The start days 1 and 2

 This week I have started a course at CityLit London that's about Art and Design, the course runs for an academic year and is 3 days per week.

CityLit is an institution that offers many opportunities for adult learning one of the big assets is the teaching which is conducted by people who have a real life history in the topics they teach in - I started the part 1 of the course pre pandemic and here is a link to a post from early 2020

On this website I will reflect on the learning and experience, what approaches were taken, feedback from the group  and the way I felt about various aspects of the topic.

Monday  13th September 2021.

The first session was Textiles and we looked at  a presentation on  Textiles and some of the artists working in this area - funnily enough I had visited a local Arts Trail at the weekend and seen and discussed with a participating artist a textile approach using a recycling perspective  as the raw material (sort of if I can see raw for recycled) the artist was  Christine Eborall -I was surprised by the high levels of colour and the variety of material Christine used (including old crisp packets).

The techniques we used to make work in the studio on Monday were around 'Heat Press' using Disperse Dyes with both a purpose built  heat press and also  an Iron and Ironing Board.

Disperse Dyes work with synthetic materials principally polyester fabrics and a nice explanation was found here. 

 

Here are two of the outputs from my experiments - the first was using Green and yellow and to me was about nature.

Example 1

I was interested when one of the group saw it as guns as it reminded me that viewer brings their own perceptions to representations.

Second example

Here I used an iron (rather than dedicated Hot Press)  and this may account for some of the less defined image.

The process works with a use of the dye (here on an A4 sheet) which is then layered with material on the dye side of the paper layered between 2 sheets of clean newsprint to protect surfaces.

You can observe the A4 sheet followed by the print on textile :

   

The second example came from seeing and being inspired by Rothko's work at Taste Modern on many occasions. My Take-aways  were that although I felt drawn to basic and 'primitive' use others in the groups completed more detailed images. I was attracted by the random/unexpected  nature  of what came out as to the frustrations with not knowing what would emerge - I can imagine further work in this style  would help me to adjust to this and to be able to be able to visualise what an image might look like.





 

Tuesday 14th September 2021

On Tuesday we had a full day of introduction to the course with groups A and B together it was useful to hear more about the philosophy and process we will undertake with first term introducing us all to many different fields. I enjoyed seeing and hearing the views of the  people from the other group

Although much of the day was spent listening there were chances to join in and we were asked to bring in a 'free' newspaper and create something with it as well as speak about the Utopia/Dystopia project.

My intervention with the paper highlighted the extensive  coverage of new 'British'  Tennis star  Emma Raducanu - I enjoyed making something in a very short timescale and could see ways to take the initial work  further.

Here is my Metro collage - all pictures from a single edition of the paper.

Looking back on this post I note how I find collage (perhaps) a little too comfortable and am almost looking at my knowledge of 'Art' as a support in citing Rothko