Jo Boddy
Unit 2 Assessment
LO 1: Develop and realise a self directed programme of learning which draws from wide-ranging subject knowledge.
(AC Knowledge, AC Process)
Experimentation with techniques is something that I seem unable to resist. Having spoken to Neil Bousfield as part of the research for my paper I now know that he does the same - for him each print is not just an exploration of the themes and the image but an exploration of technique and materials as well. The following blog posts detail many of the technical experiments I have been doing since April, moving my practice into new areas such as etching and lithography, as well as exploring new ideas around the presentation of finished pieces, using formats such as books and hangings. I have been fascinated by my expansion in the use of familiar materials (such as lino) as a direct result of using new techniques (such as etching), this is also covered in further detail in LO3.
At the same time as expanding my technical skills I have been carrying out the research for my paper and exploring themes of 'place', 'identity' and 'home'. This has lead me to explore the impact of the forest being managed for timber production more directly, producing my first image to feature a log pile.
I have realised that using materials collected from the forest has started becoming more and more regular in my work, I like the idea that the forest is complicit in my making, that it's not just a subject, it's also a collaborator.
Important posts are highlighted in bold, other posts are relevant to give an overall picture but a summary of the main points is provided.
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Spring Colours and Bluebells - overcoming hiccups detail how I was so excited to be making a new bluebell print and celebrate all the spring colours but it was misbehaving so I had to get around all the mishaps and create two prints instead of one. Then I became excited about doing two versions of a print, using traditional cutting for one and caustic soda for the other but it became a technical exercise in registration. However the fact that I overcame the problems provided great learning experiences and showed me that I have problem solving skills and the resilience to be flexible and use mistakes and accidents to learn from. I think the etched version that I made to cover the initial mistake is actually more exciting than the original design.
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Soft Ground & Aquatint Etching describes looking back over my work to identify and develop a theme within my process - using natural materials in the plate making stage. It also describes my getting to grips with etching and aquatint more successfully.
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Course: Create a Stitch-Sketchbook Map This was a fascinating course and allowed me to incorporate stitch and begin treating paper more like fabric. I really experimented and made something unlike anything I'd made previously. I want to continue using some of the techniques I tried here for my future work. This felt like a rather pivotal moment when I really started exploring processes which would allow me to use print in a new way.
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Making a book I'm really pleased that I finally got around to making a little book using some of my prints. This is something I've been wanting to explore for a while. This is more of my experimentation with what a print is and how I can manipulate paper and create other objects from my prints.
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Continuing Challenge: Huge, 2 plate reduction lino details my experiments with caustic soda and using natural materials from the forest in this huge print. This was the first print where I realised the work I was doing on my research paper was really starting to directly influence my thinking during the printmaking process My thoughts on the finished print are detailed in Finished it!
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Conquering Lithography details my finally managing to make an edition of lithographs which feels like a huge breakthrough. This print is also the start of my really delving into thinking about the forest from a timber-production point of view. An aspect which I have wanted to explore for ages but haven't been sure how. The print had to be made fairly quickly as there was a deadline so many decisions were made instinctively and quickly. I'm not completely happy with the final image, however this was a wonderful moment of cracking this particular technique.
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LO 2: Articulate a thorough understanding of your research and establish an informed critical position.
(AC Communication)
My research paper:
Knowing Your Place: The emotional construct of place and importance of home in Neil Bousfield’s Norfolk coast prints and Paul Cezanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire paintings
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I realised that I was only really interested in making prints about places I felt connected to a couple of years ago. Further research uncovered the notion of 'place' through looking at the work of Neil Bousfield. Neil is very generous, he shares ideas about his work and the themes it explores as well as preparatory sketches and materials that form part of his research on his website. This made me wonder whether he would be open to sharing a little more in an interview and therefore make him a wonderful subject for my research paper.
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When we were tasked with looking at the wider context of our work I knew that a deeper exploration of 'place' would benefit my work. My interest in Cezanne was piqued when I saw the Tate exhibition at the start of the year and read one of the info texts stating that he learned all about the geology of Mont Sainte-Victoire because he wanted to fully understand what he was looking at. This idea of learning more about a place so that your knowledge affects the images you make of it really interested me.
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Research Paper ideas details the starting point and why I selected these two artists to focus on.
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Interviewing Neil Bousfield does no justice at all to the amazing amount I learned from Neil in the 80 minutes I spent taking to him. I think that interview is something I will return to again and again as it was just so full of amazing advice, thoughts and inspiration. The full interview transcript is available in the appendix of my research paper.
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Research paper - feeling more confident and gleaning the benefits is a reflection about some of the practical steps I'm taking after writing the paper and some of the questions writing it has prompted. I said many times in my musings about it while I was writing the paper that I think I could fill enough words for a PhD just on Cezanne alone but certainly on a wider exploration of these two artists with place as the central theme.
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Completing the research paper has been brilliant. I now have a list of further research avenues and a much more thorough understanding of what doing research like this can mean for my art practice, the immense benefit and importance of delving into the context of the work in a broader sense. I plan to continue to expand my knowledge and reading around theories and ideas of place, home and identity. Alongside this I now have specific questions about the forest which I can delve into to expand my understanding of why it looks the way it does and how humans connect with and experience it.
LO 3: Analyse and critically reflect on your practice and its context.
(AC Enquiry)
Taken together these posts describe how my understanding of my own practice is developing. The stand-out phrase was something Jonathan picked up on in a tutorial in June - I said it was "important to see the feel of it". Having completed my research paper and been delving into the emotional connection two artists have with the places they depict, the fact I said this right at the beginning feels very pertinent.
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I think I'm growing into my practice but also that it's not a 'job' it's a way of approaching life. The more I read and research the more the way I am seeing the world is becoming affected by my 'artistic' outlook. I feel I'm growing as a whole person, not just as an artist. These blog posts consider my technical process development, the specific contexts I'm exploring in my work and the wider context of living a creative life.
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Finished it! details all my caustic soda experiments with the bluebell prints. It also muses over the technicalities and opportunities presented by printmaking rather than painting or drawing.
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Tutorial 3 7/6/23 provided a wonderful 'coming together' for me of the ideas and experiments I'd been playing with. Having Jonathan validate some of what I'd been thinking, reflect back some of my ideas and ask fascinating questions provided me with a couple of lightbulb moments when I reflected about it afterwards. This was definitely a turning point when I realised that I'm actively using a practice-based research method of working.
Reflections of late​ (New prints and playing section) describes the stages in making a lovely little etching using a pressed flower and three etching techniques, alongside the crossover of this idea into lino. I'm discovering that the new techniques I'm learning are influencing previous ones and so development happens across techniques. This makes me keen to keep experimenting with new techniques as this experimentation feeds into everything and I think about all the techniques in a very joined up way. Despite the aesthetics of the prints made by different techniques being very varied, I can connect specific 'different looking' prints together in the crossovers that happened between them and the way that one techniques ideas and processes have fed into another.
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Talking to Year 10 GCSE Artists was a wonderful opportunity to step back and look over what I've achieved in the past 3 or 4 years and then try to put that into a succinct presentation that 15 year olds could understand. My main takeaway was that I really realised I have developed 'a practice' and that it takes time and lots of making to realise this!
What does success look like?​ was a fascinating lecture which I reflected upon with reference to the research into Cezanne I'd been doing. My main lesson was that it's all about the making. Just keep making!
Reassessing Priorities was written after an abysmal day for sales at a craft fair. It follows on my thoughts about 'success' and what it looks like and comes to the conclusion that I need to focus on making the work I want to make rather than trying to make work to sell. I think this realisation has been creeping up on me for a while, it's probably what prompted me to apply for the MA in the first place but I don't think I've been quite ready to be brave enough to fully admit that I really do just want to make the work I want to make without having to always consider the commercial possibilities or barriers presented. It feels very indulgent to swan about all day 'making art' while leaving my husband to pay the bills. Yet I have a sneaking suspicion that by making what I want to make commercial success may follow on from that as the work will be better (fingers crossed!).
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Week 2 - Target Setting details what I'd already begun to do in terms of making myself accountable to the plans I make for work. I also made links between what we'd seen of William Kentridge's work and the research into place that I have been doing.
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Uncertainty - William Kentridge is my musings on a lecture that felt as though it had been planned just for me, I'm really thinking about my work and practice as being completely integrated into my very being and therefore relevant when thinking about family life and how that sits alongside my husbands life context. Our family life was going through a phase of huge uncertainty (due to his suffering burnout, resigning from his job and the circumstances of family ties and expectations around it) and this lecture prompted a lot of deep thinking about the wider context of life in general, a little of which made it into the blog post.
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Musings on 'Place' takes the research I have done for the paper and applies some of these thoughts to my own work and plans for the second year of the MA.
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Tutorial 4 22/11/23 marks the end of unit 2 and the beginning of unit 3. I'm looking at using what has been learned to expand my practise and think about what I might aim to create between now and June next year. There are ideas about using the forest not just as a subject and collaborator but as an exhibition space as well. I also plan on really expanding presentation of my prints in new ways rather than as something to be put in a frame and hung on a wall. The length of time I could spend working on the forest as a subject is also something that was discussed. There's a lifetime's work here!