Apologies for the very late blog post. I remembered last night I had to submit some writing for what I thought was 12pm the next day but turned out it was actually 9am. So I finished the writing up at 2am and completely abandoned the blog post as I was dropping with tiredness – oops.
It occurs to me that I have had quite a few new followers to the blog in the last couple of weeks so I thought I would take a minute to explain my goals and ambitions for degree show.
After working with adults with Alzheimer’s disease for the last year, I began to make art about the subject. My reference material has been from the University’s Herbarium Collection and I drew parallels between these pressed flowers and the disease – both are stuck in a moment in time, still beautiful yet changed from their original state. I manipulated these images to form tangles and knots, similar to what forms in the brain of dementia sufferers. Each image is from the same group of plants yet each is uniquely different, as is every case of dementia. As part of the display process I am etching these images onto acrylic on both sides. This gives the images a more sculptural property and where the image overlaps produces a shimmering ‘glitch’ effect for the viewer.
Back to last week’s updates. On Monday we were given our spaces for degree show! It was pretty horrendous getting the email if i’m being honest. I didn’t realise I was so nervous about it until that email popped up in my inbox and my heart suddenly started to sink. I had no need to be nervous though as I am in room 610 in the Crawford building with 3 others who I know quite well. We have a meeting later on today to decide the space we’ll be in within that room so that should be interesting.
In the middle of the week I attended talks about the Master’s Degree programmes available at DJCAD. I am really torn between the two, they each have their pros and cons. The Arts and Humanities course is more focuses on studio work, whereas the Art, Society and Publics course is less focused on studio work and more focused on engaging the public with your art. That puts me off slightly as I feel studio work is a huge part of my process but on the other hand I don’t fancy being thrown straight into a postgraduate level of study in another subject for the Arts and Humanities course. I’m still thinking it over so we’ll see.
On Thursday I went down to the wood workshop and worked on the measurements for my final frames. The guys down there are so helpful I really wouldn’t be able to make the frames without them. So now all they need to do is cit the wood up for me and I’ll get going on Thursday this week making the final frame which is an exciting step.
On Friday I re-etched the acrylic piece that I felt did not let enough light through. I am so glad I did this as it really looks great now, far better than the first attempt. It is slightly annoying that I had to waste a really expensive sheet but I guess that’s what had to happen. The layer on the opposite side now is really thin and so gives a lovely sheen and shimmer to the image.
For this coming week it is rather annoying as I cannot get into the laser cutter at all. I guess with degree show looming as I predicted it has become incredibly busy. I have managed to get two full days the week after this so I should be able to get all of my etching finished by then, however I will need to buy one more acrylic sheet before those dates.
Tomorrow we have the Aces (Access to Creative Education in Scotland) annual exhibition again so i’m super excited to be helping with that, it will take my mind off of worrying about degree show for the day which is nice. I have a tutorial with Louise at 10:30am but that shouldn’t take long. Then as I said Thursday will be in the wood workshop all day and on Friday my boyfriend and I are having a day in Edinburgh to go see the RSA New Contemporaries exhibition so I’m really excited for that.
Updates in terms of the blog – I want to pay for the domain name and no ads, so I will do that soon. Also I want to add a tab of all the exhibitions I have been involved in and also update the about me page so these are all future updates.
Speak to you all next week!
amycrawfordart.com 