On my Unit One Assessment I wrote an absolute essay trying to meet the criteria, but I am not sure I was in the best head space so I am going to be a little more relaxed and honest and less performative and try not to worry about grades.
I have tried to pick blog posts that show shifts in thinking and have put them in chronological order.
I am still struggling with fears of being unclear and being misunderstood as after the last unit assessment I felt completely misread.
Learning Outcome 1:Develop and realise a self-directed programme of learning which draws from wide-ranging subject knowledge. (AC Knowledge, AC Process)
Because embroidery takes so long and because I was trying to prove myself by creating something on a larger scale I was noting down ideas on my blog but without immediately making them I was losing them.
I have since returned to using a sketch book. The problem with college and uni is that your sketch book is a preformance and not a natural thing. This feels much more natural and gives me chance to get ideas out and reflect on them before plunging headlong into something that I wont love when it’s done, which has been the way with most projects recently.
It had led my to making things in clay and thinking of different media and ways of making instead of relying on my usual patterns and comfort zones. It is also helped me slow down and think about how I would make a piece of work I would actually like. I think I do still need to slow down and pull away from the need to constantly make, maybe thinking about what would really communicate what I want to say.
I am also moving away from the need to prove myself or say everything at once, which, I feel were my sticking points to get over at assessment one. Large projects don’t work for me. I am disappointed in the end and they are not immediate enough, the thoughts and feelings pass too quickly. The sketch book is helping me think without thse thoughts having to be grand or finalised.
I really worked through my quilt to get to this point in my practice. The quilt itself started with an act of catharsis, to orginise all the things I had collected and use them, and so let go. I think in that way it was a worthwhile project as it allowed me to make something in order to let go of a lot of my ideas of what I should be and what I should make and what my work should be about. It helped my get a solid sense of what I thought I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it, such as through developing the colour pallet, and also adding solid areas with paint and needle felting. I got to the place I wanted to be, made the work I really wanted to make, and hated it. It helped me think through what I was doing and why and realise that I was trying to please, to make ‘good girl’ art, to make my work easier on others and on myself. People still think its sinister either way and I do not love it. I would not love it if I saw it in an exhibition.
Learning Outcome 2:
Articulate a thorough understanding of your research and establish an informed critical position. (AC Communication)
I think the three most interesting books, or I guess the ones that have stuck with me the most, from my research were Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, as well as other things I read by her, Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex, and The Female Malady. I think it was important for me to read things like Eve Was Framed too. It was really cathartic to get a good handle on where my thinking came from and the tings that mattered to me around being a female artist so that I can hopefully move on more like a male artist is able to. Men are artist that speak about the universal condition, their opinion the default, the position neutral. I was angry that women artists cant to this and that I had to deal with being a woman before I could move on and be a human.
Since writing my research paper I have read books on three artists which have really helped with ‘learning outcome one’ and how I think about my practice/ where I want it to be. The first is Louise Bourgeois which I wrote copious notes on. Summed up I really like that she thought about the materials, the methods, the details of what she made, making in order to give feelings tangibility, to work through emotions and states, to communicate. It has made me realise that I have always had an interest in the way in which the mind works and psychological states. I also realised that by creating work around trauma and womanhood I am creating boundaries and reinforcing my position within those boundaries, crating my own status. In part this is thanks to reading a book, not yet finished on Ana mendieta and performativity and exile. It has opened lines of thinking around how my art reinforces and creates my position and made me think about what and who I am creating / is creating and making statements on me. Sorry for not being very clear, it’s not fully thought through yet. The third book, also not yet finished is one on Yoko Ono, which has been making me think more about audience participation and about engaging the audience and making them participants in the work. I am sure none of this is unique or revolutionary but I have only just go there so it is new to me. I always feel everyone is five or six steps ahead and I am running behind.
Learning Outcome 3:
Analyse and critically reflect on your practice and its context. (AC Enquiry)is largely about your reflective thinking and writing on your blog
So I have I been pretty honest that I struggle with being reflective but I do think that I have tried really hard and compared to where I was at when I was being closed and secretive and defective and defencive at the end of assessment one I feel I have improved greatly, but also a little lazily. I can’t always be bothered, both mentally and physically, to write down everything and do try to fob off the things I have made quickly. Can I use this post as evidence of being reflective? If not here are some posts that I hope will show that I have been more reflective and because of that I have changed my practice quite a bit, as you can see in outcome one.
🙂
Chelsea Swan 
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