Wrexham: the void July 2013
Location: The Old hotel rooms (above JJB regent street, Wrexham).
Lift and stair access.
Erica Taylor, Mikey Jones & Mike Corcoran.
We propose to stage an interactive exhibition in Wrexham town centre addressing the issue of why we paint this small welsh town. The plan is to make the venue as accessible as possible to all sections of the pubic especially the people who don’t tend to visit art galleries often if at all.
The content of the work looks at the people and places in Wrexham from two polar perspectives. These consist of a series of 8 colorful landscapes painted in oil on canvas within the town centre and surrounding area and a series of 8 portrait paintings documenting people that walk the streets of the town. Interactive attraction place here?
They will be an added sensory experience in the form of sound. Including narratives on what it was like to grow up in Wrexham from Mike Corcoran’s late grandfathers. Sounds of the river dee and present Wrexham town centre and it’s people.
Hello !!
Lately I’ve been drowning in a sea of post-its, to-do lists and sticky labels! The Metaforestry project i have been involved in has completely taken off! We were scheduled to do a’scratch performance’ as part of Wrexham’s Creative International, unfortunately a bout of laryngitis meant that this had to be cancelled.
Since my last post about this project we have undergone a physical transformation as a group. Adopopting the Psychogeographers persona to the full!
As you can see from the above picture, we have been busy bees. As ‘resident artist’ I am responsible for illustrating any publications and getting the ‘look’ of metaforestry right. The backdrop was made using hessian sack, i mod podged skeleton leaves to wool branches and by accident added the hangers upside down, so in meta-world the trees grow from the sky
Emmi and Sophie were genius in putting together their individual looks and I think the costumes are spectacular and ‘wyrd’
Here is a link to the ‘Bird head process‘ . I made the bird head based off this illustration and as a way to overcome chronic stage fright!
Metaforestry have already been booked to perform at Wilderness festival, Uncivilisation, and various other events. Its very all very exciting !
This week I will be heading over to Leicester to begin setting up an exhibition dreamed up on a lovely beach by the Great Orme. CARU ( welsh meaning to love) will be a showcase of welsh female artists, myself included but also the work of the extremely talented and beautiful Sophie Nina and the Amazing and gorgeous ‘spoon bender’ Kristen Rollinson of Spoonery Jewellery. We will be exhibiting work in the Gallery HQ from May 4th and I am going to be displaying my portraits and show casing a new piece I recently completed of Danny Trejo. Watch this space!
I have recently been applying like crazy for creative gallery run opportunities both locally and internationally and I have so far been unsuccessful.
I Think my main hurdle may be two main things:
1) My lack of experience
2) My lack of experience when it comes to writing creative applications
I have a CV. Its very standard and includes various key phrases taken from the job application hand book, such as ‘hardworking and punctual’ and ‘works very well on her own, but is equally capable working within a team’. I hate it. My curriculum vitae is not the essence of me. I think if i could deliver a visual application where my prospective employer could see how genuinely keen for the job I actually was then I would have no trouble securing my interview.
So, how can i make my applications scream ‘PICK ME’ ??
Ive so far applied for gallery internships and opportunities to invigilate exhibitions, and curator apprenticeships. Tailoring my CV to each of these is fairly simplistic. I have just been honest and enthusiastic. But i think I am being perpetually let down by my lack of experience. I need to get it to get so fingers crossed.
This years Creative Futures week was extremely helpful for me. At the beginning of the week I attended various lectures about marketing, branding, being a children’s book illustrator, being self employed, motivation, design. Amongst all the meetings three in particular have affected my decisions post university.
The first was ‘Being a children’s book illustrator’ delivered by Kirsteen Harris Jones. I was completely engrossed in her talk about life as a full time children’s book illustrator. It was helpful to get a glimpse into what life is like in this profession, and i was completely put off it. It was good to get some realism, because I have been under some illusion that I would be able to illustrate full time and I was totally oblivious to the type of effort and commitment it takes to do that as a job full time and more. I realise that if you are passionate about illustration then to do this full time and self employed would be a dream. I was put off because I am under no illusions of how unmotivated I can become and i really don’t think I could stay up until the early hours finishing of work for deadlines, balance my own books, handle my own contracts and the rest. I started to panic. AT that point i realised that i had absolutely no idea what i would do post university. I had no direction and I felt desolate!
I then attended two talks the subsequent day that would really inspire me and give me some comfort that ‘all was not lost.
The first talk was ‘Teaching as an option for students in the creative field’ delivered by Ursula Bryne. I’d obviously considered teaching as an option for me at stages through out my life but didn’t think i would be academically capable and brushed that pipe dream immediately to the side. But during this talk I amazed that I was totally capable of having a go at a PGCE post degree. It had become a real achievable goal. Ursula took us step by step through the process of application, funding, academic requirements, how the study is orientated and the differences between primary and secondary teaching in terms of courses run and practical work experience.
This realistic ‘next step’ was fortified after attending a talk entitled ‘from student to artist’ by Michael Robinson, an ex Glyndwr fine art student. During this talk I discovered parallels in the direction Michaels art had steered him and it was refreshing to see an artist take leaps out of their comfort zone, sometimes fail but on the journey from student to professional artist have an adventure. He stated how important the decision for him to go and study teaching in Bolton was for him as he was then able to finance his professional artist practice through temping and residencies.
Subsequent to these meetings I have since began my application process to PGCE. My Personal statement is complete and I am particularly interested in Secondary Art, as I would love to effect a young persons ongoing love of creativity and play a small role in their artistic journey. I am just awaiting confirmation of teaching experience in Shrewsbury to come through and I will be able to send off my application. Fingers Crossed
This is my third year of an illustration degree and i feel pressurised to accomplish some kind of style within my work. I have been criticised for being exceptionally broad in practice and this makes my portfolio look messy and un-uniformed. This is the first time I have ever felt it necessary to subdue my creative ‘flow’ in order to produce a uniformed collection of work that will then leave me with a nice professional portfolio to show to clients.
This feels wholly unnatural to me and so I am left waiting eagerly for my degree to finish so that then I may just be able to paint and create freely. I realise this is an ambitious want in an illustration degree. A degree that is (and the reason i opted to do it) much more career focused and practical then a more fine art direction.
I feel lost. I feel as if the work i am now producing is alien to me and i am churning out simplified rubbish instead of the more rigorous and detailed work i can escape into.
I am pining for my paint and brushes.
I have never been one to produce reels of preperation either. Often my sketchbook work are final pieces, first done first out.
Basically I wonder if all studiers of the arts face similar quandaries? It seems as if all the other students on my degree are like fish in water, and I am struggling to breath.
Is it because I am stubborn? possibly, but my art is never something I enjoy exploring, i prefer to just do it and then move on to the next new adventure.
That is all for now
Thanks for letting me rant
Alot of my ‘out of uni’ work and commissionable work is portraits, well definately mostly. Sometimes I am asked to paint family members and pets but more often I am asked to paint a scene from a movie or a celebrity.
I hadn’t really thought about things like copyright infringement until I started to exhibit my work.
For example here is a portrait I finished of the actor Adrien Brody 
I did it purely for fun and was asked if I had any work id like to show at a gallery in Cardiff last year. I thought I would submit this image but legally am i infringing on copyright and if so is it off the celebrity and their representatives, of the photographer of the original picture I used as reference or even of the publishers of the book the image was printed in?
Any artwork that is taken from a photograph is known as derivative work, according to some sources the copyright then lies with the photographer, and law usually states that a complete replica of the photo is infringement of copyright, but some works do come with certain licenses which allow for reproduction.
In short if I were to exhibit the replica painting I would be liable (especially since I hadn’t even checked the photographers copyright statement) and this risk is increased ever more by selling the image. However it seems that there is alot of mixed messages and fuzzy lines.
Shepard Fairey an American Street artist is a good case study as he has had many run in’s with legal matters relating to his use of various celebrity images and also on the other hand with people using and manipulating his work.
The lines seem fuzzy but in black and white its always wise to check an images copyright statement.
ezpaintpotface 