Formative feedback
Feedback on assignment Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity
Ex. 5.1 Evaluation Thoughtful evaluation to kick-start the project, referencing both my feedback and your own evaluations. Thank you, as you know I don’t find evaluations easy I tried to include all the feedback I had received to try and help me moving forward.
Visual Research
Thoughtful evaluation of your imagery and key terms to define the trend. The colour palette is bright and colourful, referencing the plastic debris more than the idea of destruction, but the latter emerges more in how you work with the colour. The fish colour chips felt at odds with the trend. Whilst a fish communicates a sea life theme clearly and quite literally, given the trend is about the destruction of sea life through accumulation of debris, is it an appropriate motif? I think you may be right, I hadn’t thought of it that way. I have chosen a different shape for each colour mixing exercise to make them all unique and easy to identify. If I were to do the project again I may look at perhaps changing the shapes to something more in keeping. I used a bottle motif further into the project which may have been more appropriate. I feel at this stage it is not worth changing but I will remember this point for the future.
You’ve worked more on the visual research and drawing in this project, which is great. Your use of brief evaluative notes has improved – they’ve become more specific in explaining your thoughts. Continue to refer to earlier feedback to build on this.
“I still have no real confidence in drawing, even after all these courses I can still here my school art teacher telling me I cannot draw. ” You can draw! But you need to draw far more to develop a fluency and find approaches which you feel confident in. You could have used drawing far more in your early research and throughout the project to develop and refine the aesthetic. Initially, you’ve used drawing to copy what you can see in your photos, rather than to develop it or change the aesthetic. The drawings are competently executed with nice use of mark making (again – you can draw!), but I’m not sure what you’re learning about the theme by creating them, or whether you’ve learnt more than the photo or object you’ve stuck in your sketchbook shows us. The issue is less whether you can draw and more why you’re drawing and what you want to learn, develop, extend through it. The Photo shopped picture of items from the beach does change the aesthetic and zooms into a section of debris, which feels more valuable to the development of the project. Your application of colour highlights certain elements and draws out the synthetic colour. Use drawing to extract, develop and extend rather than replicate.
Your mixed media collages work well, with bundles of beads and net mimicking the enticingly coloured tangles of waste. The photo of the small section highlights the tangle of debris but abstracts it away from the more literal visualisation of the debris on the beach. You’ve stated that you really liked this piece in the log but not stated how it could be developed into sampling or into further visual research. It’s not referred to again, which seems like a missed opportunity. Imagine delicate knotting of weaving of found objects and fibres creating something that is both beautiful and also evocative of the tangled debris. I had originally discounted these as they were not really ‘speaking’ to me as part of this project. I was concentrating more on creating something using the plastics themselves and didn’t perhaps spend as much time as perhaps I should have following this line of investigation. I had planned to perhaps use these ideas in the future as I really like their texture and colour.
“I would have liked some more primary research but really am at a loss as to how to get any more without repeating myself.” Primary research is tricky if you can’t access the sea often, and equally, your secondary research – the photographic evidence of plastic pollution – potentially has more value to the concept anyway. The focus of your research therefore has to be on drawing extensively from your secondary imagery so that you develop the aesthetic in a more personal manner. The theme focuses on accumulation of debris, so how can you create drawings that use accumulation? Could you draw the same image over and over again on the same sheet? Or layer multiple images? You could do the same but using multiple sheets of tracing paper. You could print an image over and over again on the same piece of paper. Could you fill one hand with multiple tools and draw the image? You talk about overlays in relation to sampling, so why not in drawing? Rather than drawing literally what you can see, think about ways that the theme or concept can inspire ways to draw.
The woven mixed media pieces in the sketchbook (cut photos with items threaded through) contain great colour. Drawing from these could have created exciting imagery. You could then have cut in your drawings and woven them together perhaps. Or you could have created collage papers in colours and textures matching the woven image, and then created a new woven collage from it. Every step away from the original imagery personalises the work and makes it more unique. Thank you for these suggestions I will certainly have a go at these in the future – they sound really exciting. I think one of the main issues with distance learning is that you don’t have any other input or guidance whilst working and it is very difficult to find a way through if you start to struggle.
Sampling and Refinement
In your learning log, you discuss a lot about how the theme and artist imagery has affected you but you’ve haven’t explained how it feeds into a more practical approach to your work. You do the same when talking about the theme more broadly- you’ve visualised it well verbally but not explained about how those words and feelings can physically appear in the work to make the research or this discussion really developmental to the physical work.
You’ve taken a mixed media collage approach to most of the sampling, using found materials. A lot of fragments had fallen off on the journey or whilst I was looking at them, which highlighted an issue of crafting. The found materials could have been integrated into the samples with more careful crafting. The samples do capture a sense of a mass of debris and whilst the sense of chaos is appropriate, they didn’t feel carefully crafted or composed. The photos on the learning log highlight that you have considered the composition carefully, so perhaps some of the more fragile materials (e.g. the seaweed) could have been replicated in plastics, so the samples were structurally sound. This could have posed you an interesting problem to solve: to translate and find visual equivalents for the objects without incorporating them directly. The photos of the samples as a collection are strong and the samples communicate much more successfully through photography. Consider presenting photos within the sample box when submitting for assessment, rather than the box of tangled samples I received. Consider how you want the person opening the box to immediately view the work. My main focus with this project was making samples that could be used in art works to make people think about being surrounded by debris. I wanted therefore to use some of the items I found on the beach as part of this. Clearly these did not travel well which was a shame and will mean that they need to be adapted before sending them for assessment too. I will therefore be re-crafting these samples and adapting them. I have been playing around with making seaweed from plastic bags to replace the fragile seaweed in the samples. I like the idea of presenting the samples along side the photographs as I will then be able to show how the samples will work in their proposed contexts (for example with back lighting).
The melted plastics have interesting qualities and gave you more control over the composition. The use of bubble wrap visually references the suckers on octopuses, for example, and your use of this motif in stitch related well to the base you stitched onto. There are lots of interesting patterns emerging which could have been developed further. Your proposal of an installation using these plastic patterns is interesting – it could be both beautiful and thought provoking. Could it be made from the plastic themselves, beautifully crafted to maximise the subtle patterns as well as the sense of a tangled mass? Yes this is something I would like to develop further. Perhaps as part of Assignment 6 I think it could be constructed using the layered plastics and perhaps carefully knotted masses or stitched elements to suggest the floating debris.
The wrapped samples showed potential – the individual found items (e.g. crab claw) became less identifiable and part of a chaos of colour and texture. You had to look closer to see detail. The sample with the beautifully bound red thread was more carefully crafted – it could be seen to enhance and add value to the sea debris. Whilst this is quite linear in form and doesn’t have the sense of “seething mass”, this attention to detail could perhaps have been developed in other pieces with exquisitely crafted and delicate binding and wrapping. Even if the overall aesthetic was one of chaos, the sensitivity and beauty of the crafting would be apparent when one looked closer.
The refined samples are still quite varied and there remain issues unresolved and areas untested. Choosing one potential installation idea and then developing a collection of refined samples that explore and test that idea would have resulted in a more coherent final collection. The orbs could be interesting but they feel quite clean and make the detail of the sample within hard to see. Why is the orb shape appropriate? Could hanging the samples alone work better? The canopy idea is interesting but it was this sample that felt least considered (and that deposited most bits on my desk). If you wish to refine this sample, you could explore: ways of wrapping and binding the elements together with varying degrees of crafting quality; exploring how far the ‘debris’ extends from the base material – does it hang down far enough to feel immersive for the visitor; how can light be used to activate the background without distracting from the forms on the surface.
The refined samples have definitely narrowed the scope of the project but more exploration of crafting and deeper challenging one idea is necessary to create a coherent summation to the project.
Suggested reading/viewing Context
Definitely look at the discussion surrounding ‘sloppy craft’! It is so relevant to this project. Don’t feel the need to buy the book but Google the term and reflect on the role of crafting.
“Although it was a crafting project rather than an art one” – what differentiates a craft project from an art project? How do you approach them differently, and how would the outcome differ? More research into textiles within a gallery context would be good to contextualise this project and inform the ambition of your ideas. (Textiles are more commonly seen in American galleries – there persists a snobbery about the use of textiles in the UK art scene, though this is changing.)
Jessica den Hartog’s beautiful coloured and dyed recycled plastics.
Have a look at The Drawing Book by Tania Kovats and Vitamin D by Emma Dexter. These are great books full of examples of contemporary drawing – they aren’t ‘how to’ books but rather ones full of inspiring images and different approaches to drawing.
Re-working
- Rework this assignment by developing a refined collection of samples relating to one of your ideas. Yes I am going to refine the samples based on the melted plastic installation to create a selection of layers that would be used for the finished piece.
- Consider my notes above on the presentation of samples for assessment. Thank you, I will definitely be re-working some of the samples to make them more stable and will be presenting them with some of the photographs to show them at their best.
Pointers for the next assignment
- Reflect on this feedback in your learning log.
- Reflect on the potential role of drawing in your work.
- Consider less literal ways of communicating visually.
Textiles2OCA 