Creative Strategy Summary

PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL AIMS FOR THIS YEAR

• Look into different roles of illustration. This sounds very obvious but I've recently uncovered a few new formats and contexts I hadn't previously thought illustration to be a part of (eg, as pieces of Fine Art in a gallery? Tattooing? Large scale work?) I feel last year was so busy I didn't really have the time to explore 'outsider(?)' contexts of illustration. The notion of illustration living in places other than a piece of paper is exciting; continue to explore that throughout this year
• Make better use of the technical departments this year. I want to be inducted to ceramics and spend more time in the traditional print studio this year. This is my final year at LCA and I want a strong enough knowledge of these different medias to be able to use them post uni.
•  Illustrator is a term I find empowering, it's something relatively new and thus largely undefined which means it can be applied to a broad range of contexts and functions. But which of these functions do I want to explore? There are synonyms that come with the word illustrator that I'm less keen on (making cute // pretty work with little depth or "Oooo I'm just playing around and having fun" do not interest me at all). An illustrator isn't the only badge I need to have when leaving this course. I can be a thinker and a feeler as well as a drawer and maker. What kind of work is available for someone like me. I feel a little lost, like a fine artist trapped in an illustrator's body, torn between the commercial world and self integrity. I want to make work that I believe in, but how can I make money from this? More research.
• As always, better time management. I'm buying a whiteboard. I'm staying on top of things and continuing to try my hardest. Try not to get distracted by netflix, and do not over-pressure yourself to a standstill. Remember to breathe this year.

PROFESSIONAL RESEARCH & OPPORTUNITIES UNDERTAKEN

• I feel as though I've undertaken a lot of live briefs & opportunities this Summer which have really helped in boosting my confidence in my practice outside of the university environment. I left second year feeling I'd learnt a lot, and was ready to put it into practice. Summer has given me the opportunity to do so.
• Working on live briefs has given me experience in dealing with clients, adapting work, working to deadlines, exploring new contexts for my work and given me greater confidence in what I do. It's also insane how much networking has helped me jump from one job to the next throughout Summer, this is something I will endeavour to keep up.
• Though I've looked at a few illustrators over Summer, I would really like to look more in depth at a more focused range this year. I'm a little unsure where to find the sorts of practitioners I want to look at which is something I need to address. At this point I feel I have two main avenues of interest in terms of my practice - fine artist - music illustrator. Though these terms are a little broad, I think they encompass a lot of what and where I want my work to go this year and further.

WHAT DO I NEED // WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT? (FURTHER RESEARCH & ACTIVITIES)

• At the moment I've got a couple of small illustration jobs coming up every few weeks, it would be great to maintain this professional practice throughout my final year. Time management is definitely going to play a large part in allowing myself enough time to do odd commission jobs as well as my uni work and be able to chill out and watch Netflix to rewind. I'm aware this is my final year of education, so maintaining a link with the working world is highly important. As beneficial as this degree is, I would hate to leave it having excelled at my course but have 0 contacts in the big wide world. 
• I definitely need to do more research into practitioners, collectives and agencies this year. Though working for an agency has never appealed to me, it's important to keep my mind open. And if I want to go freelance (yes please) how am I going to be successful at it? Where can I find the sort of jobs I want to do? How will I work? From a home studio? Or a rented space? What scale of work do I want to create? These are things I need to investigate throughout level 6.

SELF PROMOTION & PRACTICE 

• Website (currently under construction) to work as an online portfolio (tippy top professional)
• Web Store (currently using Etsy, very happy with the format, but needs updating REGULARLY and better branding)
• BRAND YOSELF; I'm forever changing my branding and I need to find one that fits and stick to it, so I can use it across multi-media platforms
• Business cards; something effective and well designed. If working freelance these will be a kind of 'face' of my brand, so important to get them right.
• Continued use of social media (insta, twitter ect). Do I want a facebook page for my art? My heart says no but my mind says maybe? To be considered! 

Future Practice; Improvements

Time to Improve

Time Management (Hello darkness my old friend) 

As mentioned in my previous post, I'd really like to get ontop of time management this year. I think this LARGELY comes down to my poor consistency at blogging. It was very rare I felt behind on practical work last year, but the blogging was a horrific chore, as I found myself ridiculously behind often RIDICULOUSLY CLOSE TO THE DEADLINE. Blogging is, in fact, an extremely helpful tool, and I find that when I DO blog on time and consistently, I get quite a lot from it's reflective nature. This year I WILL blog effectively and consistently throughout ALL modules the ENTIRE year. If I want to push myself to the maximum of my capabilities, I need to make the most of the time I have to get things done. Something as simple as setting aside half an hour a day to blog would help me immeasurably this year.

Research

I also think it would help to take the time to look at more practitioners again, as I did in first year. I rarely sat down throughout second year and actively reflected and analysed practitioners and their work. I feel as though I'm slowly getting a better idea of where I want to take my work and the kind of industry(s) I'd like to work in, so I need to research these more in depth so I'm not blinding fumbling my way around. I'd also like to contact some artists and illustrators this year, there are a lot of illustrators out there at the moment doing things that excite me; I want to understand how and why they are doing what they're doing. Can I do it too?

Breadth 

Pushing my work even further is something I want to do this year, whether through uni projects or self initiated briefs. I want to try new medias and contexts. I want to paint bigger. I want to fire things in the kiln. There are artistic mediums I've come across recently I really want to try out, I'm forever telling myself I "don't have the time" because of uni projects, but this year I will MAKE THE TIME. If I'm not making work that excites myself, how am I ever going to excite anyone else?

Future Practice; Plans for this Year

Future Practice, Store and Time Management

Recently I've been doing a lot of thinking about my practice outside of LCA. I think this Summer I've proven to myself that I am capable of sourcing work through contacts etc. this is something that will continue to naturally build as I endeavour to pursue more networking opportunities and people to know. I do want to push my self initiated practice a lot more this coming year however. Last year I uploaded my Dear Self zine to Etsy, and last week I sold my final copy. This has left my store bare, which is why I feel it's a good time to evaluate what I want to put onto it this year. I've got a lot of ideas in mind for small projects I want to undertake and pieces I want to create ready to upload to the webstore. I'm thinking of doing a 'store relaunch' around mid october. I'm setting that as a vague deadline to have most of my new stuff ready by so I can upload a haul of them at once.

Now is also a good time to think about my branding. It's something I don't feel fully happy with at the moment and something I really want to work on getting right this year. I'd like to do a little more tinkering before uni gets into full swing again.

I'd also LOVE to get in control of my time management this year. Last year was a complete mess, and the amount of last minute work and extreme pushes I had to undergo to finish my work to the quality I wanted it finished to was exhausting. This year I'd love to plan my time well enough to work really hard on uni work throughout the week, and be able to concentrate on my own practice outside of uni on the weekends (commissions, practical work for store, store management such as shipping, organising ect). I'd like to leave uni knowing I've created a small hub around my work external to the uni environment, and having a small stream of income wouldn't go amiss this year either.

REMEMBER TO PLAN TIME WELL THIS YEAR!!!

Website Devel; Format

http://jazzfeelz.format.com/

Format

I decided Cargo wasn't the website for me, though it was the best one I'd used so far, it didn't display my work the way I want it to be. I googled some online portfolio websites and eventually found Format. It was just as user friendly as Cargo, but the themes available were a lot closer to what I wanted my website to be. The minimal theme I went for works on a landscape scrolling function, and allows me to pick and chose which work is viewable on the first page and which is viewable via the drop down menu on the left.

This is definitely the website I like most at this point. It also got me thinking about what kind of work I want to put onto my site. I think one of the drawback of my Cargo website was  that I put too much on it; every project I felt had gone well. I need to think about the kind of work I'm making now that I want to continue making in the future. What areas of illustration// other do I want to explore // break into? I think a carefully curated professional web presence will work a lot better than throwing everything I've ever made on there. It'll also help to reflect on my practice and the work I've made so far. I need to thoroughly investigate the areas I want to branch into and work for, and target my website to those audiences. 

Website Struggles; Cargo

http://cargocollective.com/jazz_feelz

Cargo Collective

Throughout Summer I've been trying to find a hosting site to build my online portfolio on. I tried wordpress initially but didn't find it very user friendly, the themes available weren't ones I particularly  liked and I felt very restricted in terms of customizability. I know some basic HTML coding, but not enough to make the changes I would have wanted to on a wordpress site. 

After scouring the internet for another few hours, I decided to try out Cargocollective as a possible alternative. I knew a couple of people who had built their websites on cargo, and it was very easy to use and make amendments to. I had a fiddle with uploading a new font and playing around with the colour. Though I don't mind the current design and layout, I'm not sure it's something I'd want to commit to. The homepage feels very cluttered, and I'm aware that not all the projects fit within the same aesthetic, this makes the presentation look a little messy.

I'd prefer a site with one or two images on the homepage with additional project pages to the side. I love some of the minimal themes available on tumblr however I don't want to use tumblr as a platform to distribute my work. I, personally, feel it looks a little unprofessional to host your portfolio on tumblr, and it's so easy to lose authorship of your work with the press of a reblog button.

I've learnt a lot playing with this site, but I don't think it's the one for me. I'm still a little unsure of where I want to take my work next in a visual sense, so I'd like a website that is clean and minimalist so I can showcase projects individually rather than as an overview of everything.

GET DOWN Sticker

Final Design (Colours appear brighter on screen due to CYMK format)

GET DOWN

I was commissioned recently to produce a sticker design for the DJ event organisers GET DOWN. The design was to be based off their bespoke 'suitcase speakers' but more exaggerated and bold. I sent over a few scamps and we discussed which one would best suit their needs. When it came to the technical aspect of the piece, I found it easier for everyone if the client sent me over what website // company they would be using to print the stickers, so I could make sure it was all made to those standards (eg. the dimensions, CMYK, 300dpi). It's important to remember that not everyone understands the technical side of digital processing, so while CMYK comes as second nature to students such as myself, others who just send the JPEGs to print may not. It's import these details are checked so the print job comes out with the right colours ect; no one wants to receive an illustration that you've paid for, only for it to come out printed in different colours to the ones you saw on screen.

The client was pretty relaxed about the whole brief with no deadline in place, he was also a little slow at responding to messages but that didn't particularly affect my process; when a decision had to be made I let him take him time, as there was no rush on my part.

This was a nice brief as it was relatively simple, everyone was happy and payment was received very swiftly. It's also nice to do work for local businesses and feed back into the community I grew up in. Support independent!! 

HCOC Interview

Hull City of Culture Interview

I was recently contacted via email about an interview with Hull City of Culture's website. The lady, Ellie Churchill, said she'd found my Dear Self zine work online and was wondering if I was available for a recorded interview to be published on their website (https://www.hull2017.co.uk/). Hull was chosen as City of Culture 2017, and it was a surprise to be contacted by one of their team. After a few back and forth emails we arranged to meet at Thieving Harry's for a drink and a chat.

Going for this interview I was more than a little nervous. I'd never done an interview before that was about myself and my work as a professional practitioner, I didn't know what kinds of questions Ellie would ask or how the whole thing would pan out as a whole. She told me that a photographer would be coming along to take some photos of me for the article too (cue internal screaming). 

Nerves aside, I went to the interview as I do with all things that shake me up a bit, a false sense of confidence and cool breathing. I think I come across as quite a confident speaker and practitioner, even at times when I don't feel it. It's helpful to have a level head in situations that might make me feel a little worried; it was just a chat about my artwork and some photos, it would be fine.

I found once I'd met Ellie and settled in a little bit, talking and answering questions came quite naturally. There were a few blank spaces, and a little uncertainty when she brought up questions about the future of my practice, but overall I feel like it went well. The photography aspect was a little cringey, and my cheeks started to ache from all the smiling at the camera, but I left it feeling I'd learn a lot. Ellie also assured me if I thought of anything else I wanted to say post-interview I could email her no problem. The interview is set to go up around mid-October time.

After Note & Networking

After the interview, I asked Ellie how she'd found my work. It figures the night I gave Stew his copy of Dear Self, Ellie was there. She knows Stew through various music events (Ellie is also in a band 'Chambers') and she saw the sticker on the front of the zine I'd given him. She asked where he'd gotten it and Stew told her he had a friend who made zines and did illustration. Shortly after that she saw some more of my work in the 'Something Against Hull' zine Alan put together at the start of summer. She decided to reach out via email and ask about an interview. 

Networking is SO IMPORTANT !!! The amount of commission work I've taken on this Summer through my strong links in Hull alone is crazy mad and something I definitely want to continue expanding for the future.

HSS; Live Painting & The Day

The Day

Humber Street Sesh was, as always, a brilliantly beautiful day. For the first time in forever the weather also played ball, so the atmosphere at the pier where our live art gazebo was set up, was fantastic. I got there early to help Alan with constructing the gazebos and getting my Visual Artist lanyard and production wristband. The day was great, as always there was a huge turnout, and despite last minute changes to where we were situated on the site, a huge number of people scrolled past to chat, take photos and admire the artwork around them.

Something I've always found a little daunting when live painting in big groups is the work of others around me. Everyone works in such hugely different styles and that can be a little scary. There are always points throughout the day I worry about my work when compared with those around me. But I've also learnt to be confident in my practice too, it takes a little longer for my work to start to look refined, there was a lot of time this year it just looked like blocks of colour on a board, but the overall finish is something of a high standard; I keep this in mind while others around me may seem to be speeding ahead or working with a process different to my own. It helps that the bunch at Something Entirely Different (the art collective I'm a part of that put's the live art on every year) are all so lovely and supportive; when my work started to come together and people began to understand what it was I began getting a lot of praise from my peers and the public.

The Response

Though I didn't actually finish my piece this year, I felt very proud of what I'd created. I dipped in and out of painting to see what else was going on at the festival and support a few of my friends that were playing in bands during the day, and in the blistering heat it was a little bit of a push to keep painting all day (hydration is key!!). As the day drew to a close on the live painting, I ensured that I got the text of the piece down. I felt it gave the image more context and depth, and though the nerves started to sink back in as I was writing it out, I am SO GLAD I did.

Once the text was on the board the reactions I got from the public were touching. I spoke to a woman called Ali about my work and she said things that filled my illustrator heart to the brim with happiness. She said I wrote so beautifully and honestly, I thanked her and expressed how I'd been a little nervous about the piece, worried about whether people would understand it or not. She told me 

"The people who feel things are always going to get it. And the people that don't wouldn't ever get it no matter how good the art was."

The response I got on social media after HSS was also wonderful. Both Mak and Dan who run The Sesh wrote to me about how touching they found the work, and people taking photos to tag on social media like instagram and facebook helped to spread it around even more. I've also had a lot of people inquire about the piece itself, and the possibility of prints. It's a piece I'd love to finish, and maybe do a run of digital prints if photographed well enough. For sure HSS'16 has been my best experience of live painting to date, I loved the process of working bigger and still being able to bring that intimate feeling to a piece, I'd love to do more work like this going into the future. 

HSS Prep & Merch

Pre-HSS Thoughts

I was asked once again to do some live painting at this year's Humber Street Sesh festival. It's my second time painting at the festival and my third time live painting all together. I feel each time I've done live painting I've learn something new about how I work as a practitioner, and how to better use my skills to produce a piece of work I'm happy with a the end. This year would be a little different as we had a slightly bigger set up to the previous year, and had a gazebo designated purely to our (the artist's live painting) merchandise. I wanted to have a couple of things for sale and display at least for the stall this year, and felt fairly confident and getting some things together.

Merch Prep; Rave Zine

For quite a while now, I have been leaking information on my Rave Zine (produced as part of my practical for COP2) on social media, speaking about how it would be available to buy soon. My Etsy store has been looking dauntingly empty for a while. I uploaded Dear Self in November but since then haven't added anything new, this is largely down to poor time management throughout second year, meaning I had little to no time for personal work (something I WILL make time for in third year). The Rave Zine was something I was really proud of when I completed it (and I got a 1st for the module; hallelujah) and not only that, but it was a story I felt was largely untold. I wanted to give this zine a chance in the open world to educate people, as well as hopefully making them feel something.

And so I took a trip back to Leeds to make use of the ever beautiful and wonderful photocopier in the library. I decided to make ten copies for HSS, and packaged them in clear plastic sleeves with stickers on the front and an A4 'sketchbook page' fold out poster. Actually packaging the zines properly made me feel even more proud of them. The final little tweaks made a huge difference in terms of presentation and professionalism. Something I will take into consideration from here on out.

Merch Prep; Prints

I wanted to have some prints available to buy too, I've wanted to do some more screen and lino prints, however time didn't allow for me to complete these before the festival. Alan (a contact I've had for a couple of years now) pointed me in the direction of Scribes, a digital printing company in Hull, who print 100 high quality A3 colour posters for just £15. Their turn around time was also a couple of days, so they were perfect for what I needed.

When it came down to thinking about what I wanted on the poster, I found myself scurrying back to my personal sketchbooks. I've kept three ongoing throughout the Summer as I find them immeasurably helpful in jotting down ideas, notes, thoughts and scamps for later work. There was a note I'd written down a while ago "You're cute but I don't love you" that kept popping back into my head. My most well received work so far has been drawn from somewhere personal. I sometimes worry that I'm too selfish in my art, creating images more concerned with how I've felt than who else will understand. However I think this is a risk worth taking. I try to be open and honest in my work, and people have often said that is something they admire, it allows them to empathise and interact with the work. In a world full of 'silly illustrations' with 'ooo look a cute pear with shoes on' I want to create art that has something to say, and something to make people feel. So I took the note from my sketchbook and drew up an image I felt fit well.

I am, however, aware that printing 100 copies of this poster, I had to have some confidence in that it would sell and be something people wanted to own. When I'd finished the piece, I ran a poll on my twitter asking which colours worked best, it allowed for a little audience interaction, and for me to gage a better idea of what people wanted. Once the piece was picked, I also used instagram and twitter to post about the build up to it being sold. Here are you options, here is the final design, now it's printed, now I'm signing and numbering them all, here they are available to buy ect.

Live Painting Prep, Thoughts and Concerns

Planning for this piece I knew I wanted to work on board with acrylic paints. Investing in my own good quality paints had made a huge difference in the quality of work I produced this year at Assemble Fest compared with HSS'15. I also found I prefer working on board 110%, it gives me the solidity I need to make the kind of line work and block colours I want to produce.

In terms of subject matter, as with last year, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted. I wanted this piece to be something reflective of what I wanted my practice to be, I wanted to really capitalise on my strengths and produce something I was really happy with. Something I could happily put on my website and say "this reflects where I am now, and suggests where I want to go next". I always like my personal work to say something, and this time I wanted it to be something kind, quite often I think my work can get stuck in a 'sad girl' rut, and I wanted to break that slightly. I wanted to make something in the spirit of the festival itself, something with happiness and passion and a sense of community and care.

My sketchbook work has been really well received when I've placed my images with self written text. I think it's because it gives it an element of intimacy, there's a process of 'none-editing' that keeps it raw and expressive, and I think people enjoy relating to that authenticity. So I chose to create a piece that had both text and image on it, it took a lot of editing to get the words to express what I wanted them to, but it's a piece I personally feel happy with at this point.

My only concern is, will people get it? I feel there's always a risk undertaken with pieces like this, maybe I'm being too overly sentimental or soppy. Perhaps people will take it the wrong way, as something pretentious rather than poetic. It makes me a little nervous taking this piece into the wide world to paint in front of over 30,000 people passing through the festival, but it's a risk I want to take. I want to know if my work can translate the same feeling of honesty on a larger scale painting as it can in the pages of a sketchbook. Working big is something I feel I don't get given the chance to do often, and it's something I really enjoy and would love to do more of. But would my work fit into something larger scale? Could my work fit in galleries? I want to create work that could. I want to create work that everyone can look at and feel something towards. Contemporary Art can sometimes feel inaccessible to a lot of the public, and I'd love to make work that everyone can look at and understand on some level. I just want to allow people to look at art and feel something.

'Dear Self' For Stew & Networking

'LIFE' @ The Sesh; Sticker Cover for Stew

Stew, LIFE & Warren Records

I met Stewart Baxter through a collaborative brief I'm currently completing (blog post to be published upon completion). He's not only the drummer for Hull punk band LIFE, but he also runs Warren Records. It states on their website that "The Warren Youth Project’s Music Service has supported vulnerable and marginalised young people and music creators for 33 years – launching Warren Records in 2009 to provide a professional platform for those creators and their music, particularly those to whom access has been denied by socio-economic circumstance. We differ from other youth organisations and music services primarily because we are constitutionally governed by young people – thereby ensuring empowerment is at the heart of everything we do.' Warren Records is a PRS for Music Foundation Associate Talent Development Partner." They've produced a lot of local records and have been in the business of music development for over thirty years, as I got to know Stew a little more through discussions of the brief he'd set for LIFE I got to know more about him. It was whilst I was on holiday I saw he'd bought a copy of 'Dear Self' from my online store, given my holiday status, I suggested giving it to him a the next Sesh night, as LIFE were playing, it would save him on postage and allow us to finally meet face to face.

With each copy of Dear Self sold, I include a small free sketch, and when thinking of what to do for Stew, I decided on something multipurpose. The design (shown above) was done with a black biro pen on neon yellow sticker paper, I then stuck the image on the front of the envelope. It made for a nice cover and way to store the zine, whilst also promoting their upcoming gig at The Sesh. 

I posted the picture on instagram, with a little editing, a few hours before the gig. I tagged Stew and Mak (runs The Sesh) and they both asked for copies of the image to spread around on social media. It was a nice last minute push for the gig, and the DIY style of it fit in really well with LIFE's punk aesthetic. 

Networking

On the night I met Stew and the rest of the boys from LIFE, it was really nice meeting the people I had been working for for the past couple of weeks, and hearing the positive feedback from the work I'd been producing for them was extra great. I think there's a certain importance to networking in the real world rather than just online. It gave me a chance to speak to them naturally and as people rather than just names of clients. Stew also spoke about the possibilities once the project I was working on was finished, he suggested they may send a copy of the final thing over to SoYoung magazine as they had a close link to LIFE. Having the right clients and networking web can open up a huge range of possible new contacts, and I'd really like to believe in notion of community and hard work paying off. 

In all instances of commissioned work I've done, (both the good, the bad and the ugly) I've found that it's always best to be honest and open to your client. This allows for the good clients to feel trusted and more open, resulting in an often better working relationship and quality of work produced. It also allows me to weed out the not so great clients early (Mr Vague Idea, Miss Oh You Want Paying? ect). I hope that by treating the clients and commissioned work I do with respect, time and effort in each instance, over time I'll create a strong body of reliable contacts; I understand this sounds a lot like common sense, but I think acting and presenting yourself as a professional goes a long way in this industry.

Hull Is Full Zine

Hull Is Full

A friend contacted me about a project he was currently undertaking in response to societal unrest with the current Syrian immigration issue in Britain. A facebook page had popped up called "Hull is Full" ran by a group of people who believed that Hull, and Britain as a whole, should not take in anymore Syrian refugees. The page shared ridiculous, uneducated and factually incorrect status and pictures that supported their ideals. Wes, who studies photography in Manchester, wanted to produce a zine that counteracted this statement; that showcased the kinder side to Hull. Another page under the same name had already come about as a parody to the original and it felt good to know that a lot of people rejected the quite often, racist and idiotic views of the original page.

So Wes began work on H u l l I s F u l l (of great ideas), he wanted the first issue to be centered around the theme of immigration, with later issues being produced under the name 'Combat'. I was given free reign over the kind of work I wanted to submit for the publication; the only specs were A5 digital file. I began tackling this brief by doing some reading on the situation in Syria, and eventually came across an article investigating the decline of bread production within the country since the start of the war. Bread is often a traditional staple meal of the Syrian people, and both the government and terrorists had been using this to manipulate and control areas of the state. I wanted a piece that took this into consideration and told the story, but related back to the issue of immigration of this country. I came up with the idea of 'breaking bread', something used to signify friendship and community, that linked in rather well with the story I was trying to tell.

With a few tweaks I scanned in one of my original sketches and wrote a short piece for the illustration to fit into an editorial style context. I kept the line at the side from where I'd scanned in the image, with some of the grain and dark spots too. I like the DIY feel the piece had, it didn't have to be shiny and polished to convey the message I wanted it to.

Moving Forward

I enjoyed the process of this piece a lot, research is something I actually quite enjoy and making work with depth is something I'd like to continue with my practice for the foreseeable future. Editorial work is however is something I've never found to be appealing, while I enjoy telling stories and having context and depth to my work, I enjoy having the time to research and form my own opinions on subjects rather than illustrating other peoples. I think I enjoyed this brief as it allowed me that freedom, and felt a lot more like reportage illustration than something editorial. The zine context also allowed me to keep my work raw without over editing; I feel my illustrations work well like this. My sketchbook images are often ones I feel are the most powerful. It's about how I clean up and process these images so they appear finished in my final work.

KAWS Exhibition at YSP

I recently went on a trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to see the KAWS open air exhibition. It's a series I've wanted to see for a while and making the trip was 110% worth it. Though KAWS started as a graffiti artist, he quickly rose to the top of the contemporary pop art world with his work shown in numerous galleries worldwide and sold for prices my small illustration soul can only dream about right now. On the trip, two things struck me about KAWS work;

1. The was he blurred the boundaries of labels; illustrator, fine artist, sculpture, graphic artist. He work encompassed elements of all of these labels and that was okay, in fact it was a lot better than okay. His work was a showcase that you don't have to fit into a singular bracket to be deemed successful; it's okay to cross populate.

2. The scale and finish of the pieces themselves. They had the varnish and exceptional finish of a high end vinyl toy blown up to the size of trees. I don't often think of making my own work big, usually the concerns and contexts of illustration fit within the perimeters of A1 work; but that doesn't mean that's how I should always think my work should be. These huge pieces EXCITED me, and why should I feel as though my practice is limited to something that could never fit this scale or grandeur just because I'm studying an 'illustration' degree. Of course there are practicalities in the way, and I could not afford anything near this level at this point, but that doesn't mean I should completely rule it out all together. Why can't my work be big? Why can't my work be build on things other than paper and inks? Where do I want my work to sit? If money was no object what would I do with my practice, how would I push it and stretch it into something even better, how can I capitalize on my strengths and employ them to varying disciplines? Lots of questions for the future of my practice.

Live Painting; Assemble Fest

Assemble Festival

This year I was asked to do a live painting at Hull's annual Assemble Festival; based on along the largely independent ran Newland Avenue. This was my second experience to date with live painting as part of a festival (the first being Humber Street Sesh 2015), and I found myself enjoying the process a lot more this time around!

I felt a lot more confident within my own practice this year, and I think this allowed me to be a little more bold in the artwork I made. In terms of creative freedom we were pretty much given free reign, the only things told to keep in mind was that it was a family orientated festival and area, so nothing too offensive or risque.

Given the importance of community in this festival, I decided to go for something Hull based. Every Tuesday a pub named Polar Bear runs a night called 'The Sesh', showcasing local and national bands from 9PM to 12PM with DJs till 2AM. It's been on the go in Hull for over 10 years now, and has amassed such a following the annual 'Humber Street Sesh festival' was born through it's ten year anniversary (which now attracts around 32,000 people each year).

I know both Mak and Dan who run The Sesh every Tuesday, so thought I'd pay a little homage to Hull grown talent. The piece could also be used as a kind of promo too given HSS was only a couple of months away.

Experience & Future Thoughts

As previously stated this is my second time doing live art, and though I enjoyed the experience last year, I felt my artwork was really subpar to what I could have made. This didn't put me off however; the networking opportunities that come from gigs such as these are invaluable. It's also lovely to see people genuinely interested in art and what I do as a practitioner. With social media outlets, it's very easy to get spam comments of 'Nice!' with photos of your work, but it's totally different getting that sort of positive feedback face to face. It's reassuring to know that I like what I do, and that other people do to.

I actually quite liked my final piece from this year too, it was something a little different to what I'd normally do, and that was really refreshing. It was also insanely enjoyable to make some BIGGER work too. I feel quite often illustration feels confined to the page, and it's exciting to break out of that context. It got me thinking about the sort of illustration I want to make going into next year. While I enjoy working smaller in sketchbooks and zines, I'd love to do some bigger work this year. The idea of having my work on display in galleries is something that's been on my mind a lot recently, I like the idea of a freedom to create things that are important and personal to me and putting them on a platform other people can engage with. Could I still engage people on the same emotional level I have with my zines if my work was bigger and in a different context?

Bigger painting work and galleries is something I'd love to explore next year.