#i can’t say as much about canada since i’ve never been but every ecosystem is complex

[avenusbeetle]

i love america. not the country specifically, i mean the continent of north america. i love the place i live in so much. seeing the native species makes me so happy. it’s so terrible that we have such complex issues trampling all our nice things, it’s terrible that the south is known for being bigoted when we’re one of the most vulnerable places in the country. specifically the north american southeast is so gorgeous to me, i’ve been living here so long. we have SO many plants you could never even dream up.

we have giant leopard moths, giant wasps, silly weevils, junebugs, MOLE CRICKETS?? magical-looking creatures you would never think would be under a rock in the middle of nowhere in a red state. we have an abundance of raccoons to where they’re considered pests, but they’re the second-closest thing to a red panda. we have ARMADILLOS! i don’t understand how anyone gets bored of living here, i don’t ever want to permanently abandon it. the way things are going, it seems like it’s not the place for me.. but it’s my place. the government obviously hasn’t considered that this is MY place, and i won’t be going anywhere 💀 all of my favorite plants are here. we have red-winged blackbirds and brown-headed cowbirds. literally why would i leave. we have wild irises and trout lilies. spiderwort?? oh my god. all the violets. all of them

[caveartfair]

How to Succeed as an Artist While Living outside of Art-World Capitals

You want to be an artist but can’t face the relentless pace, astronomical rents, and distractions of the art world’s capitals. Can you still hope for success?

There was a time when the art market—and all the opportunities that go with it—was concentrated entirely in a few cultural centers. Nowadays, the international art world is more porous: There are dozens of art fairs and biennials on every continent, galleries are increasingly itinerant, and curators travel the globe in search of talent. The internet has made it exponentially easier for artists to broadcast their work globally, and it’s consequently more plausible than ever before to develop a career beyond art world hubs (and financial capitals) like New York, London, and Berlin.

Deana Haggag, president and CEO of United States Artists—an American nonprofit that issues grants to artists from all over the country—regularly meets young artists, from Alaska to Puerto Rico, who are graduating with MFAs and grappling with the question of where to settle and establish a studio practice. “Of course you can go to New York, London, or Paris, try to play that game and immediately try to work your way into that system,” she said. “Or you can move to a city with a tight-knit artist community and find opportunities sooner.” Moving to a smaller city or town often means affordable studio space and assistance, a supportive network, and easier access to local arts professionals and venues.

“Of course you can go to New York, London, or Paris. Or you can move to a city with a tight-knit artist community and find opportunities sooner.”

However fruitful a smaller ecosystem might be, however, living away from the art world’s financial infrastructure comes with undeniable challenges. One such obstacle is the fact that local collectors don’t always collect work by local artists. “A lot of small American cities are struggling to figure out how to amplify their collector base, how to encourage new collecting,” Haggag said. “That seems to be a topic of conversation that’s happening everywhere—Houston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Minneapolis.” It can also take a fair amount of extra legwork to remain visible in the art world hubs.

What follows are some points of advice on how to navigate a pathway to career stability while living away from the whirlwind of the art world’s capitals—culled from conversations with artists who have done just that.

Prioritize what you need to pursue your art practice  

Photo courtesy of Scott Reeder.

Perhaps you’re an artist who thrives under pressure and in cramped conditions. (The seeds of Andrea Zittel’s “Experimental Living Cabins” in the California desert were planted when she lived in New York, where the imperatives of close living quarters require a certain creative flair.) Or, maybe you’re an artist who needs mental (and physical) space—away from the pressures of the market and the conventions of the establishment—in order to discover new artistic avenues for your practice.

For Scott Reeder, who lived in Los Angeles for two years before spending nearly a decade in Milwaukee, living in the Midwestern city provided him with the space, freedom, and offbeat cultural environment he needed to grow his practice. “I like being a bit away from the coasts, to get some perspective. And for something weirder to develop,” he said. Milwaukee afforded him “a little time to gestate and slow down.”

“You wouldn’t self-fund a feature film in New York, London, or L.A. You would be insane to do that.”

Among the artworks Reeder developed there was a feature film, Moon Dust (2014)—an absurdist sci-fi comedy about a resort on the moon—which took him 11 years to complete. “It was this crazy passion project, and it’s the kind of thing you could only do in Milwaukee,” he said. The film required constructing elaborate sets, which he made in a 6,000-square-foot space that cost him just $400 per month. He bankrolled the whole project himself. “You wouldn’t self-fund a feature film in New York, London, or L.A. You would be insane to do that,” Reeder said. (He now lives between Detroit and Chicago, where he is an associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.)

Moon Dust led to a couple of career milestones for Reeder: When he finally finished his cinematic odyssey, former L.A. art venue 356 Mission presented an exhibition about the completion of the film. The feature screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art last December, and it will be included in an upcoming exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

Toompea, Tallinn’s Old Town, Tallinn, Estonia, 2012. Photo by Rémi Lanvin, via Flickr.

Merike Estna in her st studio, Tallinn, Estonia 2017. Photo by Dmitri Gerasimov. Courtesy of Merike Estna.

banana/angel 1, 2017. Merike Estna Temnikova & Kasela

banana/angel 3, 2017. Merike Estna Temnikova & Kasela

From liquid to hard to soft too hard, 2017. Merike Estna Temnikova & Kasela

Estonian artist Merike Estna similarly spent time in an international hub—some nine years in London—before settling in the smaller city of Tallinn, Estonia, two years ago. She moved in order to focus on developing a new painting technique that allows her to create complex mazes of layered and marbled patterns with acrylic. While she made important connections in London and evolved her ideas considerably, she has now found better conditions for production in her home city, where she can afford the resources she needs while benefiting from close proximity to her gallery, Temnikova & Kasela, as well as the local institutions she works with. “I can have a big studio, I can have an assistant,” Estna said. “For production, it’s so much easier here. I’ve been able to take my practice to the maximum.”

Artist Ebony G. Patterson opted out of major art world capitals altogether, preferring a path that would grant her the maximum time and space for her work after graduating from art school. She took a teaching job in Charlottesville, Virginia, before moving to Lexington, Kentucky, where she spent 11 years working at the University of Kentucky, and would return to her home city of Kingston, Jamaica, during the holidays. (She recently left her job to travel for residencies, research, and exhibitions.) “I never thought about New York or L.A.,” she said. “That never appealed to me; it was never interesting to me. I had family and friends from high school in New York, so it could have been a very easy transition.”

“I wanted to be able to live…so that I would be able to do my work.”

For Patterson, as for many other artists, the bottom line was choosing a lifestyle that would enable her to pursue her work without struggling to survive. “I wanted to be able to live,” she said, “meaning to be able to afford to pay my rent, to buy my materials, to be myself…so that I would be able to do my work.” Teaching art at a university also meant that Patterson could move fluidly between the classroom and the studio on her days off. And it provided extensive vacation time to return to Jamaica—enabling her to show her art in the community and environment that has been most formative for her, and to soak up its influence, which she channels back into intricate mixed-media installations that sometimes examine themes from Jamaican history.

Create your own opportunities

View of Ebony G. Patterson’s studio in Lexington, Kentucky. Courtesy of the artist.

The freedom to work at a remove from the art world establishment, of course, can be contingent on finding a dealer who will advocate on your behalf. Reeder and Patterson have both enjoyed the considerable benefits of being represented by mid-level dealers—Reeder by Kavi Gupta and CANADA, and Patterson by Monique Meloche. (Since joining Meloche’s roster in 2011, Patterson’s work has received a solo exhibition at New York’s Museum of Arts and Design and been featured on the hit TV show Empire, among other accolades.) Similarly, Goutam Ghosh, an artist based in the Indian town of Santiniketan, says he can’t imagine sustaining his practice there without the support of his Norwegian gallery, Standard, whose work advocating for his paintings enables him to spend 100 percent of his time on his art.

For many artists, though, being a one-stop shop for your own practice—maker, organizer, marketer, champion, accountant, seller, etc.—is an experience that will be familiar. And artists who run their own studios, even in places that are a little off the beaten track, can still take matters into their own hands.

“You have to give people a reason to come to you or you have to go to them. You can’t just completely become a hermit.”

For example, artist and writer Victor Ehikhamenor chose, after several years living in the U.S., to commit himself to his home city of Lagos, Nigeria. He decided to prioritize being somewhere that best served his art—richly patterned abstract and figurative compositions—rather than his career. Yet success has followed: Ehikhamenor presented an acclaimed installation at the Dak’Art Biennale in 2016 and co-represented Nigeria at the 2017 Venice Biennale, among other recent milestones. And though he is now represented by London’s Tyburn Gallery, and has gained visibility by showing work at the Lagos space of celebrated curator Bisi Silva and through contact with overseas curators who have visited the city, Ehikhamenor’s first shows were his own productions.

Portrait of Victor Ehikhamenor. Courtesy of the artist.

Photo courtesy of Victor Ehikhamenor.

The Metamorphosis of a Tall Dream, 2018. Victor Ehikhamenor Tyburn Gallery

“It wasn’t really an easy road,” he said. Though new spaces and a new crop of collectors were emerging in Lagos at the time that he moved back, there were few institutions there that could support him. “You pretty much have to handle your own business,” he said. Ehikhamenor organized exhibitions for himself there in 2006 and 2009, paying for the spaces and asking friends and peers to contribute texts for the accompanying catalogues. “Gradually, people began to see my work. I really believe you just have to continuously work,” he said. Now, Ehikhamenor has a strong collector base in Nigeria that is made up of individuals who have grown up alongside him.

Wearing different creative hats has also served Ehikhamenor well. (He formerly occupied the role of creative director of a media house, and is a published author and poet.) Being a writer has enabled him to deftly speak and write about his work—and gave him a network to pursue when he began designing book jackets. He has designed well over 100 cover designs for prominent writers like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Chinelo Okparanta, and—though the income from these projects is relatively minimal—Ehikhamenor sees them as another method to reach people with his work. “It helps in ways that you probably won’t be able to quantify,” he said.

Reeder likewise found he was able to remain visible—and to attract artists, curators, and gallerists to Milwaukee—by making things happen for himself. “It’s taken some effort to stay in the conversation,” he said. ���You have to give people a reason to come to you or you have to go to them. You can’t just completely become a hermit.” He has variously assumed the roles of shop manager, fair director, and comedy club impresario, along with his brother, artist Tyson Reeder, who is a collaborator on these sometimes-itinerant projects.

“I like being a bit away from the coasts, to get some perspective. And for something weirder to develop.”

After the brothers left L.A. in 2000, they opened a gallery-cum-gift shop in Milwaukee called General Store (along with Reeder’s wife, Elysia Borowy-Reeder, who is now the executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit), with a small white cube space in the back where they showed local and international artists, including Laura Owens. “It was an important bridge to the outside world,” Reeder said. In 2006 and 2008, they helped take over a Polish dive bar and bowling alley to put on an art fair they dubbed Milwaukee International. Through relationships they’d developed primarily in New York, they drew some major art world figures. “We had gallerists from all over the world come and install booths in this little place where they would usually have a birthday party,” he said. “Boesky, White Columns, but with all these local Milwaukee galleries mixed in.”

Among the participants was New York’s CANADA gallery. “It’s the one gallery that participated in every weird idea we’ve ever done,” Reeder said. “That’s part of how we ended up working with them. We broke them down.” Both Reeders are now represented by CANADA, and Scott is preparing for a solo exhibition there next year.

Grow your network and maintain ties with art world hubs

Tyree Guyton, The Heidelberg Project, Detroit, MI. Photo by Scott Reeder. Courtesy of Scott Reeder.

Reeder made important friendships while in residence at the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture and during the handful of trips he’s made to New York each year. Even though he’s never lived in the city, he had some of his earliest and most important shows there, and got his first big break at Pat Hearn Gallery in the 1990s. “I think it’s important to show in those centers,” he said. “That’s where the writers are, the collectors.”

Ideally, he says, you can do both—have a local presence and a foot in an art world capital or two, even if this means extending oneself beyond artmaking. The Reeders, for instance, have curated shows at New York’s Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and White Columns, and organized their so-called Dark Fair at New York’s Swiss Institute, before taking it to Cologne, Germany. “It’s more work wearing these different hats,” said Reeder, “but it seems like whatever isolation or opportunities are missing from being in a smaller place, it can help to keep a conversation with other cities going.”

Patterson and Ehikhamenor also attest to the importance of regular visits to big art world cities���both as part of an artist’s education, and to cultivate new and existing connections. “Charlottesville, Virginia, and Lexington, Kentucky: things are really slow there,” said Patterson. “So I left as often as I could, and as I could afford.” On trips to New York, she would spend time with artist friends and see exhibitions, and return to Kentucky feeling energized and ready to work.

“I think social media kind of blew open that door for artists to take their destiny into their own hands.”

Ehikhamenor similarly makes annual trips to London. “Once I make money from my art, I invest it back into going to see exhibitions,” he said. “I’ve made a point to come to London every year or so since 2012, usually in October to feel the pulse of Frieze week. I always visit Tate Modern.” One such visit led to his first gallery show in London at the Gallery of African Art, and to a sell-out solo booth at New York’s 1:54 art fair. (He has since cut ties with the gallery.)  

Ehikhamenor also uses social media to amplify his work and maintain contact with the broader art world. In a place like Nigeria, he explained, “where, for the longest time, people have had to rely on middlemen—in the sense that the curators come in, or do not even bother to come (they just keep showing artists from the Diaspora without knowing what is happening on the continent)—I think social media kind of blew open that door for artists to take their destiny into their own hands.” He cautions, though, that posting your work online can also lead to other artists abroad “pilfering your ideas,” a problem he has had in the past that led him to post fewer images of his work.

Ehikhamenor experienced the power of social media in 2017 when his critique of Damien Hirst’s exhibition at the Venice Biennale, which he posted on Instagram, went viral and led to calls from the New York Times and CNN. “That’s when I realized,” he said, “people might not comment, but they are consuming what you are doing. Social media has helped a lot of young artists and collectors.”

“Opportunity is everywhere. You just have to claim it from where you are.”

The availability of such tools has helped Ehikhamenor stay in touch with the wider art world while remaining committed to not only advancing his career, but the art community in Lagos in general. “I have never felt the pressure to leave since I arrived back to Nigeria 10 years ago. I have never given it thought,” he said. “I have had really tough moments surviving as an artist, being out of a job and all of that. But I made a personal decision to tough it out. I want to be able to contribute to the building of arts institutions in Nigeria. That is my mindset and my modus operandi and that is how I want to live my life as an artist. I want to create opportunities for younger artists and contemporaries.”

Ehikhamenor, like Patterson and Reeder, is helping expand the art world and support his peers by lighting a fire in a smaller art community. Indeed, mutually supportive relationships with other artists have proved essential for all those interviewed for this article—for inspiration, collaboration, and connections. “Opportunity is everywhere,” said Patterson. “You just have to claim it from where you are.”

from Artsy News

[texfmp-blog]

Final Evaluation FMP

Overcoming Challenges

 Personal Problems

The start date of the Final Major Project was 22nd February. In January I found out that my Dad’s cancer had returned and there was nothing more the doctors could do for him.  I left for Canada to look after my dad on the 16th of February and returned on the 31st of March. He passed away two days after returning so I have been dealing with the whole thing of loss and grieving throughout the project. Sadly, because of this nothing seemed to matter and I couldn’t focus or think straight, and everything felt “flat”. This has been the biggest challenge I’ve ever had to face in my life.

 I feel like this isn’t just a challenge that will last the project but will affect me for the rest of my life, and how I deal with it is going to be a huge factor. At the moment I take every day one at a time and don’t make plans in advance just because I don’t know how I will feel. This has really helped and my tutors have been very supportive throughout this process. Sadly it’s meant my project hasn’t been top priority and I have pushed it to the side at times. Even though I’ve just lost my dad I’m still fairly happy with what I have accomplished in such a short time.

 One of the things that has helped me the most is going to the river to just be with water and have it flow over me. Water has always been huge in my life even though I nearly drowned in the river Dart when I was 13 I have never lost my love for it. I still feel so held by the river when i'm swimming and feel like all my problems get washed away once I plunge my head beneath the surface. This song expresses how I feel.

  Johnny Flynn – The Water

 All that I have is a river

The river is always my home

Lord, take me away

For I just cannot stay

Or I'll sink in my skin and my bones

 The water sustains me without even trying

The water can't drown me, I'm done

With my dying

 Please help me build a small boat

One that'll ride on the flow

Where the river runs deep

And the larger fish creep

I'm glad of what keeps me afloat

 The water sustains me without even trying

The water can't drown me, I'm done

With my dying

 Now deeper the water I sail

And faster the current I'm in

That each night brings the stars

And the song in my heart

Is a tune for the journeyman's tale

 The water sustains me without even trying

The water can't drown me, I'm done

With my dying

 Now the land that I knew is a dream

And the line on the distance grows faint

So wide is my river

The horizon a sliver

The artist has run out of paint

 Where the blue of the sea meets the sky

And the big yellow sun leads me home

I'm everywhere now

The way is a vow

To the wind of each breath by and by

 The water sustains me without even trying

The water can't drown me, I'm done

With my dying

   Nature photography and British Weather

The biggest challenge I encountered with the shoots was changeable weather. It was very difficult to predict what the weather would be like a week in advance. Planning was important for these shoots as I was reliant on getting lifts from my mum and we had to work around her work schedule. Between her schedule and the weather I was lucky to get 5 shoots at all in the time I had.  I got round this by checking the weather app every morning and afternoon and when everything clicked we went for it --  from mum being free and able to drive me to the location, and the sky being good for the shoot I wanted to take (some clouds in the day and a completely clear sky at night) to the wind being light to moderate.

 We had to cancel a beautiful night beach shoot on the Jurassic Coast because the winds grew to 45-50 miles per hour. I was gutted because the sky was crystal clear, meteor showers were predicted, and we were heading to Durdle Door (see photo below). I had intended to take a very long exposure through the night and was looking forward to the process as much as the results.

  Limited Public Transport

Why didn’t I take public transport you might ask?  Two of my shoots were night shoots which  meant that public transport was off the menu. In terms of the day shoots on Dartmoor there are regular buses from Totnes to Dartmoor however the routes don’t go to the locations I wanted to shoot, which are more remote and had the features I needed for the project theme.

  Light Pollution

Rather than calling the night shoot at South Milton Sands a write-off because of the light pollution from the neighboring coastal villages on one side and the over-exposure caused by the moon on the other side, I overcame this challenge by working with the light pollution, framing the shot with each bit of light distortion on either side. This added to the image and I’m very happy with how it turned out.

   Research

 I have always known a good amount about nature and reforestation. This helped me with the project since I already had a good idea of what is going on and some of the environmental issues happening regarding the nature that surrounds me.

 When I lived in Canada there was a growing issue of mountain lions losing their habitats in the nearby mountains and to survive coming down closer and closer to human populations in order to find food. They were losing their habitats due to deforestation  where logging companies would clear-cut, wiping out everything.

 The pine beetle explosion a few years ago in Canada completely destroyed so much of the pine forests it was devastating to forest ecosystems. This explosion was caused by multiple factors such as humans not allowing natural fires which created natural gaps in the forest that contained the life cycle of the beetle. Another factor is global warming which has resulted in warmer winters that no longer stop freeze the larvae, thereby keeping the numbers in balance.

 Watching all of this happen through my lifetime has made me appreciate the nature we have around us. I do not want to lose what we still have and I want us to take responsibility for everything that we have done that affects the world that we live in.

 Closer to home, in Britain I had already known that the whole of Dartmoor was once forest, and that the clearing of trees began as far back as the Bronze Age. What I didn’t know before doing extensive research for this project was how big an impact grazing sheep have on the uplands, and how much of this impact is the compression of soil causing erosion, flooding and mud slides, not to mention the consequence that very little can grow apart from bracken, gorse and grass.

 I got very into the subject of beautiful nature on my last FMP. My focus then was on what I experienced in my everyday life on foot and cycling  in my immediate vicinity. For this year’s  FMP I stayed with natural beauty but took it further afield and by doing this discovered more about places near my home, including and in particular Dartmoor and how much we have lost. That’s how I got the idea of “Desolate Nature”.

 I did enough research to inform my project. George Monbiot and David Taylor influenced me the most in terms of what I photographed and how I photographed it: George Monbiot on ‘the what’ and David Taylor on the techniques behind ‘the how’.

 I am happy with the two B&W photos of Dartmoor and think they work alongside the theme of my project however I feel that without some writing next to them they just look like fine art photographs. What I was trying to convey was not just the beauty of the contours of the land but the contrast too between the wooded area juxtaposed with the barren hills.  

 One of the reasons I found this so difficult to convey is because the deforestation happened so long ago, and we’ve all become so accustomed to Dartmoor looking as it does. All we see is this gorgeous place but if there were still tree stumps there showing that trees had recently been cut down we’d see it as this horrific rape of the land. This fact of what happened is hidden in the ‘beauty of moorland’ and the passage of time. In a different way the clear cuts in Canada are hidden from view by the loggers leaving a thin strip of trees on the edge of the roads to hide the devastation behind. I’ve seen this myself personally. “Out of Sight Out of Mind” is the theme of an environmental photo shoot I would like to complete one day - I’ve already done a few shoots for this idea. This project has been a good learning experience toward that goal.

 Researching the photographer David Taylor really inspired me to do lots of night shoots and showed me the really nice idea of putting a torch down in front of something in the foreground to illuminate it in full detail (which would otherwise be a silhouette) when taking a long exposure shot. This is a very simple  technique but seems to have snuck under the radar of many photographers. This was an amazing thing to know and I’m very happy I utilised this in my project.

 Considering how vast the subject of my project is, and how many articles, books and magazines there are all written by so many amazing people, I would have liked to have done more research into this. The research I did do was interesting and invaluable, and I used every last bit of it in the projects. One might say I cherry picked and made the most out of what I had.

  Planning & Production

 To catch up from having missed so much while I was away, after I got back I blocked out a week where I focused entirely on college work the whole week in the 2nd half of May. I organised my time in that week and generally by focusing on the project in short bursts and alternating with breaks, it helped me get back into the project. This approach to course work generally helps me to avoid ‘burning out’. Taking regular breaks helps me to be more productive and also to avoid getting migraines from reading and writing, which can happen easily for me if I push myself too hard or if i’m reading or writing for too long at a stretch.

 It was very helpful for me to do this because I was so behind after missing so much when I was in Canada and then not being able to focus when I came back. After that week I felt more hope and belief that I could actually complete the project.

 Over the last two years I’ve noticed that if I’m not already motivated to do something I have to get engaged with it first and then the motivation comes after I’ve engaged. This is a very useful learning to know about myself and how my brain works, and will help me in the future I’m sure with anything I do.

 Practical skills

Considering I’ve been under a lot of stress and pressure because of the things that have been happening in my personal life, I think I have produced a decent amount of work to what I would say is a  high enough standard. I’m certainly not as happy with the results I’ve achieved with this project compared to last year’s final major project. Photographically my work has definitely improved, specifically the night shoots which I hadn’t done before. My knowledge of my camera and what it can do has grown significantly. Of course there are always new things to learn however I am in no rush. I’m glad I experimented with Photoshop for the project. I intentionally broadened my horizons because my natural tendency is to stick with RAW.

 Using Photoshop I experimented with taking the best parts of different images, and combining them together to create a new image. One of these is in the final show. I am really proud of it.

 Last year I did my FMP in a workbook and I think it looked really good, clean and professional, and because I filled every page and thought a lot about layout and design it was obvious how much effort I put in. It felt great to be able to hold a tangible object in my hands, something I had created.

 The downsides of this is that it was very expensive because I had to print all the images not just those for the final show, plus all the contact sheets, everything. It was also very time-consuming to write everything out by hand. Because of this I decided to do this FMP using Tumblr. This has been easy to use and has been good practice for developing my professional online footprint so to speak. The result looks good however I miss having a real object that I can thumb through.

  Evaluation / Reflection

 Throughout the project I evaluated after every shoot, analysing the contact sheet. I then chose my favourite photos from that shoot and went into depth with each of them in the editing process. I then went back to the previous shoots to see how the photos worked together. What isn’t evidenced in the blog is this organic, continuous process of to-ing and fro-ing, of doing and reflecting.  

 The way my brain works means that a lot of my work is in my head, I’m thinking and processing well before I express it. And I will go over the  ideas multiple times before I express myself verbally or in writing, What I express tends to be the finished thought rather than the process I’ve been though. In looking over the project posts I can see this is still the case.

 I think that my evaluation of the technical and aesthetic quality of my work was strong and consistent throughout the project. In retrospect what I now see I missed was the strength of the images to convey the story I wanted it to convey. I realise now that my images weren’t as good at getting this across by themselves as I originally thought. I needed to have that break from writing about the project and just look at the images and look for what I got from the images on their own without having the writing next to them, and without being coloured by already knowing what my intention was in taking the images. I think this idea of letting my images sit and coming back to them later will really help me in future, This realisation is helping me to notice how important it is to not wait to the last second to get my work finished. Having that space to sit and wait has helped me see the flaws and the imperfections and to appreciate what went really well.

 I’ve always thought that photographs are so important in their role of storytelling, and how much can be said from just a single image. For me the best example of this is Edward Burtynsky’s River of Blood (see image below) and how you look at it and instantly see what it is about. I don’t think I managed to achieve this as well as I would have liked to. This is a bit disappointing especially as this is a subject I’m so passionate about, and one I think is so important given what’s happening in the world around us environmentally and politically.

River of blood through scorched earth. (Nickel contamination in Ontario) Photo by "Manufactured Landscapes" Edward Burtynsky.  

Presentation

 Sadly, due to my father’s condition I missed two months of college at the very beginning of the project and so I couldn’t take part in any of the proposal presentation sessions - so I didn’t make a mood board or take part in the peer feedback for this stage of the project.

 My attendance in 2017 is certainly nothing to be proud of. It wasn’t because I was slacking; it was about me dealing with stress and finding ways of staying healthy mentally. Sometimes I deal with stress well, sometimes I don’t. Stress mixed with grief is not something you can be taught but is something you learn by going through it. I’ve also been dealing with insomnia off and on for years, but over the past months it’s been worse, not surprisingly perhaps.

 Working at college has been difficult for me since my Dad’s death. I found it almost impossible to work with lots of people around, so I took a lot of days off to work from home. The only reason I’ve done as well as I have with this project is because of how supportive my tutors have been. They understand that I need to take time off to grieve, and work from home a lot of the time.

 I looked at platforms such as wordpress for my blog but decided to stick with Tumblr for the ease of its linear design. I like that you can scroll through the posts in chronological order rather than having to click on individual posts. The downside of Tumblr is that you don’t have much freedom to play around with the design.  In future I might use Flickr or 500XP because they are much more specialised photography platforms, however they’re not as adequate when it comes to blogging. On balance I’m happy with my decision to use Tumblr and I’m pleased with the finished product.  

 My blog could have been better if I had included a more diverse selection of photographers beyond Dartmoor or the UK, people like Edward Burtynsky for example and Sebastio Salgado, both photographers I have loved for years and whose work I admire and which exemplifies the power that images have to tell stories without the need of words.

 I’m looking forward to seeing how my work will look when it’s displayed.  I’m extremely happy with how my business cards turned out.  I can’t wait to see the final six images set out on the board as I’ve planned it. I excited to see them together with the work of all my colleagues from the course.

I’ve gone for six images laid out in a rectangle - the top and bottom pairs are in landscape, the middle pair is in portrait. I like having the two images that well work together sandwiched between the two diptychs.  They add some variety and compliment each other, and will be separated by my business cards displayed in the centre of the board.

  Character Development

Drive, responsibility and grit are three of the things I’ve learnt most about myself and developed throughout this project. There have been many days where I really didn’t care about anything: not the project, the course, not anything in life. It took grit and drive for me to push through this phase of depression.

 By responsibility I mean the kind where I have to look after myself. “Beware the naked man offering you a shirt” is good advice I heard recently. I learnt that I can’t always help others, I need to help myself first at times, especially right now. I learnt that it’s okay to let people down sometimes and that they will be okay, and that they can go to another friend if they really need help. I learnt that good friends will be understanding if I need to take some time off. I’ve learnt the value of solitude and that it’s not just okay to be alone sometimes it’s essential.

 I found taking things day by day the most important lesson I learnt, whether that was finding my way to the river or even to the shower, going for a quick walk or a cycle ride, or sleeping out under the stars. A lot of it was feeling my emotions - if I was angry I’d be angry and would embrace it and not suppress it. If I was sad I’d be sad and I’d be with it. I discovered how much of a lifeline music was and still is to me, and I will always have nature to help me calm down and be able to sit with myself entirely with no thoughts and just be. That’s what I learnt about myself.

 The irony in all this is that all the things I did and didn’t do that I thought would result in me failing the project actually helped me navigate my challenges so that I could complete the project well and on time. Given the circumstances I am more proud of the work I’ve done for this project even though the work I did last year was objectively better and earned a Distinction. I feel proud of my accomplishments and how I’ve moved through this challenging time. The feeling I’ve had is like I’ve been paddling upstream and then finding out later I was paddling away from a very steep waterfall!