Last week in Cultural Studies we had a lecture about the Myths of the Landscape and how we perceive it. Afterwards we were given the task to in groups look at what we relate to the natural world and how we'd make a creative piece about it. When we got together we started listing word and agreed that we should make something that we could do individually and then bring together to form one piece. We all chose seperate parts of the natural world (Land, Water, Sky, Plant and Air) and base a small strip of paper on it. I then stitched them together to create this one collective piece.
At the lesson we presented our piece to everyone which was agreed it is good and certainly shows the areas of the natural world. It was picked out that it also looked quite religious/biblical with the shape of the long panels and the themes that relate to 7 days of creation where God created the sea and the land.
I got the new brief for the cultural studies essay where we have to write an essay based either on Landscape and the Natural World or Travel and Tourism along side a creative piece of work which reading over it totally scares me at the moment as I have no ideas on what I'm going to be writing about, I certainly need a one on one tutorial before I can even start this.
Today was a small metal forging workshop which to me seemed like a lesson of hitting metal with a hammer and see what we get. Obviously there is so much more you can do with it but I was unsure on how to use my hammer other than to just hit it. If I knew more about what I could do with the hammer and with alot more practice I'd probably be alot better at it. I did like the idea of creating natural forms with the metal I found it quite interesting making leaf shapes and funny curves. My samples weren't amazing so I definately haven't pick anything up from hanging around with the blacksmiths except "Hit it Hard".
We had a workshop with Steve in the ceramics workshop we're he demonstraited to us how to make and do Mould Making and Slip Casting. It was very interesting as I've always wondered how they make their moulds. I took as many notes as possible but now I wish I had taken some picture of some of the steps.
I visited the textiles studio to talk to Becky about if she know anything about lace making (which was unlikely) but if not about any alternative I could use/look in to. It was suggested that if I can't make lace I could certainly make something using lace. After talking it over I was given a few ideas I'm certainly interesting in sampling. I could:
- Expose a screen with lace and print the pattern
- Use the knitting machine to create a similar effect of open weave
- Stitch into water soluble fabric
- Learn how to crochet
- Burn into fabric
- Finger knitting
All very interesting ideas to start me off on, I'm certainly thinking of attempting to stitch into the water soluble fabric and see what effect I can get from that.
Today I visited Oxford University Museum of Natural History and Pitt Rivers Museum. I got to look around at all the different areas and collection. There was something there for everyone to find interesting.
I think I was most excited at first by the dinosaurs skeletons as I love dinosaurs, even the dug out dino-footprints in the grass outside the building we're awesome.
When looking around I saw lots of interesting things, specifically I was trying to find things that related to my theme of lace and webs. I found one section about rope, nets and knots that were interesting a i got to see different patterns of nets and different types of rope/string material they're made of.
I also found a lot of weaved pieces around the Pitt that were also quite interesting towards my theme, showing the interlinking of materials.
One thing that was pretty cool was that I saw this thing that people used to make lace. Apparently it take two people to weave the threads between each other and around the pins that creates the pattern with each thread that is joined together between two bobbins.
I talked to another student about a lace making course in Oxford for a day during the Easter holidays but considering trying to find one closer to home. I need to still look into simpler alternatives to lace like crochet.
This weekend I started my first paper cut drawings for my ICP project, I took some of the pictures from my 50 images and used them as stencils to cut them out. These are the start of my drawing process, I'm planning on doing more papaer cut outs of my images. I'm going to eventually move onto making these webs out of something else.
Today I visited the textiles workshop to see if they can teach me the processes of lace making as I feel it maybe relevant for my ICP project, but they didn't have to facilities or tools to make actual lace. They attempted to show me a similar process of using the knitting machine to put holes into the material. I created this long strip of knitting whilst trying to get to grips with the basics and trying to work some patterns. I've been thinking about also looking at learning how to crochet to get similar patterns to lace. I think I'm going to return to the knitting machine soon to churn out some more individual samples of patterns and record them.
