ATV4 Reflection
Initial thoughts: I feel because I have so much stuff to play with, so much yarn and ribbon and fabric and building materials and leaves in the garden, I’m finding it hard to stop collecting and start making. I also worry that it’s possibly stopping me going deep enough into creating. It feels like I’m dipping my toe in too many different materials and techniques but in a rather scatty frantic way rather than a considered methodical way.
I’m not sure this is an actual problem or just in my head. I have a magpie in me who likes collecting new trinkets and feathers and I’m impatient to start new projects. I find it impossible to sit down, design a thing on paper and then carry this design out. I design based on the materials I have in front of me, quickly adding things that catch my eye, I feel stifled and don’t create well when I have to work from a sketchbook or a plan. I’m still trying to work this out, deciding whether I need to change that or run with it. I do design in my working life and always have done so in real time and live rather than via the established route of thinking and drawing and considering. I do appreciate that makes it impossible to see my route, my thought process. I work very quickly which makes it feel even more like I’m cheating, like I haven’t worked hard enough at it, but looking at what I have achieved in this project I don’t know if there is a lack of anything, I think the speed at which I create comes across in the pieces, they are often dynamic and exciting, albeit often a bit messy.
I have learned new techniques for this projects and have really gone quite far into designing new yarns, I have loved going back in to previous projects and taking that work further, that isn’t a way in which I have ever worked before. I normally move on to new things all the time, so going back to use my own work as inspiration is an exciting new development for me.
I have really enjoyed this assignment and feel like I have completely found my groove with this course and the time each assignment takes and how the OCA works, and I haven’t lost any of the excitement with which I started this course a year ago. I have decided to step up the pace a little because if I have four months to do an assignment I still only work for the last three weeks as I cannot seem to get creative until I have a deadline breathing down my neck!
I spent quite a lot of time thinking about how to present my work. I initially thought of putting each yarn in a small see-through box so it could be seen from all sides. And to put all these little boxes in a larger box. But the reality of having up to 60 small boxes to store in a larger box and ship, and how to keep these in some sort of order, defeated me. I ended up mounting each yarn on white card and then put the card in see-through punched sleeves. The project quickly became too large for any folder, so I ordered some large rings to go through the holes in the sleeves. But even that proved too cumbersome so I ended up splitting the project in to halves. This didn’t feel so coherent but it would have been a nightmare for the tutor to handle the enormous monster the assignment would have been had it stayed in one piece. I do feel some of the yarns lost their magic when squashed down on paper and hidden inside a plastic sleeve and I am sad I didn’t find the perfect solution for my yarns. I spoke to a friend who is a an artist but she wasn’t too sure about creating something that would also be sturdy enough to be posted. She mostly designs for exhibitions where she builds displays on site so her knowledge didn’t help me so much here, nor did the internet throw up anything useful. But I think the book works well enough really now it’s all finished. At least it’s clean and clear and unfussy.
