Course Review

I have thouroughly enjoyed the freedom that I have had within this course. I feel that I really have started to find my own art practice voice.

Assignment 2

The piece that clearly stands out is the Bodmin Prison piece. This really felt like a lightbulb moment for me, an awakening with the discovery of an exciting new way of working for me. This piece felt like a truly finished piece but with the potential for redevelopment within new ideas. This way of working properly conveyed the  sense of loss I was looking for.

The other pieces were important to the process of development of ideas but did not inspire me enough to take the ideas further.

Impressions

Over this course I feel that I have developed my ideas surrounding impressions and their use as a metaphor for death, loss and memory well, I also feel that I have only just started to touched the surface. I am very excited about other possibilities and I fully intend to continue to develop these themes and ideas within future work including my next OCA course.

I have also overcome the self doubt that I had about what textiles can be, the textile process is evident within my work but not always present within the finished piece.

I have also thoroughly enjoyed the process of taking the work further than what was necessarily required. My inclusion within the Slovak International textile exhibition in Bratislava and Prague was very exciting. It gave me a glimse of possibilities, the important experience through an application process as well as the opportunity to meet other international artists. Filming myself spinning also felt like an important addition to item 2 of my major project, adding another dimension to my work. The opportunity to use the Filament 14 space at Magdalen Road Studios was invaluable. The ability to properly see my work outside of my dinning room at home was so important with the addition of feedback from some of the artists allowed me to re-evaluate all of the pieces.

I am very excited about the future and especially excited about the next course with the opportunity to develop ideas further still.

Quotes

I have spent some time considering quotes that could be used in conjunction with this piece of work and that might add another dimension to the piece.

I wanted some text that sums up for me the disappearance of personal memory at death. I have researched epitaphs, quotes and poems over several weeks.

Initial Thoughts

I have started to think about initial ideas for my main project as well as starting to fill my sketchbook.

I want to explore the idea of what is left after we have gone from our own perspective rather than from those who are left. I am also thinking about that brief moment between life and death.

Our memories are important to us in life but those memories are lost when we die. Even if we record our memories in diaries or in other ways, they never mean the same to someone else, they change perspective. These ideas became poignant to me after taking a look through my mums diaries recently, I may use some scanned imagery from them within my exploratory work perhaps.

Are memories what make us who we are?

I am still fascinated by the idea of a spiral or funnel as a metaphor for our journey towards death. The inescapably of it seems to be perfectly summed up. But where does that funnel take us, what is on the other side?

 

 

But is it textiles?

Many people will question whether these ceramic pieces could be considered textile art.

I would argue that they are. These are remnants of a textile item,  with the project being based on rope as a significant part of the story. The final outcome is not made from traditional textile materials but the essence of rope remains with the fibres and texture imprinted within the clay.

Perhaps Mixed Media Textiles would be a more accurate description?

 

Project thoughts…

I want to be able to tie the whole of Textiles 3: Your Own Portfolio together. I feel that over several OCA courses I have started to see some recurring interests that I would like to develop further. I am particularly interested in women’s social history and death which are often intertwined.

I would like to spend my first three projects exploring some of these ideas with an overall sense of the remnants of what is left, remains that remind us of the lives lived.

My intention at the moment is to spend the major project exploring death from our own perspective, what is after death.

 

Timeline of textiles within our lives

I thought I would try to jot down significant events in our lives where textiles feature.