OCA Workshops

OCA – Mapping & Grid Workshop – Lydia Halcrow (https://www.lydiahalcrow.com/)

I took an opportunity to attend an on-line mapping workshop with OCA tutor Lydia Halcrow.

I had looked briefly at contour lines on maps as part of my interpretation to tree rings in project 13 but couldn’t figure out a way forward. I wondered if this workshop would perhaps give me ideas to work with and to find a direction in which to take those ideas. Though at this late stage of this course I doubted I would be able to include any new ideas or practices, yet I may glean something to ‘park’ for use in the future.

Below are notes that I made before, during and after the two workshop sessions

Workshop brief –

develop and discuss ideas on how to include mapping as a way to bring in aerial imagery into drawing / painting / printmaking.

the role of maps as drawings that offer a narrative or a sense of journey either real or planned.

the grid as a way to work on multiple panels and as a tool to expand the scale of your work

Artist Notes:

the writings of Edward S Casey Earth-Mapping; Artists Reshaping Landscape (2005) “four basic ways in which mapping of any kind occurs: mapping of, mapping for, mapping with/in, and mapping out.”

Borges short story on Exactitude in Science Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley. The Art of Cartography across the generations – having read some works of Borges this is another that takes meaning from an almost  non-sensical world that is often adopted by south American / Spanish authors.

The early work of John Virtue when walking his postal round. These walks were the method he chose in which to develop his works, giving the viewer an insight into his daily world. Later in life he would take walks at the same time of day and record a particular place as a repeated theme https://www.galleriesnow.net/shows/john-virtue-40-years/

GPS tracking of walks is the focus for Jeremy Wood’s use of mapping; in particular I liked the works of the golf course and lawnmower, it is interesting to see the lawnmower works over a series of years, as time progresses the lines becomer deeper, and more intense as layers are added. https://www.jeremywood.net/artworks.html

Hockneys landscape that he revisited throughout the year, mapping the seasons.

Tim Knowles using drawing tool attached to parts of the tree that he draws. http://timknowles.co.uk/Work/TreeDrawings/tabid/265/Default.aspx

Claude Heath  https://www.claudeheath.com/Blindfold-drawings, drawing blindfolded and exploring subject by touch.

Scale & Grids. Think – How to convey a sense of the scale? Will a key help (eg map key). Is scale ambiguous, would the reader / see-er ever notice that you have downscaled or upscaled if they cannot see the object in-situ. Use a grid to collect / connect different scales into one piece. Use grid to separate, divide, re-arrange.

Grid can be used to bring smaller works together, see as a series or connected work, especially if you want to work big but don’t have the space, something I am just starting to discover, bigger is free-er, more expressive I feel as I develop work and ideas. Constrained at times by lack of space.

Grids – Break map, reform and recreate. Grids have gaps, things fall thru the gaps, grid is formal and rigid but could be adapted to breakdown structure.

Should grid be in horizontal plane or stacked in layers. Does scale up mean more detail – I would hope not.

Mapping – lives, information, characters

Movement – Chorography and gesture with body movement, something I’d briefly touched on at the beginning of this course with monoprints.

Technologies applied – Different means and methods of mapping – technology, sketches, exploration of touch

Other thoughts – In the work of Jeremy Wood I can see application. Perhaps as I walk through the woods and forest I could map my route, and maybe rather than go round in circles, like the insides of a tree, break free and veer away to form other elements out on a limb yet somehow connected. Break the circle, break the cycle, reform the path and where does it lead, is the route direct, does it meander, what points are along it. Look for / at recording different features / aspects connected by theme. Ideas to park for the future. Maps fraying at the edges.

Translate into textile – freemotion embroidery, tattered and frayed fabrics of the landscape. Printing – scratch into plates.

As my walking space has in recent weeks become smaller I have become more aware of my surroundings that I walk in. I see things that before I would never have noticed, blossom, tall trees, bees, new pathways. I am looking and searching not just seeing.

Aerial work of Edward Burtynsky – polluted rivers, mines, industrial sites, a map of human impact on the planet.

Borges cartography musings reminds me of Mappa Mundi / Greyson Perry – Map of Nowhere.

OCA – Intuitive Collage workshop – Jayne Taylor

I decided, that following tutor comment on using more collage and photocollage in my sketchbook work, that I’d sign up to this workshop as a pointer to an approach that could possibly help with my sketcbook development going forward.

The workshop brief:- Visual examples of Photocollage and how to work with magazines and papers, a discussion on ‘intuitive’ approach, 2 independant work session and a period of reflecting together on examples of what you have produced.

It was interesting to see what could be done in a short space of time with cuttings from magazines, papers and photographs, a good exercise in speed working with little thinking required to achieve a reasonable result that could perhaps be adapted further by taking key elements, drawing into, adding to or even cutting up and re-assembling.

In our reflective session it was interesting to see how other students in the group had approached their work and their process to arrive at their finished pieces.

Working at speed I didn’t have that ‘thinking feeling’, well, so I thought. But on reflection there were obviously subconcious thoughts working their way into my work. Lamb chops were on the menu for tea, and the daily battles between my dog and next doors cat, and oh how I have missed my summer festivals, travelling, been ‘climbing walls’ during lockdown and lamenting at the attempts by TV companies to reproduce that summer music environment.

https://oca.padlet.org/jayne_taylor2/m069x4qsbyn450f0

Notes :

Intuitative approach – Mind / inner self tells my outer self what to do, instinct, should be relaxed and natural, a gut feeling, I’m not conciously analysing the situation. Work leads the way, adding layers based on what is before. One mark leads to another.

Meditation – good way to ‘chill’ and relax, empty the mind before start of exercises.

Allow – yourself to play, don’t worry about imperfection, use and interpret imperfections to influence your work, no preconceived ideas.

Invite – chance, abstraction, intuition, impulse, instinct. Work and play without thinking or parameters.