Gremlins, Art Audience and Artists statements!

I have been bogged down by a hundred gremlins (mainly different) whilst learning how to do these blogs!
On some of the computers I couldn't get pictures to load, on others an 'error on page' sign very persistently popped up as I tried to edit or add to posts day after day.  I haven't been able to resize some of my photo's and others disappeared.  There was also a very strange session where all of the drop down editing menu was spread out in a kind of code-which I could actually work out how to use!  The other day disaster, no save button was there and I wiped everything off the entry by mistake.....I really am learning to learn!

 We did not have to present our response to the newspaper article in L2L today so I've (hopefully) put a video of it on the page.  We had an interesting talk about newspapers.  We need to put together (write) an artists statement to do with the piece.  I am thinking about this at the moment..what do I want to say? how long will it be?
We were then discussing our audience...who 'they' are, how they will be viewing the art.  This is quite an open ended subject I think as we could imagine new ways to reach this audience maybe as creatively as the artwork itself?

I've written my artists statement; but am feeling a bit ambivalent about it for a few reasons.  Part of me is thinking really the artwork should stand on it's own merit, sometimes artists statements come across as pretentious.  Also generally the ones I've read would be about a body of work (that the artist has been studying and producing for a while) this is just after the one piece.  I have decided to write it as if I have done a load of pieces on the particular subject and I suppose what I imagine I would have achieved....I think I will not put it on the blog....ahh, chicken!  (I may change my mind depending on how the next class goes).

Interesting Artists and Newspaper Inspiration!

7/10/2013 Our L2L group today had the fear factor!  It's safe to say that the majority of us were crapping ourselves, sorry, scared!.  Part of learning to learn is to learn how to do presentations.  We need to be able to do justice to our artwork, or the artwork of other people by being able to present well.  So we talked about how to do this, with gestures, eye contact, posture, visuals, engagement, interest etc...
It was brilliant watching the presentations about artists many I hadn't heard of and am now delighted I have.  I will be looking up more about a good few such as Virginia Davies, Gerhard Richter and Andy Goldsworthy.  
My presentation went okay, I was nervous and my voice sounded weird, I forgot to say how the background was supposed to be like 70's wallpaper and a few other things; but I was happier than I was the last time I had to stand up in front of everyone so that was something.

Our assignment today is to buy a newspaper, read it, pick an article and then to create an artistic response to it!.........................   there was also a short talk about politics; social, cultural and economic-connected to destinies, hmmm


I started to plan out possible lines of
investigation from the article with a mind map.  The article itself, taken from The Guardian newspaper, was about Peter Higgs, The Higgs boson and the Nobel Prize.  Although I am interested in these I found that my response just had to be about how I feel about the daily newspaper being a source of information (or misinformation) in the first place.  Something I feel strongly enough about to quite shamelessly say I NEVER buy a daily newspaper.  There are some possible reasons that I could think of to buy one such as listings: births, deaths, marriages, sports results and fixtures, events both local and global, cinema, TV, radio etc   For a truthful in depth (or even surface) look at a subject a daily newspaper would not even rank at all in my mind.  I did have a look at Peter Higgs online an saw that he has several videos freely available where he is explaining the Higgs boson.  I'm sure there are books too; but that is something I'm yet to check out.  There is an official site for the Nobel Prize with listings of winners and history.  For a more in depth look again I think there is a lot of information out there and being discerning about the sources could lead to a true picture of it's part in society.  There are many questions to answer in this regard!

So I personally think if there is any subject that you care about it is well worth the time and effort to go searching out truth for yourself....it leads you to a greater understanding and ultimately I feel much happier when I do that rather than relying on shoddy journalism filling my head with nonsense.  We have access to information like never before=lets use it!

Nb this article said 'continued on page 2'.....it wasn't and no sign of it in the rest of the paper....

Clare Won and Nan Goldin

30/09/13 Our rainbow group went well today, I had the sketches done- no presentation pressure.  Clare won the hurling so there were colourful stories of tribes mixed in with the great discussion that we had about where and how artists can get their ideas.

Here's a taste of the tribal colours near where I live


Claire came in and we had to pick an artist randomly out of a bag to research and do a mind map and presentation on.  I got 'Nan Goldin'.  We had to only use books for the research and had to visit the library.  John was saying about the joys of losing yourself in a book.  I love reading; but am pretty slow so when I decided to throw myself into reading about Nan this wasn't the best idea (for me).  I came out of the library as I was feeling a bit hungry and checked my phone and it was 13.50!!! I'd missed lunch and was 20 minutes late for life drawing.....  I guess in future I will have to keep a closer eye on the time.

I really enjoyed the focus and investigation of the research.  Not only do you get an insight into what the artist does, you get to see the context, what was happening at the time, influences, politics, life experience, other artist connections, inspirations etc.. it's fascinating. 

Something that is also interesting is that in the space of a week you can feel that you've discovered something new, something that you weren't aware of before and know that there is way more that you don't know that is there if you want to find out.  And even better that you can evolve any of those ideas, thoughts, images into your own way, your own ideas, views etc and those in turn can be worked on, by yourself or someone else who takes the baton and runs with it.

Here's my Nan Goldin mind map and also a Nan inspired photograph, entitled "Niam Drinking Hot Chocolate In Butlers"

I would like to make the images a little bigger; but I'm still having a few glitches with the blog so will have to keep it as it is for now....go away gremlins!

Doing a Presentation and Making A View Finder

23/09/13 This L2L session was about presenting our mind maps that we made about ourselves...why we are on the course. It was very scary, which I know when you say it logically not in the moment sounds very silly. Never the less my heart was beating faster, palms sweaty, dizzy, throat tightening etc! It's definitely something that I need to learn...how to stand up in front of a group of people and do a presentation without having a melt down. The actually presentation was v.short and I was given the advice, to look up more, address the audience, relax. So I will try to take this on board for the next time. Having the mind map there did help a bit as a prompt and as a focus. I really enjoyed hearing about the other members in the group, their goals and plans. We then made a viewfinder and got given the homework of 5 sketches using the viewfinder. Do lots of drawing practice, basically, draw, draw, draw, draw!!!

 I've had all kinds of problems getting this to publish...hence the delay