while walking home the other day....

I passed the Great Eastern Hotel on Duke St, I've passed it everyday for the past year and have always found it interesting and loved the idea of what might be inside. It was famous for being the largest homeless mens hostle in Britain but it was closed down around five years ago with big plans to turn it into something else but nothing has been done yet. It looks like nothing will be done in the near future either as in January this year a huge storm blew the roof off and theres been no sign of any restoration being done or even any protection from the elements? I imagine it will eventually just be another building left to rot and then easy to knock down.


But back to my walk home.... as i was passing it about two weeks ago i noticed that the ground floor side door was not only unlocked but sitting open. this temptation was just to much to resist so i went to explore. I dont doubt that it was stupid and a bit dangerous but it was fantastic inside!


the ground floor was full of odds and ends like chairs, traffic cones, old kettles and mugs. it smelled terrible and im sure there must still be quite desperate people spending the night there, its the most wind and water tight of the whole place and is probably a more comfortable alternative to the street. Going up to the different floors was much more exciting though, the floors higher up are so bare and as huge as ballrooms now that they've been cleared of all the tiny dormitories. The higher up we went the less floor there was and the more you could see the sky peeking through the holes in the floors above but we where "safley" taking pictures from the concrete side stairwell. by the time we made it to the fourth floor i was well and truley spooked and too scared to chance the very very narrow dark stairway to the higher even ricketier floors, particularly when we became sure we heard someone moving around higher up.


So narrowly escaping with my life (or at least thats how it felt at the time) and a few pictures it feels like another little bit of the city thats not such a mystery anymore.

ok... so...

I did manage to do a little bit of making over the summer, but only a little. I wanted to try just making for the sake of it and for the enjoyment of it instead of always trying to find a meaning in everything.

so i started knitting.
Knitting is something that i sort of enjoy anyway, I'm not great at it but you can do anywhere and once you get into the rhythm of it, it becomes almost meditative and very addictive... which is nice. Again i was trying to stick with the making for the sake of it and not to try to hard, so i practiced on certain bits and experimented with stitches and materials on others and when i was finished they began to look a lot like big creeping webs.


With this in mind it seemed natural to put them outside, so i did.

I though it would be interesting just to leave them there and see how they change. so far... nothing but its early days!! it would be nice if it started to become overgrown in the way that rope bindings round trees sometimes become swallowed up by the tree, but we'll see.

ive had a few coments on what they remind people of, one friend suggested it would make a nice homefor a lazy spider and another said it was like weaving a yarn. Like i was telling a story but in a physical way and they told me a little about Anansi the Spider who was The King of Stories in ashanti culture.

Swedish MFA

I visited Gothenburg at the end of last term and happened to be in a gallery as their school of art unveiled its equivalent to the MFA graduation show.
There where some interesting things but it was a little tricky to grasp everything that was going on as they had Fine art and Design mixed together and some of the design show is still a bit of a mystery to me.

There was one piece in the show that i especially like, I loved the used of the material and just fell in love with the presence they had in such a crowded space. There's more pictures on Flickr just click on the picture.

While walking home...

I passed the old BBC building just off Queen Margaret Drive. I think its a shame that it'll eventually be turned into just another giant hotel but there you go.
What i did see in the old car park was this!

Ive no idea what it is or was but i think it looks fantastic now. So i took lots of pictures and stuck them on flickr.

And speaking strange things you find while out walking I came across this tree in the park about a month ago. I spotted it because it was shining bright white and bare in amongst all the other freshly leaved trees.

I don't know what insect caused this web of silky stuff... it could be silk worms but I didn't think we got those in Glasgow?... It really was completely covered in the stuff and there where hundreds of little wiggly worms.

summer time

I thought, as its only a month till school starts again, it might be nice to write a few more things on my blog.Ive been doing a little bit of personal research but as its just for me its been fairly erratic, a bit hit and miss?

Two books I took from the library and keep flicking through are The Art of Lee Miller and Tim Hawkinson.

Tim Hawkinson in particular has some pieces of work that I found interesting. He makes some fascinating machines, most of which are made from found objects, like clocks made from tubes of toothpaste, envelopes or plastic bags. I love the intensity behind the making of these objects, the idea of someone being so dedicated and devoting themselves to making these things purely for the joy of making them. One of my favorites was signature

its made from an old school desk with a hand built machine which seemingly endlessly churns out the artists signature.

Another is Wall Chart of World History from Earliest Times to Present

I find it staggering to think about the patience and obsession it must take to make something of that scale. Its really the obsessional nature that i find most fantastic.

Also the materials which he chooses in his work are really interesting, the way they are carefully chosen and reassembles to create something new. This is done so carefully that at first glance you probably wouldn't recognise it was anything other than what it pretends to be?

Eggshell made of ground hair and nails

Feather made from the artists hair

Spiders web made from Hair

That its so well made makes me question the point in making it at all but i suppose that is the point, the novelty, the patience and the skill is really the interesting thing not the finished object.

Head in the railings

I went looking through the artist books in the mac library today. All the books I looked at where of a pretty standard format, not anything like some of the pictures I was interested in online. This has made me think that perhaps artist books aren't really what I should be looking at? I want to make a book that could be seen as something apart from the content, something like the camera in the last post.
What I did find in the library though, which I think is fantastic and applies really well to what I was trying to do, was a book of photographs by an artist called Sion Parkinson called Head in the Railings. It shows a series of public interventions made by the artist and under each picture there is a description of how he experienced them.

Artisit's Books

With all the pictures I have taken this project I have been thinking about making a book, not to be part of my research instead of the blog but to go along with my final piece, like an explanition or a guide to the finished thing.


With this in mind Ive been trying to look at more Artists books for aome ideas. I have found quite a few that I'm looking forward to going through but they are all in the Mackintosh library but as its the bank holiday weekend I wont be able to look see them till Tuesday. I have managed to find nice examples online.

Lygia Clark 2

With the questions I had in mind yesterday, I decided to have another look through my Lygia Clark book in more detail and to my surprise I found lots of her performances that where similar to what I have been doing.

There where hoods that she made

and particularly one piece called tunnel

In this piece she had participants crawl inside a long cloth tube, which clings to the body like a stocking. Along the way they are helped by others and if one participant feels suffocated a cut is made in the cloth. It sounds fantastic to me, all the work that she made was to do with approaching materials and actions from a new perspective. Putting them and yourself in a new context in order to experience them freshly and as something new. I really feel like finding this has helped to understand what I have been doing a little better.

Questions

The day after the bag pictures where taken, I've been feeling a little bit like I don't quite understand what it is that I'm doing? I know I'm learning new ways to work, I'm trying new techniques and enjoying it but what is behind it all, where is the meaning?

I made a point of talking to Ken about how I can understand it better and he gave me some interesting ideas about how to approach things from another perspective in order to understand it from a new light. For example, he suggested I look at the relationship between self and other rather than just self and self, so looking at how others perceive the action of being in the bag not just my experience of it. The traditions behind women being made to cover up, this restriction of someone and contrast that with my volunteering to do it. The idea of a woman in a bag being a pre-packaged object, ready to pick up and take away. I found all of these ideas really interesting, I'm not sure if they are a direction I want to take but it's certainly opened it up to a new light.

Out and About and the Four Minute Warning

Wednesday I decided that the weather was never going to get any nicer and even though it's raining when else am I going to get these pictures taken! Euan kindly offered the use of his camera and we went out to take some photos of me in the bag. I was feeling pretty nervous about it, so we stared off in the Macintosh stairwell that leads down to the basement, i like the light down there and Euan said there was a cupboard under the stairs which could look quite nice in the photos. This gave me time to get a little bit more comfortable moving around and also let me see the kinds of shapes and effects I could make with the materials. This is one of my favorites, I'm stretching up to cover the stairway light.

Click on this link for the Flickr page I set up to show the rest of the pictures, it looks a bit of a jumble at first but the organised sets make it clearer.

After the pictures taken in the basement Euan suggested I set myself a task. I should go to each of the buildings that make up the art school (Macintosh, Newberry, Bourdon, Foulis, JD Kelly, Barnes and Haldane) and give myself a set amount of time from the moment I step foot in the door to find what I feel would be the safest place to hide. We decide on the time limit being 4 minutes as it corresponds to what I wrote about earlier, the protect and survive manual the treat of nuclear attacks and the 4 minute warning. The idea of this made me feel even more anxious at first but I decide d to give it a shot anyway. I'm glad that I did, it was a lot of fun, again it helped me to feel more comfortable and I think we got some really nice pictures and shapes out of it.

All this took about an hour to do and then we headed out properly and took some photos in more open places, which is what I had had in mind from the start. As much fun as the others where to make and as much as i like a lot of the results I think these pictures are my favorites. I like the contrast within the settings and the way it became quite amorphous and doesn't always look like there's a body underneath. some of them particularly the ones taken on the fence remind me of kinds of fungus that grow on tree stumps.

In the bag

As planned I went round some charity shops to try and find some suitable material to make my bag from, in about the third or fourth shop i found the perfect stuff! Its a pale lemon, fleeced cotton, double bed sheet. I would have liked to have more than one to play with but it was only a pound and its more than big enough to fit me, which is my main objective.

Once I got into the studio I very quickly and roughly stapled two of the three edges together to make one really large pocket and then i tried it on. It was really pretty comfy in the bag? Nice and light, not to stuffy and very soft and Downy just like i had imagined it might be, i felt quite safe, safe enough to stand about for a bit. Then, the next thing I know someone is giggling and tying a piece of rope around my middle to trap me in.

It was funny even though it got a bit claustrophobic in there but what I found really interesting was I had never considered how vulnerable putting yourself in a big opaque bag could be? Seems silly that it hadn't occurred to me before but I had gotten too caught up in the idea of making yourself small, covered up and safe but it was all from my perspective within not the perspective without. I still like the original idea of creating a private moment in a public setting but I'll definitely take this aspect of vulnerability along with it.

Thank you Hazel for taking the pictures and video... and thank you Stephen for getting me out, but not Steven, it was you that tied the knot so tight.

Hood

As a start to making a bag Ive been looking at and pricing different material. In my mind Id like it to be made of fleeced material, something like a bed sheet or a baby blanket, which is nice as both have secure connotations. I'd like it to be big enough to at least hold me, about two double bed sheets sewn together size. Originally I had a circle shape in mind, so it would look a little like a deflated balloon or giant tea bag to crawl into but i think a large rectangle might be best. It will be easier to sew and also will make nicer shapes and folds as there's more fabric left over to play with.

I took a little trip down to Mandors, to price and see if they had anything near what I had in mind. They do have rolls of fleeced cotton material but its quite expensive so I will be going for a hunt round some charity shops in the next few days. What i did find though was some nice material in the scrap bin, it was no where near enough but i bought it to play around with. I bought some pink and white elasticated cotton which I've made into a little tent.

And some heavy navy blue felt which i very quickly and roughly made into a hood, to try out how the bag might feel. Trying the hood on was fun, its pitch black inside and not comforting at all, really feels quite eerie and unnerving. It's big enough to cover me to just below my knees if i curl myself up.

When I saw the hood on other people it reminded me a lot of the hood that the Iraqi prisoners where forced to wear in Abu Ghraib. It made sense of the uncomfortable feelings I'd had earlier but has also tainted the idea of the bag for me a bit and I definitely don't want to put the hood on again.

warm lights

Walking home very late the other night I came across a vacant shop, which must have been going through a refurbishment of some kind. And for some reason there where still some lights on inside, it made the empty shop floor seem very warm and inviting on a horribly cold wet night.

Eggs

Got a quick picture of the eggs in the nest while the bird was off doing other things. Think they're such a beautiful shade of blue.

Another book I was recommended was the Poetics of Space. Ive only managed to read one chapter so far but it was specifically related to nests. Its got some very beautiful passages but I chose a few that particularly made me think:

" The well being I feel, seated in front of my fire, while bad weather rages out of doors, is entirely animal. A rat in its hole, a rabbit in its burrow, cows in the stable must all feel the same contentment I do."

"the sense of well being takes us to the primitiveness of the refuge. Physically the creature endowed with a sense of refuge, huddles up to itself, takes cover, hides away,lies snug concealed."

"among the wealth of our vocabulary for verbs that express the dynamics of retreat, we should find images based on animal movements of withdrawal, movements that are engraved in our muscles."

"to make such a gentle comparison between house and nest one must have lost the house that stood for happiness. We return to it because our memories are like dreams which become a great image of lost intimacy."

everyday saftey

Jamie wasn't feeling too good today and he let me take his picture, he said this made him feel better...

walking home i came across these sandbags by roadworks, they reminded me of how I imagine I might look in the bag

Lygia Clark

After the talk with the second years it was suggested i take a look at the work of Helio Oiticica and Lygia Clark so I picked up a couple of books from the library. I particularly enjoyed the Lygia Clark, I really love her use of materials and the way she approached ideas. She made some beautiful drawings and fascinating sculptural pieces but I loved her performance pieces where she involved the audience. There are lots of these performances in the book under the chapter heading "The Phantasmagoria of the Body" which i think sounds wonderful. Found a lovely description of her work on line:

Communicating through experience, Clark emphasizes the fluidity of life in opposition to any attempt to fix and systematize the world. With this series of uncanny wearable creations made of cheap and ephemeral materials often found on the streets, work and body merge into a hybrid of geometric and organic forms. The participant wearing the Parangolé dances with it, exploring kinetically its multiple possibilities.

I really like the temporary nature of this work, i like the fact that the only people who properly get to experience the work are those who where there and took part at the time. The photographs and documentation of these performances just seems to be an after thought, most of them don't seem to be taken with aesthetics in mind or to be particularly bothered about it either.

One piece in particular which i like is Rede de elastico, it was again another audience involved performance piece. A net is made from these red elastic bands by many participants, to complete it they have to weave them together and in doing so begin to weave themselves, this then forms a collective body and the act of weaving the net becomes as important as using it afterwards.

Although I'm not interested in involving anyone else in what I want to make I love the shapes that are made by the participants when they move around underneath. So with this in mind what I've been thinking about is making myself a big bag. I'd quite like to make a really big fabric bag that I can move around inside of. It incorporates the public and private aspects I've become most interested in, as being in the bag would be very private experience but one that could be witnessed by an audience. I imagine the audience would never fully understand what was happening underneath the material and the person inside wouldn't be able to gauge any reaction or whether in fact there was an audience there at all? The idea of a barrier between the two aspects interests me to, because creating a barrier be it social or physical is a way to keep yourself safe.

3... 2... 1... coming ready or not!

While walking home from the shops on Saturday afternoon I passed by the school at the top of my street. In the playground I saw two wee-ish boys running towards the rain shelter where they crouched down in opposite corners behind pillars. I thought it was a bit of a strange thing to do and naturally thought the worst, that maybe they had robbed a pensioner or mugged someone for their Ipod? It was only when i saw another kid hiding down beside a wheelie bin quickly followed by a fourth who wandered out into the middle of the ground looking a bit lost that i realised they where playing hide and seek... phew!

But the reason I'm including this is, I've never seen the game from that perspective before,the only other times I've payed attention is when I've been playing, but walking past I could see all of the game at once. I saw the hiders and the seeker and the inevitable mad dash.

Seemed like it was a perfect little illustration of the nooks and crannies you can find when you need to and got me thinking that maybe it would be a nice idea to mark these in some way. All those places that you walk past everyday but that could be turned into a prefect hidy-hole if only you knew it.

This reminded me of some street Art that caught my imagination years ago. Its by an Artist called Louise, she works with her partner Eugene and together they create all sorts of magical things. What was in my mind was some work Louise made by knitting objects and then casting them in plaster, she says of them:

'my world is filled with naivety, in a lonely kind of way. My little creatures play hide and seek, but mostly never end up being found. My only goal is to offer a short, intimate moment to the happy few who notice a little Louise creature in the hussel of the city.'

Unfortunately I couldn't find any available images online to show but if you go to their website under the heading of Personal work and click on L-Street you'll find some really beautiful images. It's well worth having a look at the rest of their work too, I've completely fallen in love with it the Eugene and Louise bakery in particular.

Things to keep you warm at night

I was told the other day about a traditional blanket coat that's used a lot in north Africa by travellers crossing through the desert. Its designed to be almost all the shelter you could wish for, warm at night, cool in dazzling heat and thick enough to keep out the bugs and sand. The travellers practically live in them, so i heard? But try as i might I've not been able to find any information on line about them.

This got me thinking about Nomadic lifestyles, people who travel as a culture almost without any choice because it's just what they do. So, for fear of wasting anymore time I began looking a little at some of these cultures. The First that sprang to mind was Mongolia and the Yurts that some people live in. I didn't realise till now just how many cultures use these portable homes from Russia all the way to Pakistan. Passed down from father to son for generations, I read that they can be dated with the build up of smoke stains on the roof from the years upon years of cooking fires. They seem to be quite a big business these days too, springing up in places you wouldn't think of. They look a little bit like upside down nests to me the way the wooden lattice of the roof is described and also the way its covered with the fleece of the sheep that are tended by the families.

I suppose the Scottish version, although its not an accurate equivalent, would be a bothy. Its temporary in that its used for short period of times by many different people, so it becomes communal but also isolated which is a nice contradiction. It's very basic providing only shelter and not much else, in fact I'm not sure if it wouldn't be more homely in a tent? My favourite thing about Bothy culture is the etiquette, as listed in the link, the fact that there are unwritten rules that you are expected to adhere to. The only way to know them is to be told by someone with more experience than you, that passing down of tradition and information and even location is what makes these things special for me.

Wasp story

At the weekend my mum told me a story about a time in the 70's when she was on a beach in Spain. While she was sunbathing she was watching a little wasp. It was flying backwards and forwards from where there was a skirt lying beside her. This went on for hours before she decided to investigate. When she did lift up the material to find out what the wasp found so interesting she discovered that it was in the process of building itself a little nest. She said it was quite a heavy, navy wool so maybe it made a good shelter from the sun.

Ode to Bill Oddy

I seem to be making a habit out of bird watching now. One of the Birds seems to have come back to the nest, I've no idea wether its the same mother bird again or one of the grown up babies but I hope it's got some eggs to sit on.... I'd love a picture of the nest with eggs.

With this new interest in nature awareness I'm thinking of getting myself a Bee Box. I have wanted one for a long while so its not strictly a matter of research but i do think it would be facinating to watch a Bee making a home for itself in a little wooden box. Providing a home for something also seems like an interesting thing to do.

studio dens and fabric nests

I thought it was about time i gave building a den a shot, so tried it out this afternoon in the studio. I brought in some fabrics and set up camp under my table

It wasn't exactly time consuming to build but it was fun to snuggle down underneath it. It felt a bit silly at first but as soon as i was underneath with the material drawn across it seemed like it didn't matter anymore. The feeling was almost immediate to, which was surprising, lying down and peering out through the cracks in the sheets i felt like no one could know i was there. It was really pleasant.

I also thought i'd try making different kinds of nests under the table with the left over fabric, because id always rather have a home made of c omfortable material than twigs and mud or bits of newspaper. They turned out to be less like nests and more like hammocks or little fabric wombs. There are some birds who make womb like nests but these reminded me more of something like a kangaroo pouch.