Evaluation of Unit X

U N I T  X

Unit X has really pushed me a long way out of my normal comfort zone. As I have mentioned in a previous post, although I usually enjoy teamwork I was very unsure on how I would manage this when it came to artwork. This is mainly because I prefer to work individually on tasks and almost 'get lost in them' in my own world. This really brought this factor out of me, as I felt I didn't have much time to myself through the entire project. It was difficult at first to engage with different people and work in different spaces, and especially work away from textiles, but I feel as an individual and as a group I have definitely pushed myself and faced demanding challenges. Our group I do feel worked very collaboratively and really made the best of the time we got to spend with other subject areas.

Throughout Unit X I do feel like I have engaged really collaboratively. At the beginning our group found this really difficult and at easter we went away accepting that we were all going to use our group as a support system but nothing else. We wanted to work as a group but each of us were so different that we were clashing majorly. However, during the easter break once we'd all let off some steam we actually deciding to work on the entire project as a group and really make the most of this opportunity, which I am glad to say now has really paid off as we even did our exhibition together. I am pleased to say that I attended nearly all of the sessions and we have all made a huge effort to get to know each other, meeting up twice at least, sometimes everyday throughout the week for eight weeks. We have really bonded as a group and in the lead up to the exhibition we have made an effort to communicate everyday. We all particularly enjoyed the sewing session with homemade cookies! 

I feel as though I have contributed a lot towards our group, coming up with lots of ideas and giving equal direction to our collaborative piece. I think that all of the textiles in practice people have really contributed to our collaborative piece really equally and we've completely upheld and directed our group really well.

Another positive about Unit X was that it allowed me to produce work which I don't think I'd have ever have normally produced. I even used glitter at one stage! It was actually more fun than usual as I feel I normally do take my work much more seriously, but I feel that working in a group being social constantly has meant that i've had to focus on us rather than just my work, and this has meant having more fun with it and playing around with ideas more than I usually would have.

Despite having enjoyed the year thoroughly I have found there to be some flaws in the programme. Speaking truthfully, there has been lack of communication throughout members of staff and on several occasions events have been dated differently, and generally going from one tutor to another, I have found that entirely different things are said. Students end up relying on a chinese whisper system in order to find anything out.  Furthermore, as a student living at a distance the thing I have found particularly difficult this year, is how unorganised the key dates throughout year are. I think its really important to point out that key dates really need to be on moodle well in advance, as this creates huge problems in traveling. Luckily this wont be such an issue as I move into second year but it it would be great to see more organisation of the programme in general. 

First Year Evaluation

P & E   T A S K   T W O

I have really enjoyed my time this year. Moving to Manchester and doing this course was definitely the right decision for me. The course has given me new skills in two different areas of textiles as well as expanding the ways in which I have worked. This I feel has made me more adaptable as an art student as well as more open minded. This year I have specialised in print and embroidery. I love pattern and surface designs and manipulation however coming to the end of the year I feel as if my work has developed a lot and I am still desperate to explore construct and learn how to put my prints onto garments. I am truly disappointed that I could not learn construct in particular as i’ve always loved woven textiles particularly from more cultural backgrounds such as Ecuador and more of the south american countries. I would really have liked to learn construct in some way whether it be out of contact time or a quick induction and watching youtube videos in order to teach myself. This is probably one of the main downfalls and real disappointments of this course as I came into TIP in particular to really explore everything. Although I do feel Unit X has been beneficial, I also feel like it would have been just as beneficial to have learnt the other areas of the course and I definitely would have liked to had I been given the choice. 

I have found myself being thoroughly busy this year which I have really enjoyed as I am naturally a hard worker. I prefer creative processes which I can really get lost in and things I can do by hand. The more involved in my work I am; the better it is. My mood, emotion and attachment enable me to make my work more personal to me. I have realised that although I love bold designs I really have a passion for intricate details. Whilst doing embroidery I was so shocked at how much my work developed. I became really selective about the choice of yarn that I would use to create particular tiny details and really visual work. I found that the outcomes of embroidery were far more satisfying and I had a greater sense of achievement than that of my outcomes in print. This is why I really feel strongly about learning construct as I feel that I would love to pick out particular yarns and colour combinations in order to create beautiful textures and patterns. 

One of my machine embroidery samples which inspires me

In reference to what area I am thinking about going into next year, I am still very unsure. I love print and pattern as I am very visual and have obsessions with colour. However I really enjoyed embroidery, probably more than print which was very unexpected as I came onto the course not wanting to go near embroidery and avoid it at all costs. I think I need some help/advice in order for me to decide what direction I want to go in as an artist/designer despite having actually been thinking about this for most of the year. I love looking at different cultures in order to gain inspiration. All I know is that my designs are very bright, very colourful and both textural and patterned. 

Inspiring woven textiles from Peru

I came on this course hoping to develop my knowledge more on the different opportunities there are out there and so far I only feel like I know a little more in this area than I did before I enrolled. I also feel like I would really like to know more about career opportunities in terms of what jobs there are in each area. 

Exhibition Finished

O U R  W O R K

Coming back to the Kraak the following morning to meet with Eloise was really good as it meant we got to look at our installation with a 'fresh' pair of eyes. We were really happy with the way that it looked and proud of ourselves for making a collaborative piece. We received lots of complements about how it looked from other groups and remarks about how it was good that we had done collaborative final piece of work. I think our work came together really nicely in the end. At the beginning of Unit X I really wasn't looking forward to working within a group. Although I am usually happy to be part of a group, when it comes to art work I prefer to work individually a lot of the time. In the end though, I found that it became easier to work together as the time went on and we got to know each other better. Its surprising what we produced from the number 175.

This morning Waheed also created a quick artist statement to put next to our work as summary of our eight weeks together and what our project has been based on. It sums up our work perfectly;

"We have created a visual representation of ourselves by working collaboratively on a project based around the theme of our 'roots’. Exploring our individual origins and experiences through a range of drawings, photographs and textiles, we have created an array of multimedia work that showcases all the talents we each bought to the table from both Textiles and Film and Media Studies. 

Our display aims to create a link between artist and viewer by presenting a theme of unity amongst students coming from different backgrounds and congregating in Manchester. We have shown this by combining our own family images with the areas in which we come from to create 175 unique and engaging compositions to represent each of us.

Our work is represented by a series of triangular pieces of work secured beneath sheets of perspex and intricately assembled in dynamic structures and configurations. We believe this is an innovative way to exhibit our work and to get the entire School of Art community celebrating the milestone 175 years of creativity." 

Finally a short video of our exhibition made my Ana

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6wl-fHhorDQ#!

Putting up the exhibition

E X H I B I T I O N   T I M E

Putting up the exhibition today took us as much time as we expected it to, roughly 5 hours. Most of us met at 10:30am (Eloise, Beki, Adele, Ana, Lydia and I) in order to find the gallery together and begin to put up our exhibition. We were really disappointed that despite it being our exhibition day the other group members were not there, and did not arrive until after 1 o clock. This meant a lot of waiting around for the rest of the group, we put a selection of our work up, but as we were waiting on 44 more triangles it was going to be difficult to mix them up if we put too many up before they arrived. We had to wait around a lot but once they finally got to the gallery we managed to get it up quite quickly as a group. 

When we first arrived in the gallery we were a little stressed and a little disappointed as it wasn't what we were expecting it to look like. The lighting wasn't great but we knew we would make do as best as we could. 

The shape of our installation was always going to be unknown until we got into the gallery, however we did not realise how much the actual gallery space and walls would take their toll on our piece of work. We found that the main wall in which we wanted to install our piece was actually no good as we could not hammer anything into it, it was even falling apart and very delicate. In the end the gallery space almost told us how and where we could create our installation. 

Once we had put up our exhibition we realised that the lack of light at our end of the gallery was actually an advantage to our work because this meant that the light didn't bounce off our the perspex. Our work was installed at the front of the gallery and this was good as it meant it was both the first and last piece to be seen. 

Artist Inspiration

D A N I E L  L I B E S K I N D 

After our tutorial today about curating our work for the exhibition, Kate mentioned to look at the artist Libeskind who focuses on architecture. After all having a look at his work we found it to be quite useful as some 'food for thought' when it comes to putting up the exhibition. 

Libeskind creates his art work through being inspired by triangles. He also creates 3D sculptures using triangles which relates really well to our piece. 

Sewing Sessions

C O L L A B O R A T I V E  S E W I N G 

Today we met up as a group to attach our perspex triangles to our work. We decided as a group that we would use the holes in the perpex to sew through and attach our work which was mounted on ticket card to the perspex. We had an enjoyable day in the studio and Waheed made cookies which helped us get through a really long afternoon. We decided to sew our perspex sandwiches together as we felt as most of our project was image based, it would be nice to add a bit of textiles. 

Individual Work

S M A L L  S E L E C T I O N  O F  M Y  D E S I G N S 

So far I do not feel like I have shown much of my own individual work and so I think it is important to display what I am doing on my own and the theme my work is taking. I am still currently going on the theme of childhood imagination and imagery and am combining my drawings with photographs  and using tools such as watercolours, hand and machine embroidery and magazine cutouts in order to create my imaginary worlds of mixed media. 

Firstly I have developed a range of drawings using a range of media. My drawings are mostly of objects which remind me of home as well as being objects from my imagination as a child, for example fairy wings. However I also found it interesting to draw clocks as a way of displaying of me going back in time. Below is a selection of a few initial drawings. 

Following these initial drawings, I have tried to match up my old photographs with the drawings. This was actually more difficult than I expected as it takes some time to work out the positioning of the photograph. In order to see if the position of the person in the photograph (when cut out) will fit the drawing or design. To do this successfully I really had to play around a lot in order to get the best fits from image to drawing to create many successful mixed media pieces of work. 

Above is a small selection of my 22 triangles. At this stage I am still developing my ideas and so some of them will be developed further. 

For some of the very tricky shafts of perspex I decided to create some textured triangles by ironing some crayola crayons onto some calico. I did this because I remember drawing with crayons used to be one of my favourite things. I had a lot of fun creating these triangles. 

Arrival of the triangles

P E R S P E X  T R I A N G L E S 

Finally after waiting the best part of a week, our perspex arrived and the lazer cutting was done so we could finally get on with fitting our work to the triangular shape with a week to spare before the exhibition. Beki created the triangles on the lazer cutter and Aden managed to squeeze us in to his busy schedule and so luckily it didn't take long between the perspex arriving and the triangles being cut. Each of us had just the right amount of triangles which worked out as 22 each with a few spares just in case. Each triangle had 3mm holes in each corner for attaching together later on. 

We are still going to continue with the sandwich idea but instead of using felt for the backing we can now use something cheaper as we don't have to worry about it scratching the tables anymore. Instead of putting our work on the tables we are now thinking of ways to exhibit our work in the Kraak Gallery. As we haven't seen the gallery and don't know how much space we can have until we get there, this is pretty hard to plan. However we have come up with the idea of nailing our tiles to the wall and floor in order to create a flowing piece of work around a space. As well as this I want to stitch similar sized triangles together in order to make 3 dimensional pyramids. Personally, I think the more of these we have the better and more interesting our installation will look, however, putting up all of our work may take long enough anyway, so I think the amount of 3D pyramids will depend mainly on the time aspect.       Hopefully the film and media students are going to make the film as previously mentioned. We all feel that this would look brilliant projected onto a wall near or in between our work to show us constructing the piece. 

This week we have also had a tutorial and discussed some ideas in order to make our triangles look a little less flat. Eloise and I went down to the print room to speak to a technician about the ways that this would be possible on top of perspex. We came up with the idea of flocking. As Eloise and I have used embroidery in our work, we wanted to create holes in our perspex so that we could stitch on the outside of the perpsex aswell making it more textural, however after speaking to the technicians in woodwork, we found out that our original idea of using a drill to create these holes was not possible as the perspex could crack easily. Lazer cutting would be the only possibility but unfortunately it was too late as Aden had too much of a busy schedule. 

Due to our plan not being able to work we spoke as a group about the possibility of adding text on top of our perspex. We didn't know how to do this without the text rubbing off of the perspex. I decided to look into this further and googled it roughly in hope of finding a method. 

Video

I D E A S

Today we have met up again as a group and further discussed the idea of creating  a video to go with our exhibition. As previously said before, we wanted to create the tiles in order for people to be able to work and interact with the tiles. This could be moving them around and placing them in different positions to create new positions. However, now that we are out of the cafe, we were thinking of new ways that we could video our triangles in a creative way. After much discussion with the tutors aswell, we decided that it would be interesting to create a video of us putting up our exhibition and possibly taking it down aswell. 

Changing Places

T H E   K R A A K   G A L L E R Y  

Unfortunately today we were told today that we now cannot do the pitch tomorrow. After Lydia and Eloise met up yesterday, a few of us decided to meet up today to help organise the pitch as best as we could. Whilst Becki, Adele, Ana, Waheed and I were discussing this, Kate found us in the base room and said that unfortunately we could no longer do the pitch. There were a few reasons for this, but it was mainly because the rest of the PLAY group were exhibiting their work in the Kraak Gallery in the Northern Quarter and we had to be there too as the idea of Unit X was to get away from only working within the art school. This made sense but naturally after doing a lot of work for the pitch and some heavy days in the studio we are all a little disappointed but as well as this I think we are all relieved as  organising the pitch was proving a much bigger task than we originally thought. However, what we can take away from working towards the pitch in the first place, was that we are now ahead of most other groups in terms of the amount of planning and working out that we have had to do for our exhibition. As well as this we will have all our materials on time and nothing will be as much of a rush as we have really pushed ourselves to be organised when working this collaboratively. 

Handout

L E A F L E T   F O R   T H E   P I T C H 

After discussing and collaboratively producing a plan for our leaflet, Waheed kindly wrote out the leaflet for the pitch. It looks really good and we are all really pleased with it. Now the pitch is getting close I think we are getting more nervous, but we realise as a group that even if we do not get the opportunity to exhibit in the cafe, it will be really good experience to do this presentation. 

Below is the link to the leaflet . 

http://word.office.live.com/wv/WordView.aspx?FBsrc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fdownload%2Ffile_preview.php%3Fid%3D367826566656186%26time%3D1368738096%26metadata&access_token=763416382%3AAVJ_NMuWDuAn9toXy8fB4nKBEjEt2Jk-EldSFzcMKPCjzQ&title=Unit+X.doc

Prototypes

S A M P L E S   B Y  L Y D I A &  E L O I S E 

We tried to divide the work up equally as I and a few others couldn't come in on the wednesday but we went in Thursday instead whilst Lydia and Eloise were away.  Lydia and Eloise created these samples which looked great and we could really begin to see what our work might look like. These were made my photocopying each of our individual work and making them fit the triangles. We needed to produce these for the pitch in order to demonstrate our idea as clearly as possible to the Dean. 

Here is an example of the 2mm perspex that we intended to use for our tile sandwiches.