I’m running a drop in zine making workshop for young people as part of my artist residency at The Playground next week, so I bought some newspapers last week to make an example zine to show at the workshop. This is the result so far! These collages will be made into the zine (hopefully).
The above collage is a poem called “What Happens Next?”
This collage is called “Jacob Memes Mogg, or We Won’t Take This Lying Down”
This one is called “Cheeky Homophobia”
And finally the “Nigel Farage Poem” (not the most creative title but it does what it says on the tin!)
I think given the current political climate this is an apt piece of work, and the zine will possibly called “Dangerous Men” or something along those lines, because although these men are often the subject of memes and jokes they are in fact very dangerous men. I’m actually really pleased with these so far, it was my first chance to be properly creative in a few weeks and I knocked these out in a couple of hours! Life is stressful after uni, but it’s moments of creativity like this that make it worth it.
Today I ran two back to back kids workshops at 3rd Rail Printspace (where I am currently interning). Both workshops had the same format, with the same end goal- every child drawing and cutting their own paper stencil design to then print their own t-shirt with.
They both went as follows:
Introduction to the task
showing the children a paper stencil in progress (i.e. some of the drawing still visible, some of it cut out already)
Getting the children to draw their own designs, assisting with the cutting out with a craft knife or scissors where needed (children were only to use safety scissors provided, not the knives)
doing a print demonstration using one of the children’s artworks- placing the t-shirt onto the carousel (already prepped with adhesive), taping the paper stencil to the shirt, putting the screen down onto the shirt, getting the child to choose the colours they wanted, blobbing the ink directly onto the screens using a paint brush, then pulling the ink across the screens with a squeegee
leading the printing, and pulling the ink if the child didn’t feel confident doing it and cleaning screens between children with rags and water
supervising the children blow drying their designs with a hair dryer
Prep done before the workshops:
mixing the pigments with binder (making the inks up basically)
applying adhesive to the t-shirt carousel board
stripping, cleaning and degreasing the 3 screens used
taping up the screens
cutting rags
drawing a rough stencil design and partially cutting it as an example
checking numbers and getting the correct amount and sizes of t-shirts out ready
setting out cutting mats, paper, scissors, erasers and pencils for the children
setting out t-shirt examples from previous workshops
Overall I am really pleased with how they both went! The first group was comprised of 12 11 year olds, and the second of 10 13 year olds, which are larger groups than I am used to leading an activity for, but I think I handled it really well- all the kids seemed to really enjoy it and were happy with their t-shirts! Both of them ran over time a bit, but I think with a bit more prep work and now having the experience I can keep them within the time limits in future.
Did a trial assisting with printing two rolls of fabric for a client at my internship today! This means I’ll be able to assist or lead with printing clients work in future on a freelance basis (meaning paid work!) It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be, and the hardest part was actually getting the fabric lined up and pinned properly- the actual printing was easy enough once we had decided how many pulls to do (pulling the ink across with the squeegee) and got into a rhythm.
So I started my 3 month internship at 3rd Rail Print Space in Peckham this week! I have done screen printing before, but I’m actually learning how to do all the prep work and how to run a workshop, which is super exciting!
Some of it has been fairly basic maintainance of the space- restocking stuff, putting screens away, cleaning, ect. In my first week I have already learnt how to coat screens, line up artwork and expose it, prep the screens for printing, and clean off the stencils once the screens are finished with, ready for the next use. It’s all been super interesting! I have been shown some of the digital admin side of things as well, but I will probably need to have a go a few times to get the hang of it.
This is all crucial stuff, as I hope to run my own multidisciplinary workspace one day, so I am keen to make the most of this opportunity and learn as much as possible. I have been taking lots of notes, but I probably won’t share those here, just for privacy of the studio.
(I took this photo before I swapped out the keyboard and mouse for the cleaner ones)
Overall I am surprisingly really happy with how my installation turned out- the room is a really good, well lit space, with large windows, and it looks much better since I painted it, and swept and mopped it. I am also really pleased I was able to make the table top for free from scrap wood, as that saved me a lot of money, and I think it looks much better than the Ikea table tops do anyway. I decided to keep the trestle legs I got from the BA student black, as I liked the contrast (and also I’m lazy and painting over black paint with white would have been a nightmare) and I think it helps to break up all the white in the room. I had to ask my classmates to tell me the river Thames I painted into the table top looked fine, because otherwise I never would have stopped trying to touch it up and make it “perfect”. Considering I didn’t use masking tape or anything except the pencil outline and paint I think it came out well, and is fairly recognizable for what it is, without any need for labels or a more literal representation.
In terms of curating the objects for the exhibition I feel that I have chosen the right amount, and the right selection of materials- I was not able to get the aluminum pieces to a high enough standard, so they have been omitted, the other lot of glass wax pieces I made came out much less transparent and much milkier looking (due to the touch of blue wax I added to offset the yellowing that had happened from the glass wax being overheated) so I left those out and put in the first lot I made, which are much clearer and more transparent. I also left out the herculite casts as they were not up to standard, and are also still fairly fragile compared to the other materials, and I left out the iPad 3D prints, as the Einscan ones were of much higher quality.
In terms of the digital work on screen I am very happy with how it looks- I have chosen one of the larger bones that has a particularly interesting form for the audience to play with, and I feel that Meshmixer was a good choice of programme for the audience to use, as it is fairly simple programme to mess around on- hopefully people will use it and enjoy playing around! I made a 2 minute video, which is on one of my earlier posts, which shows how to move around the 3D model, how to zoom in and out, and some of the basic tools they can use on Meshmixer, in case anyone gets stuck, and this is on the Mac desktop, titled “How to Use”.
I have discussed this previously, but I chose the five bones that I did as the jaw bone pieces proved difficult to cast in some of the methods, so much so that I could not get a good cast of them in the herculite, or glass wax, so I decided not to include them at all. Also they are a bit less ambiguous than the other bones, so I felt it best to leave them out, as I like the ambiguity of the shapes of the other bones. Also I left out the brick, despite having cast it in herculite, glass wax, bronze, and aluminum, as I felt it looks odd to have 5 bones and then the brick by itself. This is a shame, as the casts of it are quite beautiful, but it would have stood out too much, so it was necessary.
when I think back I thought I would have recreated the rope, brick, plastic bottle, and driftwood in different materials like I did originally with the vacuum forming, for the final show. Unfortunately the rope and bottle became unusable after the vacuum forming, and the driftwood turned out to be quite complex to cast, so I never ended up doing it. The bones became my focal point quite by accident, as I found myself drawn to the shapes and textures of them when I first started experimenting with the macro lens back in the first term. I don’t regret this, because I feel like I have made a strong body of work, that I am very proud of.
spent most the day working the BA degree show private view, so I didn’t have much time to do work
I did pick up my 3D printed bones, and worked on them a little though
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Tuesday 18/06/19
Two of the 3D prints I collected yesterday need to be sent to print again, as the supports are where a lot of the detail was supposed to be, and as I remove the support I am also removing the detail, so I will send these to print again this week, and choose somewhere different for the supports to go- as shown in the photos below
to make the 3D printed bones look “finished” I have been using pliers, sandpaper, and files to get rid of the supports, and the marks left behind on the bones, although I haven’t been able to completely remove these traces, so I suppose it is just part of the nature of the material
the 3D prints are very light, much like the real bones, but feel pretty solid
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the photo below shows the iPad 3D scan and print next to the Einscan 3D scan and print- the quality is vastly different, as you can see- the Einscan actually has the textural surface of the bone, and is much less pixelated looking than the much rougher iPad scan
side by side of the iPad scan and Einscan
Thursday 20/06/19
I decided to try and work on the aluminum pieces today, but as I clamped one of them in the vice it cracked, and Lindsey had to help me seal the crack with aluminum filler and epoxy resin
This will need to be sanded down once the resin filler has dried
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my ceramic bones have been biscuit fired, below is what they looked like once they had been fired, before I glazed them
Friday 21/06/19
glazed my bones today- the photos below show the glazing process, and the bones once the glaze had dried and was ready to be fired again
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to glaze the ceramic bones I had to first mix the glaze very thoroughly, then using the metal tool shown in the photo I had to clamp each bone and dip it into the glaze, shaking it gently to make sure the coating was even, then working the glaze into the textures of the bones with my finger and a brush
I then had to remove the glaze with a damp sponge anywhere that the surface of each bone touched the worktop- if you don’t do this, when the ceramic pieces are fired the glaze melts and sticks to the bottom of the kiln, which means the pieces will probably be destroyed when you try to remove them
I have circled the places I removed the glaze in red in the photos below to demonstrate
After my first attempt editing an iPad scan of my bone didn’t go so well (you could see where I dragged the mesh, and this was visible on the 3D print) I was a bit hesitant to try again. This video was originally a 5 and half min screen cap of some playing around with another bone scan, to get a feel for the tools and how the programme works, which I sped up to 2 mins. You can see me trying different tools and playing with softening the shape, which I didn’t end up keeping.
This screenshot shows the bone before any editing was done- the raw scan.
I feel a little more confident to use Meshmixer now, and I plan on cleaning the rest of the iPad bone scans up, just to see how the shapes have turned out.
Took moulds from foundry down to Ceramics studio and started testing them out
The clay is much softer than anticipated- I am used to more solid materials such as the wax, so de-moulding has proven more difficult- the clay loses shape as soon as you try to pull it out of the moulds
I found leaving the clay in the moulds to dry a little helped, but not much
I only managed to get one clay bone finished; I had to do a lot more work to it than I was used to doing with the wax to get it to look right, using the real bone for reference
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I also popped into the 3D workshop to chat about the new scanner with the technician, Jonathan, and ended up doing a scan of one of my bones then and there
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Tuesday 04/06/19
I booked out the photography studio last week for this morning, to photograph all my sculptures so far, with the help of Richard, the technician
Ended up coming back after lunch and staying there til 3.30ish, as some pieces proved trickier to photograph
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I took 360 pics of all the pieces except for the two brick casts and the bronze casts, and I plan to animate them into little gifs for my website
I learnt a lot about how to light different shapes and materials, which I hope I can try to mimic at home with a flexible desk lamp, fabric, and a white table or sheet- Richard definitely taught me that you don’t always need the fancy equipment available at uni
Didn’t get time to go to ceramics again, as planned, so I went to the 3D workshop to do more 3D scans instead
I ended up with a few fixable scans, and one mutant scan- I scanned it twice at two different angles, but the software stitched it together wrong, giving me a mutant bone
Wednesday 05/06/19
Made progress on remaking my Symposium video (I lost the entire thing because the programme I was using crashed)
Had to go to work in the evening
Thursday 06/06/19
Morning group tutorial- we discussed show details and I am happy with the space I have been allocated
Edited one of the iPad bone scans and sent it to print
Made some more progress on remaking the symposium video
Friday 07/06/19
Visited Jonathan in 3D and scanned the bones that went wrong on Tuesday- he showed me how to do multiple scans and match them up to get a better 3D model
I have one bone left to scan- I just need to do that and clean up the scans on MeshMixer and they will be ready to 3D print
Whitten timber yard, behind Peckham Library- buy a door blank, white faced or plain and paint it for table, use trestles in studio, project already made river file onto table, then paint river
OR use a table top in white from Ikea, £25-£27 depending on size
IF I can’t find trestles the right size, Ikea sells table legs for £2.50 each × 4 or thin trestles for £5 each × 2
using projector as a guideline to paint river onto table
Sound- record sound of walking along the river piped into room, or speakers under the table- quieter, more intimate
Need to figure out what audience will sit on- benches or stools?
White Ikea stools- £4 each?
Instead of putting screens on separate plinths- put one Mac on the table with objects- this COULD encourage audience interaction with the rest of the objects- they will know to sit down and use the Mac because of the mouse attached to it, so this might psychologically encourage them to sit at the table and play with/touch the objects
2 screens- aesthetically pleasing but unnecessary?
1 screen- positioned at the end of the table, facing the back of the room, so that viewers have to come round the table to see what is on the screen, influencing the movement of people
Real bones included or not??
PROS- the whole idea of perception of the objects and the question of whether people will pick up the real things or the materials they are familiar with?
CONS- the bones are very fragile and I an worried they will break
Screen capture- the whole show, or just the open night?? When I invigilate? Because the files will be huge, but it can be done on quicktime very easily on the Mac- do I want to code it so that it only activates when someone is using it?
Sound- borrow sound recorder from CLS- audio recorder (Zoom or TASCAM) and walk along the Thames where I found the bones- do some tests on my phone?
Don’t let the levels get too high on recorder- put headphones in and listen as I record and adjust levels accordingly, get a DEADCAT (fluffy thing for the end of the recorder)
Look for audio recording apps for Android?
The above sketches were made during the tutorial, with the top one being the first sketch/idea and the third being the last and most likely final version.
I can be quite flexible with the space I use in the exhibition, however I would prefer a small space for just my work, so that the sound can be heard and I can specifically observe how the audience reacts to my work.
As part of an exhibition I organised for my society, The Mentally Chill Society, I decided to make a short zine exploring my experiences with Borderline Personality Disorder, which I was diagnosed with around two years ago.
I started by writing down the NHS definition, the causes, and the four main criteria for diagnosis, and began thinking about how they affected me, personally. I then made some notes, shown below, of objects/imagery I might want to use. It was at this point I decided I wanted to create the initial imagery for the zine on the photocopier, as I wanted it to look and feel handmade and erratic.
I spent about a day in the learning zone, playing around with the various objects I collected from my room on the photocopier, including- fast food packaging, smoking apparatus, my old Barbie doll, condoms, anti depressant packaging, coloured paper, patterned paper bags, doll parts, and photos of myself. These were all things I felt represented different aspects of both myself and more specifically my personality disorder. Once I had the imagery I then used various pens and crayons to create the text and some other parts (such as the mood wheel) which I then added. The original double page spreads were A3 (so once folded it would have been A4) as I prefer to work larger then scale down my work in the next stage, for better quality. The finished zine was printed on A4 paper and folded down to A5.
The next stage was to scan the pages so that I could edit them digitally on Indesign for printing, as shown below.
I printed a proof in black and white first to check that everything was in the right place, before moving on to printing in colour.
I then hand bound the book, using waxed thread for book binding, a bone folder, needle and awl, to make the holes.
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The photos above are of the Zine in the MENTAL exhibition that I organised, and set up, which I will post about shortly.
KAT OUTTEN 