FP!

As I was falling asleep last night, something hit me. Out of nowhere, some ideas just came to me in a rush all of a sudden. So I got up wrote them down on a piece of paper, as I didn't want to forget them in the morning. Needless to say when I looked at my writing in the morning, it was probably the messiest yet! I will tell you about these ideas later..
For a while now I have had these ideas for a destruction project, seeing as I wasn't getting much done last term, I thought I'd get the frustration out through my art. There were a few ideas I came up with; for example, environmental destruction, destruction of the human body, and emotional destruction. I thought about taking photos of derelict buildings, burning a few of my possessions, different ways of destroying photographs; (in destroying memories.) But my favourite destruction of the body. We destroy ourselves slowly with toxic sundstances and everyday things like food, and environment. I decided that it would be quite interesting to do a reverse photo-shoot, in that most of the women and men in these glamourous photo-shoots always looked perfect, no damage whatsoever, even if their lives are far from perfect. So, in that, I thought that I could do my own photo-shoot with the models with bruises on their eyes, messed up hair, smudged make-up, & far from perfect bodies. However, the idea I suddenly thought of last night was to incorporate healthy eating into it. Sounds a bit odd, but i thought if they look so damaged, i could have like a fun twist to it and kinda have a silent message saying, "Eat healthily and everything will be great." You know what health officials are like nowadays, they do my fucking head in shoving their philosphies down our throats, telling us how to live, what to eat, how much to exercise; because if not, you're gonna die before you turn 40! I looked at some of Tyler Shield's work and noticed that a lot of his photos have a lot of 'glamourous', but 'damaged' models. I thought that I could then do the opposite: replace this damage with an apple in their hand instead of smoking, replace the gun they are firing with a banana, replace the alcohol being poured into someone's mouth into a fruit smoothie. Basically making the 'Unglamorous' 'Glamourous'. Healthy is cool kids!
So yeh health officials, you're going to fucking love me.

John Hyatt

Well talk about good timing, John Hyatt, who gave us a talk in Hazel's creative methodology lectures, gave us a talk about Time, Space and Memories, which was exactly what I wrote my essay about. It's nice to think I'm not the only one who sees the world in such a large perspective, or should I say small. He says that the sense of scale shifts, as in we are so tiny to the world; to the universe, and too many people see just themselves, and their lives. I find this strange oddly enough, as there is so much out there. People can be so contained within themselves. We need to have a correct perspective on stress, If we look at the large things and make them small, like a small object in our pockets, then it won't seem like such a big deal. These objects can then be compared to the world, and in this way can see how irrelevant they can be. He tried to take photos of stars, but his hand couldn't stay still, and so became wiggles. This can be represented as an expression of time, as it is a linear construct, and when we look at the photo, it's like he star is in fact right next to us. We remember stories of the past, and can dream for the future, but memories need to be constructed in the now. We can also look upon this as a life span. That of a gnat is very small, it can only live for a day, and so whatever it experiences in its life is what it knows. What we experience in our life is what we know, nothing before, nothing after. Our life is the only time the universe exists, We should use the now and enjoy it and embrace change. As an artist the responsibilities become greater in knowing we have this time now, and we need to make the most of it. Art is important, but also at the same time not important, but not unimportant. Nothing to be taken too seriously. I believe this too. We will never get out alive if this is the case. Why worry about things you cannot change? The buddhist way of thinking has always interested me too, in the way they seem to lead such peaceful lives as they do not have this western way of thinking; everything needs to be done now. Meditating also helps them be a peace. The world is so beautiful, you don't have to look hard to find this out. People rush too much to see that in fact beauty is right in front of their very eyes.

'To see a world in a grain of sand,
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.'
-William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, 1803

Salvador Dali

As you all know, Salvador was a bit of a genius, and a bit of an oddball at the same time. I decided to do my 2nd essay about him, because I have always been fascinated by his 'Persistence of Memory' Painting. While analysing it, I never actually realised how deep it is.. it's all about his beliefs in time & memory. Basically warping what we believe is possible. He was all into Einstein's theory of relativity, and well basically my essay got a bit deep... here is an example..

In conclusion to this, time and memory both rely on individual perception of events, and both can alter in perception after the events. Our memory affects time and time affects our memory - both ultimately clashing to form our individual reality. I think that this is truly what Salvador Dali’s paintings were about, even though it was clearly hidden under the surface. These ideas then went on to produce his most finest works, and the ‘Persistence of Memory,’ his most iconic.

Yeh, it's a bit of a mind fuck isn't it. Anyway my brain has been overheating, so I will leave you with one of Dali's and Luis Benel's surrealist movie, "Un Chien Andalou."


Un chien Andalou (1928)

John Hegley

Okay, well a while back we had an option of getting involved in the John Hegley project where we had to do a little animation for a letter in the alphabet that was made into a poem.
Mine was.... R is for your river, watch it flood into an ocean. So here it is.. in it's completed format...

Da Vinci @ Manchester's Science Musuem

Well, I am thinking he is a bit of a genius; went to visit his works at the MOSI at last.
Found out some pretty interesting stuff I never actually realised about his work.
After that lecture we had about him like back last year, I never realised how far one person's mind can expand. Not only was he a great thinker, but he was also an inventor, a scientist who invented stuff that, in the future would be great significance to us now; with the brains to boot.
I shall give you a quick intro:
He had a keen eye and quick mind that led him to make important scientific discoveries, yet he never published his ideas.
He was a gentle vegetarian who loved animals and despised war, yet he worked as a military engineer to invent advanced and deadly weapons.
He was one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance, yet he left only a handful of completed paintings
He's an idol to say the least, he encourages us to use our mind and keep trying. He was born illegitamate, so he couldn't become a doctor or a politician. We see this as an advantage anyway, because he proved to be one of the greatest minds that existed... well in my personal opninion anyway..
In the exhibition there was a whole section about the Mona Lisa which was fascinating, like where it had been, what had happened to it.. etc.
I read that on it's travels it had been kept in secret by a worker at some musuem in Italy who was a builder I think, and had flecked a bit of paint near her eye by accident.. There was some crazy Bolivian who had a thrown a rock at it... and some varnish had been removed by accident. I have seen the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, but I didn't actually look at it as much as I did at the MOSI.. as I had never realised she was wearing veil!... The colour it is today is nothing compared to what it used to look like.. she was so beautiful!... They had used infra-red to give you an idea of in some lights what she would look like. At the time, Leonardo really was a genius.. but I never realised how much of a genius he was, and he would never know how idolised he would become.

'Where the spirit does not work with the wand, there is not art.'

URBIS IS CLOSING!

Right, so I was in town with my dearest father today and we decided to go to Urbis because he tells me it is closing; which I have to say I'm pretty gutted about! We first had a look at the top floor which was an exhibition based on evolution of television, and then went on to great tv shows in Manchester and the years they came out, going from old school faves of Steve Coogan on the box, to Morrisey giving us a tour around Stretford where he grew up, to recent tv shows such as Shameless...
It was pretty awesome cause they had all the exhibitions from the past 6 years on one tiny floor. (2nd floor.)Was interesting to revisit some of the exhibitions I had once seen, for example the way Manga has taken over the world, and the exhibition called play, which involved you having a go at getting involved in the exhibition; fiddling and mixing things. One of them involved a little chinese cat, and you had to press it's paw and it would churn out a ticket:
The one I liked the most is when they had these boxes a few feet from the floor, attached onto stands that you could stick your head in and have a look at these little minature worlds where you can learn, discover, grow, etc. Here's a little preview:I like the other random illustrations I saw along the way, without any implications to who the artists are:The first floor, was indeed a floor dedicated to hip-hop artists of Britain, and the start of hip-hop music in England. I'm not exactly a rap/hip-hop/r'n'b fan myself, but I though it was quite interesting anyway in how it's developed, from underground rap battles to mainstream artists such as Dizzee Rascal:And, well this photo just totally tickled me.. . heheThe way back to the car, which was parked in the Northern Quarter, we had a spot of english breakfast tea & quiche in Mr.Scruff's tea shop which was amazing! I can't believe I have never come across it before. I saw this plastered on a wall on the way back, and thought it was too wonderful to not take a photo of::D

Dialogue Box

Last Thursday a few of us from my class went to an event at the Manchester Art Gallery of which involved a box of objects. Sounds more interesting than it sounds! It basically involved us choosing a random object out the box which combined two normal objects to create something weird and unusual. The woman leading us told us we had to link the object to a painting/sculpture/object in the art gallery with a story, which created some very interesting results. It was quite amusing hearing what other people came up with, and also produced a different way of thinking. I linked this strange hand thing to a painting of a few guys running away from a robbery? Whatever we depicted it.. I thought the hand was his object to use so that he wouldn't get caught for leaving fingerprints anywhere, so like an escape object. Eventually he did get caught, but he turned out to be Houdini, so he escaped leaving just the hand behind. We went to the history section of paintings which I thought in a way was easier to link the objects, except this time we got given a random word that we had to link to the painting as well as the object we chose. Mine was an unmbrella frame with ping pong balls and my word was INSIDE. So, I chose a painting of a man towering over a man curled on the floor who appeared to be in pain, and so described that the man standing over him used the umbrella frame as a magical implement and used it to explode the other man's insides for insulting him. Of which I'm sure he will have regretted!
Overall it was quite a rewarding but random experience, of which I'm sure I will put to use in the future. It's always helpful in getting ideas on how to think differently. I'm sure you will agree!

Hai

Hay, I do believe this is my first blog! I should have really started this a couple of weeks ago, but let's see how this goes...

"There are shortcuts to happiness and dancing is one of them"- Vicki Baum; Novelist.

I think in many aspects this is true, but in more ways than one, I believe the same about art. Obviously me being an artist, I am going to think like this, but I think it is too true. There really are simple ways to happiness that many people don't see as they are blinded by complications. As an artist I do believe you see things in a different way; like the freckles on your face to the tiles on a ceiling. Every detail is unique.
Art makes me happy. So this is what I'm doing. Doing what makes me happy. The next step is seeing where that gets me.