Group Tutorial ~ Monday
In our first class this week, we started with creative ideation as spell casting, where our task was to create a spell to shape our ideas & find direction towards what we want our project to be. I found this exercise a much better and constructive way to externalise my intentions with my work, because usually I have a hard time coming up with ideas straight away.
I decided to automatically draw any symbol that came to my head, which I think made my ideas appear faster, from taking them from my subconscious this way and actualising those thoughts & images onto paper. I then easily followed up to write down what certain themes I wanted to incorporate into this project. I’m curious to explore themes surrounding women and different experiences, such as feelings of catharsis or hunger, or our intertwined connection to nature, depictions of the female body, sexual transgression and so on. This isn’t something I’ve explored in my art yet, but is something I’m discovering & interested in most.
⁕ Workshop ~ Tuesday ⁕
On Tuesday we paired up and had a fun activity blind drawing our partner’s portraits, mine turned out so bad. Turns out I didn’t improve since 1st year’s blind drawings as much as I thought I did, but it still was nice to look at them afterwards. We then had to write down ideas, techniques & skills for our creative ideation. I included pinterest boards and mind-mapping for planning, which help me the most when I’m stuck without any creative flow. I also find many artists through social medias and I enjoy reading about their work and thoughts on certain subjects. Recently, I’ve been reading articles on Kiki Smith and her use of female bodies alongside animals to create symbolic images. After we finished writing, we all stuck our cards to the wall and connected the things we wanted to aspired to achieve and develop on with orange string. This helped me to see the bigger picture of it all, and know what I wanted to improve on towards the upcoming 10 weeks.
“Featuring an act of bonding between human and animal, the piece speaks not only to Smith’s fascination with and reverence for the natural world, but also her noted interests in religious narratives and mythology, the history of figuration in western art, and contemporary notions of feminine domesticity, spiritual yearning, and sexual identity.”
Research
This week I was ill with the flu but I managed to start looking at film and artists that fall into the themes I want to explore in this project. I painted a scene from Under the Skin (2013) that I rewatched this week, touching on what it is to be female and to be human, and exploring the contrast of sexual desire and sexual violence. I ended up sticking lace because I would like to use materials and more texture with my work.
~ My goal for next week is to have a better understanding of the theme we have, ‘Site Specific Project: Sound’.
Hi Kat, great to see your posts, reflection on classes and documentation of activity. Well done. You’re teasing out some good themes to work with. Moving forwards, leave time to show more creative experimentation and research. You are starting to do this well, especially with visual research, but more in depth discussion and analysis of your sources would evidence critical thinking. Be sure to cite your sources to show where you’re getting your information from. More info on referencing can be found here https://aber.ac.uk/en/aberskills/referencing/#referencing—the-basics. Focussing on capturing your first ideas and the symbols that spring to mind is an effective way to get ideas, and also a form of automatic writing. You might want to experiment with this and perhaps spell casting methods moving forwards. Leave time to define and detail your creative concept this week, as next week we will be focussing on timelining your project in class. Keep up the good work and looking forward hearing more about your project concept next week – remember to think carefully how it responds to the IP theme; site specific sound art.