In progress for Battersea AAF

My latest paper cut in progress. I'm doing this post to try and gee myself on a bit. 

The grid like pattern is a taking a bit more patience than I anticipated. This is part of the first half almost finished.

The second half has more folds so it should take a bit less time.  In theory...

Taste

A couple of weeks ago I was directed to this by another blog.




This really got me thinking...

Many people out there believe that having a good eye for appreciating other peoples stuff will make them a good artist. Its not about taste. Your good taste will only get you so far, and by that I mean maybe a toe in the door of being creative.

The work out there that's really great comes from within the individual who made it. 

At art school, in lieu of any critical analysis, some tutors would look at my work and then suggest I go to the library and look at 2 or 3 artists that they deemed similar to me. I tried to ignore what other people were doing. It can actually be quite dispiriting to see someone who is in a similar territory as you and has resolved the things that you have not. And very difficult to find your own individual solution once you've seen theirs.

Look at your own experience rather than your taste. Work inspired by someone else's will be just a dilute version of their work. 

Show people how you see the world. You have an opportunity to make something new, that no one else has seen yet! 

If you want what you make to live up to your ambitions, then work out what those ambitions are. What are you trying to say? How do you want people to feel when they look at your work? Keep this in the forefront of your mind and ask yourself time and again, what percentage of this are you acheiving? This way you stay aware of heading down a blind alley of churning stuff out for the sake of it. If you lose sight of what you are doing then just keep working and you will find a new ambition. 

The bit about making a great volume of work is very true. You move forward through doing, not thinking.  
It takes forever and if you're lucky you'll never quite get there. Its all in the chase!

Playing with scissors

Well, I actually finished it fairly quickly!

Its going to the framer on Friday along with another one not started yet - I am on an over optimistic roll here!

Inspired by my fun with scissors, I made this. Eight pairs in various states of openness. It is quite long so not very practical.

I'll be selling them along with my other mobiles from this Saturday 24 Nov - 2 Dec at Wrington Arts Trail.

The venue is Glaisters, Church Walk, Wrington. My stuff is for sale in a gorgeous pop-up shop along other locally made things. You can also see beautiful paintings by Amy Shiner.

I'm off to get started on the other one now...

Beginnings of some new stuff

Before I start I like to try a small section and maybe make a mistake or two. It helps me check that the scale is okay and is like a tiny warm up before I begin the proper one.

More of the little objects again. Clothes pegs...

... and scissors.

I'm on a mission to get these done quickly. Although I've said that before!

Health and safety

I've just finished another curtain piece, so I thought I'd post a couple of work in progress pics.

I'm not sure how I managed to do the other ones without a mask. I make the holes in the paper with a soldering iron. The fumes aren't that bad but my head is about 8 inches from the paper. After a very short while on this, my nose was streaming an my eyelids were a bit crispy! I ran out and bought this mask.

The less enjoyable bit is picking out the all extraneous tiddly bits  which weld themselves to the paper. I do it in front of the telly. Its both painstaking and boring, but worth it to get to the moment when I can cut it away from the template.

Its framed and ready so will be on the Artwork page soon.