MAI 140, Week 6: Show work in progress: What’s your main current challenge? How are your practice and journal tackling it?

Week 4

During week 4, I continued my decision that the Lantern Man will be depicted through the eyes of the audience through provided written prompts, as opposed to being bodily represented in the object in front of them. The idea for this is that it involves the audience more thoroughly in the mind of the eponymous character, which will in turn hopefully a more personal, permeable connection.

This is a part of telling folklore that I would like to focus upon: helping others to feel a sense of place. Being situated in my region of upbringing, I want the piece of work I create to be informative and accessible to those who might not necessarily be aware of the folklore, but are a part of it just as much as anyone else.

This brought me back to thinking how a sense of place has been a continuing thread for my work and how the visual imagery can reflect this.

This has coincided with the beginnings of making some practical decisions about the paper engineering ideas that I may incorporate.

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Looking Back at “Mapping the Territory” with Phyllida Bluemel.

I thought back to a workshop I participated in during Semester 1, led by Phyllida Bluemel: a particular aspect came back into my head recently whilst contemplating how I can bring my project back to creating a sense of place. This was to dissect an image, physically cutting it up, and to place it back together and find what is created as a result.

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I think this process helps to highlight ideas surrounding making my own connections to a place in the way I can. It intentionally steers away from cartographic knowledge, which is not a bad thing but nothing I am trained in, and instead focuses on directing energy towards forming meanings idiosyncratically.

I am not an expert on the place I am aiming to navigate – neither East Anglia nor its folkloric realm. I feel that not many people from the area would be aware of such tales. I like the idea of bringing these nods to the past that they presently reside in through the eyes of a similar person. The

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Week 5

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During week 5 I wanted to start gaining a sense of the engineering behind manipulating materials in the way I am imagining the project will transpire.

I also have been looking briefly into the plant and animal life of the area of the Broads. I will use these within my illustrations to

I have been looking at the book “Midnight Creatures” by Helen Friel which use shadow play to depict animals from murky or hard-to-reach places.

The cuts throughout the layers is not an easy concept to grasp, but could definitely be simplified. There are of course many ways to create a shadow. I tried making a little one for myself:

Aims for the coming week:

* to create a portion of a mockup to take to the laser cutting technician, which will then give me a sense of how the machine works and the material limitations I will be working with

* start thinking about the activities / written prompts / directional cues to give to the audience. How and what to write and present.

* once again connecting to a sense of place, thinking I can connect people to the folklore – connecting originalprojects; (“originalprojects; works with contemporary artists and communities in Great Yarmouth, co-creating ambitious objects, experiences and developmental activities that respond to the place and people, building relationships for a sustainable future”) and discussing the project with people from the area into my research journal.

* creating a timetable for the rest of the project would be really useful and I haven’t got round to doing that yet.

PS – new artist of interest = https://www.lauracopseyart.com/about