The Reflective Journal of a Fine Art Student

Nicole Hudson: A Fine Art student studying at Norwich University College of the Arts, this reflective journal will record my progress on the course as well as recording my inspirations throughout.

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richard diebenkorn

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Hernan Bas, Bright Young Things, now at Lehmann Maupin. 

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Necklace No. 9112-Object and Totem

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Design with the Unknown, 2016-Studio Oink x Aimee Bollu

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Lucy Halcomb (Instagram)

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Choreographer Simone Forti: “How did I come up with the term Dance Constructions? I was invited to do something at Yoko’s loft. I remember sitting on the bed with my notebook, and making all these little sketches of pieces. I knew that they involved a lot of building. The dance in it was going to be an important element, but the wood was going to be an important aspect, or the rope. We’d be handling those ropes and climbing on that wood. So construction was an important part of it.” Seven of Forti’s Dance Constructions were recently added to our collection. Read more about them on our blog. 

[Simone Forti. Slant Board. 1961. The Museum of Modern Art, New York © 2016 Simone Forti]

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Chan Dick:  Chai Wan fire station, 2015

website

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ON THE WEB: ARTNEWS: HABITAT: JESSE GREENBERG in his workspace, visited by Katherine McMahon.

“I’m always trying to find new ways to make mistakes,” Jesse Greenberg said in his basement studio, surrounded by a number of the psychedelically colored resin sculptures that have become his trademark as well as all sorts of scrap material. In the past two years, Greenberg has made a point of hanging onto these “mistakes” so that he can reuse them in other projects.

How do his shimmering, almost-liquid-looking works come about? “Very often I have a piece in my mind that I want to create, and through that process of trying to make it, I come up with something really different,” he said. Chance surprises can help. “In some cases,” he continued, “I make something exactly how I imagine it and it’s somewhat underwhelming.”

Greenberg counts his time as a sculpture student at RISD as a formative technical learning experience. “When I first applied to college, I assumed I’d study Industrial or Product Design,” he said. “When I got there and started to experiment, I realized that I liked sculpture more because it was even more open ended and I didn’t have to make things that had a strict function.” Greenberg’s knowledge of materials has evolved a lot since then, but he continues to try to push the limits of his chosen mediums, which frequently include urethane, resin, and silicone. He normally orders his materials straight from the supplier, or sometimes The Complete Sculptor, which he says is the only place in New York that sells every single variety of the materials he works with.

Jesse Greenberg photographed on October 6 in Brooklyn, by Katherine McMahon. Courtesy ARTNEWS.

http://www.sculpture-center.org/

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Degree Show Idea Finalised 

Developing from my previous idea, I have decided to continue to use textures inflatable materials, however take the piece back to the material which started the process of this development. I will use inflatable balls to create an abstract sculptural shape, upon which I can add the textural patterns, combine materials, and incorporate the window within the space.

+testing colour combination

+testing pattern combinations

+testing shape

+structural support

+light penetration 

[nicolehudson-art]

Degree Show Idea

+The textural element of the adapted beach balls (test Piece and Not Yet Built Exhibition)-the level of curiosity to touch the work 

+The use of inflatable/air filled material-the gesture of expansion, the playful optimism of the gesture of filling it, the kinetic energy, the potential energy, the manipulating form, the tension of the interior pressure

Idea

Box Frame made to fit the entire wall, splitting the wall into two panels

Panels filled with inflatable material-bulging out of the frame

Each inflatable panel=bold, solid colour

Each inflatable panel covered in repetitive gestural pattern, creating an increased tactility

Viewer can touch the work (interactive) whilst the piece also functions as a static work

Immediate issues and solutions

The work may be perceived as an extension of Kelly Briggs’ work (next to mine), the brightly coloured drape and the coloured panels all lining up in a series of vertical planes

I have discussed this with Kelly and neither she nor I mind about this potential misinterpretation-the works aesthetically would be completely different and so the chance of misinterpretation would not be too high

The 3D workshop does not sell wood deep enough for the box frame-the wood would need to ordered in 

I discussed with the workshop technicians who contacted a wood wholesaler for a price quote

The inflatable panels would need to be custom made to fit the space of the frame exactly

I contacted numerous inflatable manufacturers to gain quotes upon custom made products

Over riding issue-Piece must be changed

 +Despite being able to control all other elements of the construction of the work, the inflatable manufacturers who could create the custom made panels were majoritivly based in China, and so the risk of the panels not arriving in time was too high

+Should the piece become damaged during the show, the inflatable panels would not be able to be salvaged 

+The panels could be home made by myself, with use of a generator to insure constant inflation, even if punctured, however the generated would create noise, would require a custom wall to be created to hide it, and the texture of the inflated piece would not be of the right consistency to fulfil the vision of the work I had intended. 

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Degree Show

To incorporate all of my ideas, my recent development and progress into one summarising piece of work, requires a lot of consideration.

Working from the basis of not having a participatory element, I have been sketching ideas for static works.

Static, playful, colourful

The use of repetitive pattern not only incorporates the repetitive gesture (the beach balls), but also colour and shape ideology (my collage works, Become the Sculpture, simplistic communication-which formed the starting point of this line of work) I am considering the use of this on the work itself (like with the beach balls) or on the wall space

Site specific-My space is predominantly taken up with windows, and so I have been considering how best to use this light within the work. However, light as not been an important factor in my work so far, and so I will not alter my ideas too drastically for the sake of this alone

I am next to the work of Kelly Briggs, whose large florescent orange fabric drape will need to be taken into consideration when finalising my piece idea

(Images from top)

+patterned wall (sketch taken from Not Yet Built idea plans and applied to the wall). Plinth works=colourful bulging shapes inspired by the bag experiments, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Free Range area. Plinth would need to be reconsidered after the evaluation of Not Yet Built 

+Colour on the wall, extending out of the wall into 3D sculptural elements and then flowing back into the 2D colour-coluld incorporate variety of materials, textures etc. Have movement (flowing between 2D and 3D) whilst being static. Textures of the 3D elements triggering curiosity form the viewer

+2D/3D idea in sketch form

+Wall patterns (Sketch taken from Become the Sculpture post exhibition development work) 

+Colourful bulging shapes-sire filled-inspired by the bags, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Free Range area, tension, weight, curiosity etc. 

[nicolehudson-art]

Not Yet Built 

Yallops Gallery, Norwich, 16-18 April 2015

In the run up to the Degree Show, I wanted to test ideas in an exhibition environment to gage direct public responses.

Idea: The material gesture, movement/gesture/behaviour represented through form alone, texture curiosity, weight, balance, tension, pressure. 

Turning point in my artistic development: 

Participation should only be a factor within my work if it is integral to adding something to the work-my work should not limit itself to participation/interaction as it will be blocked in and thus confining itself from full creative exploration of ideas. The way humans move isn’t always interesting-participation isn’t always necessary-the way materials move could be more interesting

First exhibition of static work encompassing my recent work ideologies

 Ideas that have been developing in my studio but not previously exposed beyond the periphery of experiment.

  A public statement of the expansion  of my practice, a symbol of my work (despite the change from participatory to sculptural, it was evident as a piece of my work): shows that my work can be perceived as meaningfully when static as when participatory/interactive

Degree show piece is likely not to be able to involve a participatory/interactive element, and so it was an important practice for this. 

To progress from: 

+The use of the plinth-despite advancing the use of the plinth since the Dialogues exhibition (incorporating it within the work rather then as a pedestal for the work), the plinth still maintained the ‘white-cube’ style glorification of the art object (heirachy) with which it becomes a loaded object. To use a plinth, I would have to completely re-think and alter its aesthetic to avoid this

+The material combinations were perceived by the audience with irrelevant connotations, which I will re-work to avoid in the future

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Experimental work

Away from my artists studio for an extended period of time during the Easter break made it difficult for me to experiment with sculpture in the natural and continuous way with which I normally work. I was however able to use a garage space to explore ideas taken from my visit to London

The plastic bags on the streets around the Free Range area (Brick Lane), and upon the ceiling of Pascale Marthine Tayou’s exhibition

+ I have been exploring ideas of tension, gesture, behaviour and form. Filling objects with air (as with the beach balls that I have previously used) creates an expansion of form, a gesture of energy, a tension and pressure, and a feeling of lightness and buoyancy 

+I filled bags with air (if progressing, coloured bags will be purchased and used) and experimented with ways of hanging them, combining them with objects, and applying paint to them in the same repetitive gesture that I used on the beach balls. 

Positive=The repetitive gesture of paint had an increased sense of movement to that of the beach balls, as it lay upon the creasing contours of the bags

Negative=The paint patterns began to resemble tribal art more than it has on the beach balls, possible due to the colour combinations, or to the semi covering (as opposed to the beach balls which were entirely covered).This is not an angle which I am trying to approach or portray 

Notes: I think that the inflatable balls hold an increased sense of energy-the bags (not entirely filled with air) seeming limp and tired

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Pascale Marthine Tayou: BOOMERANG

Serpentine Gallery (4 March-17 May)

Pascale Marthine Tayou’s use of colour and everyday materials, his playful compositions and sculptures both inspire and reflect areas of my own artistic practice upon a larger professional scale

+The gallery itself was full of work, yet curated in such a way that despite being crowded it was not oppressing or claustrophobic=useful curation inspiration for a degree show room which is predominantly sculpture 

+Theatrical, like walking into a stage set of Marthine Tayou’s imagination.

 +Exciting: kept your attention throughout the whole show, a sensation of discovery around each corner

+Mirrors reflected the other works and the different sides of the gallery within one another, reflecting the audience positioned within the gallery, within the work, within the stage set, as one big colourful composition

+ Although Marthine Tayou’s works have a deeper political background beneath the playful exterior surface, it was useful for me to see a show of purely colourful, playful works:

 How he combined colour with material (everyday materials, bricks etc.) 

How it was curated in a way that was busy (like a toy box) but not chaotic

 How the works were hung as reference for the hanging on my future works

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Free Range 

In the case of Free Range I am interested in creating a piece that responds to the industrial side of London, incorporating this into the materials choices I make, whilst maintaining my use of bright colours, to create a collection of abstract freestanding sculptures that can be moved and combined in different ways to create various compositional environments (Taken from proposal statement for Free Range Application) 

Selected for NUA’s Free range exhibition in July, I decided to go to London during the Easter break to see the area surrounding the exhibition. My work is often site specific and so I wanted to gain an idea of the feel of the place. I was particularly drawn to the vibrant colours that contrast against the prominent metal and brick features. 

Main noted elements to experiment with:

+Plastic bags-the streets were clustered with piles of brightly coloured plastic waste bags

+Brick-colourful graffiti contrasting against the brick work

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Experimental work exploring balance, tension and material combinations. 

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Exploring gestures of tension, material combinations and behaviour, and alternative methods of display, I returned to Blue to see the different sculptural directions  that it could expand within, with an increased focus upon it as a sculpture as opposed to a interactive sculpture. 

Although not limiting myself solely to interaction, the use of the elasticated rubber not only linked to my BA7 perforative works, but showed a more confined way with which the work could still be interacted with my the public, without the loose balls that risk becoming a disruptive feature within an exhibition. The elasticated rubber created a spring effect that would increase the viewers curiosity to interact, which I pushed further by adding in the textured ball. The different shapes created when pulling and anchoring the net in different directions demonstrated a sculptural potential, that could also become perforative; a piece not interacted with my the public, but by the artist: an ever changing work, becoming a project within the gallery space. This negotiates the issues of play functioning within the studio as opposed to the  gallery space that I have previously raised.