09/03/2010 by James.

I’ve been spending some time exploring objects, both real and imagined, this week, developing ideas for new sculptures and assemblages.

I’m continuing to look at the links between body and environment and man/nature - exploring and blurring these learnt perceptual boundaries, by a simple combination of found objects and materials.

The sketches are a way of playing with different objects and images that I collect from around me, to see what these new relationships say about them, about the places that the objects are normally found or the body on which they might be worn or held by/against, etc - its about supporting a kind of dialogue between myself, the objects, the materials, and any ‘viewer’.

What do they say when they come together, and how does our perception of them change?

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18/02/2010 by James.

 An example of some work currently in progress in my studio involving adapted printed pages and found objects… finding stories in the way that discarded objects and everyday fragments come together.

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18/02/2010 by James.

A few images of wrapped and bound objects that I’ve been gathering together for inspiration, as I return to work that combines found objects and materials as evidence of place, and of a multi-layered, multi-sensory experience of the world.

(left to right - Gail Rieke, Craig Roper, Chris Drury and Diana Cooper)

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17/02/2010 by James.

I’ve been taking some time out from project-based work this week, to explore and re-inspire myself, a bit of a pit-stop and a recap of what I want to do in my own work.

Now that I have a few projects on the go to feed my more sociable side and to learn from that kind of dialogue, I can also start making more room to focus on the individual side of my practice, and create more of a balance again.

Yesterday I went to The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust at Slimbridge and wandered around photographing the birds. The ones I took in the tropical house, where the condensation blurred the images, are some of my favourites, like this image where the beautiful sheen on the trumpeter bird’s breast feathers glints through the mist.

Today I spent time in West Woods near where I live - quiet time, taking it all in, the quiet whispering, rustling, echoing noises, and the treasures laid out at my feet.

I am re-connecting with simpler, earlier work that came out of gathering/collecting objects and materials that catch my eye, bringing them together on the spot with natural fibres and clays, then letting the materials speak of the places and experiences that link them.

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03/02/2010 by James.

Things are busy again at the moment, with artists selected for the new Kingston-Upon-Thames 5×5x5=creativity cluster, and a professional development day happening with them and the schools on Friday.

I’m also in the process of setting up the Stonehenge Young People’s Panel with English Heritage, and have got an Art & Identity project next week with a secondary school in Highworth, so will add info and images from those as things develop.

Meanwhile, I’ve been grabbing calm moments to get out and see what’s happening. The light is changing now, I can feel Spring in the air and the bulbs are pushing slowly up out of the frozen soil.

I was up on a hill near us the other day, getting my dose of clear cool air and wide open space above the Vale of Pewsey.

The ground was frozen solid, and in the woods that cling to the side of the hill, the cold had frozen the most beautiful patterns into puddles and footprints in the once wet, sloppy mud, now frozen so hard that wet chalk grew stems of ice crystals and the imprints of raindrops that had fallen a day or two before, had been captured like miniature spiky, volcanic landscapes.

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13/01/2010 by James.

  Not an original title for a post but hey… its everywhere at the moment, you can’t avoid it, and it certainly adds an element of excitement to early January. Things look fresh, shapes and patterns stand out like never before, and our embedded-ness within nature is in-escapable. The snow stops us from getting to places, covers up our cars and gardens, and takes over our lives… at least for a short while.

Personally I find it quite refreshing to see how weather can change the way we relate to the world around us. I know it can be hard, frustrating and even dangerous, but it also gives us permission to play, and to stop and stare at beautiful everyday things. It alters our perception of the world around us by literally changing the shape of things, the way that they look and feel. Wonder becomes a part of our lives as water freezes into clear sparkling blocks, and soft white clumps fall from the sky.

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07/01/2010 by James.

As with most people, at this time of year, I have had time to look back over 2009 and my achievements in my practice as an artist, and start to think about where I want to go from here.

It looks like 2010 is going to be really busy in terms of my participatory and consultancy work which is great - some really interesting and challenging pieces of work and opportunities to learn alongside children, teachers and other artists.

So I’m starting to think about what I want to focus on in more individual work, my own personal research through doing and making; what did I start in this last year that I’d like to build on, and what have I neglected that I could kick-start in the coming months?

I’m determined to spend more time outdoors and a little less on the computer, I want to explore the role of drawing and what it means to me, and I want to continue to make work which explores the value of time spent interacting with my physical, sensory environment - the landscape that I live and work in and the other ‘beings’ with whom I share it.

My work with children through initiatives such as 5×5x5=creativity, continuously reminds me of the need to support each individual to follow their own path, and to trust in their innate creativity. At times I look back to my own childhood and start to unpick where present interests came from and which ones I have left behind. Some of those that I didn’t carry on were so important to me so why did I just drop them?

Often in these moments of reflection, I get to the time in my life when I started my Fine Art degree and I see why I dropped those discarded interests, or ways of interpreting and exploring the world. My experience at college was a really valuable one, but the way that it was taught was not person-centred, or student led, it was much more a kind of channelling or grooming for a place in the art world. I think arts education has a lot to learn from the 5×5x5 model.

One thing that I am returning to more and more is drawing. One of my earliest memories is drawing birds from Tony Soper’s Bird Table Book. Drawing was something I did all the time, right through my life, until college, when it became something we did on Wednesdays, or a way of planning a piece of sculpture, or a drawing held tightly in a sketchbook.

What I want to return to is drawing as a means of exploring and making sense of the world, drawing for play, drawing for pleasure, without such a fixed end product in mind.

Wonder, the piece that I showed in the recent Salisbury Arts Centre Drawing Open, was not created as a drawing, but was exhibited as one. This has led me to start looking at different examples of drawing recently and asking other people what they think drawing is. Does anybody know?

The Tracey online journal - an electronic open access journal dedicated to the presentation of drawing and the discussion of drawing practice - inspired me by its inclusion of photographs of ‘found drawings’, so when I planned to be in the studio yesterday and couldn’t get there because of snow, I went out with Moshi (our dog) and looked around me at the marks and shapes highlighted by the fresh white snow that was resting on every surface.

Are these my photos my drawings? Are my collages drawings? Is the way that I gather together information, experiences, materials and people a drawing together that is my own way of drawing?

I’m not sure at the moment, I’m just going to allow myself to play with drawing, and to see what happens - to pick back up a piece of my creative ‘toolbox’ that I felt I had lost along the way.

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14/12/2009 by James.

A beautiful cold day yesterday up in the Pewsey Downs NNR. Lovely to get back up above everything and breathe in the wide open spaces.

Taken into the low bright sun, I like the way that the phone photos distort, blur and change the colour slightly, taking on a more painterly, dreamlike feel, with the tonal quality of an old faded postcard.

There’s more info on Adams Grave longbarrow on Walkers Hill and the surrounding area on the Natural England website - http://www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/designatedareas/nnr/1006120.aspx

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09/12/2009 by James.

I went in to the studio today to have a bit of a blitz… to clear out old images on the walls and generally de-clutter. I wanted to clear the space and clear my mind and to focus on what’s really important in my work.

But that’s just the point, when I start to think about it I know what’s important to me in terms of my focus and my values, but its not all that easy to work out if/how that comes across to others.

I can know that my participatory work supports people to explore themselves and their environment creatively, because I’m there with them, I get the feedback and I can get involved in the evaluation. And I know that this work feeds me, that I learn about how people can use art to learn in creative and ‘joined-up’ ways.

BUT… when I make more individual work, how do I or any other artist for that matter, know what effect it has on anyone else, unless you are actually there with them?

I had an interesting conversation with one of my 5×5x5=creativity colleagues yesterday, about the relationship of participatory and individual practice. In some ways it worries me that my work on projects such as 5×5x5 is focused on the importance of the creative process, and yet the next day I might be in my studio making a wall-based piece for exhibition, that I will leave and walk away and never really know if it is having any positive impact.

And yet, I reassured myself today that its okay, because, as I wrote in my sketchbook…

the artwork acts as an indicator of the level of personal/environmental awareness, whilst the process of exploring that leads to and informs the creation of the artwork supports the development of such an integrated awareness of self & environment.

The artefact is the evidence of the process and of its effects on the perception of the individual (me).

The creation of the artwork also further supports a sensory exploration of the world in a more focused way, and (if made in the right way) can act as a conduit for the flow of life energy, through the senses, through the individual and into the artwork.

So, as I came to realise after clearing the clutter, and (s)crawling across a rolled out sheet of paper to get my ideas ‘out-there’, how the different areas of my practice link up and relate to each other…

I am researching culturally influenced perception  (its impact on our learning, our behaviour and the ecosystems on which we depend), and its relationship to more direct, individual, sensory engagement. My resulting work supports the development of greater understanding of the relationship between the two, and the gap between them.

I am breaking down the perceptual barriers to direct engagement with ‘the one’ and ‘the now’… my research and my explorations inform my own understanding, which in turn supports my work’s ability to engage with its audience.

In other words I don’t need to make someone feel anything or think anything specific. I just need to provide the audience of my work, whether object based or participatory, access to a place where they can engage with the stuff of the world, and the issues that I am interested in, and allow them to gain from that experience in whatever way they need to at that point in time, as part of their own learning journey.

…Phew!

(by the way, the scruffy dog at the top is Moshi, who often accompanies me on my adventures, and was patient enough to wait in my studio, so I thought I’d include her too.)

Since writing this post I came across the following article on twitter (via @dryearth) which looks at the experience of the artwork by the artist/ audience, and the context within which the work is created/experienced -

Situated Cognition, Dynamic Systems, and Art: On Artistic Creativity and Aesthetic Experience - Ingar Brinck

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03/12/2009 by James.

I was back in the studio yesterday and it felt great - I didn’t have my camera with me so not such great quality photos…

I want to do more map-based pieces on native wildlife and previously native species which may be re-introduced. I’m fascinated by the idea of re-wilding areas of our country, and the red kite, sea eagle, beaver and crane introductions that have been happening or are in the pipeline now.

I’m also itching to get back into some more 3-D pieces, maybe which combine found objects/materials and fragments of man-made clothing or other ‘detritus’, so watch this space….

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