Painting

I saw this today and was inspired to start painting again. 

Flyers

The flyers and posters for Art of Tea have been printed. Am so pleased with how they have worked out. 

Roni Horn aka Roni Horn

Last weekend I visited London whilst there I went to the Tate Modern. A Roni Horn exhibition was on as well as a Rodchenko & Popova exhibtion which I found disappointing alot like a Russian version of Bahaus, also I found it pretty heavy going.  However I did enjoy the Roni Horn exhibition, I loved the mix of sculpture and photography, it is obvious throughout Horn's interest in pairs and doubles. I especially liked the phrases made into script sculptures like White Dickinson: Faith is Doubt 2006-07. Another piece that I enjoyed was Her, Her, Her and Her 2002-3 which is a grid of 64 black and white photographs shot in a locker room, they way they confused the viewer making your eyes dart across the photos. 

Another artist was Cornelia Parker with Thirty pieces of silver 1988-9 which was a collection of silver items which had been steamrolled flat and then hung from the ceiling at a low level. I could of looked at it all day. 

Flyers

Today I have been working on the flyers for the Art of Tea exhibition I have been asked to take part in. I have produced some simple ink line drawings of antique teaspoons which I have been layering over some floral fabric which i have stitched into. I have then been scanning the images and layering them.

I have also started on producing the animation that will be used as visuals, combining stitched line drawings with appliqued text.

I can knit

My aunt taught me on friday how to knit and now i can't stop. Ive been thinking of ways to incorperate knitting into my animations, at the moment I can see it working by producing a square of knitting and unravelling it to produce the animation.

I have also been thinking about producing an animaition to be part of the visuals to be played behind a dj. For this I have been thinking about different techniques and maybe using collage aswell as stitch.

Craft & Design Centre

I visited the Craft & Design Centre for the first time yesterday, even though its about 2 minutes away from my flat. I loved it. At the moment there is a piece on by the Uk craft Mafias who are a group of people who use traditional crafts suchas crochet and knitting in a mordern way. The work that has been produced is amazing, I found it so inspiring and could see myself doing similar work. To coinside with the UK crafts Mafias exhibition, Artyarn are group similar to that of knitta are inviting people to produce a piece 7 cm wide by 40 cm long of either knitted or crochet material which will then be used to cover the first floor banister of the Manchester Craft and Design centre. I have been trying to teach myself to knit for months now but haven't been able to get it right but on my last visit back to my parents house I found out that one of my friends is a skilled knitter and are willing to teach me over easter. Which is great because the deadline for producing a piece is 25th April which i will be back for, so i hope to enter a piece.

2nd Unpicking Animation

Tried out another unpicking animation, it works pretty well. Just have to wait and see what it will be like played backwards.

Have booked the animation suite for after the Easter hols so that I can get a few more done before the assessment.

Unpicking Animation

The animation worked out really well, I have yet to see it played backwards but it works well as it is. It has a very unique quality to it, and almost looks like a sketchy drawing. So I am going to look into different drawing techniques. I really like the way the thread moves in different frames. At the moment it looks like the plant is dieing but hopefully when played in reverse it will seems as though it is growing. I am going to look into trying out this technique but use it in different ways and experimenting with it.
I'm thinking of trying it out in layers of colour, and using appliqued pieces which will be unpicked to reveal whats underneath. I am consentrating on plants at the moment because of the element of growing and change involved, i plan on studying the way the grow and using the information to produce a animaition.

Art of Tea

I have been given the chance to produce some work for the Art of Tea in Didsbury. I'm so excited about it as it will be the first time I will have my work put up in a space and I'll maybe even get the chance to sell some pieces which would be great.
At the moment I'm not sure if I have anything to use so I'm going to complete the four pieces I'm working on and then think about what I can produce for the Art of Tea. Whatever I produce I aim to link it with my uni work so that it can be entered with everything else I have done at the end of the year in May.

Essay

Thank god thats over with.

Deadlines

I have found that over the past few weeks I have been constantly chopping and changing what I'm working on, which is good as I am producing lots of different pieces and testing out different techniques and mediums but I have found that I don't actually have many finished pieces. To sort this out I have set myself deadlines for each piece of work that I have on the go at the moment.

• March 15th Hand Embroided Debbie Harry
• March 22nd Dog Animation
• March 29th Unpicking Animation
• April 12th Book of Illustrations

Once these main pieces are complete I will be more confident that I have a decent amount of work produced to show in my end of year presentation. I will also be able to get back into the swing of things once this essay is out of the way as I find I don't work well when i have an essay to complete as I find it takes up all of my energy.

Whitworth

I visited the Whitworth art gallery today to view the new exhibition Subversive Spaces: Surrealism and contemporary art. I obviously loved to see some pieces by Sarah Lucas as I have always liked her work and its really good to see her work in Manchester rather than just in London. 

I would say that I only enjoyed a small percentage of the work as some I thought was of a poor standard and other pieces made me feel uneasy. 

However there was a video which I didn't managed to get the name of the artist, it was of a man using a drumstick against railings and fence to create a series of sequences that were then put together to make one film. It was really enjoyable to watch and I could have sat and watched it for hours.

I visited the Cornerhouse in the week to see the new exhibition there, Interspecies. What I most enjoyed were the videos of an artists spending hours with monkeys. The monkeys all had different characters and it was very funny to watch them interactive with the man.

Things I Love

I'm thinking of producing a small book combining my illustrations and my sewing. I will leave them all around manchester with my blog address on the back and wait for responses.

Watch this space.

Unpicking animation

For my next animation I plan to produce a sewn image using a sewing machine instead of hand embroidery. I will then unpick the stitches to create the animation. Using the animation suite in the studio each unpicked stitch will be a still of the animation. Once i have completed it, i will play it backwards so that it appears as though the sewn image is being created not the other way around.

Today I visited the Urbis and saw the Black Panther exhibition and the  photography exhibition Reality Hack: Hidden Manchester showcasing the work of Andrew Paul Brooks.

I found the Black Panther exhibition really interesting and learned a lot about that period of time, the posters by Emory really interested me, I liked the use of line and blocks of colour simple but very effective.

Andrew Paul Brooks photos were very intriguing as they showed places that the general public never see however I did think some of the photos look as though they had been photoshopped a fair bit which I really dislike as I prefer photos to look more realistic, other photos looked less edited which I think worked a lot better. The light in the photos made them almost dreamlike and very fascinating.

Knitta

Knitta is a collective of women from Houston Texas, who use knitting as a form of graffiti. Tagging street furniture such as lamposts, bridges and postboxes with knitted pieces.

I think its the same simple idea taken from people like Bansky and turning it on its head. Because whereas Bansky is using paint, Knitta are using wool and because it isn't actually defacing the objects as the wool is not completely attached.

There work has become very popular with people removing items and selling them to earn money for themselves which is also happening with Bansky, I'm completely against this as I think it is unfair that these people get money that the don't deserve. All they have done is find the piece of work, they shouldn't be the ones making money from it.

At the moment Knitta has only been seen in the U.S.A but theres always a chance of it

happening over here.

http://www.knittaplease.com/ABOUT.html

Control

Just watched Control for about the tenth time the film about Joy Division by Anton Corbijn and just realised I had the final song of the film Atmosphere on my itunes. Am well pleased, its one of my favourite songs of all time.
Shame the music video is rubbish.

Der Lauf Der Denge

The Way Things Go a film by Peter Fischil and David Weiss made in 1987. Its the inspiration behind recent adverts by Honda. Its all based around the domino effect, objects controlling the movement of other objects.

The film its self is nothing special its set in a dark dirty warehouse, its the objects moving that make it so intriguing to watch, tires, trash bags, candles, bottle rockets, fire and chemicals are all used. There a moments of suspense when your waiting for an object to make contact with another object. One of these moments was the plastic cup rolling around a table, it needed to fall off to carry on the process and keep it all going. It was almost tense watching it roll around , waiting for it to drop.

There is no other sounds apart from those of the objects, such as the spark of the fuses, water dripping and gushing into containers.

The only fault of the film is the editing between sequences, its visible and pretty obvious which ruins the idea that its all complete and set up ready and waiting.