A day with textile artist Neil Musson

MARCH 21, 2017 / 2 COMMENTS / EDIT

As part of my programme for the new initiative for South West OCA students, I organised a day with OCA textiles tutor Neil Musson.

This is what I reported for the newsletter :

Textiles and more!

What a feast!

And that was not just the fantastic spread of food either! We had such a great time on Saturday in Bristol that I for one can’t wait for the next time we meet. There were 9 of the 11 students who had signed up, plus inspirational tutor, Neil Musson.

Thanks to Sharon Butler, the hall was a perfect size for our group and the cake was to die for! Many thanks Sharon for sorting out the hall, the projector and the hubby on a motorbike to bring the extension cable!

Before we introduced ourselves, Neil asked us to include something which told the others something about our character, our strengths and challenges. This was an opportunity to give us insights for when we were to present our work in the afternoon. Great idea.

After the introductions we closed the curtains ready for Neil’s presentation ‘to add a bit of theatre to the proceedings!’ The next thing we knew, the wall (screen) went blank and we could not get the show going. After much scrabbling in cupboards, under tables, switching kettles and lights on and off, Sarah came up and fed the meter! The projector came to life and an audible sigh of relief, mostly from Neil, warmed the room! £1 saved the day & saw us through the day!

In his presentation which took him from the career defining sketches he did at college through to mega commercial projects, Neil stressed that whatever we do in our work, we must be ourselves and that we must experiment and “do the same things over and over agin but do them differently” & that the breakthrough will come. Never throw any work away!

He also stressed the importance of uploading to Instagram to get our work seen and to see other peoples’ work, the importance of collaborating with others which had transformed how he worked, and to keep sketchbooks.

Studying with the OCA.

We spoke about our various experiences studying with the OCA and again sketchbooks came up. Neil reminded us of an OCA blog he wrote on the subject & Eliza subsequently looked it up & sent us the link: https://weareoca.com/fine-art/what-should-my-sketchbook-contain/

We also spoke about exhibiting our work and entering competitions. The number of competitions for each subject pathway is different but the new initiative schedule for SW OCA students has an Autumn exhibition penciled in for November 25th & 26th, 2017. We could call it a “work in progress “ exhibition. So please let me know if you are interested in submitting and stewarding for it.

Student work:

After lunch we had two hours of students presenting their work and, as always, it was such a feast of inspiring and adventurous examples of student resilience and commitment.

Following her presentation of iPad work, I approached Anne Dyke to ask her if we could do a Hang Out tutorial on the technique and this is what she wrote:

To be honest I am not very good at Hang Outs for the usual discussions, let alone teaching people how to make iPad drawings. I think I would confuse people by chatting about too many different aspects … For example using a colour wheel, using different brushes and adjusting their size and transparency, using layers, etc, etc.

What I could do, however, is to Create a document, with annotated illustrations, for the basics, and once people have read it, have had a go, and formulated the questions they want to ask, perhaps then we could have a hangout. How does that sound? I could produce this for you by next Sunday. The iPad app I recommend is Procreate (possibly available on other platforms)

So, if you are interested please let me know and I shall pass on any info that Anne sends me.

I don’t think any of us knew how well known and accomplished Neil is as an international artist. He certainly knew how to encourage us as students. We all realised the importance of going cross-curricular.

Our meeting finished on time and we set off with happy hearts and much to reflect on.

(Images are by :

Top: Anne Dyke; all others Paddy Howe)

The piece of work I took was a development of my prisons and prisoner identity themes which I am just exploring. It draws on all the themes I have been exploring recently and uses the following material: on tracing paper, I printed the image of the atrium in the Artemis hotel, Cyprus and an article on prisons which referenced the high incidence of suicides in UK prisons. I then cut up a yellow duster to reference the very thin material used for bedding and clothing in prisons, as told me by my ex-prisoner friend, the I used orange ribbon to reference the Guantanamo Bay polemic; I used some red crepe paper to reference the suicides and finally I sewed the bits together using red thread on top which I left dangling in front of the image. The textiles flowed over the mount board to show the ramifications of what was going on in the prisons.

The composition, being made with tracing paper, needs to be seen against a light.

DAY: FEBRUARY 20, 2017

Review of OCA meeting:Nature writing

FEBRUARY 20, 2017 / 2 COMMENTS / EDIT

An afternoon with nature writer Stephen Moss promised to be an interesting idea on how to see and portray nature, not just leafy nature but human nature too, differently for me. I was expecting to get insights in to how to see nature differently.

The meeting started with introductions & I was glad to see two creative writing students in with 4 photographers. We went for a walk along the River Tone &, on return to base, we were given about half an hour to write about our experiences.

The room where we met had a serendipitous set of prints on the walls – they were by Carry Akroyd who had illustrated some of Stephen’s work. He was as surprised as we were to see them there. I was struck by their stark representation of nature and by the artist’s use of text in her work because I had just been exchanging ideas on discuss-OCA forum about the use of text in art work. I took some photos of the relevant work & have posted it on the forum here.

As I walked along the Tone, I took photos with my phone of what I found interesting and I was surprised that I used this method of recording my reactions exclusively. I was expecting to write more than record my observations.

We were blessed with a fabulous Spring afternoon which brought many people / families out for walks and fishing.

When We were asked to write about what we had observed, thinking that I would not have enough time time to write coherently about what I had seen, I went to my photos and wrote what turned out to be captions for my photos rather than a piece of poetry or prose.

My comments reflect the idea that I saw fragments of interactions between man and the environment.

These were my observation highlights which, seen from the perspective of a photography student, illustrate the images:

Overall, a good day to meet new students and catch up with old ones. I got to know a lot about the work of Stephen Moss. I was stunned at the visual and poetic quality of work Rosie could produce in such a short time. Her ‘borrowed time between winter and spring’ will stay with me for a long time!

20th May, 2017

Plymouth meeting - see blog post of 21st May, 2017.

17th June, 2017

Bristol meeting with tutor Jesse Alexander. See blog post of 28th June.

15th July, 2017

Creative writing with Miriam Darlington in Bristol. See my post of 28th July.

19th August, 2017

Photography with Painting.

16th September, 2017

Neil Musson has since uploaded a post on his 'dreamspace' on Weareoca:

https://weareoca.com/education/the-value-of-dreaming/

14th October, 2017

Polly Harvey leads a workshop on bookmaking in Bristol.

Catching up with fellow photographers while folding exhibition catalogues.

On Saturday 27th October, 2017, I met up with 2 OCA photography students who live not far from me. Initially the idea was that they would help me fold the 200 catalogues I had had printed for our forthcoming exhibition.

As was expected, the conversations turned to OCA work. Karen Allen and I finished the folding and Derek Youd arrived later to have a chat. We got talking about my project - I was going in a million directions at once and spoke to Derek about my idea of developing an app with the prison walls in the shape of a 3D spherical jigsaw puzzle and each piece being another aspect of prison as seen from the outside. Then we got talking about Richard SUnderland's suggestion that I speak to Plymouth University Professor in charge of iDat, Mike Phillips about his igloo idea. Derek developed the idea by talking about augmented as well as virtual reality and how inside the igloo / bubble, the different aspects of my project need to be linked with augmented reality 'speaking' to other parts of the project. Derek also suggested interviewing photographers who have worked in the field. I would also like to conduct imagined interviews with Jacques Rancière and Michel Foucault and make them part of the discussion.

I contacted Mike Phillips of iDat who replied very quickly that I should come up with a project proposal that he can put to his students. I quickly googled the topic and it threw up a very useful template which I then used to create my proposal. It was a very useful exercise. My proposal:

I await the outcome.

Sunday Level3 Photography hangout:

On Sunday I had a hangout with L3 photography students Jane (Austria), Maurice (Netherlands) and Selina (Australia). Jane presented her images on what the menopause means to her. I thought that, with one exception (walking down an avenue of trees towards the light) they were very powerful. Iy reminded me of 'the menopause' I have read about as a play on words. I must find the article and send it to Jane. Jane also had a series in red & although 1 of those fitted in that for me it represented anger and disorientation, the rest looked as though they had just been transformed without any meaning.

Selina spoke about her very positive feedback from her assignment.

Maurice spoke about his people in uniform series which was also quite disparate for me. I am not sure where he is going with that. When I spoke of my idea to have an app developed, the others said, almost in unison, that my project was too vast for a BoW, and that all those elements were possibly part of SYP. More food for thought which, after some hours had passed, calmed me down: I was not going to throw it all away, just 'parking it' as tutor Wendy would say.

Reflections o the weekend's events:

Although I felt rather rudderless on Sunday night, I remembered and made sense of what Wendy had asked me to do: ask yourself honestly why you wanted to do this project. Feeling very defensive at the time, I saw it as a criticism of my the vast majority of my work and, consequently, provided a whole lot of 'artist statement speak' about what I was trying to do with it instead of answering the question.

Why did I decide to do the project on prisons?

I had letters from prison which few people have and which give a view of that 'other place' I had never expected. It is a reality for more people than I knew existed, indeed my daughters are surprised at how many ex-prisoners I know. Ian's letters showed me how banal his life in prison was. The mass media are constantly showing violence, hardened criminals, mass drug addiction, riots and lawlessness while his letters spoke of how he filled his days, how he tried to keep busy learning new skills, how good it was to have visitors, what the food was like and about a touring exhibition he had seen based on the diary of Ann Frank. So, far from the chaos, I am trying to represent one person's banal, humdrum prison reality. I am encouraged by the fact that one of my favourite photographers, Luigi Ghirri, produced very banal work too, some of which spoke of longing and absence and is highly valued by many and which I really appreciate.

Now, at last, I can face going to yet another closed prison and take yet more photos. This time I know what I am trying to portray. I need to represent the classrooms where he learned for and sat his many tests; I need to show what he would have seen when his visitors came. The kitchens in which he worked are important as he spent a lot of time there.

I needed all those exchanges to make sense of what I am going through. Like all creative people, I am very sensitive about how my work is received. I needed to hear what Derek was saying as well as what Jane, Maurice and Selina were saying in order to get out of my protective cocoon.

19th - 26th November, 2017: OCA SW Autumn exhibition

Saturday 13th January: First OCA SW meeting of 2018

Venue: Paignton

Present:4 students

Topics discussed:

2018 Calendar; Gloucester railways; printing; History of art; Uploading files to G drive; use of moon phases, and others in a photography project.

My newsletter to all at OCA SW:

We had our first meeting of the (calendar) year yesterday and, being a small but significant group, we had time to talk exhaustively about our work. Having gathered at 11, we finally started our car engines to disperse just after 4pm with a soup lunch and lots of inspiration in between.

We discussed photography assisted by archival research on the railways in Gloucester; eco-printing involving, inter alia, India Flint and Hapa zome printing using hammers, mordents, colourants, eucalyptus,onions...; the use of microscope cameras attached directly to the PC; using moon phases, time lapse of water cress growing and metronomes to present aspects of a photographic project.

Before discussing our own work, we discussed the OCA SW meetings and funding. The main points were:

1. the OCA academic calendar starts in July and so funding for the year follows suit. I will have to re-apply to OCASA for funding for our July - October tutor-led meetings.

2. OCASA only fund 6 tutor-led meetings in the academic year per regional group. Since we had 3 tutor-led meetings in the second half of 2017, it left us 3 funded meetings in the first half of 2018. This is why we had to cut 2 of our scheduled meetings, March and May 2018.

3. The March and May meetings will still be held but will not have a tutor present. Several of you have written to me saying you would value informal student meetings. The March meeting is scheduled to be held in Plymouth / Paignton (please let me have your views on this), and the May meeting is to be held in Wellington/Bristol.

4. Please sign up for the remaining scheduled meetings:

February 10th: Helen Sear talking on her image making practice (Bristol)

March 10th: Informal student meeting (Plymouth or Paignton - please let me know which)

April 14th: Michele Whiting on drawing. (Either Bristol or Wellington)

May 12th: Informal student meeting (Wellington / Bristol)

June 9th: Brenda Miller on Textiles. (Bristol)

The main OCASA criterion for funding remains 'bums on seats' so, the more we have, the greater the likelihood of getting the funding.

The Jerwood Drawing outings are as follows:

February 21st, Anne Dyke suggests that other students in the vicinity might like to meet up at 11.30 at the Edge Cafe, Bath, on February 21st. Just turn up if you are interested. Karen Woodfield is organising a tutor-led meeting to the same event later on - keep an eye on OCASA diaries.

For all photographers, June 30th: I have booked an all-OCA study day, limited to 15 students, led by tutor Matt White at The Martin Parr Foundation for a guided tour of the premises and entry to the David Hurn photo exhibition. The OCA will be advertising this 6- 8 weeks before the event.

I look forward to hearing from you regarding: booking places for our SW meetings;

your preferences: Paignton/Plymouth

Bristol / Wellington

I particularly liked Paddy's eco-printing ideas: