PE Task 2

My first year of TIP has certainly been an interesting one as I have learnt so much in such a short space of time, I have also had access to more facilities than I ever have before. For my first Unit of the year I chose to do Construct (Knit & Weave), I felt comfort from that as I was already a keen machine knitter. Although I had already used knitting machines before I was shown such a wide variety of new techniques and process that I had no idea about, I found this to be such a great experience and I really enjoyed my 3 weeks of knit sampling. I also found doing Weave to be a very interesting experience as in this case I was a beginner, I struggled to grasp the numbering system at first but I came to a point where I became almost a natural at the weave machines. Although this is a much more time consuming process in comparison with knit I find them both thoroughly enjoyable and somewhat therapeutic. I then moved on to doing Embroidery and I feel that by this time I became more confident in my work and I wasn't as concerned or weary about what my work looked like, if I liked it then why did it matter if others didn't? I developed so much as a person and I learned how to take criticism in a positive way rather than a negative way. When looking back at both of these units I feel very pleased with how I worked and how I managed my time to stick to deadlines without exception, If I had to chose between Construct and Embroidery I can honestly say that I cant pick a preference as they have offered me individual learning experiences. As I start to think about going in to my second year I think I would like to continue both of these further and see where they take me maybe as a combination, I have already incorporated them both into a project but I feel that I could show them in a much better way if I had an enjoyable and more interesting project. I feel that I have a preference for the Art and Craft areas of the Textiles industry and I would like to look into career possibilities that I could pursue, I do also think it could be a good experience to look at the interior side of things and maybe gain some knowledge about the interior world of textiles. Over the summer I plan to research into these areas within the textile world to ensure I have a clear mind in terms of what I aim to achieve.  

Unit X summary

For me Unit X has been a roller coaster of an experience! At first it was pretty slow but it then picked up once my creative juices started to flow, as we got further into the project there were so many ups and downs that I began to confuse myself due to having mixed messages from tutors and not having a clue about what was okay to do and what wasn't okay. I started to feel like my work wasn't going in the right direction and changed paths a few times which just added to the confusion, after various tutorials I began to have a more clear understanding of what I was doing which made me start to think positive about this unit. I was then told to change parts of my project for certain reasons, I was then told by another tutor that I didn't need to change anything (again adding to the confusion). Once I had finalised a direction I felt much better about the project but I wasn't necessarily enjoying it, I wish I had a clearer idea in the beginning as I probably would have enjoyed it much more! 

In the beginning I don't feel that we collaborated very well as a group as we didn't put an equal amount of effort in to meeting up and actually doing things together, this is not to single out anyone in particular as at some point each group member has had this problem. I believe that this was purely down to the fact that we all had no idea what we wanted to do or what direction we wanted to go in, Once we all had our projects going at a good pace we seemed to collaborate more effectively, it is however a shame that this wasn't the case from day 1. 

As an experience I feel that I have learnt a lot about myself as a person and an artist. I do not work well digitally! and I don't work well when I dislike the project/theme, I also don't seem to have worked well as a group initially but I think if I was put in a group again I would make sure that I gave myself clearer ideas and expectations. Overall I think this unit was not very well organised or thought out as it never seemed to have much structure to it. 

If I was to do Unit X again I would follow my initial ideas and back up my progression in such a way that would not enable me to be lead astray. I would also be more involved with my group and be sure to collaborate in more ways than what we did this time.

Presentation of my piece

For the presentation of my piece I decided that I was going to have it up on the wall next to the work of the other students in my group. This image shows how all of our work was initially displayed:

After having some input from the tutors our work was moved around to give it a more professional look. My personal work was taken off the piece of wood and hung from a pipe in front of the window shown in the above image. I then made two small cage like scupltures and attached some of my shells to them, these were placed alongside my 'hanging structure'.

These two images show my piece from different angles, unfortunately I forgot to take a picture front on so I will have to upload one in a separate post! I think taking it off the wood was a great decision and I am really happy with how it was finally presented in our exhibition. 

These are the sculptures that I displayed alongside my 'hanging',  I feel that they themselves show quite a good contrast between the natural and man made objects. Over all I am very pleased with my exhibition display and I hope that people have enjoyed looking at my work.

  

Large scale 'map'

I completed the 'map' idea that I explained in a previous post and I photographed it before dissolving it, I feel that the my drawings and the lines I created with stitch have very similar qualities in terms of line control, movement and structural elements. These images show different angles of the fabric:

Full length Piece, (fabric was water damaged when purchased so is rather curved)

A section of the piece to show the linear patterns better.

Two close up images showing the detail in different parts of the piece.

I dissolved half of this and left it to dry on the piece of wood but as I didn't think it was drying quick enough to do it in separate parts I used cable clips to secure it on to the wood. I then put it in my shower to hose it down and dissolve the remaining fabric, below is an image of the piece at the half and half stage.

As you can see in this image when the fabric dissolves the stitch loses its firmness and becomes somewhat stringy. Although this is not how I wanted it to look I think it will work well with my knitted pieces.

Group meetings?

Throughout Unit X we have met up multiple times, I have not mentioned them on my blog as I kept forgetting to do it after the meetings as I am still not used to doing blog posts. I also feel that as a group we have still not collaborated in a very good way, I would rather not mention some of the meeting we have had as not a lot about or work was mentioned as we were too busy discussing why we had not all been to certain tutorials/meetings/lectures etc. This in mind I don't feel like it is suitable or relevant to my personal blog space.

Final Piece idea...

After using the water soluble fabric I have had a great idea for my final piece. I am going to create a 'map' of journeys from memory, transferred on to the fabric using machine embroidery. I am going to make this on a large scale to fit the piece of wood which measures 19 inches wide and 55 inches tall. I will do multiple layers of stitching and then dissolve the fabric. Once I have done this I will attach my knitted pieces using objects from my pound shop task, I will also use my found objects to add a contrast to my knit pieces . Once I have done this I will either hang this piece in my allocated gallery space or prop it up alongside my groups work. 

Keeping on top of my blog!

I have found this project much more stressful than usual as I really do not like keeping a blog, I believe it is a great way of showing my work but I personally much prefer keeping a physical record of my progression rather than in digital form. I have struggled a lot with my blog so far and I don't think it seems to be at a professional level. I am finding it really hard to get my head around keeping a blog and using blogger itself, as I am not on my laptop very often I sometimes forget to upload things straight away and have to back track a little, unfortunately I think this may have an affect on my project as a whole but I will keep pushing myself to try and understand the process of blogging and I hope that I will soon be able to show a good level of understanding and have a professional standard within my blog.

Water soluble Fabric?

I was looking through my box of fabrics and came across some water soluble fabric that I used in a previous project. I remembered how it felt after dissolving the fabric and it had quite a firm finish, I though that this could be a great technique to go alongside my knitting in someway. I started by doing some test pieces which turned out really well.

I have chosen to show this image only as the other images I have are extremely poor quality. I found these really interesting to do as I used my imagination and the help of friends to choose what lines I created by imagining the journeys we often take around Manchester i.e if on the journey we turn left I would change my direction of sewing to go left and vice versa for right turns. 

Design ideas?

When thinking about my design ideas I pictured different ways of portraying my natural, neutral palette contrasted with elements of the city. These images show some of my ideas...

These designs all have really similar qualities and although I like them I want to try and get away from this style, I feel that as final pieces they may come across as too literal. I need to now think about different but interesting ways of presenting my work, maybe look at another technique?

Finding objects around the city...

I decided that instead of just using my images to relate my work to the city I decided to collect objects from around Manchester, Here is an image of my findings including my other materials.

This picture is very poor quality as at this time I did not have acess to camera so this is a screen shot from a collaborative video, see link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBOhn0hkPwI&feature=youtu.be

The wood in the image was also a found object, I was walking home with a friend one night and I saw this lovely piece of wood, it had been there a while as I believe I had seen it before so I decided to save myself some money and take the wood.

Me Carrying the wood home.

Knitting...

In my previous post I said I was going to create some knitted pieces, I found it interesting to do as rather than look at my images for inspiration I just looked at my linear drawings and created pieces that only had small elements of 'the city'. I had a breakthrough in my project during my time knitting, because of the confusion I have been experiencing in terms of what I was 'supposed' to be doing (relating my work to 175 or the city) I decided that I was going to use my initial research/work from the beach and my development of looking at the city as a contrasting concept. To show this I made my knitted pieces with natural looking yarns and I then physically created patterns and included more structured shapes within my samples.

Knit sample 1.

Knit sample 2.

Knit sample 3.

Knit sample 4.

I have selected these four samples to show the variation in what I did with the knit machine, as well as machine knit I did some samples by hand which I felt went really well as I was more confident in trying to manipulate the pieces.

This is one of my first hand knit samples, I feel that the shells have a really lovely effect and I think that to contrast this with samples showing more linear elements from the city could be really interesting.

Choosing techniques

At this point of the project I am figuring out what I want to produce, I am starting to think about what techniques I want to use. As I have previously experimented with knit and relating them to buildings I have decided to get back on the knitting machines and let the linear elements of my images and drawings influence my samples. I hope that they turn out well enough for me to have a more clear idea of my progression within this unit.

Drawings

To give me inspiration for my final piece I have decided to look at the images I took around the city, as well as recreating all of the images in different medias I am going to focus on the linear elements of the images. With this in mind I started a collection of drawings using ink, pencil and fine-liner. 

Ink with stick drawing, Manchester Starflyer and City Tower.

Layered Ink and water with brushes and sticks, Close up of Manchester Starflyer structure.

Pencil, Fine-liner and ink, Linear elements taken from multiple images of the city.

As my drawings are all very similar I have only used a select few in this post, at this present time I don't think I have many other good quality drawings/ photos of my drawings so when I have a clear idea of what I want to produce I will post images of my designs/ideas.

Unsuccessful Unit

Unfortunately due to a lot of mis-communication our collaborative group has not been very successful, so far we have had so many mixed messages that we have been either confused or unaware of certain things about unit X as a whole. We have tried our best to make the most of being put together as a group and we have helped each other as much as we could with certain parts of our individual projects.  Putting this aside I think that if we have tried hard enough as a group then we will have a successful exhibition in our final week of the unit.

I personally feel that my project may not be as good as it should be as I have not enjoyed this unit at all!

Sheila Pepe

'Mine Ayn, 2006'  Is a collection of work by Sheila Pepe, I feel that using my images of the city I could create some great drawings inspired by the style of these. They are very clean in terms of line quality but at the same time there is a childlike essence to certain parts of each drawing. In particular I like the drawing in Fig.1 as I can relate some of my images of the city to the shapes that are used. (Drawings to Follow)

Fig.1

Fig.2

Fig.3

I have also looked at 'Detail. Josephine', I feel that this piece has a web like effect and could have some great inspiration towards my work.

Fig.4

Fig.5

The looseness of this piece is what makes me interested in it, I think this is because it almost comes alive with movement. I created some small neutral coloured samples using some of my collected items, in one of my samples I knitted with string and cable ties, the way I photographed it reminded me of this piece see Fig.6.

Fig.6

Although this is just a sample I believe that it could be a strong starting point for working towards my final outcome.

Relating my work to the city continued...

I found these images interesting as they are both on the corner of a street, bearing this in mind they have a sort of contrast that makes them both appeal to me in different ways. They also remind me of a piece in the 'Creation Destruction' exhibition in the Holden Gallery, Manchester.

'Mark Lewis, Isosceles (film still, detail), 2007.'

(please excuse poor photo quality as I did not have my camera when I saw the exhibition. Photo taken of picture in booklet.)

The reason I liked these two buildings is that the windows are like patterns, and they have a certain order to them both. I'd like to think that my final pieces have an order maybe in a similar way to this.

After relating my work to the city I feel much more confident and positive about this project and I hope that this continues throughout. 

Relating my work to the city...

After having a tutorial and being informed that our projects had to relate back to the city, I decided to go into town and photograph the buildings that I found most interesting. In this blog post I have included my favourite seven images, the rest will be posted with drawings as i progress.

Manchester Starflyer- I feel that this image shows a brilliant perspective of the new addition to Manchester City Centre, the way in which I have captured some of the essential 'parts' of this structure has inspired my ideas involving connections and structure. I will definitely keep the idea of a structure based outcome in mind and will refer back to this.

I feel that these two images have quite similar elements in a sense of their structure and layout. To me these stand out as I really like the way that you can see the different 'layers', I find this quite interesting and I think I will use these elements to inspire my drawings and samples.

Patterns?

After making the patterns in the sand, I feel like i could make something interesting from sets of patterns or small motifs made from 175 items.

I have started this by testing nails with glue on a small scale to see the kind of effect it will have. Here is an image:

Looking at this sample I think that the glue was a bad idea, from this I will keep in mind to experiment and try different ways of putting things together. Look at 'Connecting, Attaching or Joining' in terms of how things can be put together.

As part of this idea I set myself a mini task to get some items that could be used as a possible way of 'Connecting, Attaching or Joining' my samples/pieces or objects together. To make this more interesting I have decided to go to a pound shop and give myself a budget of £5 only.

Task Outcome: For my 'pound shop task' I ended up purchasing 3 Packs of Cable Ties, a box of Cable Clips and 3 balls of string.

My own 'Circles in the Sand'

After I found the article about making patterns in the sand I arranged another trip to the beach to do my own patterns in the sand, instead of using pebbles I used the 175 shells that I collected previously. When I got to the beach I decided to start my patterns by writing the number 175 with pebbles, shells and a stick in the sand. I felt that this would be interesting to look back at and compare the different qualities of each media.

Pebbles-I don't think the pebbles have a particularly interesting look about them in any way, for this reason I was even more sure that i wanted to use shells to make my patterns.

I wasn't really impressed with how the stick writing turned out either so I will remember this for next time.

For the shell number I decided to do two versions. (shown above) I feel that the bottom image shows more potential for ideas relating to patterns.

When I started to think about the patterns that I wanted to create I walked around for a bit to find the best place, somewhere out of the way. I came across this wreckage and thought it would be perfect, so I started to make patterns and here are 4 images showing my personal favorite parts... 

Fig.1 

Fig.2 

Fig.3 

Fig.4

Out of these images I prefer the pattern with part of the spiral left in (Fig.3) as it really stands out to me, I feel that it has some similarities to the old cave drawings that you see in films/on historical programs. After doing this I am feeling more positive about Unit X, I think I may consider using patterns as a new starting point.

Circles in the sand

After clearing out a room for new furniture I came across some of my old selvedge magazines...

These kept me busy for a while as I found some interesting things, in particular a little article called 'Circles in the Sand', it said:

'Stop sleeping in the sun and get involved with two projects that capture the beauty of sand and sea. Sue Lawty invites you to take part in a global project and use the natural canvas of the beach to create a stone drawing. Images of your artworks can be uploaded to the V&A website.' Examples can be seen at: http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/textiles/lawty/world_beach/map_gallery/index.php?section=1
As I have already been to the beach i'm disappointed that I didn't see this sooner as I would have done my own patterns. (Try and go back to the beach!)

In case I don't get another chance to go to the beach I have created an A3 poster imitating the image from the circles in the sand article using shells instead of stones.