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Experimenting with Shape through Air dry foam clay. I must get shapier.

[WIP please come back to add text]

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Becoming one with the birds

I was tasking with befriending the birds, to figure out how the move, and so I spent Tuesday morning filming them, trying to understand them. Here are the results of that.

Here is the edited footage of what I captured:

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MOVEMENT [13-01-25]

current thoughts: Birds, fake birds, Automata

current inspiration:

DabChick, by Barnaby Dixon on Youtube, Handmade one handed bird puppet

Maladapted (2021), by Harrison Pearce as part of the Graceful Degradation Exhibit

Music Boxes, Cuckoo Clocks, and general mechanics

And just generally, the way birds moves, i think they're neat :)

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Animation and video editing

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Bookbinding Engagement Lab!

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Painting!!

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Zine/Risograph Workshop

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Putting Up A Sign: Progress Review Tutorial Repsonse

The key takeaways of my Progress Review Tutorial were that I need to Focus More and Write Less.

While what I’m doing makes sense to me, this is a visual communication course, and so I need to find a way to explain it Clearly and Concisely to others. Paul Tarpey, my tutor, said it like this- “you’ve got an interesting factory here- but I don’t know what you make”.

I write too much- this is primarily a Visual course, so visuals take precedence over written word. I need to change the way I communicate.

I was also told that I need to show the process, the journey I’m taking with my art more, but just my end results. Show the planning, the thinking, the construction process

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Study of Plastic Dinosaur Toy

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Sketchbook

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PRINTING WORKSHOP: RESULTS

I enjoyed this workshop quite a bit, but I'm not sure I cut out for print. It's a little too particular, too delicate for me. If anything, I'm excited to use the mess I made for backgrounds. I think the most compelling thing through this process for me was the interference, the layer of ink you need to remove before printing in mono-printing. I like the texture, the noise of it.

That last one was a result of me forgetting to do my interference, a mistake I did not make twice

Some sketches, playing around with shapes and gradients

This is my biggest success of the bunch, one that I'm actually happy with. Print- mono print- requires just a little more confidence that I possess.

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Workshop Week 8, 11-11-24

Christ its week 8 already

This week I did the print making workshop. On Monday, the day I write this, we did mono printing, with acetate sheets covered in oil based ink. First we covered the sheets with paper, and traced out our print on top before removing the paper. Then we did the reverse: removing ink off the sheet, then running that and a piece of cartridge through the press. We also explored colour and texture with wall paper

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Visiting Artist: Peter Blodau

On Tuesday, 5-11-24, Peter Blodau gave us a talk about his work. He travels about the world, drawing in situe, telling the stories of the cities and their people. I find his work incredibly beautiful- his use of shape and colour is breathtaking, and I am so very envious of his careful imprecision, a looseness that is hard to master. Following along with his methodology, we the students were let loose on Limerick city, to sketch along the river between the three bridges of Limerick. I will admit, i love having an excuse to sit outside and draw-my setup is built around this, so I was quite in my element. I posted up at the river, hoping the chain "fence" to sit by the lock across from the old rowing club. I discovered this spot of Arthur's Quay during my Radius project, as its were my friend Artie the Heron likes to hang out. There, you have an excellent view of the river, the rowing club, the park, the birds and a little glimpse of Saint Mary's Cathedral in the distance. My one regret with this position was that it was removed from the people of the city: i was thankful for it a the time, but in retrospect an important part of Blodau's work is his interaction with people. Something to keep in mind for next time

Speaking of regrets, I somehow managed to not get a picture of my favourite piece, and the one i spent the most time on: a watercolour study of the water and the way the light interacted with it. It was good, but i suppose you'll have to take my word on that.

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Visiting Artist Brian O'Shea

On Thursday, 7-11-24, LSAD Alumni Brain O'Shea visited campus, and gave a talk about his work. Admittedly, it wasn't exactly my thing, but I really admired the way he iterated on his ideas, and showed us the process that lead him to his self-proclaimed most successful works: the initial idea, what worked, what didn't. I think the idea that sometimes you just ned to keep going, keep messing around with something until you get it to work for you. I think the work of his that he showed that resonated with me the most was the street he made on his way to his wood block prints.

Then took his MO- taking classical imagery and twisting it, "transforming" it- and did it for ourselves. My group took Artemisia Gentileschi's "Judith Beheading Holofernes" and recreated it in a photoshoot, keeping it simple. The fantastic @k00322323, who's a very skilled photographer, took the photo's, and the rest of us took turns directing, posing, and adjusting the lights. I edited the below photo's trying to invoke the theatrical influence of the Baroque.

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Primary Research: Making Egg Tempura

A key inspiration behind my Assemble project is the idea of making and dismantling as a form of exploration and understanding. So, when I heard that egg tempura, the most popular form of painting from Ancient Egypt all the way up until oil paints where invented in the 1400's, was as simple to make as mixing egg yolk and pigment, I figured i had to give it a go.

So first and foremost: is it really that simple? Well, yes and no. The method was the one suggested by the The Royal Academy Of Art:

Mix pigment with small about of water to form a sort of paste

Separate egg yolk, mix with little water (for smoother application) and lemon juice (to help with the smell, and to keep it from rotting too quickly)

Mix pigment slurry and egg yolk slurry

Paint

Success

This method did in fact work pretty well for me, with a few quirks of course. my ratio of egg to pigment was a bit off, meaning instead of the vivid matte quality egg tempera is typically praised off, mine was a little less vivid and quite shiny. i used a variety of different pigments- old makeup, pastels, chalk, charcoal, dirt, spirulina, turmeric- and each had its own challenges.

The make up, while vivid and delightfully shimmery, was hydrophobic, meaning it didn't want to mix with the water, or the yolk, and so kept separating in the palette. I couldn't get the chalk or the charcoal milled fine enough, and so they made their paints quite chunky: the chalk in particular was a nightmare, yellowing immediately, forming clumps, being both too thin and too thick, and generally just a nuisance to deal with. The easiest and most effective pigments where definitely the turmeric and the spirulina- both where extremely smooth and fine milled, and both mix perfectly with both the water and the yolk, and made for good paints.

Overall, a very worthwhile experiment, one I had a very fun time with, and would most certainly recommend!

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Engagement Lab 18-10-24: Lumen Studio Tour

I had been itching to get into Lumen Studios since I first walked by it 3 years ago, and I was delighted to see it as one of the engagement lab tours! I love the idea of sculpture with use- puppetry, elaborate costumes, community building. I was also delighted to learn that this year's parade was based heavily off the book Heavenly Bodies by Paul Koudounaris, a book I adore and find very inspiring in my own work.

I Love Making costumes, I love halloween, and i will absolutely find a way to incorporate what I saw and learned here into my personal practice.