Chloe Sutton-Stacey

Art should interest, excite and inspire.

Madrid: Day One

After arriving at around 3pm Madrid Time, we went pretty much straight from the hotel to the “Parque del Retiro” firstly to the “Palacio de Cristal” which had an installation by Soledad Sevilla. 

Here’s the quote from the leaflet inside the gallery space.

In this installation the “palace-greenhouse” contains another building that acts as a small scale model or copy. Meanwhile the sky gives the impression of being both inside and out: the daytime sky with the sun and clouds on the outside and an imaginary reconstruction of a night sky with the buildings basic forms on the inside. The class panes open onto the sky while enclosed within is our mental universe: language - or rather a universe of signs breathing life and the sound of speech into writing. Punctuation marks act like a constellation of sound tools and serve to introduce expression into language: exclamation and question marks, full stops and commas (which also to help us catch our breath) for silences and pauses, brackets for speaking softly or in asides, accents to give words volume and music, asterisks and hyphens to direct or situate collateral thoughts…

The Crystal Palace thus becomes a mental astronomical observatory for an inner universe with the installation explained through a poetic and spatial paradox somewhere between interior and exterior, seeing and perceiving, speaking and writing. The ancients viewed the celestial world as an unchanging, perfect universe. Today we know that it is a space full of constant changes and “written in the sky” can now involve other variables where the poetic and digital virtuality intertwine. 

I think this sums up the most of that piece and you can get a better idea of what it’s all about. I loved this piece, I thought it was beautiful and very clever- I loved the way that the sun lit the “sky” up.

On the other side of the Parque, to “Palacio de Velázquez” where René Daniëls work was being shown. I didn’t like his work so much and didn’t take any photos as I only had a small amount of memory so I have stolen a friends photo to give you an idea of the work: Credit to Miao.

Back tracking.

Hopefully over the next couple of days I will be able to back track my work that I have been doing so far since starting at Winchester School of Art. This will mean probably a lot of learning and posting but hopefully it will mean I will have another source of backing up my work. 

Worn Project

As we only had a week I got straight into it. I kept the theme of Alice in Wonderland and regrets and worked from there, but wanted to link it to my Aunty.

I started off with the skirt, I have only done hand sewing when I was a child at school and haven’t had any proper teaching so it took a few tries to get right… The skirt itself took most of the time to make roughly 4 days.

 

I had started off by just holding the material close to the skirt and using a back stitch to keep the red netting in place. This didn’t work because I wanted the skirt to puff out a bit but this method meant it didn’t puff out and the material didn’t make it around the whole skirt either. So I then tried ruffling the skirt and just tacking it in place. 

This worked much better and so I cut the material to the right length and used the excess to create another layer underneath to add volume to it. 

I then left the skirt and started working on the top. I wanted to include my own regrets this time but carry on the paper idea so I wrote out some of my regrets on pieces of paper, screwed them up and used a glue gun to glue them on after realising that hand sewing them was getting nowhere. 

I then glued 2 tubes of explanation of my regrets and finished by hand sewing some paper ones that moved as I walked. 

I then carried on with the skirt by individually hand sewing train tickets, and playing cards onto it which is what took the longest! The train tickets represent travel as it is such a big part of my life and I always had to catch the train to see my Aunt, she never got to see me drive. Playing cards representing mainly chances and fun.

I took a break from the sewing cards and began working on a fascinator, using wire and the remnants of the red netting. 

I then added a card, dice and pills to go with my theme. The card representing games I used to play with my Aunt when I was younger, the pills representing the pills she had to take day in and out of her life since day 1 and the dice representing how her life was just chance everyday if she could push on. 

I then worked on my hair I wanted to create a bow in my hair to add to the fantasy and link to childhood. 

I looked on youtube and this is what I managed to create. 

I used hair spray on the day to neaten it up. 

I then finished off sewing things onto my skirt including ribbons and other tickets. I sewed a big bow out of the remaining netting to the back of the skirt. 

To finish the whole costume I wore red tights with fish nets underneath and little boots. I tried to make the back of the top resemble a corset but that failed. I tied ribbon around my neck and did my own make to reflect the fun / games part of my Wonderland. I finished off my hair by tying the bottom pony tails in ribbons.

These are some photos from the event itself.

There is also a video below: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILQZqIYHpvI&feature=g-upl&context=G25039adAUAAAAAAAAAA 

My sentence to accompany my outfit was 

“Although I didn’t say Goodbye, I know you’re in Wonderland now, you must be.”

Moving On/Off (Self Directed)

This was our brief, I did open it when we were allowed to. Those that didn’t left the room and that was all they were given for their brief. After listening to the lecture and then analysing and researching into the brief I decided that I wanted to look into the kind of Alice in Wonderland: Curiosity and Regrets side of things. 

One of my favourite things with art is the audiences interaction with a piece of work or their reaction. I started having a think of ideas that could link the two together and eventually came up with a small book where people could write in their regrets. To find the book they had to follow the arrows… and only once they followed the arrows would they find out what the piece was about. I covered the uni in these arrows with black electrical tape which lead to our studio with my little book. 

I got 44 entries by the end of the couple of days that I left the signs and book up on its shelf, which was a lot more than I thought I would get! 

To take it further I spoke to a friend about doing a photography piece with it I knew I wanted to include the peoples handwriting because that made each entry very personal which I really liked. So I photocopied all entries and we narrowed them down so we could go out and shoot. 

I wore a dress that made me look out of place so more people would take notice and we shot several of the regrets. I turned the piece into a trip tic using the 3 below. 

I then stood for 15 minutes just under and held each regret for roughly a minute and then dropped it, to see the publics reaction. 

The quality isn’t very good because of the size of the video: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoaA5xhyZzQ&feature=g-upl&context=G22c1a6dAUAAAAAAABAA

Clay Towers: One Day Sculpture project

We were each given a block of clay and the aim of the whole day was to create a the tallest tower in the class. 

This was mine. 

And this is myself stood next to the guy who’s tower was the tallest… By the end it was taller than me! 

Manifesto Project

I began by filling up a book about where I get my inspiration from, how I choose media and then spent some time researching some of other peoples manifesto’s. I then read through all of my own points and summed them up into 10 main points which I thought were most important about art.

  • Art is all around us: it doesn’t have to be in a gallery, it can be on the street to in your room to on a train and so much more.
  • Art is not just painting: from sculpture to knitting or a sketch in a book, even music on the radio- art takes many forms. 
  • Art is not always manmade: nature has  provided us with some of the most beautiful sculptures from the Antarctic to the Grand Canyon. 
  • Art should be for everyone.
  • Art can help open peoples eyes: to problems, to ideas and to beauty that may not have been experienced before.
  • Art is not always in “black and white”: it is not always instantly clear what the meaning is… if there even is a meaning.
  • Art can help us overcome issues: like when people are struggling how to express their feelings or memories.
  • Art can be inspired by almost anything: if you put a creative mind to it, things can lead you to something that you never expected.
  • Art is not perfection: failures can lead to great pieces of art. You should never fear failure.
  • Art should inspire, interest and excite! 

This was the final “poster” that we had to make from it that was displayed in West Side for a week. 

Setting Up (Self Directed)

This was our first self directed project and I had no idea where to start. So I started mind mapping different ideas from past projects that I had thought of or other ideas that had come across in the everyday. 

What I ended up looking into was Travel. I make a journey every day from Southampton to Winchester, which should take roughly half an hour but it usually takes more like an hour plus. I begun by doing what I was used to doing which is sketching people whilst I was travelling. I then became interested in how the trains movement blurs the images outside because of how fast we were travelling and started documenting this. 

I did experimented with different medias to copy the images but I didn’t really like the outcomes. So I then turned back to film 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHAQT8zlQOU&feature=g-upl&context=G23af6b5AUAAAAAAAFAA

Using different clips and mashing them together as a time-lapse with music over the top.

I was also quite interested in reflections, I have lots of other ideas to do with reflections that I hope to experiment with in future works. In the video I took I didn’t take out the sound or add music because I didn’t think it needed it. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmvqQvKfnes&feature=related 

I then videoed parts of journey from the station to my university and time lapsed that with just my feet at the floor and added music. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VazEFbjDUPg&feature=related 

The final piece was the whole journey time lapsed without music. The sounds are all distorted from where its been sped up. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loiFPLtdc7U&feature=related

Timeline Project: “Earrings from antiquity to the present”

We were each assigned a book and then given a week to respond.

I hated this project. I am not that interested in jewellery except when its aesthetically pleasing… And even then it usually costs far too much for how often people wear it. The book did have some interesting points in it, which I took notes of in my sketch book:

  • The fact they had proof of people wearing earrings from the 3rd millennium BC and even assumed that before that they used shells etc.
  • That they could tell the egyptians had worn expander kind of earrings like from todays culture, because of the mummies elongated lobes.
  • That the Greeks buried jewellery with their loved ones. 
  • An earring that was around 10.5cm long… I can’t imagine how heavy that would be to wear…

I then started to struggle with the intense reading… bearing in mind I only had a week not just to make a piece but produce sketchbook work etc. So I began to flick through the photos and write what caught my attention: 

  • The attraction of beautiful diamond earrings. 
  • Some earrings relating to greek mythology or stories/ fairytales.
  • The idea of women hanging “anything” off their ears for example at the time using basket shaped earrings… 
  • Use of Nature and Animals, they also were using resin which I had used a lot at Foundation.
  • Using emblems which had a story behind it from the French Renaissance.
  • The way it was presented in the book like using a silhouette of someone. 
  • Taking things from nature and then adding man made things to it. 

I then sketched out several ideas, but ended up making something quite crafty, based on Salvador Dali’s honeycomb heart earrings. It was a long, frustrating process and I wasn’t that happy with the final result. Below are photos of the process.

First I blew up the balloons, and covered them in tissue paper and glue.

I covered both balloons with about 3 layers.

On the bus journey home, one of the balloons popped inside and shrunk… I was quite annoyed at first but after a while of contemplating it, I think this was the best way to go ahead.

I then used gold thread to sew them together, to resemble the heart shape.

I made some templates of honeycomb shapes out of paper and then proceeded onto the gold card.

I then used gold foil for the drop at the bottom. 

I added diamonte to reflect the jewellery aspect of my work, and the aesthetically pleasing aspect too.

Viewing the Whole: Winchester 360

I started this project by going through the brief getting rough ideas of how and where to start. I printed off a map and highlighted my 2 destinations with the routes of how to get there. My places were The Royal Hampshire Hospital and The Water Meadows. 

At each destination I did some sketches and wrote about my thought process in my sketchbook. I preferred the water meadows although it had been raining most of the time whilst I was there, I felt that the surroundings were a lot more inspiring than at the Hospital. 

I also did some artist research, Mat Collishaw’s work interested me the most. I think this is mainly because of the fantasy aspect of his work it is quite beautiful. 

I took photos at both locations and printed off a contact sheet and wrote about each photo’s significance to me. 

After sketching out some ideas, I decided to go out and do a photoshoot with a dress, I wanted it to act as a fantasy aspect in my work, similar to a photoshoot I was involved with last year. I hung the dress or sat it up in different poses so that it acted in certain ways in the photos. Whilst I was there I also took lots of videos, capturing the water as I found in very mesmerising and ended up getting distracted so I felt it was important to capture this. 

 

In the end when I got back I decided that the videos were a lot more interesting than the photos, and that they showed a lot more how I felt. I taught myself a little how to use a program called iMovie using youtube help videos. I used one of the videos as my final piece as it was the most appropriate one to convey the fantasy aspect I felt when I was there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emEzKxCvIxo&feature=g-upl&context=G2b80883AUAAAAAAAIAA

Above is the video I used for my final piece.