University Campus Suffolk

6ix Souls -the end

The water screen shows a roughly 13 minute long film on a continuous loop. Entitled Is Death Your Bitter End? it depicts the beginnings of bacterial life, sudden deaths by drowning, suicide, fire, and old age – and ends on a clip of Carl Jung discussing death. All of this is edited from much longer clips, and laden with effects and sound to give drama and atmosphere. The clips are spaced out with stages of darkness between them.

I finally decided to run the water screen on a timer, such that it comes on every hour during the 8 hours of the daytime degree show, and every half hour during the evening opening. Each ‘burst’ last for merely a minute, on the hour (or half-hour). The resulting mix of flowing water and still globules to project upon adds to the interest.

Last minute arrangements I’m still working on are to replace the laptop to projector arrangement with a DVD player to projector arrangement; it’ll be neater and easier for others to operate. Probably won’t have that ready for assessment, as I discovered today that I don’t have the right cables to achieve sound. Will resolve this by the degree show. ‘Til then, it’ll be a laptop, I guess.

All being well (car journey etc.) I’ll be able to drop off my folios and set up my technology between 9 and 9.30, Monday morning. Hopefully, the lecturers (or someone) will turn it all off at the end of the day. Still not sure about that one. It’ll be a very long day in town otherwise!

So anyway – here’s the last post prior to the art being marked – but not the last post, as I’ll pop back to update on the actual degree show; it’d be daft not to.

My project has evolved & the them streamlined enough such that I should be able to explain it in fewer words than before. I’ve already been tested on that whilst I was setting up.

6ix Souls

There are four tall, narrow paintings with depict the lives of four of the souls. Each of them read from top to bottom as an abstract pictorial of a life, from birth to death. As they are displayed, the first is entitled Abraham Frostrithick, Drowned at Sea. Abraham didn’t drown at sea, he drowned his sorrows with copious amounts of alcohol. Abraham, being a Master Mariner, would’ve preferred to have drowned at sea.

Next along is You Don’t Understand, which represents the life and eventual suicide of a teenaged girl who had a great many problems that no one was aware of. The tragegy being that if they had known, they might’ve been able to help.

Then comes What Goes Around Comes Around, which is the life of Mr Frederick Smarmsworth, a man bullied in childhood, who grew up to be less than he wanted to be. Ending up in retail middle management, Fred kept up a facade of being wealthy – even though everyone knew he wasn’t, they humoured him. What they didn’t know though, was that Fred was a serial killer; his dark side well hidden; his favourite method being fire. He met his own end at the hands of another, by fire, of course.

Lastly, there’s When September Ends, which depicts the long life of a gentleman left alone for many years after the passing of his wife. A steadfast, most would say ‘normal’ man – he died alone surrounded by all the furniture, ornaments and photos collected over decades.

Inside the Black Space, there are four ‘last shelves’, representing how each of these people would leave them as they expire. Carrying tales of their lives with their contents in books and oddities.

The Last Voyage of Abraham Oscar Frostrithick depicts the true reason for his death. Drink.

I Miss You belongs to the teenaged girl. A sad time capsule of her interests and clues of her tendency to extremes of emotion.

The Final Shelves of a Man Who Wanted More are how the murderous businessman left them, now retained as evidence against him, no doubt; or did he get away with it?

Seems Like Only Yesterday are the last shelves of our dear elderly gentleman, indicating a life more ordinary, and a realisation of the end soon to come.

So there we have the beginning and the end of these 4 souls.

Then there’s me: A Perfect Breakfast in an Imperfect Place relates fully to how I feel as a creative person in a world where creativity is not much appreciated. My ‘breakfast’ is the art; the imperfect ‘cafe’ represents society as a whole. It’s been my life not to have much, in pursuit of creative happiness.

My end? 47 Springtimes – how many seasons do we actually get to see? Not all that many. If I died just after I’d created that artwork, I’d have had 47 springtimes, or so it seems – give-or-take …Life purely as a collection of seasons, each time weathering and ageing more.

Viewpoint on Capt. Abraham’s Preferred End hangs in the dark of the Black Space, and represents the way that Abraham would rather have died – in a shipwreck.

A Window to Another Mr Smarmsworth also hangs in the gloom; a gloomy piece itself. It seeks to illustrate the dark underside of the life of the murderous Mr Smarmsworth. The side of himself that even he couldn’t face. The dark evil behind the facade. That is why the painting has been reversed, and we must view the charred rear.

Timebag is a small, discrete piece which hides away, low down on a wall in the darkness. It is there forever, like time. Whatever happens to us all, time will go on … until the end of … time.

Well, here we are – nearing the end. I’ve just spent what has to be one of the better/more rewarding weeks at university, setting up my degree show in and around the Black Space. It’s been a joy to see so many of my colleagues pulling their own shows together; the buzz about the place has been truly uplifting, on the whole. This is what I went to university for, and I only wish that we’d been able to be hands-on creative 100% of the time – what a difference that would have made …

For me, the week started with me still feeling exhausted – but with a bit of an inner feeling of determination to ‘get things done’. Small problems with limited facilities at the uni did rather delay my plans for the week; there seemed to be a lack of paint to decorate the studios with – especially black paint! However, after a couple of days of sprucing-up the space, moving furniture out of the studios and generally tidying-up, paint became available, artwork was installed and everything began to fall into place.

By Friday, I had painted all of the space allocated to me, hung the art, and installed the water screen. Still a bit of tinkering to do with respect to whether I use a laptop or a DVD player to show the film, which I hope to resolve tomorrow (sunday) with some tests at home. The water screen has been set on a timer switch that will come on every half an hour on the degree show opening evening, and every hour during the degree show. It runs for a minute each time, after which it leaves behind a quite beautiful pattern of water globules which play with the projected images.

I introduced the timer at first purely because I thought that running the water screen 100% of the time would be noisy, difficult to project clear images onto, and have a greater potential for leakage. As it transpired, the resulting ‘downtimes’ make for a quite effective change to the few minutes of pumped water.

I’m quite happy with my display, although (as ever) I would’ve liked a ‘bigger page’ to work on; not much bigger – but just a little bit, such that my original ideas fit together in less crowded harmony. Moving the shelves into the black space, rather than outside it, has worked – it adds to the atmosphere. The overall feel is probably slightly odd/creepy/other worldly – which is bang on, so I’m chuffed with that.

If I could change anything (apart from the space), it would be to have made sure that I didn;t have so many problems in sourcing parts for the screen, which delayed my tests to rather too close to the time it was needed. The silicone sealant, supposedly quick-drying and waterproof took ages to dry, and remained white as opposed to translucent until just a few days ago – hence I’ve added loads of heavy duty duck tape to reinforce things, plus a couple of bowls under the legs to capture what little splash/drip that there will be in the 8 minutes a day that it’ll run for.

Maybe, if I’d thought about it more thoroughly, I’d have gone for static wall art instead, which was more my thing prior to attending university – but I suppose this way I’m showing a new side to my art that has become part of my ‘toolbag’ largely as a result of being at UCS. The film and installation opportunities have been crucial to me, and I wish I’d had more time to explore them. I hope that UCS continues to keep the installation spaces it has – and that next year, the Fine Art department keeps the White Space, rather than allowing it to be used by another department (as it has this year). Such things can make or break us.

Here’s to a good last day of prep before the marking begins on Monday! Phew!

It’s (to me) a surprising amount of days since my last blog post. I’ve been very, very busy with art in the real world and have been ‘saving it all up’ ready to post about it.

I’ve photo-documented my journey through the month of May, and will share details of it all in the next few days.

The degree show is on 5th June, and assessments start next Monday. The end is nigh.

I am exhausted, and will be quite glad to have finished. I guess what I have learnt most during the past 3 years has been that I’m probably too ‘long in the tooth’ for all this ‘education’ malarkey. When you’ve been making art and throwing it away for 30 years, you develop a different kind of relationship with your art. Like you’re just not driven by the same motors that some others are. I suppose that I’ve always known that, and have (and will) steadfastly refuse to follow trends, methods, ‘the right way’, etc.

Art (if that’s what you have to call it) is just what I do, even if you don’t ‘get’ it, I’ll still keep doing it. As I said a while ago on this very blog – we’re all together going on very different journeys. I happen to think that if you are truly a creative person, then your journey will certainly be right for you and you shouldn’t go on someone elses. I suppose what I am saying is that, on reflection, as I suspected before I began this course – art as we know it today cannot (and shouldn’t) be taught. The only things that can be taught are the craft elements of art – techniques, materials, composition, mechanical knowledge etc.

I’m not alone in thinking that, and have noted the same being said again in the last issue of Art Monthly.

I would like to think that at some point in the future, art can separate itself from academic study, thus giving rise to unfettered creativity. I guess that art schools would be much better at that than universities – and a qualification in art perhaps ought to be more vocational. There’ll always be those that think that you need to write essays to prove that you’re an artist. I really think that’s daft. Your head is where it’s at. Where’s your head at?

Whatever transpires after uni, I remain very happy with my own art. I can also see some others around me who should be very happy with theirs too. They deserve to be.

Tomorrow (Friday) is my last day for setting-up my degree show. I am taking it all in, except for the sketchbooks & blog stuff which I need to sort out on the weekend.

My project is important to me – personal, if you like. Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone down that route and instead gone for a more frivolous art – but I really needed to do this body of work. Every single part of it counts, like the pages in a book. I am often told (by lecturers) to edit my work – as if I do too much; over-complicate things; to strip it back. That isn’t what I do. I have already done that before it gets displayed and am very capable of a ‘less is more’ approach. This project just isn’t one of those times. It’s about 6 ‘souls’ and each one counts.

Apart from a last minute move of a painting whose positioning I was testing, all is as it will be.

If it isn’t much liked, then it will be entirely my fault, and that is how it should be. I can happily live with that.

I am ready to move on now. I shall drink to that next week.

I dragged the dead canvas from the water today. It’s been there for a few weeks and represents the drowning of Abraham Oscar Frostrithick.