So it's coming up to the 'Open Studios' event at my University where we all have to show a.... well it's not hugely clear: some tutors say make a couple of resolved, developed pieces to show and others say just pin up some stuff your working on; it's a work- in- progress show! Anyway with this in mind I thought I would show what kind of thing I'm making for it and also where my work has been going recently.
In my last post I was interested in working with books as my medium, and while I have been working towards that I hasn't been as central as I thought in this semester, but this is for good reason. In the book I mentioned before I found a quote basically saying you shouldn't make a book then find stuff to fill it with, or make a few sheets of work then stitch them into a book. The concept, process and book form should all interweave and be justified and developed together. So with this in mind I stepped back from making books and started to look at drawing techniques, my ideas, content etc to make sure what I was making would actually suit the book form, and I wasn't just filling books. So here is what I have been making. They are prints I finger painted on an aluminium sheets then rolled through the press so the thicker bits of ink smeared across the page. I have added a picture of one of Gerhard Richter's paintings (from a 2009 Portraits exhibition in the Portrait Gallery, London) to show who was inspiration for this idea. The prints are of me using my hands to be playful and touching books like they are precious objects and there are all sorts of ideas of protection and preservation in with this.
All the while I was making these images I was recording them with iStopmotion- some animation software I strongly recommend to anyone making animations! For the Open Studio's I plan to project these animations onto a book I stitched to show how my drawing/ printing ideas are going to be linked into book making in the next semester! Feel free to comment saying what you think- criticism included, I can take it, we get it from the tutors all this time! :P
On one final note I found out I am a 'bibliophile' which is someone who has a love of books. Sounds a bit creepy to me.
