Imagine you are an artist living between 1860 - 1910 - Produce artwork for each era.

1860 – 1870

 More and more factories are opening and it is becoming difficult to make ends meet as a designer with good drawing ability. Factory work is repetitive and each worker only completes a small part of the finished item. I feel strongly that I wish to be part of the whole process. In the late 1860’s I have been fortunate to gain employment with Morris and Co to design and create templates for their embroideries. The drawings shown give an example of coloured drawings from life of fruits and flowers as well as the templates for the embroiderers to work from.

1870 – 1880

I continue to be employed by Morris & Co and continue to do some of the drawings for embroideries but have also enhanced my skills as an embroiderer. This means that I work some of the silk embroideries for this increasingly popular company. We are receiving many commissions for wall hangings from owners of some of the large newly built houses which are being built by Philip Webb, one of Mr Morris' close friends and business associates. This piece is but a small example of my work.

1880 – 1890

We continue to live in fast changing times. Because of my association with William Morris, I have been able to visit many private houses and see other artists at work. I wish to return to drawing and painting and it seems that there is now a growing enthusiasm for photography which is now often used for portraiture. Artists no longer need to draw accurate representations but can be more impressionistic in their painting. I have experimented with this new genre to see how it suits me as an artist, although I believe that Monet is rather more accomplished that I will ever be.

1890 – 1900

I have had a modicum of success with my painting and decided that it would further my career if I spent some time in Paris.  I have been fortunate to spend time in the studio where Georges Seurat amongst others works. He has a rather different way of painting. He applies colour in tiny dots or small, isolated brushstrokes. This has been given the name ‘pointillisme’.  The form of the painting is visible only from a distance, when the viewer’s eye blends the colours to create the mass of the object. I have attempted this with some fruit I had in my home which I set on a checked tablecloth.

1900 – 1910

One of the many advantages of living in Paris is the opportunity to soak up the many new artistic ideas which seem to appear almost on a daily basis it would seem.  Impressionism has been replaced by Cubism. An artist who is gaining in respect is Georges Braque. His early style was Impressionistic(like mine), then the brilliant colours to represent emotional response of Fauvism took hold. After a retrospective exhibition in 1907 of work by Cezanne, Braque was much influenced by his work and began to work in the Cubist style(so named by one of the reviewers ‘bizarre cubiques’). I too have experimented with this interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective and the use of monochromatic colour.

I have had an interesting and varied life and have been fortunate to live in an age where it is possible and acceptable to try out new ideas. Who would have imagined in 1860 that within a period of 50 years, factories would be producing in days what it used to take a craftsman many weeks to make; photography is now common place and rail transport is the preferred means of travelling rather than a horse.

Pieces of eight

Close up of the Pieces of Eight.

Friday project

Remember the Friday Project that I mentioned in an earlier blog? Well here it is!!
Numbers 1 - 9 - can you work it all out I wonder!!
The book is obvious ; next are 2 Chinese ear muffs which I have remade in coloured paper; 3 is the scissors, paper, stone game; 4 is the Kanji sign for 4; 5 are 5 Olympic 2012 postcards; 6 is a rather battered 6 pack; 7 Up is pretty obvious; the pieces of 8 are stones that I found on a walk and have embellished a bit and 9 is a Cat o' 9 tails; the cat being a catalytic converter.
Quite fun and of course the tray in the middle represents zero without which we could not operate our number system.
have a nice day.

Art and design update

A quick update on some of the art work I have been producing in the past few weeks...the workshops were Textiles and Printmaking, both of which were interesting and fun. In Textiles I had to research Claire aka Grayson Perry and find a connection with trains.....?  so some way down the line...sorree....I decided on a screen print of a train( first time I have done screenprinting - great )so produced a stencil and printed it off in different colours on different materials.  I then embellished this with a cloud, a flowering tree and a signal with freehand embroidery,and the finished result is.......a cushion.

 The other item I made was a shoe - which looked a bit like the front of the Bullet train but was also embellished as Grayson Perry does with a lot of his art.  It was quite difficult to make and used quite a bit of ingenuity!

In Printmaking, we again did some research into people like Rauschenberg, Hokusai and others and had explained the fundamentals of lino cuts, dry etching and screen printing.  I tried all three - lino cuts of course print in reveerse so numbers and letters need careful consideration! After screen printing, I then dry etched a dragon onto these, and also cut up some of the original screen prints and created further artwork which could become prints in the future. All really interesting as I had never done this before.  What do you think?

 this is one of the screen prints onto which I have then printed a lino print of the number 5 in Chinese/Japanese kanji.

 Again one of the original screen prints onto which I have printed a dry etching of a dragon which came from a design on one of my mother's old dressing gowns!

 

This is a new design with elements of the original screen printing together with parts of a map of Tokyo and complementary colour strips.

Again original screen print plus Tokyo map plus kanji character...perhaps a mountain with a river flowing through it?








An ongoing project is the Friday probject - something to keep us out of mischief on Fridays when we are not in college but should be doing something art related.  The project is to be presented at our assessments in 10 days time - An idea popped into my head which was to do the numbers 1 - 9 (there being 9 Fridays) - so I have been racking my brains for different things to do for each number......more to follow on this one! 

Art and Design course

Have just started back after half term and thought some of you might like an update on how the course is going??
...and the answer is it's going well...lots of ideas, different ways of doing things and Homework - not something I have done for a very long time!!
The first couple of weeks we spent either as a whole year group or in smaller workshop style groups. The first project was the Tableau project where a smallish group were given a photo which we then had to reproduce exactly in 3D. Our group was given a black and white photo so we had to make background walls with cardboard and paint them dark grey, make costumes etc in black....then the tutors took a photo of our 3D group so that it can be compared with the original photo...good fun and it got us working together.
Once term settled down we have critical studies lectures once a week, workshops on 2 afternoons and visual studies and drawing on the other 2 afternoons.
Visual studies has covered collages and 3D amongst other ideas..

the start of a 3D sculpture made out of card....

this is a piece of work that formed part of a drawing class...we spent time doing a vast coloured still life and then had to do some quick drawings(close to; far away; sitting on the floor; wrong handed etc) For homework we then embellished these drawings - left hand is the original and right hand is embellished. Fun!!

The first workshops I chose were Contemporary Art Practice(CAP) and Sculpture/3D.
In CAP we were looking at Appropriation which is where you take an artist's work and then alter or change it in some way to make it your own.  Amongst the artists I checked out Gerhard Richter stood out and I then took his picture of The Party and changed it - as is was a party I thought of all the diffeerent types of party you could have....see other blog for images of this. Gerhard Richter has an exhibition at the Tate Modern on at present. I am told it is fantastic so if you get the chance go and take a look and see what you think.

In sculpture we looked at many objects etc in Christchurch Mansion and then worked in different mediums to create a variety of 3D objects.  We were lucky enough to be able to try using porcelain which was interesting, although after it had been fired it didn't seem to take the glaze as I expected - I have increased admiration for the craftsmen who paint those beautiful designs on lovely porcelain plates and teacups!

From the back you can see a little Chinese man with a snake, a bucket with moulded porcelain shells and at the front the head of our late lamented dog Curtly(with slightly frigthening eyes)resting on his ball with a bone - which took the glaze better than anything!
Just before half term in our drawing class, we had to take a small object and then draw some quick larger images of it. Then we spent about 1 1/2 hours on a really large detailed drawing of it.

This gives you an idea of the size of the small round object I chose to draw! and here is the finished result

Not bad but my shoulders ached a bit!!

Appropriating Appropriation - A Museum that is not

Contemporary Art Practice is one of the workshops the Group of artists is doing in the Art and Design Foundation Diploma.

The Group of artists have been looking at appropriation - this is where an artist takes another artist's piece of work and changes it in some way thus making it their own..ie appropriating it!

The Group took a look at some of the well known Appropriation artists including Mike Kelley, Barbara Kruger,Yasumasa Morimura, Jeff Koons and Gerhard Richter amongst others . One of the group chose Gerhard Richter as their appropriating artist - in particular his picture of The Party.




The Party by Gerhard Richter

This is this group member's collection of parties....Welcome, come in and have a wonderful time!!

please help yourself to a drink....

Political Party

there are many Political parties in the world - and a lively mix of cartoons that are published the world over of politicians - what a joke!!   in the newspaper was a marvellous cartoon of some of the European leaders trying to sort out the Euro crisis. Just pop their faces onto the Richter party heads and add 'the man in the street'. 

an altogether more forgettable party is this one...apologies!

Let's move on....

Have you got a drink yet?

What's your poison?!

let's hope you don't end up like this at the end of the evening.



A Garden party might be fun....with lots of plants,

trees and flowers....
.

and in spring it might look like this.....

So sorry - forgot it is your Birthday...let's have a  party, 

.not forgetting the cake and candles..

Careful with those candles!
Don't be a party pooper!!!

It's such a lovely day - shall we have a Beach party - such fun!

Mind that BIG wave.............
                                            ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
                                                                 ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
                                                                                          aaah.....................r
remembering 
all those who lost lives in the Japanese tsunami.......
what a terrible tragedy.

www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/mar/14/japan-tsunami...  

let's move on to more cheerful things shall we?

can you find the end of the rainbow - and the pot of GOLD!




Lot's of you will be very environmentally aware......so what's your feeling about the Green Party.....

ooh...what's that music????
would you like to pop in and see what's happening?


http://www.weddingmusicsamples.co.uk/songs/18-wagner-bridal-chorus-here-comes-the-bride-from-lohengrin/

definitely time to sit down - what about a cup of tea as well?

poor Alice - it is all a little strange isn't it....

hope you are feeling refreshed as we are getting to the end of the exhibition.

always a pleasure to go to a Christmas party - all those exciting packages - wonder what is in this one?

and now we come to the end of this 

small and select Party.

Hope that you have enjoyed yourself...

if you have tell your friends!!

Farewell