Wednesday 31 October 2007

Winslow Primary School 1st Visit


The first round of my school visits takes me to Winslow Combined Primary School on 28th September. Winslow is a quiet, gentle village, just south of Buckingham. Here I am working with Mrs Epps, the Deputy Head and AST in art. I meet the Year 5 and 6 digital art group called 'Picasso's Ipod'. This is an extension project for these students, showing a particular interest and strength in art and design and digital media.

I have brought my bag of tricks, sketchbooks, fabric samples and slide show to introduce myself and my work to this enthusiastic, bright group. My plan was to present examples of finished work and also the beginnings of a new body of work, in which these students might be contributing. The session would aid the students in creating their own unique and exciting imagery using digital cameras.

To do this, I set up lights and filters in the darkened IT room. Lamps were placed under desks to create a mini studio and translucent fabric attached to door frames and lit one side, acting a s a large light canvas. I pinned into the fabric (our light canvas) a range of objects and materials, which became illuminated and diffused by the use of lamps and filters. The resulting affect can be captured with photography. An atmospheric and never ending exercise I wanted the students experiment with.

The first steps were to create subject matter with which to photograph. As an ice breaker, I handed out sandwich bags to each of the 12 students in the group. Clear, disposable sandwich bags, easy to manipulate and sculpt with. I use the word sculpt to encourage a sense of value and reverence to the material. The students took to this really well, first manipulating the plastic with fingers, tying knots, stretching and poking. Some blew air into the bag, some trapped plastic and fabric scraps inside, used string to tie in different ways and suspend their new object, lots of action words, investigating the material by touch in the way one might explore by sight in the form of drawing.


These new objects were pinned and hung around the temporary dark room using the classroom furniture, movable lamps and a range of translucent fabrics and papers. Students were very calm and considerate of each other's space, sharing cameras, helping each other out to hold things in place. There was a very particular scientific air about the room. Low voices and an urgency to see something work.

I really enjoy creating imagery this way and have developed habits, styles and definite understanding about fusing light and object together. Its always interesting to observe somebody new interpreting the exercise differently. With limited resources ( an important creative restriction) an infinite range of imagery can be created. For example, photographing an object placed behind fabric and back lit will create a very different effect from an object placed in front of fabric and front lit. The results are surely objective to what's most successful. I had to consciously hold back from stepping into a students experiment, suggesting alternatives. I did try to encourage as much experimentation as possible, so students would observe for themselves what methods they deemed successful.

As an extension to the exercise, students delved into the resources and began selecting their own materials and constructed new objects to continue photographing.

I have been fortunate enough to work with Mrs Epps on a number of occasions on sessions like this. Its great to see how the Winslow digital photography kit has grown. We used about 6 or 7 digital cameras, easy to use and with a large storage capacity on the memory cards. The students had used these cameras before and were confident. The sort of imagery being captured really gained from getting close to the subject matter, zooming in and cropping the picture by eye. This was quite demanding of the students and again a tricky one not to over influence a student's own judgment.
To end the session, all imagery was uploaded onto a computer and using the smart board, the group reviewed their imagery as a slide show on Windows. This encouraged a sharing of ideas from the activity and a chance to view their own work in a completley different scale from the camera's display. We discussed what was successful and what other options there might be to try for next time. I think the group left feeling slightly surprised and I hope encouraged by what they were able to accomplish.


Experimental Photography Kit:

- a range of translucent fabrics, cottons, netting, packaging material, bubble wrap, tracing paper, acetate sheets, greaseproof paper, net curtains! Any material which light can shine through and be used as a layer to photograph (once suspended)

-apparatus to hang fabric from, eg door frames, desks, chairs, easels, door handles (use a washing line to cross the room)

- pins, saftey pins, masking tape, string, blu tak

- a selection of lamps and torches, overhead projectors (offer a great light source and acetates placed on top can vary imagery further.)

- extension leads

-computer access to upload images from cameras. Good size storage space allocated on school computer.

-optional, for students to have their own memory sticks to save and access their own work.




Tuesday 30 October 2007

Quick Studio Tour


A quick 360 degree turn in the space, testing how links will work, have posted my first YouTube clip:

(its the same clip....just on the giant You Tube)



Monday 29 October 2007

Making Preparations

Installing the 50m cable


With intentions of being as natural and 'as you find me' about my studio space, there has been a bit of a re-shuffle in preparation for visitors. Clearing room, whitewashing walls, installing good lights, getting hidden work up on the wall, organising more efficient storage solutions, all actions to aid clearer communication during the project. Trying to understand an alternative perspective of the space which wasn't about being the maker/worker.

Another, crucial component for the project to happen is securing a stable, strong internet connection which can support the Adobe Breeze application. This one job has branched into a sequence of steps, each one a little daunting for me, a technical novice who's impatient to crack on. Here's a run through of what's happened to achieve this mighty goal:

1.) Confirm need and suitability for broadband connection with owner of studio, who I rent from. Decide on a wireless connection to suit all internet users in the building.
2.) Order broadband package and wait for installation date.
3.) Installation date arrives, test connection in studio, situated three floors below where router is sited.
4.) Wireless configuration headaches with my Mac ibook, what's a WEP code? Where do you find it? Is it lost forever? Shall we start again? We do, I generate my own, and its written down safe.
5.) Get connection in studio, first opportunity to observe very shaky, slow and at times faltering connection. Web pages load and freeze, I start to worry a little that three floors between ports may be a bit ambitious.
6.) Get researching back at home about signal strength trouble shooting, learn about 'range extenders', a device to boost wireless signals, purchase a mac compatable divice and plug in.
7.) Signal strength is up to 90% from 40%, an improvement but encountering same slow, inconsistent connection on my computer back in the studio.
8.) Deciphering root cause of problem must be my computer, I'm off to the genius bar at the Apple Store. A kind and clued up Apple man reminds me of my elderly Operating System and wireless adapter I'm attempting to use to 'talk' to the server. My internet browser Safari is way out of date and can't be upgraded on my current OS. Relief at understanding problem but worry about what is implied for next step.
9.) Two solutions, one, to install a wired connection via a cable to the computer from the router. The most stable of all ways to secure an internet connection. Or, upgrade/replace my computer. I opt for installing the cable.
10.) Problem, three floors between router and computer site in studio. A long cable will be required and acess through building negotiated.
11.) Get the okay from owner to use cable, decide most direct(!) route will be from back of the building, up the wall, over the roof (which is flat) and down the front side and into the studio three floors below. Estimate 40m.
12.)Source cables, select a 50m RJ45 Cat5e UTP cable, known as an ethernet cable. I'm learning....RJ45 is the code for the type of connectors on cable ends, Cat5e means its an enhanced 5 band cable suitable for internet connection, UTP means its suitable for exterior use. Nearly there now.
13.) Find a man that can, cable gets up and over the building, all secure. I get to see the view from the top, neaten up the cable path, marvellous autumn evening, feel better.
13.) Connection better, but still something not quite right, more troubleshooting.....
14.) Thinking of plans b, c, d....etc Can make video recordings of space and post to blog, Youtube, Facebook....for later access by participants.

View from the roof

Saturday 27 October 2007

What's a Virtual Residency?


In collaboration with Waddesdon Secondary School textile/digital artist Clare McEwan will be leading a variety of workshops, talks and tutorials with four of Buckinghamshire Schools; Waddesdon, The Grange, Chalfonts and Winslow. This project is supported by Arts Council Creative Partnerships in Slough. It will consist of real and virtual communication via webcam from Clare's Kent studio and include a series of school visits over the course of the term.

All webcasts will be produced with Adobe Breeze software. This allows us to record each meeting and access content at a later stage as a resource and documentation of the project. The Adobe Breeze application provides safe and private communication with only invited users to participate.

Friday 26 October 2007

How to start? Clare's notes

A question or a 'how to solution? I think I've been asking the 'how to start' question for some time now. The answers will have to come gradually when I am able to piece together all the unexpected components and add ons of this project. The first, how to make an introduction and set the scene...and before I could start I paused, where to do this and for whom?

Where? Virtual residency blog and Virtual residency web album

Still investigating all the 'whos' this project can reach.

It begins with lots of casual, curious conversations about the nature of an artist's space. By convention, the space an artist inhabits publicly, tends to be owned/managed by others, and is a temporary platform in which the artist can exhibit, talk, demonstrate or teach. As open and generous as an artist can be in communicating within this space, is there still a sense of mystery that lingers? Maybe its better to switch the ambiguous word mystery, for distance. There can be a distance between the artist, the work and those trying to 'get the picture'. The quality of time to formulate ideas and produce artwork is a challenge to doccument, package and deliver effectively towards a receptive audience.

My own work is developed gradually, the end point/resolution showing itself very slowly, dependent on a series of processes gone before such as photography, printmaking, stitch, construction, painting and drawing. All these elements pull together to create a large scale textile hanging. This development occurs over a period of months, deliberating in the studio, trying things, making wrong turns and occasionally stumbling on a sense of 'rightness' about the project which springs it forward. It is a large undertaking to meet an artist and their completed work. The audience has been removed from a large chunk of creating time and content. As a result, information on technique and subject matter is weakened. It is these two elements I will be seeking to illuminate over the course of the project. To bring others closer with that unique deliberating period. A period which occurs in the artist own space. Already, the notion of an artist's space must surpass the studio walls and is dependent on a shaky, less concrete quality, one of time.

I was fortunate enough to experiment with an unusual work space when accepted for the Art Council South East Setting Up Scheme Award in 2005. For 18 months I established my studio in the art department at Waddesdon Secondary School. Marking out independent territory in a public terrain; the classroom. Merging these boundaries would be frequent, ever changing and require an openness and trust from both sides. This model was of great mutual benefit for host and artist and went a long way to manage the issue of audience and artist space. The audience in this example being staff and students, impacting the group and the individual.

It was while at Waddesdon School, that the question of sustaining this quality of relationship between host and artist was discussed. I was able to visit and work with a variety of partner schools during my time at Waddesdon in the form of day visits. The new challenge is to be able to offer an equal level of engagement simultaneously with all four schools, sustained over a whole term. An engagement to stimulate my own practice as well as collaborate with student's work would be ideal. A sustainable model would have to maintain the same openenss and trust described for the Waddesdon studio.

Digiatally equipped and technically confident, Head of Art, Mr Berrett led Waddesdon School's proposal of a virtual artist residency. Scheduled times to fit both school and artist have been arranged. Communication will be via webcam from my new independent studio space, (now in Kent) back into the classrooms I had visited in the past (Buckinghamshire). The geographical distance highlights the ubiquitous benefit of the internet connection.

This is a trial residency style being undertaken with great enthusiasm by all schools. We will test a variety of exercises during the scheduled meetings via webcam, linking students work practices with my own to suit both parties. The Adobe Breeze software allows discussion, sharing of files, and live video streaming with audio, all of which can be recorded as future resources. Already there are clear benefits to the virtual collaboration and I am sure new examples will show themselves as the project develops.

Here lies the intention and background for the project. I am looking forward to the collaborative opportunity. If my private studio is to go public, it seems right that the work takes on a more public dimension, group efforts, interchangeable work, feedback and a general loosening of ownership in response to this trialling.