wanting to achieve.
Artists such as Matthew Harris and Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn have been a great aid to my work.
Matthew Harris, a detail from Taking Time
Both of their layering of beautiful surfaces, and carefully considered colours are beautiful. Matthew Harris especially inspired the 'patchwork' aspect of a lot of the most recent work and helped me to realize that what ideas I had were good , and that I should just run with them rather than worry too much about what i thought was expected of me.
