1. Wonky
2. Curiosity & Wonder
3. Ephemera and Collection
4. Visceral Storytelling
5. Authenticity
6. Sentimentality / Obsession
My practice/myself is very much a running cycle of becoming completely obsessed with something and exhausting it until I move onto the next thing - this is a blessing and a curse, I'm v hungry to always learn new things but this can lead to becoming overwhelming and trying to do too much.
For this brief I didn't end up with 6 actual outcomes as I would have liked to, but instead I just did some making for the sake of making, trying to take the stress and overthinking out of it and just enjoy the process. Playbook !
For one of the sessions I for some reason settled on a fact I'd learnt in a podcast the night before - that the man who invented ballpits was inspired by a jar of pickled onions. Writing this retrospectively, I'm not quite sure why but hey ho - I spent the afternoon trying to play around with this idea. Majority of the outcomes of this were pretty terrible - but I actually really like this small image below - I used these chunky kids waxy pen things I found which are lovely to use.
Following on from this session I was looking at my memos and wanted to do something about 3. ephemera and collection. I'm a bit of a paper and scraps hoarder, and constantly keep a pile of offcuts and scraps from when I collage. Decided to start this little scraps bank book and see what images I could make combining them. This was so enjoyable and there's some pages in here I really like as single images. I'm going to keep this practice up - it'll be useful to have a bank of these bits to refer back to.
This was another tiny sketchbook I did going off the memo '5. authenticity'. Decided to sit down and just focus on filling this small sketchbook really quickly in one sitting without thinking too much or looking at any reference points, just hand to paper and see what happens from my brain go go go. Again, most of it is pretty scrappy and not very exciting, but theres a couple of pages which catch my attention looking back through it which I might refer back to to push further. All in all a good exercise in making without worrying about the outcome or the quality.
During the first pickled onion ballpit session I started to chop up some words from magazines to form little poems - thought this was really interesting so decided to carry it on and made a sketchbook with very short chopped up poems / prompts for me to respond to to kickstart storytelling juices. Really fun exercise.
Editorial
ohhhhhh editorial my old scary friend.
In September I was commissioned by Mosaic Science to fo 6 editorial illustrations. I wrote about it here on my PP blog, but to sum it up, I don't think I was ready for it. I put way too much pressure on myself and trying to battle COP at the same time it was just bad. I tried to produce something digital which isn't my practice but for some reason I thought I needed to and I ended up embarrassed by what I had produced and it knocked my confidence.
Same with this brief to be honest. I chose the emoji article because I didn't know anything about the Handmaid's Tale, and thought I could do with making something more lighthearted (even though the article was completely ridiculous).
Once again I tried to make something I'm not and I'm not pleased with this outcome at all. The concept of the whack-a-mole could have been interesting but I just didn't execute it well at all.
I do want to do editorial in the future, but I need to work on myself first and maybe set myself some self directed briefs and illustrate some articles. When Molly Fairhurst came in and did a talk she spoke about learning and deciding that her roughs were her favourite thing - so why was she trying to polish them up past this? Keep the energy and fluidity of the 'roughs' and make the finals like this !
This was really great to hear and something I'm going to work as the problem solving aspect of editorial is something that really appeals to me, I just need to keep in mind that I need to stay authentic and true to my practice and not try and mould it into something its not.
Final gif:
Stolen Museum
The trip to the Discovery Centre was amazing, I'd never been before but it was like a tardis full of goodies I didn't know what to focus on. I loved the weird juxtaposition between the placement of stuff - eg Victorian shower next to taxidermy bear next to sword. I think this could be an interesting concept to look at in the future?
The object I chose to focus on was the flying boats carousel. I loved the craftsmanship of it and the bizareness of flying boats - ((does that actually make them planes???))
For my risograph print I played around one evening with making a fleet of floating boats using ephemera and drawn image. This workshop was brilliant - I've always wanted to try riso!
I was really proud of my risograph print - it remains one of my favourite things I've made so far. It reminds me of chip paper or the 1970s Beano annuals my dad taught me to read with.
Following on from this and to take the project further, I spent some time researching carousels, particularly the animals on them, and got an incredible book out of the library about carousels and the history and artisan craftsmen who carved the animals. It was full of big glossy pictures of the stand alone sculptures against a black background, and talking to Matt he said it would be interesting to make some big paintings of these.
I was exploring ideas of the strangeness of these 'vehicles' - and similar to the Discovery centre, the weird juxtaposition of a frog next to a horse next to a car next to a dragon - all being used as a 'vehicle'. I was interested in the nostalgia and sentimentality of carousels - how kids had their 'favourite' character who they'd want to sit on every time. Three dimensional memories.
Carousels also bring up wider conversations and research into folk, national heritage, industrial revolution and immigrant experience.
I had lots of ideas about what I wanted to make :
- purely paintings, large scale from the book I was reading?
- make those into a flipbook? echoing the random juxtaposition of carousel 'vehicles'??
- make a 3D mobile?
- more narrative approach?
- artefacts surrounding carousels? tokens / ticket design
Unfortunately, I never got much further than the research, ideas, and a couple of sketches in my sketchbook due to personal life things, but I think this research and ideas could be something for me to dive back into in my personal practice in the future because I think its fascinating.
I'm disappointed I couldn't push my ideas, but I'm pleased with how my riso print turned out and this project, though short-lived, was a really enjoyable one.
Some images from the Discovery Centre:
my chosen object:
information about the artefact:
sketchbook:
risograph print:
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