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Hi ! sorry two posts in one day haha what am i like!
yeeea also something ive been doing is salt dough! lovely florence (shout out to florence if ur readin this), recommended salt dough as a medium. basically its like equal amounts four and salt and a little bit of water and it becomes a mouldable dough! then u can form it and then bake it 4 like 3 hrs until its dry and then its solid. its more environmentally friendly than plaster so thats a plus, but its very salty, i licked it at certain points and it was not pleasant 🙁 .
I had this dream where this man fell asleep at the dinner table and his face fell into his food then he awoke and lifted his head up and it was a dinner plate with eggs 4 eyes and a saus for a mouth. i wanted 2 make it like a 3d painting ? so like with lots of finger marks n that, and i added inks and acrylic into the dough to make it a certain colour. I was like a child with play doh it was super fun! both keith and my flatmate said that it b sweet if there were like loads of em tiled on a wall and i might do that u kno, throw back 2 my tiling//grouting days! oof yea would love to bring back the grout!
also made some worms w left ovr salt dough, look at them in my dead basil plant, and omg now theyre in my roses! not the roses!!!!! >:((((((
Yea so u know i made that sword, well i keep looking at like ugh what do i do with it now u kno? i had an idea, the shape in it rlly reminded my of the teletubbies horn/antenna things. u know what i think im just gonna make like 4 swords each one representing a teletubby. then im going to paint and flock them in their respective colours and hang them up like in an armoury.
Actually they’re quite similar, they both wear a costume (although actually are the tubbies just animals that look like that? or wait acc same could b said for the fencer aha)
I am so excited about how im gonna hang then, gonna b longitudinal and i rlly wanna make some fluffy hooks that’ll fit in perfectly to where ive manipulated the metal, so it looks like its droopin down from the hook u know?
are teletubbies bears? comment down below!
I think Donna Haraway has gotttt me, i cant stop relating everythin to her, like do u think a teletubby is a cyborg or a companion species?
wow and their environment is like a golf course acc, got they rlly blend wild and tame, v interesting cultural figures.
I’ll do some sketches and post em here. xoxoxoxoxoxox
I write to you with shocking news. I have decided to step away from the world of art and instead pursue a life of vigilante justice, i now have my sword and will soon be indoctrinated into the world of sword fighting, where i will be duelling any wrong-dooers, evil people and tories. It will be a brave a perilous task but I feel myself draw to it with god-like urgency. This may be my final blog post for the time being as I set sail tomorrow morn, and have no idea when I will return.
Aha just joking ! i made a fencing foil in metal this week and it was loads of fun! its a fun shape (like a lightning bolt!), and i also learned a new method: forging!! i am now a forgery! loads of good fun! Im going to add a nice flocked duck handle and maybe make it into a bird bath, but we shall see! but yea if anyone wants to meet up for a duel or requires a quick-witted swordsman to hire for purposes of settling disputes etc hmu!! byeeeee xoxoxox
Bear ham: I’m sure we all know it, for me i think of it in the meat counter at morisions, sitting noplussed-ly between fine cuts of breaded and honey-roasted, or simply glazed, as if of course it should be there. What is it? It is ham isn’t it? But why are some parts paler and some more pink? The most important question though is why is it in the shape of a bear?
Who gathered all of the off cuts of their pork sausages/bacon, the snouts, the trotters, the tails and thought yeeeeea imma grind this up and reform it into a bear shaped thing?
Dont get me wrong, I love it. I think its brilliant, and if my memory serves me correctly it was delicious too. I’ve talked to some friends about this and it is this sort of ubiquitous “omg yeaaaaa bear ham i remeber that’ response. But it’s the exact same ingredients of most hams, why is the addition of the bear face an addition of absolute taste perfection? It goes back, I think, bergers take on zoo’s: ‘”the zoo to which people go to meet animals, to observe them, to see them, is, in fact, a monument to the impossibility of such encounters”, the imposibility of havin a peice of ham shaped like a bear is the spectacle, and for a child thats spectical that is olfactorarily all consuming, effecting how our tiny taste-buds receive the factry-ground and repackaged oaffle.
Theres another quote i love about meat, and how theres this whole thing about moving as far away from what it is (i.e. carving it into weird shapes/ glazing/crusting/ completely submerging in jelly), but i legit cant find it anywhere :(( any way i just love how we’ve gone full circle here, and the symbolism of the bear is made out of the object of the pig. I don’t know more thinkin for me to do i think
also please someone let me know how u change the font on this
So basically I was just looking into the history of forest gate in east london (my home), specifically a green belt of land i live next to, wanstead flats. There are loads of war relics dotted about which is super intresting, includingthe concrete ruins of an itallian prisoner of war camp. One thing i found out was these metal structures that I assumed were for tying up cattle (the flats had been used as the last watering hole/stop for farmers before they sold their livestock
in c london markets), were actually Barrage ballon tethers.(seeimage).
This got me thinking about the sculptural contexs of barage balloons, ephemeral and byoant compared 2 thier rusted metal tether counterparts. Upon more research I came into contact with a really odd little comic that came out during world war two for childern, trying to aclimatise them to the new presence of the barage balloon floating above them rather ominiously.
This weird anthropomophic and feminine image really started to fester as I got on with other cat paintings. so beautifully illustrated, tho it makes me think of that scene in gr8 gatsby where all the women are like floating they’re so full of hot air. “The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house” (that one). I love this idea of floating away, but being tethered to something u kno, and how these tethers in the case of the barage ballon are so solid they’ve existed for like 100 years almost. Idont know if i want to like focus on the ballon aspect or the tether, i think theyre both v v intresting and sort of work in tandem, like the ligature of the rope in waiting 4 goddot between lucky and pozzo. Who is in charge? the rope and the tether only exist because some1 thought that the barage ballon/the ladies in gr8 gatsby/lucky in waiting 4 goddot needed 2 b tied up and taimed. what happened to all the barage ballons in the uk when their ropes were cut ? did they just like fly away ? why didnt they un-earth the tethers? sorry lots of q’s not many a’s.
Insights and Inspiration
What will you learn about yourself in undertaking this course of enquiery?
-I will hopefully learn how I can push ideas I think as concreted in their certainty. The constant negotiations between two dimensions and three dimensions is something I would like to consider- i.e. 2d sculpture/3-D paintings. Seeing these transformations as a linear oscillation, naturally swinging from one-side to another. The implications also of digital source materials and digital end-products, bookending my creative process.
What are the personal skills you have that you can use in this work?
-I am not skilled but I am trying to experiment with felting, casting and metal. The limitations of space in this sense will push these skills forward and I I’ll have to engage in certain amount of critical thinking. I think the skills in this regard may be scaled down in more manageable ways, and could produce an interesting synergy with being smaller in terms of working together.
Are there other skills that you need to develop?
Yes- all of them. Especially the new skills I will have to adapt in response to the lack of ability to use plaster in the space I am currently in, which will come in the form of salt-dough- something that I’ve only used in primary school but lends itself well as it can be thinned out and made into slip, and when baked becomes hard. In this way it is similar to plaster (except drying is aided by an oven in the case of saltdough) but obviously will have it’s own limitations.
how will you achieve what you had hoped in this year? Can you achieve more?
-Achievement I find hard to quantify, I see it more as a sliding scale of ability verses satisfaction- achievement is subjective, but I feel that as long as I stick to my own briefs and allow room for bending them too I will b okay. Time management is also a huge thing for me, as well as distraction, which I find hard to negotiate, I will feel achievement if I manage to balance my time well this year.
What can you do to extend your knowledge and push yourself?
Read: this is how I go about most projects- visually depicting thought and theory, I find though that I do get bogged down in certain texts for extended periods of time: treating them like holy texts and following their rule. I really love texts on pet-love and queer use and wild-ness/wilderness at the moment, but I am going to try and not let myself get caught up in that. Also I’m in the fortunate position to be living with another art student who will provide me with a certain amount of critique that will help me to push forward. Observation
How will you plan your activity?
Fluidly. I find myself most productive in intermittent, and I find that when I sit myself down in a forceful way I end up ruining things I have already done. I guess this links into over-working- something I do a lot,
How can your recorded your creative thinking?
Note taking and sketches I think, as most people do, sometimes I have too many they like spill out of me and I write on my hands and scraps of paper and come up with random diagrams, using a lot of the time symbols from maths and chemistry. (the therefore sign ∴
, does not equal, reversible reaction sign).
How will you evidence your outcomes?
I will constantly take photos of these, and upload them to my blog.
Your reflection
How well can you communicate your ideas and processes?
I think maybe quite poorly, I have decided I don’t want to start a kind of didactic dialogue, but rather reveal some aspects of what we perceive as ‘home’ and the domestic sphere. This is something I do need to work on, I get so immersed in the making that I forget to document process.
How well can you present your outcomes?
Not very well, but I will try. I am going to take some pieces out into Edinburgh to see how they might interact with the environment.
What are the skills you needed to complete this body of work effectively?
I need to develop my concentration skills, I usually get incredibly distracted to the point I don’t get anything done which I myself find very frustrating. I think this will be especially relevant working from home as I am surrounded by distractions. I also try to think about things too much in terms of planning, sometimes running 0ut of time to actually make anything.
in c london markets), were actually Barrage ballon tethers.(seeimage).
r, i think theyre both v v intresting and sort of work in tandem, like the ligature of the rope in waiting 4 goddot between lucky and pozzo. Who is in charge? the rope and the tether only exist because some1 thought that the barage ballon/the ladies in gr8 gatsby/lucky in waiting 4 goddot needed 2 b tied up and taimed. what happened to all the barage ballons in the uk when their ropes were cut ? did they just like fly away ? why didnt they un-earth the tethers? sorry lots of q’s not many a’s.