Catherine Mclure Art Blog

Welcome! This blog is my personal journey of my art practice.

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29th April 2022

I just realised that I won’t be able to show my actual setup as its bank holiday next week so I did a practice at home and tried to plan out where the samples at the office will go. I have decided that I am going to stick with doing a samples table and act like the office space/gallery is a showcase to show off designs. The setup with include my sketch journal, past mock up drawings, and ink markings. I also chose this set up because it doesn’t require lighting as where the cabinets are stationed doesn’t have a lot of lighting. One thing I want to try when I do set up is make some sculptures from the samples.

I’m looking forward to the show as it will be my 2nd pop up show and it will give me the chance to learn something new.

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25th April 2022

Here is our poster for our show made by George. Our collective name is The Junk Punk Bunch. The space is called The Junk Space Gallery and our show is called Stuff TM. The show is on the 16th of May from 3pm to 7pm. We did try to make the show last over several days but a lot of us had other things scheduled on the other possible dates. I’ve invited peers from my BA, a few students that are on the BA currently, Members of staff at the university, and my parents to come to the show. I hope they come because it’ll be a nice way to show all the hard work and it’s a great way to end the module.

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4th April 2022 I've been thinking about my set up as a kind of mock up presentation. Like what I'm doing for the Easter show. Which is a welcome to my habitat. But for James I'm going to do it as a samples table, like here what's I have to offer to you. I'm going to use the Easter period as a chance to investigate what I'm going to do.

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28th March 2022 I have a bit of inspiration this week. When looking at some samples, I came across some glass sample with markings that look like my drawings. I'm thinking about using my drawings a making them sample size. And maybe mixing them amongst the samples in James's office.

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21st March 2022 We did a bit more heavy lifting as well as discussions about the show. I'm still not sure what I want to do just yet. Might just try out a set up that I've been thinking about for my project. Right now, I’m trying to decide if I want to use the sculpture that I’m currently working on or do something else.

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7th March 2022 Progress has been made. Now we are at the stage of making certain areas neater. I'm thinking about taking the knee-high cabinets as my area. Maybe make a series of sculptures from the samples, maybe make my drawing out of the samples.

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28th February 2022 We started cleaning up the office. A lot of heavy lifting and organising. On top of that all the dust I've inhaled has cause my allergies to flare up. But I say a lot of great samples to make something with. We have made a pathway so we can continue next week.

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21st February 2022

Since I last wrote we discussed about making a show for our networking module. We were offered James's space which is an architecture office in Holborn as own venue.  The only catch is it's very messy. Messy doesn't begin to cover the actual state of this office. Cluttered would be a good work. Commence operation clean up next week.

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7th February 2022 I think I understand what networking is. When looking at networking I came across the word connection throughout the research. This caused me to make a little slogan (if you will) about it. " Networking is people. It's human connection. You talk. You share. You connect. It's like Lego, each brick is a new bridge." I wanted to make it positive when talking about networking especially with the social media aspect, which a lot of my peers are quite against, but there's no point in being negative about something that has now become a very big thing in making connections within the art world. This drawing is the best representation of what I envision networking to be like.

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31st January 2022 Welcome to Networking 2022 blog. On this blog I will be showing my journey through networking and my practice. Today I just started the module. It's opened a lot of questions about what networking is. Good thing I've got a week to find out what networking is before I talk to Charlotte (My tutor) about what I think it is.

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Evaluation 

30th May 2021

This project has been the most challenging of all the projects as it has been the project that I have opened up the most. I’ve said this a lot before that my work is a continuous journey of me exploring the theme of mental health, mostly focusing on mine. But during this project I had chosen to open up about how I process my feelings and about how my sketch journals started. Even though it was challenging it allowed me to look at my process in more detail and how I could adapt it. For example before doing this project I attempted to add colour into my drawings, but they didn’t work so well but now I have learnt how to add colour and not make it the main focus. I still think I have much more work to do with colour, but I will work on it in the future. 

I looked at a small selection of artists as references for my research, which is against my nature. This is because I feel like my work will then turn into tributes, which has happened in the past (before University). Looking at these artists did help me develop my process and they helped me with how to display my work. The artist that I found most interesting was Helen Wells. This is because she has a similar process to mine. I found it interesting that her work and my work from second year was quite similar.

I had a few questions at the beginning. But when I got to around February I forgot about the first 2 questions but in the back of my head the third one stuck. “How can abstract art show the narrative of my mental health?”. I mostly thought about this question when I was testing out display methods, from wall displays to time-lapse videos to progress photos I kept one thinking how do I show my story through the display. In the end I felt that lockdown made the answer harder to find. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. But in the end I feel like I presented my story the best I could. If we didn’t have COVID or lockdown it might have been easier to answer the question.

I didn’t have a budget because I bought a lot of my supplies before I started the project, so I focused on trying to organise my time. I struggled to follow a time planner so I made aims to meet and as a reward I would watch an episode of a new show I wanted to watch. One of my aims that was more of a long-term goal was to try and make one drawing a day. But some of the drawings would take a couple of days. But I had to then start prioritising different modules, this didn’t stop me from drawing. I want to continue doing these drawing series and hopefully I can do that in London Met’s MFA course.

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Show Display

9th May 2021

I was able to put up my display for the summer show. It did come with its struggles as I did it as soon as I woke up. I had to get my parents to help me get a patch of Ivy that was growing over the fence. Which didn’t help with my hay fever. Once it was clean I started to put the drawings on the wallpaper. But it was slower as the magnets had pulled my nail away from my skin, so I had a bruised nail. I’m very pleased with how it turned out. The fence added a rustic feel to the setting, but I don’t think I will include those photos in the show. So I will put a photograph of just the drawings on the wallpaper.

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Prep For Summer Show Display

8th May 2021

I have spent the last few days preparing for my display. I had planned on doing it today but it is raining currently. So hopefully tomorrow I can display it. My plan for the display is to hang a long sheet of grey wallpaper. The display will be outside in my garden. Before it was suppose to be out it my house on a brick wall, but it was structurally unstable. I will be pinning my drawings with small magnets, so that the drawings don’t get damaged during the set up. But the magnets look like nails, which makes me feel happy. Fingers crossed the weather forecast and app is correct and I have sun and a bit cloudy.

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Finished The Drawings

7th May 2021

I have finally finished my drawings and I have come to the conclusion that I am going to have 30 drawings in total, as I want to be able to manage my time with the many deadlines to come. I’m quite proud of how far I have come with my drawings because they started off as just doodles that I didn’t want to show because I thought that they were terrible. But now they are out and free from the cover of a sketch book.

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Progress Report

18th May 2021

28 drawings completed. 2 more to go, until I get to my target of 30 drawings. But I will be moving a bit slower now as my dissertation is due in soon. It is also getting harder to make more drawings as I have done a lot of them. That’s part of the reason why I have chosen to do a minimum of 30 drawings. 

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Trying Something New

15th April 2021

In this recent drawing, I wanted to try out something that I saw a long time ago. This pattern is called a paradox and every time I saw it I wanted to learn how to create it. It was only a few weeks ago that I found how to do it. I started off by making 4 rectangles. I split each rectangle in half making 8 triangles. I then started drawing the pattern. It was a bit out of my comfort zone as it required precision and a steady hand to hold the ruler in place. But I’m happy with the results.

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Gyorgy Kepes

12th April 2021

I was looking for an artist to look at and I came across Gyorgy Kepes. I quite like his piece “Branches”, 1939-40. When first looked at it, I thought that it was an etching, but it is actually a photograph. I like how it has subtle marks, like a ghost effect. I like including subtle marks, if I can, in my work. Looking at Kepes work makes me want to try and include more subtlety into my drawings.