A look back as Artist-Teacher-Researcher-Student at Community 360 August 2022

This exhbition took place at the same time as the Level Best exhibition (August 2022), each exhibition housed some of the body of work from the Artist-Teacher-Researcher-Student collection. 

The work explores themes of a multifaceted identity. Within these texts, I am working out who I am as an artist-teacher but also as a researcher and postgraduate student. The works employ the use of purple, reflecting the thoughts of Alan Thornton (2013), an artist-teacher who ten years ago asserted in a colour mixing metaphor that artists are red, teachers are blue, and thus artist-teachers and purple.  

The work intends to make visible inner thoughts, feelings, and experiences. With the hope that others will resonate with them. The topic is focused on my grappling with a multifaceted identity. I hope it has a wonder reach and prompts others to consider their many identities too, artist-teacher-researcher-student, or otherwise. 

You can find out more about my PhD research here: https://www.nua.ac.uk/study-at-nua/research/research-degrees/students/abbie-cairns   

Jelly Print - Part Three

I felt that I should not let the small square dictate my art practice, and in a jigsaw kind of way am working on bringing longer text to my jelly print collection. 

I knew that if I really wanted to bring text from my research into the medium - which I have been doing over the past two years of my Ph.D. I needed space for more words.

I found working like this to be many things and offer many options. Firstly it was time-consuming. I could not use old art, and studio scrapes, I needed to create bespoke templates of the research text on paper cut to size to fit the jelly print plate.

This required thinking about how large the final outcome would be, here you can see I have decided to go create the final outcome as two wide, as this fitted neatly onto an A3 sheet.

The next thing it offered was two different kinds of print; positive and negative. The first print came from placing the stencil on the plate, then placing the A3 sheet on top and pressing down to transfer the ink. The second print came from then removing the stencil and placing the A3 sheet on and pressing down.

Visually the two outcomes are very different and I found could be mixed and matched - allowing me to create two outcomes at the same time - saving me from wasting ink and stencils. 

The placement was difficult, made harder by the A3 paper - it was much easier when I was working with smaller squares the same size as the plate.

Overall, this is time-consuming and I may or may not come back to it. But it is good to know that I can use the jelly plate to create later outcomes.

A look back as Artist-Teacher-Researcher-Student at Level Best August 2022

Visual documentation of an art installation. This exhibition was held at Level Best in Colchester for the duration of August 2022. 

The body of work Artist-Teacher-Researcher-Student was created during the first year of my Ph.D. at Norwich University of the Arts and takes text from reflective writing on my identity as I studied it. Within this collection of work, I reposition the reflections as text art, bringing my many identities together as I do so.  

The text is selective, and phrases were selected from longer reflections, based on which felt most pertinent to the research.   

You can find out more about my PhD research here: https://www.nua.ac.uk/study-at-nua/research/research-degrees/students/abbie-cairns   

Jelly Print - Part Two

Once I had finally figured out how to place the letters so they read once printed I was away!  

I continued to use old art outcomes and off-cuts found within my studio to create a number of experimental outcomes, including vinyl letters, and paper and paper letters. Each print made a different kind of outcome as the ink acted differently depending on the properties of each material. 

I also found that I could create at least two good quality (readable) prints from one layer of ink. The first print is ink saturated, the second more subtle. I came to enjoy the second print and started to explore using less and less ink, to see if I could create this outcome on the first go - to save ink, paper, time etc. 

To an extent I am bound to small outcomes here, working within the size of the square, but this has started to make me think about how I can say what I want to say in a limited number of words, or in words of a certain length. 

'we can' came to mind and I feel I have used the words before, but I cannot be sure. I like the openness of these words, and that to me at least they feel positive. 

Squishy Letters

I am always looking for new ways to create letters out of my font. 'Squishy letters; is probably not the best title for these, as they are only squishy in the making.

These letters have wire at their heart and air-dry clay around them. I tried this technique before but at that point in history has little success - the clay was drying too quick!

One of the issues was the size of the letter, the start point and end point need to join up. so the letter cannot be so big that the start point, starts to dry before it becomes the endpoint...

Making the letters smaller resolved this issue. I'm not sure about these letters. They might make an appearance in the future, but for now, they are just a fun studio experiment. 

Wire and String Letters - Part Nine

A delayed part nine, as I had forgotten that I left these letters under my chair to dry. Added a quick coat of varnish and left them be. Hopefully, they will not have to hang around for me too long this time...

I think that I would like to see these outside - hence the gloss! I want to ensure they are weather-tight before I go hanging them up or laying them down. 

The installation technique is to be decided. 

Jelly Print Fun - Part One

Experimentation with a new medium, jelly printing. It took some time to work out letter placement to ensure the word actually read when printed.

I have continued to work with the colour purple as per my recent art projects. Getting the text to read right was harder than expected...

The jelly printing will open me up to explore a new series of outcomes based on its square shape, as I work out the best way to position text and say what I want to in the limited space provided. 

In the above image I experiment with letters that had been cut out from a previous project, and kept 'just in case' they would be useful in the future! I enjoy this extra layer to the work, of DIY art, which meets make do and mend and reuse, recycle, repurpose. 

I did not have any specific wording for these tests and just went for 'yes' as it was the first short word that came to mind. It introduced me to thinking about placement on the square, and how this might be difficult - I was going for central, but it might be a little off here.