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Just came across this on a design blog...
"I struggle every day with expressing my own "self" within the design I am making for others. I am sure like me, most of you have an inner desire to create. That this creation is not just something we do... but actually is somehow connected to our inner-self. To me the act of design is just as natural as breathing, and just as important to my overall health and well-being."
ermmm... not sure about that one Doctor!
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Tuesday, 16 November 2010
The Wye
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It's amazing what a phone camera can do. I often find myself as pleased with the shots from my phone as with my dedicated DSLR.
This was taken on what is reputedly the deepest pool on the River Wye. I cast a lead into the pool and counted 14 seconds before it hit bottom. It's a really eerie place, the completely still and black water probably holding the skeletons of several tractors washed away in the floods and never recovered.
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It's amazing what a phone camera can do. I often find myself as pleased with the shots from my phone as with my dedicated DSLR.
This was taken on what is reputedly the deepest pool on the River Wye. I cast a lead into the pool and counted 14 seconds before it hit bottom. It's a really eerie place, the completely still and black water probably holding the skeletons of several tractors washed away in the floods and never recovered.
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Monday, 15 November 2010
Remembrance of things past...
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I always find it interesting to look back at work that I did a long time ago. I often see it from a completely new perspective - odd, for something that I myself spent so much time thinking about and creating.
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"Fresh and original" - a favourite phrase of my second year tutor (along with 'jaw-dropping'), that encouraged many of us to come out with the most unbelievable toss. Most of the time this was inoffensive, as it was often too baffling to have any basis in reality, but there were occasions where this desire to 'push the boundaries' crossed over into questionable territory.
We were set a photographic project for public exhibition based on a book by the late Paul Arden, entitled 'Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite'. The written brief we were handed contained all of our tutor's favourite buzz-words: 'staggering', 'shocking', 'breathtaking', 'fresh', 'jaw-dropping', 'original'... (I could go on), while examples of previous work created for the brief showed a passion for pigs' heads and pornography. (It seemed that if your work contained either of these then it would be a pretty safe bet for the final exhibition).
Deciding to go down the route of shock and gore, two of the most vacuous students in the group decided that they would visit a funeral director's and ask to photograph some dead bodies. This eventually developed into them somehow getting permission (from crematorium staff, not the family) to photograph the body of a teenager burning in the oven of a crematorium.
The resulting image certainly fitted the bill of being 'shocking', it was horrific, but also, on the surface, strangely beautiful. Had these two girls been trying to communicate something with their photograph, had they had some justification for it, it may have been a rare example of a deeply affecting piece of art. Unfortunately, what was most remarkable was their apparent obliviousness to what they had been doing. The word they used to describe it, in a typically offhand manner, was "crazy". There then followed the most unbelievable piece of bullshit post-rationalisation I've ever seen, resulting in an Artist's Statement that was 'jaw-dropping' only in its stupidity. The final exhibition was cheapened by it. Though I might add, only slightly, as the tone was already fairly low thanks to one of the 'mature' students (and I use the term loosely) painting his penis and using it to print "one-off individual pieces, signed by the artist". Needless to say, there was no great rush for commissions.
To return to the original point; here would have been a good opportunity for the tutor to give these students a much needed piece of moral grounding. That substance is as important as style. Instead, she lapped up their work with enthusiastic praise, failing to note their lack of morality or understanding. (With very good reason) she hadn't seen anything like it before, so she loved it.
Thankfully, the majority of students were able to think for themselves without going down the obvious route of cheap, graphically explicit imagery and the resulting exhibition included some pieces that were both intelligently rationalised and beautifully constructed. The two particular pieces that stick in my mind were those of Anna Brooks (http://www.anna-brooks.com) and Amy Herriot (http://amieherriott.com).
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My Exhibition Piece:
Images of bathing children, once a common subject within family photo albums, were displayed in a dusty shoebox in the under-stairs cupboard within the gallery.
I wanted to highlight the suspicions people have in the modern age where photographs of children are concerned. An innocent collection of family photographs, taken in times gone-by and stored away for years can take on a sinister edge if they finally see the light of day in our modern social climate.
The exhibition was held at the Arden & Anstruther Gallery in Petworth from March to May 2009.
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I always find it interesting to look back at work that I did a long time ago. I often see it from a completely new perspective - odd, for something that I myself spent so much time thinking about and creating.
--------------------------------
"Fresh and original" - a favourite phrase of my second year tutor (along with 'jaw-dropping'), that encouraged many of us to come out with the most unbelievable toss. Most of the time this was inoffensive, as it was often too baffling to have any basis in reality, but there were occasions where this desire to 'push the boundaries' crossed over into questionable territory.
We were set a photographic project for public exhibition based on a book by the late Paul Arden, entitled 'Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite'. The written brief we were handed contained all of our tutor's favourite buzz-words: 'staggering', 'shocking', 'breathtaking', 'fresh', 'jaw-dropping', 'original'... (I could go on), while examples of previous work created for the brief showed a passion for pigs' heads and pornography. (It seemed that if your work contained either of these then it would be a pretty safe bet for the final exhibition).
Deciding to go down the route of shock and gore, two of the most vacuous students in the group decided that they would visit a funeral director's and ask to photograph some dead bodies. This eventually developed into them somehow getting permission (from crematorium staff, not the family) to photograph the body of a teenager burning in the oven of a crematorium.
The resulting image certainly fitted the bill of being 'shocking', it was horrific, but also, on the surface, strangely beautiful. Had these two girls been trying to communicate something with their photograph, had they had some justification for it, it may have been a rare example of a deeply affecting piece of art. Unfortunately, what was most remarkable was their apparent obliviousness to what they had been doing. The word they used to describe it, in a typically offhand manner, was "crazy". There then followed the most unbelievable piece of bullshit post-rationalisation I've ever seen, resulting in an Artist's Statement that was 'jaw-dropping' only in its stupidity. The final exhibition was cheapened by it. Though I might add, only slightly, as the tone was already fairly low thanks to one of the 'mature' students (and I use the term loosely) painting his penis and using it to print "one-off individual pieces, signed by the artist". Needless to say, there was no great rush for commissions.
To return to the original point; here would have been a good opportunity for the tutor to give these students a much needed piece of moral grounding. That substance is as important as style. Instead, she lapped up their work with enthusiastic praise, failing to note their lack of morality or understanding. (With very good reason) she hadn't seen anything like it before, so she loved it.
Thankfully, the majority of students were able to think for themselves without going down the obvious route of cheap, graphically explicit imagery and the resulting exhibition included some pieces that were both intelligently rationalised and beautifully constructed. The two particular pieces that stick in my mind were those of Anna Brooks (http://www.anna-brooks.com) and Amy Herriot (http://amieherriott.com).
-----------------------------
My Exhibition Piece:
Images of bathing children, once a common subject within family photo albums, were displayed in a dusty shoebox in the under-stairs cupboard within the gallery.
I wanted to highlight the suspicions people have in the modern age where photographs of children are concerned. An innocent collection of family photographs, taken in times gone-by and stored away for years can take on a sinister edge if they finally see the light of day in our modern social climate.
The exhibition was held at the Arden & Anstruther Gallery in Petworth from March to May 2009.
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Thursday, 11 November 2010
The One That Got Away...
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pencil on paper 11 x 16
October 2010
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Monday, 8 November 2010
'The Idler' on the 'Big Society'
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Doers, grafters and idlers
10 October 2010
There was no mention of idlers in David Cameron’s speech at the Tory Party Conference last week. He praised the toilers; his phrase was the “doers and grafters” of Britain. Idlers were made to feel a little guilty. This praise of toil is common to all governments. Under New Labour, it was the long-suffering “hard-working families” who were singled out for special praise. And in Nazi Germany, Himmler created a project known as “Operation Workshy”, designed to get the shirkers back into useful employment. The problem is, that paid employment rarely delivers the benefits that its promoters, who must be either naive or disingenuous, claim for it. Overwork destroys lives and wrecks families. Work kills: the TUC estimates that 20,000 people in the UK die each year as a direct result of their job. A quarter of a million are injured by their jobs, the TUC claims, and a further half million are made ill by them. The UN says that 2.2 million people worldwide are killed by work. That’s three times more than war. Yet we see no war on work being declared by governments. Instead, both right and left subscribe to a middle class fantasy of a jolly working class, whistling as they work, when the reality is stress, humiliation, worry and debt, as well as a depressing sense of being enslaved. But Idlers have time and good cheer: they have time to look after children, read books, write songs, go for walks, help out in the community. The hard workers do not have time; they are tired; they do not have the energy to cultivate their leisure, and in the evenings they simply collapse in front of the television with a can of Stella. It is up to us, the idlers, to stand up for truth, beauty, pleasure, art and life, words you will never hear coming from a politician’s mouth.
(Hear, hear!)
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Saturday, 23 October 2010
Some Drawing..
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I was inspired by the beautiful illustrations of Greg Eason, see www.gregeason.com, to do some drawing of my own. His work reminds me a lot of the stuff I did on my Foundation course, both in style and composition. Although, his is far far better... Anyway, these are a few sketches I did lastnight.
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I was inspired by the beautiful illustrations of Greg Eason, see www.gregeason.com, to do some drawing of my own. His work reminds me a lot of the stuff I did on my Foundation course, both in style and composition. Although, his is far far better... Anyway, these are a few sketches I did lastnight.
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Friday, 25 June 2010
Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Sexiest little blonde I know
My Takamine EG523SC - Probably the nicest thing I've ever bought.. I plan to be able to really do it justice one day.
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