artist research – A DEAD LETTER

StudionAme – visiting a practicing studio

14 March 20223 May 2022Dead Roses

professional study

Who Are Studio Name

StudionAme is a studio with practicing artists of all ages and skills. Located at 2 Brougham Street (1st floor) Leicestershire England LE1 2BA. Within this community there are around 28 artists, some using the space as a place for hobby and other using it for a living.

Steve Sadler	Phil Hackett	Tim Fowler	Emmer Peers	Willow Stacey	Hannah Pillai
Tazim Hamed	Indrė Rimšelytė	Tom Van Herrewewge	Jack Casey	Loz Atkinson	Beth Bell
Lucy Stevens	Lorna Grey	Adam Khalifa	Matt Macken	Beccy Benedict	Christopher Samuel
Emma – Jane Rule	Graeme Hawes	Joe Moran	Nic Evans	Mark Boot	Steven Allbutt
Yuka Namekawa	Northside Bikes	Susan Knox

these are the artists

Within the studio are several different sized studio spaces, the sized of the space you are given is dependent on how much rent you pay, bigger size= more rent. They have a common room area but also an exhibition room the artist can use for free when wanted. This gives them great opportunity to hold exhibitions and to see how their work look together.

studioname.co

Business Cards And Exhibition Leaflets From The Studio:

My Visit To StudionAme

After a volunteering session I was invited to see the studio by practicing artist Emmer Peers, on the Sunday after I went to visit the studio. This was a great experience as we got to look around each of the artists areas, their works and thoughts. While looking around the studios I was able to see work in progress, finished works and even machines that help the artists.

These are photos I took through the studio, this was great inspiration both professionally and contextually. Looking around the studio it gave great example of how they live and help each others art.

Artists We Spoke To

While at the studio I talked to 3 artists being Emmer Peers, Jack Casey and another I can not remember the name of. Once we had looked around we where able to talk to them about any recommendation they have for us to be able to become artist. Jack Casey was really helpful within a professional light, due to explaining to us his journey from becoming part time artist with a job, into a full time artist.

Talking to Emma I found out that there are grants artist can apply for to help them produce their work, from looking i have found one that could be useful within my future projects. The link below is a website from the Leicester Art And Museum Gallery, where they have information about how to get grants and about different grants that are possible to get.

https://www.leicestermuseums.org/arts/funding-grants/#:~:text=Cultural%20Ambition%20Fund%20%28CAF%29%20We%20have%20a%20small,our%20Cultural%20Ambition%20Fund%20page%20for%20more%20information.

To be able to talk professionally to the artists was a really important step, this gave me a really strong insight to understand the next moves I will need to make after I leave DMU. Where if I do not have a studio at home I should look for one. I am fortunate enough to be able to create a studio at home ( I am currently in progress of this). I feel this has been one of the most beneficial experiences I have had this year.

Orlan – Artist Research

10 February 202211 March 2022Dead Roses

Artist Research

Orlan is a french artist how mainly works with her body, although she has used many different mediums within art. Orlan uses her body to make art, but she would not consider herself as an body artist. ‘She says that her art is not body art, but rather ‘carnal art,’ which lacks the suffering aspect of body art.’ I found this quote on Wikipedia. this shows her intent was not just to create art with her body but to really show something new, another creative choice she made was to changed her appearance from a website called Artnet I found a quote they have of orlan talking about this modification ‘ “I have been the first artist to use aesthetic surgery in another context—not to appear younger or better according to the designated pattern. I wanted to disrupt the standards of beauty,” she explained ‘. i found this quote interesting as it shows how she wants to push standers instead of becoming one.

orlan’s works are similar to cindy shirman a photographer whos main subject to photograph is herself, her works look closely at herself

her motivations can be seen as the same as a person who gets body modifications, some people do it to get out of the everyday beauty standards while others do it to become more of their selves, society as a whole tries to drag us into being the ‘perfect normal’ standard of beauty, but some people want to get out of that and do their own thing. therefore tattoos are still seen as completely acceptable and looked down on just not as much. in my project i want to move on from just looking at tattoos to looking how tattoos are in society and how people with body modifications can feel with society, also how i feel.

within this video, orlan talks about the concept of her works and why she did them, not all her works are like mine but the way she thinks about her works and wants other people to think about it is like mine. she talks about how people find talking about body modifications can make you ‘unfuckable’ but if you meet her or the person that can change. this is like my works, how society wants everyone to be alike and if you change yourself to be more you it can make you ‘unfuckable’. equally this can be completely the other way around, with fake boobs and bbl (but lifts). another thing she speaks on is how women where more open to kiss her than men, i found this quite an interesting point, and possible shows how women find it easier to open up rather than men.

although i wont be taking inspiration from her actually work i wanted to look more into another artist concept around body modifications, i feel its really interesting about how she uses her whole body and her art to try and convey her ideas.

Anthony Gormley – Artist Research

5 February 20223 May 2022Dead Roses

Artist Research

As my works is closely focusing on the ideas of humans bodies and i am creating bodies with my own, Anthony Gormley’s work is very instresing in how he uses the human figure within his art.

In Gormley’s work he investigates the human body and space, a lot of his work involves nature, I wanted to look at his work for more detailed inspiration as I had already started making casts of my own body before I found out that he makes some of his work by casting his own body. In my project I was mainly focusing on full bodies. Unlike some of Gormley’s work where he will cast parts of his body and put them together with a beam to make them seem whole.

quotes from websites

‘Increasingly, in the early 1980s Gormley was drawn to examine questions of humanity in relation to the environment. He made his first whole-body casts for Three Ways: Mould, Hole and Passage in 1981. As he continued, he varied materials and positions (crouching, standing, kneeling, lying down), sometimes distorting the human figure (as by elongating the arms) or replacing human features with other objects (as by putting a cast beam where the head should be). As gallery goers paused to examine the sculptures, they themselves seemed to be both the observers and the observed.’

Antony Gormley | Biography, Art, Sculpture, Angel of the North, & Facts | Britannica

Above is a quote I got from the Britannica about Gormley’s works and especially about his first body cast and his journey through them. Although I have been focusing on whole body it has crossed my mind to do body parts of half a body. His works is about the human body not as an object but as an experience and a place. Below is a quote about the meaning of his art found on wiki but is his words.

quotes from websites

‘Gormley describes his work as “an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live.”^[10] Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or “the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside.”^[10] His work attempts to treat the body not as an object, but as a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical – a trace of a real event of a real body in time.’

This shows how he is trying to experience the human body in another way and like he is trying to understand its concept more rather than its biological presents, this could be the same for someone wanting to put art on their body or to change it in a way to make them feel more themselves. The idea on how he wants to explore the body and he uses his own makes me relate to his work about how I have tattoos to explore my body and grow myself and feel more myself.

There is a lot within this video about his works and how he makes them, I found this so interesting. Although I have made a lot of casts and I am using string, unlike how he is using mode rock, I was interested in seeing how he creates his casts as I have cut myself while making them. In all fairness he is creating them in the same way as I am. After seeing how he has used the Modroc and that it will create a much stronger sculpture I will start to experiment with using it to create a cast, I feel it will also be a quicker process.

The next step I want to take within my project is I want to look at using Modroc for parts of my body, then use these to develop my idea with having the fake flowers on the string. I might see if I can grow flowers in them as it will hold soil better but also have some holes and see if I can grow the flowers in an organic messy way to show self growth.

Research Into Society – Contextual study

28 November 20213 May 2022Dead Roses

subject research

Statistics And Facts About Tattoos

I started by researching statistics of how many people have tattoos but also what type of people have them, within this image it shows that ‘tattoos seems to be more popular with people who attained higher levels of education’ I found this really interesting and against the normal stigma around tattoos.

There has always been a sense that if you have tattoos you are in a gang or the mafia, therefore I did not find it that shocking that Italy has the highest percentage. This does not mean that stigma is true, from this stigma seeing someone who has a lot of tattoo threatening. So we tend to stay away from them.

38 Tattoo Statistics: 2020/2021 Industry, Trends & Demographics | CompareCamp.com

How Fast Do Human Judge Each Other

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/how-many-seconds-to-a-first-impression

Within the website there was two psychologists called Janine Willis and Alexander who carried out some studies that determined it takes a human a 10th of a second to judge another. This is mainly from a persons face and not only the first impression but your opinion might not change from that first 10th of a second even when you know them more.

Do Tattoo Stop People Getting Jobs

The BBC new report talks about if tattoos still effect people getting a job, they speak both about people having better opportunities due to their tattoos and also how over the last 5 years (this would have been from 2014-2019) people have lost their jobs due to body art. Their is no law stating that a boss can not fire someone on the grounds of body art, but it is seen as not a viable reason to dismiss someone. Over the last few years body art has become more popular and accepted but it is still seen as a non-professional look.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48620528

How People Live Fully Covered In Tattoo

I watched video and it was really interesting as it shows how being tattooed can effect different parts of someone’s life. From love life to starting a new business, they follow them to see how people react to them but also how they have to be brave and push through the judgement.
Within this video people talk about how they feel about one of the men, how they call him scary and one even stated he should not knock on people’s door after it get dark as he will terrify them. This shows how without even knowing him they would actively stay away from him, just due to appearance.

Where You Are Not Allowed Tattoos

Though all this research it has shown that society is slowly changing to become more acceptable to change ( I know this was heavily tattoos based) but it is still far from accepting, this is not only the same for tattoos this is throughout many different groups who are all trying to be themselves.

As this website says japan is a country where it is not really acceptable to have tattoos, this is surprising due to Japanese style bring so popular. Another one that was a shock was USA, I did not think they had a problem with tattoos due to the amount of Americans that get tattoos. On the same website here is one more facts I found interesting so thought it would add them.

Is It Safe To Have A Tattoo In Turkey? – CowBoy Tattoo

𝖳𝗁𝖾 𝗈𝗉𝖾𝗇 – 𝗅𝖾𝗂𝖼𝖾𝗌𝗍𝖾𝗋 𝖺𝗋𝗍 𝗆𝗎𝗌𝖾𝗎𝗆 𝖺𝗇𝖽 𝗀𝖺𝗅𝗅𝖾𝗋𝗒

6 November 20213 May 2022Dead Roses

Contextual and professional studies

When the gallery first opened in 1849 there was 10,000 different objects given from the Leicester Literal and Philosophical Society. Within the museum and gallery there are a massive range of artworks, animals fossils and many other things to see.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leicester_Museum_%26_Art_Gallery

Through out the year the museum host many events for example:

Family days
meet the artist
black history events
open 32
And so much more

Open 32 is an event and exhibition that encourages artist of all levels to hand in their art works you just have to apply using their website to get your art into the judging stage of the application. They have an adult and junior section to apply to, then you have to fill out some questions about yourself and give them the title and information about your art pieces. Each person can put 3 pieces of art.

This is my application form, and all the imformation, i had to give them.( and all the information i wrote about above)

Below are the prices depending if your a student or not. The only thing you need is prof of study when you hand in.

Once I had filled out the form I sent it off and then waited for it to go through a judging process, i just had to wait till November to find out if any of my 3 pieces got in to the galley.

On the 4th of November I received an email saying that 2/3 of my art works have been chosen to go into the gallery.I needed to get them framed and ready to be delivered to the gallery between the 27-29th of November 2021. Below is the email

I backed my art pieces on to mount board using adhesive spray, making them presentable, but also stronger. I then needed to buy mirror clips and get the art work framed. I started to look around for places to find cheap frames and found a store that would custom frame both peace’s for £25. It took a couple of days to frame, after my art works was ready to be handed in on the 27th November 2021.

These are the pieces I am handing in, when handing them in all I did was sign them in. Due to circumstances I was not able to attend the opening or the artist meet up within the gallery.

I went to visit the works after a while, it was amazing to see works from ages of 6+. This was a very beneficial experience as a professional artist, as I now know what to expect when applying for a galley. Also contextually due to seeing how the gallery had presented each work and used different artists works to complement each others. While my work was in this gallery I visited the gallery itself and looked around the whole thing to see all the other works within it.

𝗧𝗼 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗟𝗲𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗠𝘂𝘀𝗲𝘂𝗺 & 𝗔𝗿𝘁 𝗚𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘆

Leicester Museum & Art Gallery – Leicester Museums

Leicester Museum & Art Gallery
53 New Walk
Leicester
LE1 7EA

Telephone: +44 (0)116 225 4900

natural inspiration from walks

5 November 20219 January 2022Dead Roses

artist research

While exploring etchings I started to look into insperation on how I can develop my etchings and I remembered the chapman brothers, but also a massive inspiration is the world around us. I have some photos of places i went that inspired me but also about the chapman brothers.

Nature inspires alot of my work as drawings but as this year I have been exploring and descoving/ studing nature more. I started to think about and learn much more about colours and how nature uses them. Below are some photos I took while out n nature that inspired or intrested me.

These are some of the places I went and thing I saw that inspired me, all of the colours are there for a reason weather it to draw things in, to send a warning or to camouflage. When looking at this side of colour it helped me to understand on how I can use colour within my art. By this I mean how I can draw a persons eye through my works or to one section of the work before another.
The mushroom shown in the photo is a brightly coloured rare mushroom in the waxcap family ( scarlet waxcap). They are rare due to how they will only grow in grass lands that haven’t been touched by pesticides and chemicals, the bright colour makes the mushroom stand out from the grass and bring a persons eye straight to it. For art this would help people to be drawn to a section of the artwork before another this could be useful for a body off work being presented or a massive piece with a deeper meaning.

the Foxthe fox fits into the nature but also seems like it’s a random colour of orange, this shows how you can use colour more freely and have some that stand out really strong in an image it doesn’t always have to fit in, it’s more abstract.

white flowers flowers are bright and colourful and stand out to help bees find them to be pollinated, therefore the bright colours make them stand out and attract people towards them in order to help themselves. This could be used in art in a way that I’d you have a bright colour scattered around a piece of art the persons eye will scan across the whole pierce of art and make the art look more of a whole piece with the same colour linking different elements.
Trees in the Woodall thought the trees are a different colour to the ground around them, they still are harder to see. This shows how you have to take a longer look than normal to be able to see them. This could be used in art as a way of making people look deeper into the art and also making something seen but not as straight away.
Grass on the tree this shows how different things in nature can stand out and contrast against each other, this could be used well in art to make one thing stand out more than the other.

moss on tree the moss hides the tree really well but you can still see it, using this technique shows how something can be so in your face but still hidden.

𝘋𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘢𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘱𝘩

20 October 202130 December 2021Dead Roses

After making my original collagraph I decided to try and experiment more within this technique. As a start I wanted to see if I could create a reversed effect, for this is used a roller to roll ink onto the plate and then printed it. I’m glade I tried this because It changed the result dramatically.

After doing this I wanted to take my experimenting further, my next development is to go from under A5 to A1. I also want to try a more relief style collagraph, for this I thought of making this plate in a more 3D style.

For this I decided to try and use string to so it will have a low relief. This will also cause the paper to have a risen 3D print on the back, this could be a fascinating idea to develop.

I order to do this I used a A1 mount board and drew out the design I wished for. I used wool and PVA glue to slowly place it down. Once dried I painted the whole thing with shellac so it holds better but is also water proof.

when inking the plate up, at first, I wanted it to be clean and just lines but as I was in the process of inking I decided to be a little more loose and started to let the ink so where the roller would touch when just rolling over it. This left a blocky college look that I have been convinced to love.

This was the final look of just printing the collagraph and I really like it, the next thing I want to try is adding colour but I’m not exactly sure how I want to do that right now. All I know is I don’t want to do it with just ink and a roller. As I feel there is a much more interesting and effective way of adding colour.

next I will be trying etching and my plan is to do a black an white experiment etching and then try and add colour to both the etching and the collagraph, as I feel it might help me to be more loose if I can bounce between the two and use them to help the other. I also have plans to try out making a background before printing the collagraph but I’m not sure how I want the back ground so I need to do some experimenting on this.

𝗢𝗽-𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 + 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀.

13 October 20212 December 2021Dead Roses

𝗢𝗽-𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁
The op art movement was an optiacal – allusion movement which manipulates colours and the use of black and white. The most known arts at the time were black and white, but i will be focusing on colour. The movement first started in 1964 when Times magazine used the term ‘op art’ to describe pieces of art in a show called Optical Paintings at the Martha Jackson Gallery, by Julian StancZak.

The concept of this art was to make a design that mimics movement, flashes or an illusion (due to how the colours work and contrasting rather than the art being a moving film).Although this is when the movement was first named, it was not the first time optical illusion was brought into art. For example ‘ zebras ‘ by Victor Vasarely in 1938 and more.

Colour started to ne developed in OP art around the beginning of 1965 when a handful of artists started to experiment with colours more within the op movement styles. While researching I came across Riley Bridget who was an artist who worked closely with this movement, both in colour and black and white.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTv1biPq4Cc

The link above is a video about Riley Bridget and her work over time. This clip talks about how she developed her work and process of understanding painting. Although at first she only used black and white to understand their relationship, she then slowly started integrating colour into the works. By adding colour slowly she really reset how she thinks about painting and colour in relation to movement and human vision.

From her works, have thought more on the idea of how I can develop my use of colours within art, to establish an understanding in how I can use colour effectuality and Beneficially for my work. weather to by adding colour after the print or during will have to be explored and found out with the art itself.

I wanted to try this optical illusion in my work but first in a way that is different to these artists and use some of my prints to create a new print. So l am going to be cutting up and manipulate a print i have printed this year but designed last year. (All done in 2021)

The top photos are my original prints, to create the illusion look I played around with how they look and how people will view them. I feel I could really develop on this and I want to try and use one of my big collagraphs to make a collage, my thoughts are to use bubble wrap and experiment with it.

I’m not so keen on the colour with this piece but it was an experiment so i don’t mind I can just explore more with this. I feel with colour, want to print colour on top of colour to create an effect, more that adding colour afterwards.

𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴

12 October 20212 December 2021Dead Roses

Collagraph is a process of a printing plate that has an abundance of different textures to create a print. It was first seen in 1955 when Glen alps used it, the word ‘collagraph’ comes from a Greek word and in simple terms means to glue/ graph (to draw). Near to anything can be used, due to this being a relief printing method the only setback is the material being glue on has to have a low relife (this is when the relief patern is shallow,for example string, a leaf or mount board when cut).

a vidoe i found explaining how to make collagraphs

While researching I discovered this video on YouTube presenting a simple homemade collagraph. Due to COVID I really like this technique as it’s simple to do from home. But this is also interesting as I could involved a lot of natural resources to create my prints. The women shows how you can create simple patterns with this method and can be used for the main print or as a background.

When desinging my relife print, i decided to develop a drawing i did last year for print (made in febuary 2021). I wanted to manipulate the blossom and snake skull to keep to the theme of beauty and ugliness, the skull would represent ugliness and the blossom is beauty (i fine skulls and bones beautifull but in this project im using them in a different light).

I decided to keep it simple as this was my first time experimenting within collagraph printing, i drew out the flowers and then added the snake skull behind. This shows the concept of when looking at anyhting weather its the world, a person or a relationship you might see the beauty but if you look harder there is always some kind of ugliness with in it.

On the left side is the plate I made. I found it challenging to Get my head around what textures are needed to hold enough ink in order to a have different gradients of black at first. Once I grasped an understanding I really enjoyed making this plate. Once the plate is ready and all glue (if used) is dry then you can apply a layer of varnish, for this I used shellac. Shellac is a substance that make the plate in a sense more water proof helping It to stay strong and give a better print due to being able to wipe ink off.

The varnish is applided in a room with an air vacuum and the left to dry. Next i appiled an oil-based black ink the used some scrim to take off all the extra ink before printing.
When printing you place some news print on the etching press then place the plate facing upwards… on top of the plate lay on some dampened cartage paper and the some more news print.

Mount board	Just the normal mount board surface creates a mid-tone grey (e.g the outside grey)
cuts (with a stanley knife)	This creates black lines (e.g the lines inside the flowers)
first layer taken off the mount board	This creates a much darker tone…. Basically black (e.g around the skull and flowers)
Glue / any shiney surface	This creates highlights (e.g highlights on tge skull and flowers)

How the ink reacts to different textures (there are loads more materials you can use)

I found this process intresting, I want to develop this technique further. Therefore I am going to create a piece on a much bigger scale, my first collagraph was smaller than A5, i am now going to design an A1 collagraph. I also want to take it one step further and print onto the print that comes out from the collagraph.

𝘗𝘢𝘶𝘭 𝘑𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘴𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘴 𝘉𝘦𝘥𝘦𝘭 -𝘈𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘙𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩

2 October 20212 December 2021Dead Roses

Print

Paul Jackson is an artist I have been inspired by and research about a couple of times, due to our styles being closely related. Paul Jackson’s work mainly consits of skulls and animals. The concept behind them is the connection between the Skelton and the physical body we can see, but also to develop peoples views on animals.

https://www.trendhunter.com/trends/paul-jackson

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/938016047180466

https://www.boredpanda.com/skeleton-animal-draw.

When looking into the reasoning behind Jacksons works, I found a website by zio. A piece of text on this page has quote from Jacksons blog (Unfortunately I can not find this blog). In the quote previously mentioned Jackson explains reasoning for his works. The second paragraph Delves deeper into the photos l used as examples above. His quote discusses how he wishes to show animals in another light. His concept has a close correlation to to ‘point of view’, the project within print. Therefore this strengthens the link into why I’m looking at Jackson’s works.

Jackson adds his interests into his works, this includes the surreal and sci-fi. This is also accompanied by the hint of ‘technical faults’. From what I have learn from research is he has worked in the film industry with, 20th century fox and universal. therefore these traits have partly inspired him but also his own style within the art.

All the research I have conducted has given me ideas. The title is ‘point of view’ but I am going to develop that into how society see people and look into ugliness and beauty.therefor my Starting point is going to deveplo my snake design from my 1st year. This idea has evolved from my research into these artist, Paul Jackson and Travis Bedel, but also from my own intrestes (with in biology, animals and bones).

Beauty and uglyiness is a major choice we all make and can easly express,i have always been interested in the concept of how people act/treat others but also them selves. There for I am going to do research into how humans act within society and how different things might effect out view on a person.

I really visibly enjoy these works and find them very inspiring. The way in which he can bring a realistic nature style into art, is a skill I have been practicing and trying to bring to my own work. Travis Bedel is another artist i have research into. Bellow is a quote from Travis talking about his work and how he develops it. The way in Whitchurch he execute his works is interesting due to how he uses very simple materials, nevertheless the result has such detail. This is a skill that is very important within print making, due to not being able to acheve a mass amount of detail within a print unless it’s on a very large scale. Therefore being able to experiment with materials to make an illusion of details is a more developed way of making the print.

Conducting this studies of Travis Bedel and Paul Jackson has really inspired and helped me to develop ideas to start this project off. Alternatively there is another aspect of my work I want to grow, this is my relationship with colour. Throughout my practice I am very restrictive with my use of colour, within this project I will study the use of colour and find different ways to integrate it into my work.