John Berry

An artist named John Berry came to our class last week, he also has a studio at WASP in Selkirk.
He has a unique outlook at the world and didn't find anyone with the same views until he went to college.
He taught English in Istanbul while also doing some illustration jobs. He also helped to create "The Snowman"
He started doing Illustration and Graphic design jobs once he finished school but always loved collage, he got the opportunity to create a collage mural using books that were being thrown away -there were around 3000 books being thrown out, and he I still using them!!-
He is inspired by Piccasso and Kurt Schwitters' collages. He doesn't like using recognisable people in his collages so he uses old photos of people from years and years back and makes them into art. He also likes old paper and etc.

He is so far my favourite artist who has come to visit, he is interesting and i can really be inspired by him.

These are my favorites by John, they are all done on pieces of wood and they are displayed in a large group, i picked out 3 of my favorites to show. However my pictures are upside down and i'm not sure how to rotate them on here :s;

Goya, disasters of war

I stared looking at Goya's series of prints called the Disasters of War by looking into how it came about, I found that he produced 82 prints between 1810 and 1820, but were not put out until 1863.

I began looking through some of the prints he created, I think they were possibly political statements etchings and I read that they were in relation to what he had witnessed in the Peninsular war in 1807 – 1814.
The first image that really grabbed my attention was this one...

"Disparate general (General folly)"

I consider myself quite a morbid person, and while I was looking through these images although very powerful and violent, they did not shock me. Although it made me think about what kind of reaction he wanted to give to the viewer.

The more I looked at this image, the more I noted the darkness in it, in tone and in message, to me obviously on purpose.

I noticed the background has little to no detail in it and I noticed this in a lot of these etchings... they all appear to have a darkness in the backgrounds, it gives me the feeling of emptiness all around what is happening in the etchings. Here is another example of this I found.

"Modo de volar (A way of flying)"

"El caballo raptor (Kidnapping horse)"

I liked these, I liked the darkness to them again both in appearance and message, and it made me quite interested in trying out etching for myself. :)

Mary Morrison

On Tuesday an artist named Mary Morrison came to visit our class to give a talk on her work, She is based in the Scottish Borders and was brought up in the Isle of Haris where she left at the age of 18.
She uses oil paint in different solutions, she explained that she can never come up with the same effect on a canvas twice and every piece of work is unique, Mary works on flat and can sometimes work on several paintings at once as they are oil paint and take forever to dry! She is inspired by the isle she grew up on and incorporates the waves in most of her paintings. She then moved on and was inspired by Abstract Musical Notation and eventually put two and two together and created beautiful work. She was then inspired by tide tables and grids and mapping and then continued to add them to her work to make interesting works.
She is currently based in WASP Studios in Selkirk and has been for the last 12 years. WASP Studios opens once to twice a year and is open on the 1st and 2nd of October and there are 13 other Artists based there.
Mary helped with the Bard Mhealboist project.

"Undersong"

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This is her studio, as you can see from the picture its rather messy!

Morgan Robinson

Morgan Robinson is a student at my college currently in the last year of Art and Design, she is going to do Photography at Edinburgh college at the end of summer.
At the exhibition, Morgan created a tiny little room thing, printed photos on acitate, hung them up and got people to use a torch to project them onto the wall.
The photographs i was able to.. well photograph were just things in her portfolio that she took to the interview.

With having this portfolio papre based I could really see the quality of the photos..

 

Bethany ... - portfolio

Bethany is a student at Edinburgh University doing textiles, she has just about finished her first year and has applied for her second year. She showed us the portfolio that she would be showing in her interview. she showed a mixture of techniques in the portfolio with inks and stuff.
It was a lot better having her portfolio in front of us as you could really differentiate the quality of materials used i think.

Charlotte Miller - portfolio

Charlotte Miller is in the last year of my college course and is about to go to University. She works on a huge scale that covers almost the majority of the classroom floor. Her work is very abstract and colourful.
I dont think a digital portfolio for Charlotte would do her work full justice as having it right in front of you, you can see the full size of the art. You could find a tiny picture of a painting online but when you view it it would be massive.

Caitlin Steele - portfolio

Caitlin Steele is a fashion student at Heriot Watt University who previously done the BTEC art and design course that I'm currently doing. She came to present her paper based portfolio to our class. The portfolio was photographs of her work from this year and the year before, she told us that she isn't allowed any work in her portfolio that is more than 2 years old so she has to change some regularly.

She told us this last one was made completely out of recycled material (rubbish)

Audra Auclair -portfolio

Audra Auclair is from Canada and has been exhibited both local to her and in other parts of america alongside Australia. She has a degree for Graphic Design but spends her time exploring the female form using fine art. 

She is also on Youtube and has an online store/gallery.  

Showing your portfolio online is extremely helpful, you can access it where ever you are for example an interview. 

www.audraauclair.com/#

Greg Simkins - portfolio

Greg was born in 1975 in California and started drawing when he was 3 and was inspired by cartoon characters.Greg's art continued to progress to the age of 18, when he started doing graffiti under the name “CRAOLA”. He has a series of speed paintings painting's and has his website http://www.imscared.com/

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8xQhGGKjek

Greg's website is easy to navigate, and very well laid out. You can easily and quickly see his work from where ever you are with internet access. It has sub headings when you hover over any of the categories in it so that you can find specific things such as drawings, paintings and graffiti on the Gallery section. The shop section is also cut into prints, originals, merch etc, which I find is pretty cool.

Cara Gates - Portfolio

Cara is a member of my college class, she is extremely talented and I've admired her wok all through the year. She is 18 years old, doing the same course as me - BTEC Art and Design Level 2, she would like to either be an illustrator, photographer,painter, or possibly a designer but shes not sure.

She brought in her paper based portfolio for some of us to look at.

The benefits of having a paper based portfolio are that you can easily see the quality of media used and the quality of the paper/canvas. 

The disadvantages, however are that you can't access them instantly and not everyone will see it.

(Some images are upside down :s)

F. Jay Haynes - photography

F. Jay Haynes was born in Saline, Michigan, on October 28, 1853. He opened his first studio in Minnesota. He was the first photographer in the area. 

The first image shows a hunter stood in a field or something, over his kill with his horse in the back ground. The hunter is stood "heroically" with one foot on the bison with gun in hand, both the hunter and his horse are looking in the same direction. 

This photo appears to be a train tunnel. The photo shows some symmetry, with the railway tracks leading you into train tunnel with the slight glimmer of the other end . 

 

Final ideas for photography

For my final thing for our photography unit I decided to use some of the pictures of my cats, My previous idea for the photography unit was to use my mental health as an idea but I sort of ran out of time for that and I felt it was a little bit much :s but I thought more into it and what helps me the most when im sliding down the slope of self loathing and that is my cats, Walter and Jessie. I looked more into what they usually do on a daily basis and that was mostly shoot around the house at top speed or perch in their cat tree or on shelves.

This image was basically a lucky shot that she moved as i took the picture, i love the smeared effect around her face that was made as she moved.

This one I basically just got down to Walter's level and i think it's okay

Like I was saying, Jessie likes to perch on shelves and tables and I personally love this picture due to the way it sits composition wise with her next to my mums Basset Hound ornament thing 

In this one Walter was confused by the camera so he kept bobbing his head up an down so I had loads of pictures of him just doing that so I thought, why not merge them together?! And this happened

I'm not a photographer, nor really plan on doing anything with photography, I tried my best to get into the photography unit but it never really excited me but i still tried my best :s