CPS...What is a studio?

To me a studio is somewhere to create your work, store your tools and kit, spend time thinking about your work, eat, sleep and have a space to get on with what you want to achieve. It needs to be a second home, or for some their actual home.
This space needs to suit the style and size you work in and must be a place you feel comfortable in or the work you produce will be highly affected. A sculpture artist may need a much bigger space than a web designer, it all depends on what you intend to produce: the bigger the work, the bigger the space.
Light plays a big part in the choice of a studio space. Lots of natural light is needed but must be controlled. A harsh burst of sunshine straight onto the canvas can dramatically change your final work. Ideally the windows should face the opposite way that the sun shines giving an evenly distributed covering of good light.

We've been told our spaces at DMU need to be used to produce work and not just used as a mini gallery to hang work up that we've produced in our classes and I agree with this fully. Our spaces shouldn't be social hangouts or somewhere to relax between lessons but should be USED to make our art works. I don't mean it should be deadly silent or church-like but a level of respect is needed as it belongs to us all. Each area IS going to get messy but it should be a controlled mess. A lot can be learned in these areas from the people around us. We see new work on the walls every day and this can have a great effect when it comes to inspiration and ideas. Its always good to see what everyone else is doing.

I've visited a few studio belonging to various artists but my favourite was owned by print artist Sue milton who had a small barn converted into a fantastic studio. The place was full of natural objects she'd collected on walks in the area she lived in, skulls, leaves, twigs, grasses etc, and every inch of ceiling had something suspended from it. In the centre she had an antique printing press that was her pride and joy and at the far end stood a glorious wood burning stove, used to heat the large comfy settees. The place was perfect.
Another studio I visited was a little private place in Blakeney, Norfolk. it belonged to a very old artist who painted the seascape and the beaches. it was a total contrast to the print studio. The artist lived amongst his work with bis bed and chair virtually buried under paints and piles of old canvas'. His sink was full of cutlery mixed with huge brushes and pots of different colours. All of the walls were covered in paintings on wood, canvas, paper sketches and all manner of beach finds. What surprised me was the fact that he sold his work in the village for really good prices, almost London prices but he just couldn't move out of the space. I think he thought he'd lose his skills if he left.

The price of hiring spaces in different parts of the country can be massively different. London prices (100 sqm £230 pcm) are almost triple what you would pay in leicester (2.5x2.5 sqm £35 pcm) and anything near the beach or sea is always going to be at the high end of the scale.

The real benefit of working in a group situation is the chance to meet people doing things you can relate to or maybe collaborate with but the downside can be the noise and commotion that comes with it.

Drawing project...The Journey.

Kibworth is a village steeped in history.
Each street, building and field has its own story running through the centuries.
Slowly the town is becoming modernised. Old buildings, cottages and farm houses are losing their originality and being modernised by new owners.
The church and grounds are full of ancient tombs and graves, crumbling away into the earth and being smothered by overgrowing shrubs and trees.
I've lived here for two years now and this is a chance for me to learn about my new surroundings.
My 'Journey' is a stroll around the town, a walk through the present and the past, and an investigation into the history of Kibworth.

This project will hopefully advance my drawing skills and photography skills with each image I produce. My drawing sometimes lacks depth and look a bit flat and this is something I need to concentrate on but I intend to develop this project both through my drawing lessons and in my own time as a personal project. I want to experiment with different styles of drawing including sketches, detailed drawings, abstracts, using charcoal, paint, washes etc until I find a style I really like and can progress further. 

kibworth history is really interesting and something I'd like to document whilst I live here. I want to try and show what's happening here in the present but capture the old mood and feeling that surrounds the village. A strength of mine is my photographs which will play a big part in this project and I intend to produce a series of portraits of older residents and how/where they live. 

The lady who owns the house with the clock tower turned 100 last week 

(possible first target?).

CPS London trip artist.

Yehudit Sasportis

at Frieze London Oct 2013

Yehudit Sasportas from Israel displayed two pieces at the frieze festival this year. 

The images are the artists own depiction of a bog in a forest in Germany. 

Drawn with ink onto fine art paper she uses deep, dark areas and strong depth to make the images disappear into the distance. Large clear expanses of grey and white give the impression of muddy snowfall and what really stands out is the way she expresses textures on the surface through scrubbing the ink onto the paper and letting it run or drip down from the top. 

The monotone images are very dramatic and the size she paints at works well in the way you feel like you are looking out of a window or straight at the abstract landscape in front of you. 

She uses lines, scribbles and dissipating circles of ink to draw us into the scene and tries to impress on us the size and spread of the bog.

I think she makes the works as a recording of these places as they start to disappear and shows us not just the landscape as it appears in front of her but also how the place makes her feel. She does this in a way that makes the images look dirty and grimey and cold which reflects the fact they were produced during long wet winters. 

Sasportas takes a dying landscape and through her own memories and images offers us very striking abstract paintings that are both dramatic and beautiful to look at. 

In my charcoal works I'm trying to find a new way of translating a landscape onto the paper in a new unique way and these images are so close to what I'd like to do. The messy but controlled look really appeals to me and I intend to research her works more in the future. 

Love it...Hate it... at Frieze London

LOVE IT.

This print by Thomas Ruff was just stunning. Digitally printed in the brightest colours available and with all detail lost in a blur that hurt your eyes to concentrate on, it drew people to it from across the gallery space. The picture is made by massively distorting Manga cartoon images to an extreme that they become an abstract form, totally different from what they originally were, making a brand new image altogether. The way Ruff transforms a static image and turns it into an almost moving 3D blur works for me. The mix up of colours, forms and shapes, and the progression of depth through the image grabs and holds your attention as your eyes try to decipher whats going on. But even with all the confusion they still have a very pleasing and controlled overall composition and balance. My landscape abstract paintings have a lot in common with Ruff's works. I produce them with the intention of being unrecognisable as landscapes, but more as stand alone pieces of art with no reference to what they actually are. 

HATE IT.

Please tell me these umbrellas turn into something really special when they are unfolded. No? Well that cements my thoughts that they are just useless both as art and as umbrellas. I could nip down the beach and get the real thing for a tenner. 

They just don't work as art for me. they look exactly like the real ones but, unlike the works of Jeff koons who's large scale blow up toys are so impressive to look at in their quality and build, really don't have anything special to offer. I just don't get it, Why not just put a bunch of real brollies there?

I have an idea that these could well be the most expensive beach brollies in the world. Whats next? Bucket and spade? No thanks. 

Lens based presentation october 2013

Keith Carter 

65 year old Texan based Keith Carter produces monotone photographic images in a surreal dream like style. His use of harshly contrasting dark and light areas and difference in focus and depth of field give the images a feel of being stills from a movie. Through this technique we get the opportunity to add our own story or narrative to what's going on. 

Carter spent a long time hunting out towns in America with strange names including 'Paradise' and 'Earth'. He visited each town and took just one photograph with no preconceived idea as to what he was going to capture. These images are intriguing to look at and are a document of the lives and happenings in small American towns. The figures are frozen in time, suspended in the surroundings they occupy and Carter uses his technical skill to portray American life as it happens. The images could be from any era though as they have such a timeless feel showing us how these towns haven't changed over the decades. 

Each of Carter's images contains a certain amount of strangeness. Simple subjects are printed in such a way that they have a dark, edgy, haunted look with a hint of creepiness. The pictures serve to remind us of times gone by in our lives, memories recalled from small details in the back of our minds. childhood adventures or even nightmares. Reminding us of friends we had as kids who disappear as time goes by but are always there, somewhere in our thoughts. Carter achieves this so well in his pictures which strongly feature children and the way they play or interact with each other. 

 

I tried to reproduce an image in carter's style as part of our lens based projects. I stayed away from photoshop and breathed onto the lens before shooting, creating the blurred edge, then tweaked the colours to get a sepia tone. I got Amelia to look away from the camera as I wanted to ask the questions 'What's she looking at, Whats happening over there?' I used the little playhouse in the background as a substitute for the wooden houses the American families occupy in Carters images. 

I'm pleased with what I achieved in the image. The only possible change might have been to print it in black and white and give it some real darkness? 

CPS. Visit to Gagosian Gallery, London. Oct 2013

The piece that really caught my eye when I visited the gallery was the Andy Warhol screen print.
'Little electric chair 1965', is a really striking image. set on a bright yellow background the electric chair and its surroundings are printed in harsh black ink and the eeriness of a death chamber has been caught perfectly. He's highlighted the shape and form of the chair so we recognise it straight away against the shaded, grimey backdrop. On one of the side walls in the print you see a sign with the word silence written across it and this really fixes the final image. Is the word aimed at the viewers in the prison room or at the prisoners who have been silenced forever? The electricity cable, now cut, lays on the floor in front of the chair suggesting its own life has also come to an end.
Warhol has captured an image showing a time and way of life gone by, and a time here and now. As i studied it i couldn't help thinking how sad an image it was.
All the lives it had taken and all the lives it had saved.
A stunning image and a real treat to see a Warhol in the flesh.

Another artist I looked at was Cy Twombly.

His piece 'untitled, (New York City 1968)' could almost be mistaken for a school classroom chalkboard with the scribblings of the children all over it. The ghost like forms of individual letters dance across the surface and the background of smeared chalky patches resembles figures walking in a darkened forest. The piece has real depth to it and was produced with oil based house paint and wax crayon on canvas. I really like his work and I like to use scribbled hand writing in my works, writing that you can't properly read but can just make out a few words, just enough to get the viewer interested in the possibility of a narrative but no final outcome. 

Another painting that caught my eye was 'Ghosts 2013' by Douglas Gordon. The word ghosts is spray painted onto aluminium which is unpolished and distorted and as people walk past they literally look like ghosts floating across the face of the work. The image constantly changes and as i looked at it I caught myself looking behind just to make sure someone was actually there. The harder you stare at it the more ghostly the figures become. 

The word just gives us the push we need to relate what we are seeing to what, as a piece of art, we are supposed to be looking at. 'Yes' says the artist, 'thats right, they look like ghosts'.  

A very simple work but still very impressive.

The Gagosian is a beautiful gallery with some very impressive and intriguing works on display and I'll definitely be heading there again.

PRINT. experimental works. Oct 2013.

Experimenting with left-over things from installation jobs. 

This painting is on an old kitchen unit back panel. Painted with interior emulsion wall paint and brushes were bits of wood from the old kitchen. The view is in Kibworth looking across the fields towards Harborough. 

I like the detail in each line and the random way that the paint attaches itself to the surface when the wooden brushes were pushed against it. I was limited to the colours as these were the only ones used on the job but they really work well in the scene. 

Self directed studio paintings

In my studio time I've been working on new styles and ways to paint, experimenting with papers, paints textures etc. 

This piece is an abstract cityscape painted in watercolour and charcoal. It's a project I'm enjoying and want to produce a series. It filled my studio wall and is 6ftx3ft on fine art paper. The idea is to highlight certain areas in the image but not produce an exact interpretation. 

watercolour, pen and ink. The idea was from a newspaper clip about a girl who would only eat toast?

watercolour, pencil and ink. This is from a series of images I first made as photographs which are faceless portraits. 

watercolour and pen. 'weapons of mass destruction', The things that are going to kill us in the end but we love them anyway.

These paintings are all about the time spent in prison yards in America and how the prisoners become a solid mass as opposed to single figures. Gangs seem to rule these places and they wear certain colours to highlight which gang they belong to. I tried to capture this by using the one colour for the figures. 

                                       

These next paintings are all about certain marks on the paper working together. Each line, mark and colour has to be thought through and positioned just right to get the look I'm after.

Printshop experimental prints

We've been experimenting a lot and learning new techniques in the printshop lessons and the outcomes are really interesting. I think my work needs to be more defined though and aim towards a finished image rather than just an experiment.

I really like the bottom one. The delicate print marks and slight use of colour are something I want to concentrate on in future pieces. 

Self Directed studio work

This is done on one of the cardboard boxes that my new kitchen came in with charcoal and water colours. I really like the way the background drew itself due to the textures on the surface. 

CPS Urs Fischer at MOMA Los Angeles.

A lot has been written lately in the art press about the work of Urs Fischer. 

Is it art? Is it a rebellion against art or is the guy just a genius?

Born in Switzerland in 1973, the contemporary artist moved to New York and his work has been exhibited worldwide in some of the biggest most prestigious shows including the Venice Biennale and Manifest 3.  The LA show is a collection of his previous works coupled with brand new pieces. 

'I work everyday in the studio, its like an intoxication' he states of his obsessive urge to constantly produce pieces which are ever changing, always evolving and pleasingly random in subject, which really appeals to me. He isn't faithful to any particular medium, this week making a towering steel teddy bear sculpture, next week a collection of dust paintings or a massive crater dug into the floor of a gallery. 

using all possible materials his exhibition is a visual funhouse of vivid colours, movement and distortions appealing to the child in us all. He presents his work in a playful interactive way making the viewer walk through raindrops suspended from the ceiling, step through holes chopped out of the gallery wall and dodge the many small clay sculptures scattered around the floor, each made not by Fischer but by a group of 1500 locals invited to take part in the show. These pieces vary in size and subject. Tiny heads, penis', animals and people splatter across the floor in what looks like chaos but is actually organised to by Fischer in a way that leads the visitors through a central pathway and out into an open area of larger sculptures. 

Grand romanesque statues, created out of candle wax, slowly melt before our eyes whilst next to us a smartly dressed man studying the exhibition melts from his head down (also a wax statue).Both pieces constantly changing form as every drop of hot wax disfigures the perfect image making it constantly interesting to look at. 

Reminiscent of Warhol's works, Fischers pop art inspired 'everyday object blocks' would easily sit next to Warhol's 'Campbell's soup tin' or 'washing powder boxes' and his 'Banana cube' almost mirrors Warhol's banana print. Each piece could have been produced buy either artist. 

Fischer is a showman and his exhibition a masterpiece of all sorts and eye catchers and a lot of the work looks very 'American' with bold bright colours and oversized in your face pieces.

He makes art which should be looked at and enjoyed, grabbing influence from everywhere. 

His work  now demands big money and in 2011 his lamp/bear pieces fetched 6.8 million dollars when sold at Christies in New York. 

With no formal art training and no time spent at art school he sees himself as a worker in the art world constantly producing, showing and selling. 

I personally  like Fischer's work, the fun, boldness and craziness of it all, and the fact that he isn't trying to push an underlying message down our throats. I look forward to seeing what he produces next. 

CPS Lesley Halliwell @ Northampton Contemporary arts.

The Infinity show at NN-Northampton brings together artists from around the world with the theme of what 'infinity' actually means to each of them.
Manchester based artist Lesley Halliwell is amongst the group with three of her meticulously drawn spirograph pictures. Using a classic childrens toy and Biro pens she produces pattern flooded works based on constant repetition.
The artist experiments with different qualities of biro. Some run out sooner than others and the feint lines scored into the paper by the empty nibs become part of the images as do the ink splats and blobs made as a pen explodes onto the paper.

'Fanatic 4500 minutes', a wall sized rainbow of repetitive pattern and colour is the largest piece in the exhibition. Each brightly coloured line appears clear and precise and seemingly never-ending. The piece took a total of 75 hours to complete which is a testament to the artists apparent obsessive nature.

The works remind me of old William Morris wallpaper and the shocking wallpaper designs you would see in the 70's. The detail is intriguing as are the depth of line and colour and after a while they become slightly hypnotic, like the magic eye pictures of the 90's.
She also display longer works rolled into long strips of paper and hung on the wall. She says she was inspired by Pierro Manzoni's 'Linee', a painted line, rolled, concealed and displayed in a tube.

The use of spirographs appears in a lot of artists work and some have taken the idea one step further. Tony Orrico uses his whole body to produce beautiful 'human spirograph' pictures which are amazing to look at.

Halliwell's work continues to gain exposure in the UK showing at Turner contemporary, The Pumphouse, Jerwood drawing and the sadly missed city gallery in Leicester. She has taken a very simple technique and used it in her own successful way.