I've been really questioning myself recently. Coming to the end of the MA, this seems natural. I've been wondering whether I'm making the work I want to make or whether I'm making what I think I should be making to please others. I think there's definitely a bit of the latter going on.
I've realised that I keep repeatedly feeling guilty about making work with a plan to sell it. One of the students stated how against this they were last year, that art made for financial gain isn't art. My feedback after unit 2 also asked me what I would make if the opportunity of selling anything was removed. I've been musing over this A LOT! Feeling like I should have no sales plans for anything, wondering what I can make that no one would possibly want to buy, wondering whether I need to split my work into 'for sale' and 'not for sale'.
I've come to the realisation that I would probably make the same things. I don't think I actually make work to sell. I make work to share. While selling is great and definitely gives me a confidence boost, what I REALLY love is being accepted for exhibitions. Being accepted by those I look up to is the highest honour. I also like the encouragement on social media and from family when I'm making something that's working and that I'm interested in. I always have a fantasy that I'll send the email releasing it and my phone will ping all evening with all the sales, in reality that never happens! (And I know it won't happen!) I have always looked on a single sale from an edition as covering the paper and ink costs of that edition and therefore enabling more paper to be bought for the next one. Selling one is enough, but not essential.
This all ties into my panicking about unit 3. I REALLY want a good grade for the MA, I didn't realise when I started that MA's are graded, but they are. This leads me to ponder whether I'm making what I want to make for me or am I doing what I think I should do to get the grade???? I think if I'm honest there's a bit of both at play. Would I be making this without the MA? No. Is the deeper work, more research, extra pushing worth it without the MA? Yes. Nuff said.
I've been feeling like I backed myself into a corner with my ideas about making a forest in CSM, or at least, a log pile forest. I'm not so sure that's really what I want to make at the moment. It all feels very rushed - like I'm just going to rustle something up for the exhibition rather than let the work come in its own time when the ideas are fully developed. I've been walking past a pile of chippings a lot recently and it really got me thinking... there's something in it.
I tore up all my mini prints and laid them out and thought there was something interesting there. Then I collected some different sizes, colours and shapes from the chipping pile and brought them home. I really like the idea of laying things out in a grid as all the trees in the forest are planted in rows and I think that's a really important part of the forest aesthetic.
I still have the piece I made for the interim exhibition - it's just hanging at the side of a wardrobe and I couldn't see how it's every going to be used/exhibited again so I decided to repurpose it. I cut all the stitches to remove it from the scrim and then cut through the stitches where I sewed all the prints together. I decided to make bundles in different sizes with pieces of it adding a piece from the chipping pile as well. Some of these will go in a sketchbook but I think there's potential here to take something like this to the forest and 'exhibit' it.
Other ideas I had involve using tree trunks as scrolls with a huge 'map' of the forest rolled between them. The map would emphasise all the different shapes and stages of growth of the 'farm' operation that gives the forest its aesthetic. I also thought about overlaying these shapes using various different colours of ink or even taking inspiration from Shelley Rhodes and Cas Holmes and stitching and layering paper. There was something about the peek-a-boo potential I spotted in some peeling bark:
