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January 2015

29/1/2015

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January saw our first meeting for 2015, being the second of a revised bimonthly schedule and it was good to be back at MadLab proper, albeit still a ‘work in progress’ affair that saw us climbing slightly unfinished feeling stairs and avoiding the brick dust!
With three ‘core’ members present, it didn’t take long to get stuck into the chat! Kevin started things off by reminding us of a couple of his recent and ongoing projects; those of the Cave Painting work and the 53 Views project. Whilst the Cave Painting work, projecting and drawing inside pill boxes, is for now, as complete as creative projects ever are, 53 Views has been on pause while a bit of a refocus takes place. The initial concept for the work was to produce 53 photographs from a specific square window in Kevin’s flat (apartment number 53), to reflect the square Instagram format. This lost steam, however and the parameters are likely to evolve, permitting a greater variety of ‘views’. Retitled Windows this work would then encompass photos take from train windows as well as existing images from the flat and of other locations.
Kevin Linnane Cave Art
Kevin Linnane; Cave Art
Renate Wendel - Self Portrait
Renate Wendel; Self Portrait
Renate had been getting back into drawing with the Apple a Day series (See November 2014 CRITblog), work she has been continuing to a degree but which has also been overtaken by explorations in a few other creative areas. Some of this includes outcomes from life drawing classes, as well as sketches of musicians at various concerts. She’s also been reengaging with practical skills in the area of jewellery making, selling beaded and ceramic items at craft fairs. Whilst she has enjoyed this venture, it is unlikely to form a significant strand of future work as she explained that the ‘production line’ process did not appeal to her. This was something I could certainly identify with following my own experience of selling crafts and though Kevin suggested producing ‘limited edition’ ranges, Renate felt that once all the costs were factored in it was unlikely to ever be cost effective. At this point the conversation made James’ absence (due to the snow forecast) palpable and I felt sure he would have had much to contribute to that particular discussion!
Renate has also been making the most of access to a black and white darkroom at Start in Salford, where she has been volunteering, to revisit these skills. She shared a self portrait with us, as well as some photograms designed to function as bookmarks (she likes work to have a purpose, she explained) and talked about ideas for moving in to the area of contact prints. ‘Get yourself some good quality acetate!’ advised experienced photographer Kevin!

For my own part, I was able to share a new painting in the Serenity Series as well as a minor evolution in my own perception of this work; the question of whether or not ‘art’ that has been identified to have some therapeutic value (as opposed to enjoyment, as previously discussed) to the creator can really be classed as ‘art’. This led on to some analysis of the source of such perceptions, traditional academic views of this as part of arts educational institutions and established or well known examples in contradict of such dismissal, Tracy Emin and Sarah Lucas amongst others.
Annabeth Orton Heart Sutra
Annabeth Orton; Heart Sutra; Go Beyond
As I have recently been in the unfortunate position of being unwell and not in work, I have had time to be gently flexing some other creative muscles and so shared with the group a recent collation of old and new poems (I even read one out!) as well as the fruits of my other labours in the form of baking; a gugelhupf in this case! I explained that I find cooking a very soothing activity, as well as actually quite creative and this certainly fed in (no pun intended) to the whole ‘what is art anyway!?’ debate. I’d already responded to this by describing Scott McCloud’s suggestion that art is any human activity that cannot be directly related to a need to survive, (as Renate pointed out, you can survive by eating the berries from the bush but do you need to spend time and effort turning them into jam?) and it was equally relevant to earlier conversation about art as therapy; where does mental and emotional survival fit in to the definition and how does that support or refute each perspective? Renate had explained that her voluntary work brought her into contact with people who had actually been prescribed a course of creative activity to help treat various mental health conditions and it didn’t seem entirely random that our conversation had come at least in some respects, full circle.
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May 2012

24/5/2012

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Picture

Danbo is tempted by the fresh summery snacks...

It was quite a small group this month but no less varied for it. Tammy Leigh, James Sharp and I started off chatting informally about craft stalls before I’d even really noticed we were properly ‘in session’! We mostly discussed the reasons behind lower than expected sales at local art fairs and festivals and tried not to point the finger too exclusively at the recession without being more widely questioning. We all agreed that there was a tendency for such events to attract visitors who have no intention of buying anything at all, but while these may not be immediately lucrative opportunities they still present a useful method of raising interest in work. This interest can later manifest as online sales or interest in workshops. Additionally, we talked about the benefits of making whilst supervising a stall to be time efficient and more importantly provide talking points and interest for potential shoppers. This can also be an effective way of demonstrating that the work is genuinely hand made. The potential for selling and running workshops simultaneously raised both pros and cons; a problem if it makes you inaccessible to make a sale but of benefit if you can make sales relating to the workshop content (such as craft kits, etc.)

James Sharp shared three new journals with us today, a Cook Book (with pages for notes and recipes), a Stuff Stash (a book-based format of an existing textile product; for keeping notes and loose pages together) and a Lazy Journal (for those who enjoy the aesthetics of his work but are not inspired to generate their own content!). James will be giving a live painting demonstration at the Creative Recycling Gallery this Saturday (26th of May) as part of the Chorlton Arts Festival and will have a stall at Much Wenlock in Shropshire on the following Saturday (2nd of June).

James Pashley
then introduced us to the newest member of the group in the form of Danbo (see above!); a card model robot who will be helping us keep up to date with James’ imminent adventures in Japan by posing for a series of photographs for section headings on the new (and rapidly improving) instantpash site (link soon). I then spent the next 10 minutes working with Dambo on a series of glamour shots and completely failed to support James in explaining our recent collaboration to the others!
The other work James brought along was the latest development in a project which we have started that references the writing of Mitsuri Senda who discusses ‘circulatory play systems’ when designing playgrounds in urban spaces. Senda summarises this in a series of 7 points, which our project looks at applying to Manchester City Centre by identifying existing environmental features with the potential to be used in such a play system.  Ultimately, we aim to design a route for use by visitors to Manchester, though we are still in the early stages of this.


Picture

The group view the plans so far

One key consideration raised was the need to be aware of health and safety restrictions, though it was also recognised that this was being deliberately set to one side temporarily in order to avoid prematurely capping the creative stages. It was also argued that allowing children exposure to supervised and calculated risk is an important part of facilitating healthy development and that opportunities to encourage outdoor play could be seen as especially responsive to recent news items regarding a lack of exercise and over use of screen based media. The next big challenge facing us in this project is the actual design of the map as we have a proposed route and a suggest list of features, all of which tie in with the source reference to Senda
Picture

Danbo notes the next CRITgroup meeting while the others look at maps

To conclude the evening, I briefly shared the final draft of the proposed This Place Is booklet which has been developed in response to feedback from the group at several previous meetings. That is now ready to be printed and it would not have been half as robust an outcome if it had not been for the input and the suggestions from CRITgroup sessions so it was good to be able to share it one last time before sending it off.

Finally, I invited the group to the ‘opening’ event of a show I am hanging tomorrow at the Nexus Art Café in Manchester’s Northern Quarter; though the work will be up from Friday (25th of May), the actual Private View isn’t until the end of June which coincides with the opening of the Nexhibitionists show, in which I will also have some work. The show, titled I Hope To See presents the conclusion of a series of workshops with various community groups in Hulme.

The next meeting is June 27th and you can find details of months up to October including guest speakers on the home page.
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Second Meeting

25/1/2012

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I was particularly excited about the opportunity to meet at MadLab this month as I have attended events there before and know it as a very creatively nurturing space. It was unfortunate that not many people could make it along this evening for various (pretty good) reasons so I'm hoping that numbers pick up again soon and we can keep going. Not to start off on too much of a downer however, those of us who did attend, all left agreeing that it had been useful to meet so that's still pretty encouraging.

Tammy Leigh returned and briefly shared some developments in her range of knitted wire jewellery which involved the inclusion of semi precious stones threaded onto the wire. Following on from her presentation of some pieces made using recycled materials at the previous meeting, we spoke more about this aspect of the work. During that discussion, we arranged for her to visit my students at Tameside College next week to talk with them about using recycled materials in their own work.

I then asked people to look at some mock-ups I had made following suggestions at the previous meeting for the This Place Is book; a development from This Belongs To and a series of workshops run in Hulme. It was agreed that although I had probably done a reasonable job at being clear and concise in terms of the content, I probably hadn't allowed enough space for people to record more personal reflections. We then chatted a bit about possible tweaks to that and eventually came to the conclusion that I might in fact be looking at two projects, one formatted as booklet to hand out to people (probably locally) and eventually compiled into one volume and one printed more carefully to send further afield but to more specific locations. This seemed to make sense and I have since realised that the booklet format might also work really well in a workshop so there are more possibilities for developing those avenues too.

Juan Armellini also joined us for the first time and spoke about his experiences using blogging sites to build an online portfolio. We discussed the format of blogs as opposed to other kinds of web pages and I suggested that a blog might not be the most flexible format for his purposes. We also talked a bit about how the design of the site must 'agree' with or support the content. Having previously helped Tammy with her site, I suggested that at the next meeting I could spend a bit of time with the laptop showing people how I build mine (very simply) using a browser based system not dissimilar from many blogging sites. We agreed that might also help give the session a bit more structure so that has become the plan.

I have since spoken with the very supportive people at MadLab who have agreed we can use the space next month so we will next meet at 7pm on Wednesday February 22nd (2012) at Madlab, Manchester (36 - 40 Edge Street, Northern Quarter). We will begin with an informal sharing of practice and then for the last 30/45 minutes or so I will demonstrate how I build my website. If you fancy coming along but are not already on the mailing list, please drop me a note using the contact form on the main page and I can be sure we make time for everyone! Hope to see you there!
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First Meeting

2/11/2011

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The first Meeting of CRITgroup got off to a good start with six people attending. James Pashley got the ball rolling by sharing his recent investigations into  play environments. As a landscape design graduate with a new-found direction in 3D Design, his work looks at how play could once again be encouraged in the streets by suggesting structures and interventions for urban environments which would tempt both children and adults out of the car and back into enjoying the journey on foot. He spoke about how his work had been focusing on the research for a while but that this was now shifting back to a more project based approach and discussion then moved on to how our perception of environments affects our use of space.

Tammy Leigh then shared some photos of her hand made jewellery. The group agreed that she deserved to be far more confident in sharing them, as there were some genuinely exciting pieces involving knitting with wire. The group shared some ideas for promoting the work and the importance of wearing your own pieces when at a public event such as a stall or workshop!

John Quinn, sculptor, spoke with enthusiasm about his recent rediscovery of material properties since occupying a space at Cow Lane Studios in Salford, following a long break from making. Photos of his work conjured a discussion of tension and form and he spoke about the benefits of working in a studio space, especially when producing large scale pieces.

Kevin Linnane, photography tutor and postgraduate student, presented his recent explorations of Modernist views of cities, through photographs of Coventry. He discussed an interest in the myths of and interactions with cities and spoke about how his work had developed from an earlier body of work concerned with the location of an urban Green Man. This brought the topic of conversation back on to a discussion of our environmental perception and how this can affect the lives of city residents.

James Sharp
then shared some examples of his textiles pieces, especially a collection of art journals titled Bibliophilia. Though the journals are designed so that they can be used as diaries or sketchbooks, many members of the group felt that they were enjoyable just to have as objects too. James also brought along some examples of his other work including the Stuff Stash, a textile wall hanging with additional capacity to store or display household items. This brought the discussion on further to making work commercially viable and James especially recommended using online methods to make sales.

I then tried to wrap up with (what I hope was) a brief summary of my recent practice and how I was hoping to develop my work following the completion of the MA. I especially benefited from sharing one idea I had been mulling over; that of a series of blank template books which would require users to research and share aspects of their local area. It was suggested that instead of producing multiple copies that it might be successful to have one book with several sections which could better facilitate a sharing of the content.

A very successful first meeting, but we did feel that the venue was a little noisy, so not to be ungrateful to our hosts at Odder Bar, it will be my job to hunt out an alternative space for the new year (we're skipping December as too many people have other commitments!)

Check back in January!
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    CRITgroup

    _Creative Reflection and Investigation Talk Group is an informal network for local artists and designers. The group meets every other month aiming to facilitate a pooling of professional skills and knowledge to provide motivation, support and social contact for those pursuing a creative (visual) practice in Manchester.

    CRITgroup is an initiative organised and managed by Glittermouse.

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