What are the chances?

Right! Time to roll up the sleeves this Autumn and blog! I've been really neglecting it lately, partly from busyness, then from being on holiday, and then simply from a bit of blogging inertia, but that's all going to change! Oh yes! Really!

Ok, so what have I been up to? Well, loads of stuff. The Geocaching project I mentioned in the last post has finished now, and I think it was pretty successful. As a side shoot from that I have got quite into going Geocaching as a hobby, so maybe more about that another time. As I mentioned, we set up a Geocache to go on the global network as part of the project, but having submitted it I haven't been given the OK by the official Geocaching organisation, so it's not live yet. Chasing that up is one of the things on my "to do" list, so I'll let you know if it does make it. Having found a few official Geocaches myself now, I have a feeling they may ask us to move it, as it's currently pretty easy to find.

Other than that, I've been away in Hungary for three weeks. Hungary is kind of my second home, as it's where my husband's from, and I lived there with him for five years in 2000-2005, and we still go back regularly to see family and friends. 

We were based in Budapest which was a great place to live, and was/is full of young creative people making waves at ground level, not least my friend Peti, aka Petyka, who's a super talented street artist. Check out his website for lots of examples of his work, but here's one of my favourites, featuring lots of Budapest's architectural landmarks both famous and everyday, mixed up and given a cool urban twist. We own this as a large print and it always reminds me of Budapest whenever I glance at it.

Anyway, what I was trying to say was, although there's a good creative energy in the place, one thing it was lacking was a really good art gallery that put on internationally important shows. I've seen lots of interesting smaller exhibitions in various places over the years, but the national collections don't have a lot of great art in them, and the bigger shows have also been a bit lacking in star quality. However, I've been to a couple of art shows in the Hungarian National Gallery in the last year or so that make me think they are really trying to up their game. The first was a show about Post-Impressionism that I saw back in October that was excellent, and on this trip I saw a show about Dada and Surrealism that was awesome. Read more about it at the museum's webpage. It was full of really great work by the big names of the movement(s), and it was particularly resonant for me as I have been reading a book lately about chance in art that talked about a lot of the artwork here, including Marcel's Duchamp's 3 Standard Stoppages

In this work, Duchamp took metre long lengths of thread, and let them fall onto a canvas covered in glue. He then made these wooden measuring tools based on these new "standard" shapes that he had randomly created. This really chimed with a lot of things I have been thinking about in my art lately, where I want to try and actively re-create the chance marks you can see in my photographs. But how to make "random" marks? This is the question I've been trying to solve. I'm not sure I've come up with the answer yet, but here was my first attempt...

Yeah, so it's a random video of me hitting tennis balls covered in paint against some old wallpaper. Pretty surrealist, huh? I actually did this a few months ago. I had the idea and just went for it. This again shows the benefit of having a studio, you can try these crazy things and not worry that you're going to get paint everywhere. I want to try again in a bigger space, and maybe with more people involved instead of just me. But in the meantime, I think it did produce some pretty interesting images. Not sure what I'm going to do with them, but they're interesting.

Ok, as usual, more to tell you about, but let's do it later, OK?

The Chosen Few Pt 2

Well, that was hardly soon, but I am back! As usual, way more to tell you than I probably have time for, but I'll try and squeeze in as much as I can!

OK, so first to deal with those topics I mentioned in my last post. First I'll wrap up this whole "chosen few" thing. So, yeah, basically, this is something I'm discovering about the art world, and I think it's kind of a rubbish thing. It just feels like the art world is a pretty elitist, snobby and unfriendly place, where those lucky few at the top who get all the attention/commissions/prizes/exhibitions whatever, are very reluctant to help or even interact with those further down the pecking order. A recent example; an artist I just discovered on Saatchi Art, whose work I think is AMAZING, but also very much like mine except in paint, and is very successful, didn't bother to reply to my very effusive email or the friend request I sent her on that website. Just a small thing, but it kind of bugged me, and I do remember thinking to myself after I looked at their website "Wow, they've had loads of exhibitions, I bet they won't get back in touch with me, they're so successful!". And my pessimism was correct. Anyway, that's a small thing compared to my next complaint. As I think I mentioned before, I went to a talk by a successful London based art curator, who has been responsible for putting on loads of big shows and working with lots of famous artists. Her advice about approaching galleries? Well, it was pretty depressing. I don't think she meant to do this, I really think she was trying to be helpful, but the basic message she sent out was "Curators are busy people, artists are always trying to get to meet them, you're really kind of an annoyance, so don't bug them too much". OK, I'm exaggerating for effect, but that really was the effect what she said had on me. Let's examine a fews key things she said:

1.Don't just send in work unsolicited to galleries, you need to build up a personal relationship with a curator if you want them to show your work.
2. On the other hand, don't expect curators to have time to talk to you at opening evenings, they are there to promote that artist's work, not talk to aspiring artists.
3. When an curator gives a talk, that's a good time to go and introduce yourself, perhaps by dropping into the conversation that the work they were talking about inspires you. (Yeah, I thought. Go join the line of all the other desperate aspiring artists all keen to compliment your talk, as it is the only opportunity they will have to meet you, and you only do it every few months.)
3. Most of the artist's they work with are people they've worked with before, or have been recommended to them by those artists or other curators.

So basically, she built up this picture of a really closed circle of elite artists and curators who all work with each other, and who don't want to be disturbed by us mere mortals, because, y'know, they're really busy doing ART! This talk kind of depressed me, as you can probably tell. Also, in my mind at least, confirming this theory, I didn't get into the Open West show. I sent in £42 entrance fee just to be considered, so these guys are happy taking money of us mere mortals, just not showing our work. (Incidently, I partly did this because the curator said you must enter shows, because even if your work isn't selected, at least it gets seen by a curator. Great. £42 well spent then.)

So, as you can tell, I'm a little fed up. But I'm not gonna let that stop me! I know I've had a problem in the past about getting one rejection and then going home and feeling like setting fire to all my work, because it must be all rubbish, and I know that to survive in this business, I need to get more resilient. And you know what? Like I said before, I am honest with myself, and I really do feel, deep down, that my work is good, so that makes me stronger. Now I just have to figure out how to convince all those people at the top of the food chain about that!

Right, well I am actually off out to go see some art now, in the form of the "Diagrams" show at the Holden Gallery, so I have to dash. Actually, when I first conceived of this blog I intended it to be a lot more about going to see other artist's work as well as my own ups and downs, and actually I have recently gone to see several really cool things, but as usual, it will have to wait until next time!

Ok, in the meantime, as a counterpoint to all that doom and gloom, here's something new I've been working on. It was initially in response for a request for work for an exhibition on the theme of "Speculative Futures", which I may or may not still enter - the deadline is tomorrow.
My inspiration, as a Sci Fi geek, was the question that's been on my mind a lot lately, about whether we will ever colonise Mars. (There was an awesome programme about this on the BBC recently, plus the "Mars" trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, that deals exactly with this issue, are some of my favourite ever books). I was thinking - would mankind at this moment make a good job of colonising Mars, or would we be destined to make all the same mistakes we do here on Earth? So this piece kind of came out of that. I made it from photos I took all within about a mile radius of my flat, so if it looks Mars like to you, I'll be pleased!

"Mars Future?"

Actually, this piece raises another issue I'm struggling with at the moment. Can something made entirely in a computer be hung on a gallery wall as "Art"? This piece does look a bit "Graphic Design-y" for want to a better expression. If I had more time, I might have printed it out and painted over it. I did make another version as a painting, which I'll maybe post next time. It's the first painting I've done in ages and I'm about 85% happy with it. But maybe splashing a bit of paint around is what my work is lacking at the moment, at least in the eyes of those that make decisions about these things....
OK, running late. More soon(isn)!

New Exhibition, New Camera, New Pics!

Lots of new developments to tell you about! The main one is of course, the ongoing exhibition at Eccles Community Art Gallery. The first day that was open to the public was the Saturday just gone, so I went down there for the whole day to go and meet people and chat about my work. The gallery was pretty busy, I think mainly because one of the other artists exhibiting was a local man whose family has posthumously put on an exhibition of his work and invited down many other relatives and family friends. I chatted to several of these people, and sold a few prints to one of them, which was great! I also had a steady stream of other people who came and looked at my work over the course of the day, so as usual I had lots of nice chats about art with people, which I always enjoy. I also got interviewed by a journalist from Salford Online. I've just checked the website and it doesn't appear to be up yet - I will of course post a link to it from here when it comes online.
Ok, here's some photos of the gallery and me and my work hung in it:

The gallery as seen from the outside

The proud artist trying(and failing) to strike a natural looking pose

The work

The exhibition will be up until the 8th of February, and the gallery is open Tuesdays (10am - 3pm) and Saturdays (10am - 4pm) during that period. I will be there most Saturdays, probably just for a two hour time slot, so if you're in the area, do please come on down and say hello!

In other news…. I finally have a new camera! I haven't really mentioned it here much before, but ever since I have gone full time as an art photographer, ironically, I haven't had a camera! I dropped my beloved and much used old Minolta back in June, and as it was badly in need of replacing anyway (I'd had it for about 8 years, which in technology terms is about a century I guess), I didn't even try to get it fixed. Instead, I was planning to buy a new one myself when the sale of our house went through and we released some of the equity tied up in that. But, as regular readers will know, that isn't exactly going to plan, so luckily for me my lovely family clubbed together and bought me one as a Christmas/Birthday/You Owe Us Big Time present.
 I wasn't sure what to go for, so I bought a photography mag and scanned all the reviews, and then with a little research I found the shop in Manchester that seems to cater to professional photographers; a place called Calumet. So I went there and they were really helpful and gave me pretty good advice I think, and in the end I plumped for a Canon EOS 70D

It's not like a real serious professional photographer's camera, but I would say it's probably at the top end of the fairly ambitious hobby photographer's range, and I think that's as good as I need for the type of images I take. Because the photographs I take are pretty up close I also splashed out and got a fancy new Macro lens as well, which will hopefully add another dimension to my photography, so I'm really excited about that. I've only had it just over a week, and I haven't taken it for a good long photography session outside yet (hopefully soon!), but just in playing around with it and learning it's basic functions I've already seen how much better it is than my old camera, so I'm really excited about the kind of shots I should be able to get with it!

One of the jobs I've been doing so far this week, is editing and photoshopping the huge backlog of images I have , from way back when I went to Hungary in October. I borrowed my mother-in-law's Nikon on that trip, and took about 300 of my "Photo Abstract" images there, which I've only slowly begun to process, partly because I knew I already had such a large back catalogue of images to use for launching myself on the art scene. But I'm a big believer in keeping things fresh and challenging yourself to do new things, and now I have my new camera I can do that. So, I've made a deal with myself that I have to get these "old" photos processed before I can fully move onto the new stuff.

You don't always know until you do the Photoshop magic on them, which shots are going to turn out to be your best, and I'm not sure whether any of the ones I've processed yet are up there with my very best work, but here are some of the highlights of the 100 or so pictures I've done so far:

Maybe slightly different colour palettes than usual for me; I've noticed blue is a colour that seems to dominate my work a lot, I guess because of the nautical subject matter of some of them. Anyway, these are in warmer, and more pastel shades than is typical for me, which I like about them.
Drop me a line and let me know what you think of them if you like!

OK, there's loads more news to share, but in the name of brevity lets leave it there for now, and I'll be back soon with the rest of the updates.

The passe-partout, or, how to mount your artwork.

So, my current project is to figure out how to mount my own prints. In the past I have always had them done professionally by the same guy that framed them as well. So, this is a cost cutting exercise, but of course, I have to make sure it's done to a really high standard, as I'm going to be selling these prints to the public!

Of course, I did what every self-respecting person who wants to learn a new skill would do... I looked on You Tube! At first I was a bit discouraged, as none of the videos seemed to be quite what I wanted. Lots of the videos concerned something called dry mounting, which I realised wasn't the technique for me, partly because it involved lots of expensive equipment that I didn't possess. So I did a bit more digging, and realised that what I wanted was a window mount, like so:

 Some people use what's called the hinge method, which I think is particularly good if you want to preserve the photograph as much as possible and not rule out the possibility of re-mounting it in the future. It's kind of fiddly though:

Finally, I found a video that seemed to be exactly what I was looking for. The only problem, it's in French. However, the visual instructions are so clear I don't think it really matters. Check it out:

The clip refers a lot to the "passe-partout" which I only recently discovered is the name of the bit that's called the "mat" in the diagrams above. I found this out on my recent trip to Budapest, where I went to visit a friend of my mother-in-law called Katalin Albert, who is actually a professional passe-partout maker. It seems like a weird thing to specialise in, but she has elevated it to an art form all it's own, finding very special vintage and handmade papers, textiles and even small 3D objects to decorate that area, and in some cases transforming the original artwork into something new or more complex. Unfortunately there are very few examples of her work on the internet, but here's the little I managed to find on her website.

I might try and do something elaborate like this with some of my prints one of these days, but for now I'll be happy if I can just master the basics!