Visual Language - Ghita Craig

Throughout this module I strove to remain cognisant of my theme(s) whilst openly engaging in the workshops exploring light projection, paper-folding, risography and mono-printing in response to the given brief of Indexes. Initially I thought of literal indexes of actions and events like movement and ritual, but I developed work I began to ruminate on the interpersonal indexes; memories and relationships and romantic or platonic love. How these marks on our souls as social creatures transcend time long after we perish or how upon meeting someone new can feel like you’ve known them all along. Time was something explored through Process and Enquiry, but I wanted to explore how it affects us as humans, and more explicitly how it affects me. As a sentimentalist I wanted to extrapolate from my personal experiences to create visuals that are playful, unique and relatable.

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Final Thoughts

I've enjoyed playing freely within the workshops and creating motifs and visuals that illustrate my theme, but I am disappointed with my failure to execute some of the things I planned to like cyanotypes and screenprinting. Also restricted access to the studio meant I couldn't further develop risograph prints and use the printing press. That being said, I feel my output was strong with a visible relationship between the collection.

This module helped me crystalise what my style really is and when I can introduce new elements and techniques. Discovering what themes resonate with me, what techniques are my cornerstones allows me to use that as a foundation to develop upon and expand my creative process.

Should I revisit work created in this module, I would explore risographs more thoroughly and create some larger mixed media prints that perhaps incorporate digital motifs as well as analogue.

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Louise Bourgeois

My biggest creative influence, perhaps it goes without saying, is Bourgeois. Her gargantuan body of work spans every media there is, and every occasion I look her up I discover a piece I've never set eyes on before.

I connect with Bourgeois' artwork and style because of it's strong narrative and each individual pieces automatically ties to all previous work; it's an ongoing process, a personal journey. Poignant, sentimental, honest, feminine and strong.

I feel particularly drawn to the use of text and embroidery as well as dominant colour and symbols. Her work is psychoanalytical and therefore so self-referential - it simply begs to be understood. She begged to be understood. I believe that's why she remains my favourite artist is this sense of vulnerability and demand for empathy. It touches me; it inspires me.

Even the mere aesthetics of her style pleases and inspires me - impactful and liberal use of colour, repetition, pattern, text, positive/negative space. Her drawings feel to me like archetypal drawings. And they serve a purpose greater than aesthetics alone.

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Cy Twombly

These collages by Twombly from the 70s look like present day sketchbook pages. I find the thematic, borderline scientific, exploration of mushrooms in this journal-like presentation so interesting to look at. The variation of approach; some scribbles, some graph paper, some printouts, photography, scientific illustration, numbers, crayon. So chaotic yet graphic with a clear visual theme. I must have been subconsciously reminiscing about this series when I was composing my projector pieces.

It's also quite confessional, there's no subtlety or nuance as it's all just splayed out and layered.

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I found these patterns in the newsprint sandwiched between several sheets of glass at my work. Created by pressure and humidity and time, beautiful indexes of environment.

It reminded me of suminigashi marble printing, which is where I want to go next. And could perhaps make a beautiful risograph.

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Risography Workshop

This workshop was such a fruitful follow-on from the monoprinting runs, and encouraged me to play with colour more. As a fan of screen print, this is such a fascinating bridge between analogue and digital printing.

I wanted to make the most of this medium and layer up different colours and textures, but I actually prefer the pieces that have only 2 or even a single layer.

The fluero pink text and grounds are my favourites which is surprising as pink is not one of my colours. Its garish brightness just has great presence and instinctively triggers joy.

Creating a riso ground would lend itself perfectly to be monoprinted, Lino print or even screenprinted atop of.

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Monoprint Workshop ii

A continuation of monoprinting exploring the visual motifs of circles and textures and text.

Luke wrote me a small poem:

“Strangers miles apart.

Wandering, then suddenly

One, as if always.”

I wanted to include this in my process because it inspires me within my theme of love and connection transcending time. The Joanna Newsom lyrics were an appropriate jumping off point but this is far more personal and therefore apt.

I was really experimenting with textures and diffusion by placing the paper atop an object and rolling my inked up brayer over it in different directions. The diffusion visual makes me think of the frailty of memory and how it dissipates over time.

I also tried inking up my plate repeatedly after taking each print layering up textures simply to see how much would remain. Even lifting the excess ink before printing created a nice noisy ground.

Angus lent me a roller that had dried acrylic paint on it that created a lovely organic ground with patterned minutiae.

Inking up the lace doily and putting it through the printing press just seemed like an act I was compelled to do. The print was not only so crisp but is embossed the paper which created additional dimensional depth. I loved the high contrast of this one and I feel it simultaneously exemplifies time and domesticity.

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Projections Workshop

Though this workshop was an exploration for the Process and Enquiry module, for a few compositions I was concerned with making nostalgic “journal entry” arrangements to explore sentimentality and narrative.

I used slides of someone else’s slides from decades ago; snapshots of family, holidays, landscapes from another’s life and perception. It gives me an interesting uncanny feeling; I’m familiar with a family unit and holiday destinations but these slides are from someone else’s experience and is alien to me. It’s an odd simultaneously comforting nostalgia and an unauthorised voyeurism.

I arranged the slides with acetates, foliage, doilies, and found materials. Clingfilm made me think of sheer curtains especially framed in a window by the projector. A view into or out of a home.

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Monoprint Workshop i

Mono printing is one of my favourite media techniques because of the quality of marks made. The paradoxical fuzzy sharpness and tactile indirectness of the practice are so appealing to me, so I was really excited to explore themes of time and love.

I’m influenced by Tracey Emin in my practice too, the confessional and autobiographical nature of her work speaks to me as a feminist and an artist. I pay particularly close attention to her monoprints because of her inclusion of text and how that written narrative effects her work compositionally and sentimentally.

I like the use of icons and symbols in my work because sometimes I find these most basic visuals are most communicative. So I played with clocks, knots, circles and my hands, as symbols of time, love and humanness. I really liked the use of my hand as an indexical trace in its literal sense. Hands are a strong symbol of human connection to me; the physical love language of touch and the making of things for a loved one.

A direct source of inspiration for me within this project is my romantic relationship. I save things from our time together like receipts and train tickets, and these objects take on this intense sentimentality. They’re no longer a fiscal or travel document but a ticket to an intense emotional memory, a stamp in time.

Circles are a potent symbol of the cyclical nature of time, reflected in a clock face. But also how concentric circles resemble gravitational waves and the physical nature of time. This is why I chose to print with the lace doily as it refers to domesticity and home and nostalgia as well as nodding to ripples through time.

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Midpoint Overview

After gathering together my thoughts and research and discussing them with my tutor, themes and intentions have crystallised creating great scope for exploration.

Notes:

Key words/themes relating to my project: sentimentalism, time, nostalgia, narrative, domesticity, love, humanness, existentialism

Playing with the use of text: both my own and that of others.

Using envelopes and folded forms as substrates for printing both onto and with.

Creating envelopes out of other materials, ie fabric.

Mixed media exploration, journal-like aesthetics.

Researching Sherry Turkle

Exploration into 3D forms as well as 2D

Things to try:

- Suminigashi onto envelopes and fabric, make envelopes of out fabric. Dip folded form into suminagashi bath and unfold.

- Play with candle wax; batik, cast objects or build stalactites

- Cyanotypes with photography and text on acetates both on fabric and paper

- Crochet around objects, protective

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Through the paper form folding exercise, I relied on intuition to design and manipulate but struggled to keep my brief at the fore. Until we moved onto the poem on an envelope part of the workshop. I’m not an eloquent writer, so I opted for transcribing the lyrics to song Time As A Symptom by Joanna Newsom, about the fear of how mortality is not only your physical death, but the death of your experience of your emotional and spiritual intimacy with others. As the narrator of this song states, we care about the passage of time because we are one person in a nexus of others: “love is a not a symptom of time, time is a symptom of love.”

I crafted the envelope out of a floral printed paper bag that I’ve hoarded for years because I’m a terminal sentimentalist but I feel it was a befitting choice because my attachment to it transcended time. I have a profound preoccupation with the physics of space and time as well as being a hopeless romantic, so exploring indexes of the passage of time both in and out of a human context is the route I’m going to take going forth.

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Paper Folding Workshop

The exercise was to fold paper planes in differing scales and types of paper to study the change materiality and behaviour of the form.

I made a small basic plane using a envelope because I enjoy the prefab patterns they come with.

I then made a larger plane of a different design using A2 cartridge paper. There was a tremendous shift in weight and how it occupied space. Even the sound of folding the paper was deeper and slower. Made me think about slipcasting it in porcelain or casting it in bronze because I love playing with sensory assumptions of familiar objects.

Also I found as I’m not an immaculate folder, I had to refold multiple times and began to tire out areas of paper. This softened the material till resembled fabric, and revealed indexes of my working.

We then had to take the basics folding basics and create a form that could stand on its own without additional support. I think I intuitively opted for something architectural simply to make sure it stood, but I was also striving to create something with organic form and flow. Without even realising it I made something anthropomorphic and vaginal, whilst denoting an architectural strength; symbolically feminist. Which is a theme I tend to explore in my practice.

But I struggled to keep my index brief at the forefront of my mind for this part of the exercise. There was a disconnect that I couldn’t remedy until we moved onto envelope poems.

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Stranger Language

I spun the globe on Radio Garden to land on a random station foreign to me. It landed on Norway and listened to a man and a woman conversing; the tone of their voices, the clipped yet melodic language, the intonations of how they spoke. I had no idea what they were saying, but my response was to the act of conversation itself. The weaving and waving of words. One can appreciate the significance of communication, even when ignorant of the idea being communicated. Ink has been my media of choice lately, simply for its fluidity and high value. I love the way it diminishes off the brush and on to the paper.

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What’s this?

I picked up an object without giving it a thought, and began to work with it. Imagining I was privy to what a toothbrush’s function was, I looked at it analytically and was instinctively drawn to the bristles. Their texture, their rigidity until they bend, their repetitive formation. These qualities led to some intuitive explorations in repetition, pattern, line, negative space and contrasting value, using the toothbrush itself and Indian ink.

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A metallic tube leading into a flashing machine.

Can it see me?

Have I displeased it?

It hovers above blinking its red eye at me.

Its brother watches me from behind.

But it winks in blue.

First day of exploring the Stranger Brief in the studio. Imagining I’m a stranger in a strangeland responding to my immediate surroundings. Within this mindset I tapped into vulnerability; I get travel anxiety visiting new places and feel like everybody is looking down at me.

Looking up at the ceiling and feeling drawn to parallel and intersecting lines. There’s strong industrial aesthetic which I wanted to convey in my rudimentary drawings.

I wrote the text above before I did anything. Personifying the little devices on the ceiling felt like a natural narrative; if I were in a brand new place I’d be desperate for some familiar kin.

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Dropping ink-covered marbles onto sheets of paper sitting in a tray and tilting the tray in different directions. My movements in response to where the marble was and was going were so slow, it felt very strange. Like in a dream, you’re not quite in control. I played with ink-saturation, how frequently I moved the tray, the number of marbles, dropping on one after another.

I loved playing with the mechanics of chance and creating so many unique pieces filled with movement and energy. Some are sort of sombre with sweeping lines and some explode and gather and swirl! Like birds in the sky.