Water Line - Water week 2 Herstmonceux Castle

Waterweek2015 I contributed 4 boards, Boundary, Deposit, Seam 1 and 2 and an afternoon of experimental action drawing using moat water, accessible to anyone willing to jump on a scooter or a skateboard...

'Boundary' shown at Herstmonceux Castle 

Herstmonceux Castle

'Deposit' on the left at Gallery North Hailsham

'seam 1' shown in Herstmoncuex Castle

'Deposit' shown at Gallery North 

'Seam 2' shown at Herstmonceux Castle

raising moat water for Water line drawing

5 senses workshops SEE - the eyes are listening...

SEE

We use this sense probably the most and are rapidly becoming conditioned to see in particular ways through exposure to instant culture throughout the media. 

On a more mundane level we all need to see to live a daily life and just noticing details or looking at our surroundings in a different way can be inspiring. 

This week's workshop was about seeing through the eyes of an artist, how and what we see and how we translate that into marks. 

I visited The eyes are listening at Hastings Museum recently and loved the large paintings of Tom Hammick.

In terms of creating artwork I am very interested in the right brain left brain function. After reading Betty Davis' book, Drawing on the right side of the brain, I am sure there are ways of strengthening our use of the right brain thus being able to harness its global skills and lack of critical awareness  allowing creativity to grow. 

So to get students started and to switch off the left brain function we drew an upside down drawing, This is an exercise to copy a drawing by Picasso of Igor Stravinsky. By doing this the brain reads the lines and marks as just that, it no longer recognises them as eyes, arms, a collar etc so the right brain is in control and this allows the student to make a drawing without preconceived knowledge and spacial judgement . The result is a better drawing. Still not necessarily perfectly (if there is ever such a thing) accurate but conveying a more real sense of the original subject. 

           

                 

Time changing greatly affects what we see so students drew from view finders on the windows to record what they could see at different intervals during the workshop - overlaying the images made on tracing paper. 

                

                

I had asked students to bring in white objects to draw so we could just focus on the forms without too much distraction while they made 3 specific drawings, 1st to make a drawing using usual observation, 2nd to make a drawing looking at the subjects and not the paper, trusting the eye and the hand to connect to create an image, 3rd to make a drawing entirely from memory of the subjects, by removing them. 

 

                               

  

I hope doing these drawings in this way highlighted how we store up image in our brain, and when we draw we can either use the images accumulated subconsciously by just living or we can re learn new lines, angles and marks by looking carefully and memorising by repetition these new images. Increasing our own artists resource of our mind. 

Students then continued to draw the white still life using slit shaped view finders. 

                          

   

5 senses workshop SMELL

Smell 

This workshop was a fantastic feast of memories, associations and stories all tumbling out. Identifying moments in our childhood, rights of passage and first perfumes. A rich tapestry of stories of relationships, of when and when perfumes were bought and used ranging from Yves St Laurant, Poison, Chanel no 19 to Jo Malone and the smell of fresh cut grass. 

Miriam was practising losing herself in process and produced some lovely experimental work. 

I tried to keep up with doing some work myself but with so much reminiscing and memories emerging instead we enjoyed a really open and varied discussion including Wolfgang Laib's pollen fields, Anish Kapoor's wax train in the Royal Academy, dead foxes and lemon scented cleaning fluids.... 




Anish Kapoor's Wax train  and Wolfgang Laib's pollen from hazelnut. see the link below to watch his video. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-_92MYcANk 

What was really pleasing and motivating was the connections that students were making through articulating their memories and how this was inspiring confidence and the desire to apply these new thoughts and feelings to ongoing work. We all left the morning buzzing about setting new projects in place. I found myself really encouraging students to begin to set themselves their own chosen parameters to work within and to create a body of work following on from these experimental workshops. 



cloves



soap

5 Senses art worskhop TASTE

This week we were looking at Taste and how it might influence or enhance approaching our art work and creative process. 

Taste is of course very subjective and food has been used in art both in direct and indirect ways. We referred to Anthony Gormley and his bread sculptures, Claus Oldenburg for his pop art floor cake, burger and other food items and several artists who have looked to food as subject matter for still life - in this brief exploration of the sense of taste I was hoping to highlight some of the subtleties and associations of this sense. 

First we did a warm up in pairs identifying something small that our partner had changed in their appearance this encouraged students to take time to think and look ....this exercise is useful done several times over until you think you have run out of choices...it can help to break through blocks and push you beyond your usual thought pattern. We all notice things to a degree and then switch off relying on our memory or habit of simply sticking to what we know. To break out of this opens up new pathways which is especially helpful when trying to make art that remains interesting and challenging.   

After this we looked at a diagram of the tongue and its taste receptor areas of sweet, salty, sour and bitter including umami - a pleasant savory taste (from the Japanese) .

To get immediate experience and wake up our taste buds we tasted some large caperberries, green chili peppers and slices of lemon. Then discussed each of our experiences which rapidly led to stories of associations and childhood memories of food. 

Focussing the mind onto creating something visual and consolidating our previous discussion and experience we drew some aubergines - just straight aubergines whole or cut open. 

Cheryl with felt/sewn aubergine

Carol's lovely bold bagel with fish, aubergine arrangements and chocolate slab squares

Sadly I missed photographing Miriam's wax resist and water colour aubergines. 

These senses workshops are intellectually demanding as they involve a lot of thinking and application - however there are ways of bringing us back to the subject if we are struggling (and we can do this in our own time too to bring us back to our work if we are getting stuck) An easy on for TASTE at coffee time it was cupcake blind tasting.

Identical mini cakes made in 6 flavours; rose, orange, lemon, peppermint, cola, and strawberry. This was harder than I anticipated for two reasons 1) some people were not sweet toothed and found the sweetness too overpowering and 2) it's difficult when there are no visual clues to search your memory for identification of a taste....we were literally closing our eyes and delving deep into our minds to recall the time when we had tasted something similar. 

 Students created work around a food item they had brought in that held some significance for them. 

Miriam's 'real' bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon 

David's bread relief 

Cheryl's final autobiographical piece 

Aubergine with Bagel and tinned Nappolina Tomatoes. 

5 senses workshop HEAR

Naked Eye drawing group experimenting in the HEAR 5 senses workshop inspired by the story book Ish by Peter Reynolds. 

I had the pleasure of being able to facilitate a 'TOUCH' senses workshop with Naked Eye last year and they have been very kind to ask me back to complete the series. 

Being on email and mostly on Facebook has meant we could swap images and background thoughts before and after the workshop. 

Facilitating a group of very keen and talented students is a real privilege and I think I learned as much if not more from the process of doing it and from the students themselves than they did. All of them take a very different approach and are willing to try new things which is what keeps their interest alive and is in turn inspiring. I'm really looking forward to TASTE which is next week. 

The idea behind the Ish concept is that we are looking at how we approach our creative process, what do we bring to it before we make a mark or decide what materials to use? Just as other artists, text or music might influence our ideas or mark making - our own physical state of awareness is something we can draw upon to be part of the whole. Sensing our way rather than over thinking. Just being ourselves and becoming aware of how we feel or respond to certain external or internal influences can reassure us in our conscious choices further down the line and give integrity and depth to our work and experience. 

Focusing on each sense gives us the chance to see where strengths and weaknesses lie and in some cases may help students break free of a rut but trying something new or seeing something from a new perspective. 

In HEAR students were first asked to create a sound scape with their voices and secondly to make marks on paper to visualise a list of everyday sounds they had no warning and no time to think  - they had to move around the table to a new paper every new sound so they didn't get too limited by  their own previous marks. 

They then tried making a system or code for the letter sounds of their name or a chosen phrase. In the second part of the workshop they listened to music they had brought in and visualised it using 3d lo fi materials as a relief - as this is not an exercise in making 'finished' or aesthetically pleasing pieces of work it can be a frustrating and very difficult thing to do as each student is battling with their need to fulfill a need to succeed or do it 'right'. Left brain against right brain. However Ish is about getting a sense of something, its not exact and there should be a strong sense of freedom to do or try anything in any material in order to explore possibility and progress ideas conscious or unconscious. 

apologies for lack of photos here I have them saved as a Facebook album and am struggling to access them. For the full album go to https://www.facebook.com/felicity.truscott.9/media_set?set=a.755085321221076.1073741826.100001588467591&type=3

Lookout Folkestone Trienniel 2014

These are the artworks that caught my eye at Folkestone, 

I would have had some of the wind lift,,

 had I been brave enough to let go of the side. 

 

I loved this interactive colour wheel to gauge the colour of the sea - its one of the permanent collection now from a previous Trienniel. 

Yoko Ono, Earth Peace. Good to see a big flag and the light transmitting morse code was like a silver disc on a grey background the day I was there. 

Will Kwan, Apparatus #9

Andy Goldsworthy and his cracking clay installation Clay steps and Clay window. 

an Old Gasworks transformed by Jyll Bradley, Green/Light 

There was so much more and it was great walking around the town seeing feeling and experiencing these artworks on location. No white cube fatigue just aching legs! 

Thanks to www.axisweb.org there was a fascinating talk with the curator Lewis Biggs featuring the relationships with local communities and placing the art works within them. 

Dark and derelict places can be transformed by the desire to place public artworks in them. Just like the corners of our houses that get ignored and piled up with rubbish - if we curate them and clear them they become spaces to go to, they broaden our footprint and our attitudes.