Potential

Was at the library yesterday evening after work to grab a few books, and can't help but notice the boulders out the front of the building. Could be just like the photos of the yarn-bombing in Hamburg. Yarn-bombing has been done at the library before...

Walker and Bromwich

Zoe walker and Neil Bromwich were in the college this morning to talk about their upcoming project up in Orkney. But also to discuss their professional practice, applying and working on projects and opportunities and about collaborating with other artists.

 I've never seen their work before nor to be honest, heard of them! But was interested in their wacky, fun pieces. 

They talked a lot about the celestial radio piece which was created from researching into pirate radio and involved 60,000 mirrored tiles, a boat, recordings and music and headphones...

Please follow the link to view their website and read more about the work they have created. 

http://www.walkerandbromwich.org.uk/home.html

Lots of time and effort for....

Nothing! Burst the balloon and not what I wanted to happen, it didn't maintain it's structure and just slumped into itself. 

Some ideas work and then there are those that don't!

The string balls don't float... So any thoughts of floating them on water of any kind, would be no use! 

Tried out writing with invisible pen and UV light which works well. Then also tried UV glow in the dark paint (left over from a fancy dress birthday party!) on the string balls, but despite a good glow coming from them, didn't photograph just that well. 

Field of light installation in St. Andrews square Edinburgh

My parents were away in Edinburgh and my mother mentioned about seeing lots of Peedie lights on the ground in St Andrews Square, so I looked it up.

Turns out it's an installation by Bruce Munro entitled 'Field of lights'. See the link for images and more information http://m.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/st-andrew-square-in-field-of-light-show-1-3293381

It's for my artwork I swear!

To progress forward sometimes have to reflect on the work already been done (part 2)

continued...

String balls - I wanted to work on something a bit more 3D for a change. Keeping connections and links between cultures and travel in my mind I made the balls.

 The string becomes a physical representation of travelling as you start in one place - home - and no matter where you travel home is where you were born and raised. The string is also representative of the direct connections and links between cultures. The spherical shape being the world itself and with the difference in light and shadows showing the division of the world into two hemispheres - daylight on one side, night time on the other.

 

This idea of showing travel was continued when I used the string ball as a form of printing block and rolled it over maps

Was quite effective for something so simple - considering doing a larger installation of this, people ink up the balls themselves and show their own journey



To progress forward sometimes have to reflect on the work already been done (part 1)

I started this body of work back in September 2013 with my focal point being the Italian Chapel due to wanting to focus on Italian influence in my own Orcadian culture.

http://www.visitscotland.com/info/see-do/the-italian-chapel-p253741 (a link to the history of the Italian Chapel)

The Italian Chapel provides a link of cultures - from Orkney, which for being a small populated place has such global connections. And despite the horrors of WW2 how the POW's created something captivatingly beautiful, with the very basic of materials. Nowadays the Chapel has been used for Weddings which I find such a contrast to the idea of war and division of family and loved ones to unity and love.
This idea of incongruity and contrast gave me the idea of showing the complete contrast between Orkney and the likes of Italy. So I merged photographs of my own and this is what I came up with...

Colosseum/ Ring of Brodgar

Sorrento/ Marwick Head

Frescos in the Vatican / Inside the Italian Chapel

 

There are elements of these photographs that do work...surprisingly! Ended up necessarily not showing contrasts after all!

 



I then tried showing the contrast of visuals and language...

Flattie is an Orcadian word for a small, flat bottomed boat. Noust - scooped out hollow near the beach where boats are left in the winter

 Quesy, seasick

 

Think they would make cool postcards...but that's a different idea!

 

After this stage I had a break for a few days and came back fresh to it all and felt it had gone stale and needed to change direction. Researched into a few artists like Susan Stockwell

I like the simplicity of her pieces which led me on to the string balls... (to be continued)

Film

This is a very short film I made last semester - when it is set on a loop it becomes quite hypnotic.

Do plan to hopefully, extend it greatly but as a simple development piece, it works.

 

The thumbnails on iMovie actually looked pretty cool too!

Results

Critical and contextual- B

Creative Practice 1- B

Workshop- A

Very pleased with that- just have to work as hard to stay at this level over this semester. 

Temporary work

Took my string balls, wrapped up warm and headed to Inganess Beach. 

With all the wind that Orkney has had over these past few weeks has caused a lot of damage along the shore, great areas of what used to be sand is now all stone. But this was perfect for me!

The idea behind this excersise was linking back to the environment of Orkney.

I am very pleased with the end results, both of photographs and moving images.

Start of something bigger

I ordered these balloons quite cheaply from eBay and thought I would try making larger string balls. Not as easy as I thought. My arms couldn't wrap the string around the balloon in one go not enough tension. So after a lot of struggling found the easier method, but not the cleanest was to glue the string first and then wrap half way, then turn the ballon and continue.

This final result here took 2 hours to do...and I was covered in glue!!

Also I had to use a chair to suspend it off of to dry. 

I also fear that there may not be enough support to keep its shape being so large! Just have to wait and see...

Artist talks

Listened to a talk on the Papay Gyro Nights- only heard the title in the passing and despite being an Orcadian had heard nothing about it. 

But was fascinating to hear about the creative undertaking that goes on at Papa West ray in February! 

For the full details check out the website www.bonfire.papawestray.org

Semester 2

Into semester 2 now- expanding ideas made in semester 1. What I ended with in last semester was about going bigger, some sort of installation perhaps, outdoors? Well, for a start the weather has been wind and rain for weeks!!! 

The going bigger involves more thought though. Sticking with the string for now, I need bigger balloons. Ordered ones that expand to 36" which I will try out but a weather balloon cropped up in my searches...may be too big but it's something to consider! 

Then when I was on Facebook my sister in Hamburg had these photos up online which was a rather fitting of a temporary installation