Well done guys!

Hey,
Just wanted to say that I've really enjoyed working with you all and I think we built up quite a good project. I've learnt loads and I'm sure you all have too. Thanks for being awesome to collaborate with!

The Final Idea (sketches)...

Here are the images of some sketches I have done of our piece in the Museum space that we have chosen.
Some of them are really rough because I was trying to get my head around the structure of our groups artwork because at first I was struggling with how we would construct something so big. I found that by sketching these out during and after a trip to the Museum on my own, I was able to visualise our work in the space.

Here are the dimensions for the tubes that would form our artwork.

Here is a very quick sketch that I produced when I was looking at the space that we had chosen. It shows the general shapes of our desired artwork.

This is a more in depth analysis of the space. I spent some time looking at how the visitors used the space. Many walk straight through the middle of it and don't really look around the Entrance Hall space. It would be interesting to see the effect our artwork would have on those people as it obstructs their clear line of view into the Museum. They would have to walk around our piece which means that they would have to pay attention to their surroundings and hopefully they would then become interested in our work and become involved.

In terms of pushchair and wheelchair access, the widest part of our work (that will cause obstruction) will be no bigger than approx. 50-60cm. So, as far as access in concerned, our piece will fit into the Museum very well.

Here is a rough pen and ink sketch of our piece in the Museum. I understand that if we were proposing this idea, this style of sketch would probably not be appropriate. Although this is not life-like, I feel that it conveys the information and general idea of the piece. 

I tried to show how the pieces would fall and collect at the bottom of the piece and also sketched some small proposals on the slots for inserting the puzzle pieces and the join of the delivery tubes to the main tube. 

Leaflet Design...

Here is my final idea and (all be it rough) prototype of what the Leaflet/Flyer/Poster will look like.

(Front)

(Back)

I understand that this design is incredibly simple, but the idea was to give nothing away. I also understand that because it is such a vague leaflet design, we could run into the problem of people not understanding what we are about - what the concept really is. 

The Front: The design on the front is extremely blunt yet vague. It stands out in it's stencilled fashion - I used a stencil for the lettering because I wanted it to look rough, sketchy and also, stencil making and using is an quick and simple way of making a mark on something. The background colours are the colours of the Earth. At first, I knew that I wanted to use these colours because they are the colours that nearly every person associates with the Earth as an object. I wanted to create a subtle sense of unity which is what our project is all about. I incorporated a simple border to frame the writing in the hope that this would attract more attention and draw the eye into the information (even though there is little of it). 

The Back: Again, this is a very simple layout with not that much information. After a discussion with the group, we decided that it would be best to keep all info to a minimum so that we don't bombard the public with too many ideas or information. I have literally put the opening times for Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery (as stated on their website) and the fact that admission in the Museum is free.  Also, I have out our "website" address down so that anyone interested would be able to contact us and/or find out more information about the project. 

Clearly this is a hand drawn/produced leaflet. I chose to avoid using a computer to produce this because the whole point of our art piece is to encourage people to get into the artistic mood. Also, in a way, this leaflet looks as if it is a puzzle piece itself. I would like to have designed a few different leaflets (all with the same info and similar concept) so that they looked like various puzzle pieces (individual art works) but I understand that in reality this would probably not be a feasible idea. Also, I understand that if this were for real, producing these leaflets by computer would be a much easier and less time consuming method. 

Problems: Due to the lack of information (which does worry me and I have explained this to the group), we could run the risk, as I have said before, of being to vague and therefore lose potential interest. Not everybody wants to or has the time to research into things like this. However, these will be placed inside the Museum itself for advertising so people interested could find out more information at the Reception desk (should this have been put on the leaflet?) 

Last session prior to presentation

After our session today, we have put a presentation together and decided to write individual notes on each slide. A couple of slides will be for an individual person to talk about, but most things we have worked on cooperatively so we will all have input. Between now and next Thursday I am going to write a selection of edited notes to have in hand during our presentation. We have decided to come in a little early next Thursday and get together all of our notes, print outs and go through our presentation. We seem to feel pretty confident about what we have done.
I will write a brief self-evaluation after we have presented our project next week.

Group CV

I have edited our individual CV's to make a joint CV, as during the session before Christmas that I was absent for, James and Adam said that a group CV was more appropriate for this kind of project.

Group CV

We are a group of Fine Art students at Plymouth College of Art, starting out as practising artists. We collectively share enthusiasm for creating public art and interacting with the community. We have successfully created installation pieces together, in different sites over Plymouth. Although we cooperate extremely well together, we each have our own strengths that give us certain roles in our team. This reinforces our group and utilizes all of our individual skills.

Louiza is 21 years of age, and works as a support therapist with individuals with autism. The last few years of her life have been spent gaining experience around the world in the health and social care field, which included leading arts and crafts sessions at a special needs summer camp in America. She wishes to pursue a career in art therapy. She has a very strong passion for humanitarian work, as well as a desire to use visual art to make positive difference.

Fay comes from Somerset and previously studied a BTEC National Diploma Level 3 in Art and Design at Bridgwater College. She works directly with the public and because of this; she feels that it has a great influence in the art work she creates. She wishes to become an art teacher and share her ideas with new emerging artists.

Jess is 19 years old and studied A level Art at Plymouth High School for Girls. She likes to explore the context behind art and the connection between Art, the Artist and the viewer. She shows this through her work by creating pieces that reflect her own influences and experiences. Since completing a week’s work experience at Plymouth Museum during secondary school, she has been interested in pursuing a career in Curatorship.

Elena is 19 years of age, and a practising artist in Plymouth and the surrounding area.  She is particularly interested in the psychology behind art, and how creation is a basic human need. She likes interactive exhibitions and tries to involve the public heavily in her work.

We would like to continue working collaboratively for many years to come.

Email:                                                 Website:

louizahamidi@live.co.uk                louizahamidi@blogspot.com

fayhawkes@hotmail.com              fayhawkes@blogspot.com

jessbent@hotmail.co.uk              jessbent@blogspot.com

elenabrake@hotmail.com            elenabrake@blogspot.com

Leaflet ideas...

These are just some rough ideas that I had when I was thinking about designs for the leaflet. We decided as a group that there should be as little information on the leaflet as possible because we want to avoid giving the visitors and participators an influence.

Though, I personally think that there should be information about the dates and times of our group sessions, opening and closing times of the museum, contact details and also how long our project is going to last - I think that if we don't include these, then we will be limiting the informtation we give to the public and it could possibly effect the amount of people that get involved.

1/12/2011...What does our art mean?

I found this quote which, to me, sums up the meaning of our piece:

"Perhaps more to the point, does public opinion influence the outcome of public art commisions?"

This is exactly what I think that we, as a group, set out to achieve with our piece. The Museum is a place for visitors - we wanted to draw people in and allow them to take part in our artwork. We wanted to work with the Public in a way which would allow them to express themselves freely but also, in a small way, educate them through getting them to think about the Museum and what their thoughts are. We really want the piece to reflect the visitors which is why we have been trying to be as vague about our ideas (what we wanted from the project) as we possibly could. 

Research notes from 1st December...

1/12/2011: notes and research

Today, I decided to research Public Art. I didn't know much about it so by researching it I learnt a lot and it made me think about how we could develop the ideas behind our work and also how we could talk about it during our presentation in January.

I found a book called 'The Benefits of Public Art' by Sara Selwood which I think was very helpful.

Here are a few of the quotes I found and the notes I made on the relevance they have to our piece.

"[public art] may...be intended to 'enable' and 'empower' the community."

• I feel that our piece will 'enable' and 'empower' because it enables the public to get involved in the process of an art piece and also will empower them to a certain extent as depending on their creation, they will determine the outcome of the piece. Also, it will depend on how they put the piece into the artwork - will they put their puzzle pieces in backwards, upside down etc. they will effect the way that it travels down the tubes and land in the main body of the structure. Through their participation, the visitors will change the look and process of the artwork.

"Are people sufficiently aware of their environment to make judgements? 'Do they know enough to be consulted?'. Can they, as some planners asked, 'read drawings sufficiently well to anticipate how things will be?'"

• One of my personal worries was that not everyone will get what our piece is about. Although it's subtitle is 'Your Museum' and we will be there to explain what we mean or want from it, I feel that it would take away the originality of inspiration. It sounds complicated but I want the aim of the project to be clear but not influential in a 'dictating' way.





Critical Rationale

The purpose for our art piece initially is to make the general public think what a museum is to them. The definition of a museum is:

“A building or place where works of art, scientific specimens, or other objects of permanent value are kept and displayed.”

But in this age museums are changing and how we perceive the spaces within them are constantly being questioned. It’s not solely by people in the professions but also the public who walk through the front doors of any museum. They question what they are going to see, how they are supposed to act and even how they feel about certain aspects of the museum experience.

In earlier times museum culture has always been conserved and proper, but we as collaborating public artists believe that a museum has many different uses. Peoples different circumstances create different experiences even if everyone is looking at the same content.

Our structure, plays also upon curiosity; moving up into the second floors the public are gently persuaded to seek what is up the stairs, making them want to explore more areas of the building.

The fact that members of the public are contributing to part of this exhibit, will probably mean that they will visit more than once to watch the piece evolve and eventually finish it’s month long time at Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery.

This is part of a touring exhibition of British city museums. Gathering different opinions from all parts of the country. Making a statement of how varied every member of the public’s opinions are. So this museum will be part of a yearlong exhibition.

Reflection on 24th November...

Thursday's session was really productive. Although Fay was ill and Sharon has left our group, I found that Elena, Louisa and I managed to get a lot of the groundwork done so that we know where we are in our project so far and how we need to progress. 

At the beginning of the group meeting, we decided to film ourselves creating a mind map of our project, our ideas so far and how we want to progress and develop it and also our discussion along the way. We had many discussions on the actual piece that we have decided to build. Louisa and I liked the idea of having a second piece that would be created out of the pieces that collected from the public after we discussed making the paper that the public could draw on in the shape of jigsaw pieces. However, Elena made a very good point about the fact that the second piece would be a little pointless because it would effectively just be saying the same thing. On reflection, I completely agree. I think that we were getting to carried away with the actual piece instead of all the other important things such as researching funding and construction etc. 

After we had finished our mind map we then went to talk to James and Adam, who had come from the Museum to see how we were getting along and offer us help. During our talk, I learnt a lot about Art as a business and how money orientated it could become. I was surprised how naive I was about it all. 


Here are some of the notes I took during our talk to James and Adam: