EDGE 5. Share
Welcome
to Edge 5!
Sharing in the digital age has taken on a new meaning. We ‘share’ social media posts and news stories with both positive and negative consequences. Anecdotal evidence can spread as fact with little effort involved. Knowledge is power, no matter its veracity. The internet has however made courses like those offered by OCA possible. We can share images and have dialogue despite geographical restrictions. Social media and discussion boards were key to my experience as a student. In putting together a proposal for this issue, I was particularly interested in how we would work collaboratively despite not being physically together. We present a mix of individual and collaborative work, and are hugely proud to share it with you.
Rural Perspectives The suggestion for this edition of Edge was one of collaboration: we artists to use an image from OCA photography students to create a new image. Prior to this, I had been contacted by one such student, Andy Birskeugh, regarding an exercise he wanted to do, using my sketches as resource material. Naturally I asked for a return match for this edition of Edge, to which - happily - he agreed. What started out as a simple exchange of skills became more interesting for me thanks to the dialogue between myself and Andy over the images. I’d wanted a farm building photo from him so that I could overlay a drawing from the farm where I live, which was straightforward enough as he, like me, lives near a farm. However, he said he had been meaning to visit a particular abandoned farm for some time and this would be a good excuse. His resulting images focussed on what he had noticed, namely the shadows formed by the roof beams on the walls. The fact the site had been bombed gave a poignancy and starkness to the photos. I wanted to tap in to his creativity rather than overlay a drawing on a photo, which reminded me that I’d been wanting to try painting over a photo/ postcard with gouache as I’d seen at the Rachel Whiteread exhibition at Tate Britain so this, like Andy’s visit to Balsdean Farm, was a good excuse.
Jennifer Moore
Having daubed some paint and marker pen and shown the resultant picture to Andy, he remarked that he felt the photos had been missing something but my application of paint and marks had made them complete. What strikes me is that had I chosen a photo from a stock of images, none of the above would have transpired. Utilising a fellow student’s creative insight as the catalyst in this collaboration was as important as the resources shared. Andy’s blog can be found at https://dbdicblog.com and at @ drewkabi on Instagram.
Jennifer Moore
Connect:Disconnect
Lottie Ellis & Holly Norris
Pistachio Smiles You choose to share it, For someone else’s Piece of mind, You choose to hold it, in that line, When really your thinking, of the things behind, False, False smile. Something wakes you up, To see beyond the mire, To see a face, You do not want to disgrace, With your false, False smile. Lines that make you look, Sentences that others, Have not took, Smile.
Ailish Henderson
A chance in grace, To see another face, A renewed faith, You now have a facial truth, To share, Something free, We can all bear. Smile, Really smile
Ailish Henderson
Sharing
Carol Hoy
Carol Hoy
Conversation No.1
Sue Parr & Arlene Sharp
Sue Parr & Arlene Sharp
Plein Air Days For the past two years, I have been working with another local artist, sharing inspirations and exhibition space. Working together has opened many doors for us both. We have been able to combine forces applying for gallery spaces, project funding and residencies. Between us we can offer a wider range of media and consider more ambitious proposals. This year has been an exciting one, in which we have started to organise plein air painting days at a local sculpture garden involving over 20 fellow artists with national media advertising, and we have just returned from a month as artists in residence in Australia, during which we led similar plein air days with local artists there. The opportunity to work on location with other artists, most of us out of our comfort zone, unused to working in public, has been an invigorating one. As a textile artist, I have done a lot of painting and drawing, but as a means to an end rather than a finished work. Like many other artists we have met, historically I have found drawing from life incredibly challenging, often working more from images. Even with artists we know well both from their work and socially, we rarely get to see each other at work and observe one another’s process. Sharing tips and techniques, and discussing how we each try to resolve a piece has enlivened my own work, and I have been told others feel similarly. It has also been a unique opportunity for members of the public to get an insight into how a work evolves.
Holly Norris
I have come out of this experience wanting to spend more time dedicated to developing my drawing and painting. Having found ways to resolve problems of depth in translating a three-dimensional scene or form to a twodimensional piece from life, I am now finding it more difficult to work from inspiration photographs taken along the way!
Holly Norris
Self & Others I am interested in the way we humans categorise everything from the self, right down to the way language operates. For me the terms self & other refer in the first instance to the relationship between our subjective and objective realities, even before one begins to look at power dynamics. The idea of strictly separate selves and others is questionable and argued, by some, entirely constructed within the conscious machine; the ‘I’. Technology and artificial intelligence are potentially changing the very nature of who we are, along with how we determine self and other. It has been argued that old language structures may become defunct as technology begins to communicate messages between one another, outside of the linguistic system we have relied upon for so long. With this introductory work, I wanted to demonstrate that a) we absorb other people’s stories, and project our own narratives onto them, which means any hope of having a perfectly objective image in our conscious minds about someone else is definitionally impossible and b) that the internet gives all of us the ability to develop entirely constructed personas in a way that is new and un-experienced by we humans previously. Working with other people was one way of demonstrating the blurred lines between self and other - we are influenced by others all the time; why not embrace it, which I believe is a trend in art nowadays anyway. I needed to make a contract because of course expectations but also because it seemed the sensible thing to do.
Sarah-Jane Field
Looking back, the work is overly convoluted. Saying that, I like complex work, and I don’t need it to be polished perfection. I am influenced heavily by the notion that meaning can and should be opened up in art, rather than narrowed down. Moving away from easily identifiable narratives is appealing to me. It’s what drew me to both Lottie and Stefan’s work. I wanted to collaborate and wanted to find collaborators via the OCA network who weren’t on the photography course. I also wanted artists who paint or draw, not photographers, to merge my photo-technology with.
Sarah-Jane Field
Self & Others: Stefan
“I found the start of this project inspiring to respond through drawing on thoughts provided by Sarah-Jane. However, I wasn’t sure which turn it would take and what it would mean to my interrogation of the subject matter. It turned out to be more of a response activity, grounded in the distance and perhaps different expectations. Nevertheless, I continued working on that subject matter of distant constructed perception of other beyond the scope of the contract.
Sarah-Jane Field & Stefan Schaffeld
“There are a few aspects (external and internal) that I am taking away from this project: - An inter-subjective relationship and perhaps inter-dependency and a sense of connectedness (more with Sarah-Jane than the other persona) - A sense of responding to new or updated information, something I appreciated in my further interrogation of the subject matter - The me as self and as artist with its continuation - Questions on mental images, self-conscious reflections, and development of visual works that are intervened with each other.� Stefan
Sarah-Jane Field & Stefan Schaffeld
Self & Others: Lottie
“Being invited to collaborate was an invigorating and encouraging opportunity. The written character prompts I received immediately inspired me to consider what it was like to be that person and how they might think and feel – to consider their inner landscape. It was then a short transition to considering how those feelings would look as a drawing.
Sarah-Jane Field & Lottie Ellis
“After this Sarah-Jane photographed me in my garden wearing the art. This was a very interesting experience: Others by Sarah-Jane Field to be wearing my own art and have the imagined inner landscape of another masking my own face. Like Stefan, my part was feeding my responses into the project – first with the creation of 5 drawings and then being photographed behind some of these – this last part contributing further to the experience of distance and disconnection: a fascinating juxtaposition considering the theme of this collaborative project. “I continue to consider how to render our inner topographies and, further to this project, went on to create some wearable art of my own – creating inner landscapes on to t-shirts which I then wore hiding my mood behind or projecting a feeling out.” Lottie
Sarah-Jane Field & Lottie Ellis
Horizons
Sibylle Herzer
Sharing A Vat Of Dye Where I grew up hills rise behind hills and mountains behind mountains. On hazy days the land seemed like a stack of horizons. Climbing a hill blocks out all but one, bringing that one horizon tantalisingly close. But just as one is about to reach it, it reveals a stack of new ones. This has always exercised a strong pull on me. I wanted to see what there is behind the next hill and the next. I wanted to see where the horizons would lead me. And so I feel with making art, with all the mediums and techniques I want to explore. I wonder what I can do with them and where they will lead me. Some are close and connected with what I already do. Some I am climbing and until I am familiar with them they won’t reveal what possibilities lie behind. Others still are no more than a vague mass in the distance, seemingly unconnected with me and what I do. Textile dying has been like that, always in view but far away. I saw it often at work where my colleague Kaili grew her dye plants and dyed her wool and cloth. Until one day I wondered whether dyes could be made into inks. It was about the time of the indigo harvest and I soon found out that to learn about inks I needed to learn about the pigments in the dyes. So I started to climb that hill. I soon lost view of the inks, paper and drawing as I immersed myself into this new craft. And while Kaili taught me my questions and ideas led her in a new direction. We shared our knowledge, experience and ideas, experimented with pigments, dye baths, and inks, we dyed paper and drew on cloth. The view from here is marvellous!
Sibylle Herzer
Palimpsest
Patricia Howe
Just about to move to level 2 and changed recently from Photography to Creative Arts, I am part of the very active South West Group. In November we are having our first exhibition, and I chose to do a palimpsest as I am interested in enigma of all sorts. I invited others to join in a collaboration and discovered that this involves a great deal of organisation but much more fun and surprises involving, with myself, in the final image, Anna Goodchild, Derek Youd, Krystyna Dembny and Sue Parr. The challenge for me was to make a dynamic image from the contributions and still leave the original visible. Happily the colours were naturally harmonious and editing was minimal, consisting mainly of increasing the contrast in the first image so that it showed through. Having recently been studying labyrinths, I saw a connection in time and space to palimpsests. I made the mistake of inviting our whole South West Group to participate and soon found the necessity to limit the contributions. Any more would have confused and muddied the result. As the exhibition is called ‘Work- in- Progress’, I have chosen to exhibit the individual components in Clipframes and to entitle them with torn edged paper to highlight the unfinished aspect of the work. The final image is the only finished piece and has a proper frame to celebrate its elevated position.
Patricia Howe
Let’s All Share Have you seen the cockatoo dancing to the Queen song? It even had a tagline asking you to share if you laughed. We probably don’t think much of clicking the ‘share’ button, but advertisers go mad thinking up what ways to hook you in, from positioning of the button; at the top will you decide to share after looking at just the headline, or is it better at the bottom after you’ve read your way down? Adding a message near the button ‘share if you care’ might just get you to click for a charity. Attention span is a big deal on social media. Think about the scrolling we do. What makes you stop and look at something? It has to be extreme in this age of information overload….too cute, funny, angry…the emotion has to be intense to make you bothered. It’s suggested we might share because it makes us look ‘cool’ and it’s not just the Beckham’s trying to build their personal brand. Papers have been written about sharing, how to be interesting, humble and get your message out there. Companies work out what time of day you’re most likely to do it. After lunch when you’re taking a sneaky look at Facebook, or weekends? The average American reads 100,000 words a day, so it’s not surprising this is big business. Maybe you’ll look at that ‘share’ button in new light and ask why that nice celebrity you like is fronting a shocking headline article with so many adverts?
Catherine Levey
Catherine Levey
Conversation No. 2
Sue Parr & Arlene Sharp
Sue Parr & Arlene Sharp
Arctic Reflections
Veronica Worrall & Nicky Eastaugh
Veronica Worrall & Nicky Eastaugh
Word Play
Nuala Mahon
Nuala Mahon
Who are we? Holly Norris Having studied Textiles with OCA, I am a printmaker and mixed media textiles artist based in Portland, Dorset. I regularly exhibit around the county and have just returned from an art residency in Australia. www.hollynorris.org
Sue Parr I live in West Dorset and am currently studying for a BA in Painting through the OCA. Contact: sueparr000@gmail.com
Jennifer Moore I am studying Drawing Skills 1 with OCA, and live and work in rural East Sussex. I keep bees, and teach and give talks on the same. Instagram: @sevenhens Blog: www.jmoore515524d1.wordpress.com
Lottie Ellis Lottie wears many hats, but desires not to be defined by any of them. She remains curious and seek always for things to wonder about. She baffles both herself and those around her at times, but finds great solace in creating. She can be contacted via her Instagram account: @lottie_ellis_art
Ailish Henderson
Carol Hoy
Freelance artist, designer, columnist and tutor; I provide talks, workshops and masterclasses in Textiles, Print Making and Fine Art. I had my first solo exhibition in March 2016, and have been published widely including Batsford’s “Be Creative With Textile Art”. I am an illustrator and artist based in Hertfordshire. I’m half way through a degree in Visual Communication with the OCA. https://www.instagram.com/calhoy/
Sarah-Jane Field OCA photography student and commercial photographer in and around London. She will be showing work at Oxford House, Bethnal Green in a collaboration with photographers Keith Greenough and John Umney in November 2017. www.sarahjanefield.com
Stefan Schaffeld
Fine Art OCA student since 2015, professional coach and art therapist. He interrogates through drawing and painting the human conditions of presence and absence as a spatial experience in our current time. Facebook @stefan.schaffeld.artist Instagram @stefanschaffeld
Sibylle Herzer I study Drawing with the OCA and am still looking for my voice. While I enjoy exploring media, techniques and subject matter, light and my native hills are recurring subjects.
Patricia Howe Formerly a nurse, midwife, health visitor and lecturer, I began OCA photography to inform my painting, first intrigued and later disillusioned with the limitations I felt. Now on the Creative Arts path, I will combine Photography with Printmaking as I move into Level 2.
Anna Goodchild
I am a photography student and have just started Level 3. I flourish on cross-discipline work and really enjoy the company of students from other pathways who like to think differently about their work.
Nicky Eastaugh I am an OCA textiles student. I am interested and influenced by geometry, architecture, visual representation of words, and issues of identity. I have a propensity for bold, dramatic colours and strong contrasts of hue and texture.
Veronica M. Worrall
Nuala Mahon
I am a photography student with OCA. Sharing her love of the natural world and her concern for its preservation are her main artistic drivers.. I attained my Licentiateship with Royal Photographic Society and am a keen contributor to the society’s Creative Group. Sharing my time between the Luberon mountain foothills and an island in the SW of Ireland, I have worked and travelled in many countries. I work part time in a craft shop and exhibit my work in local galleries in both Ireland and France.
Arlene Sharp Fine Art student, Open College of the Arts
Catherine Levey I’m a second year arts student of the Open College of the Arts and live in Nottingham. I’m interested in expressing hidden emotions through contemporary portraiture. Instagram: @profmeme Please look me up and say hello!
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