Blog
You are welcome to quote extracts from my blogs and essays. Please also be so kind as to credit me as the author.
At Edinburgh College of Art, we are heading towards the Art Practice presentation/ degree show deadline of 11 May at 4 pm. After that the doors are locked we are not allowed in again until 25 May, after all the marking and appraisal has been completed. The following week the fun begins when people come in to look at our work.
This week we moved out of our studios, where we have been since last September to our degree show spaces. For me it is a trip upstairs to room E. 01 where I have joined a couple of great fellow student artists Isaac and Sian. I am excited to be with them and I think our work will look great together. As well as moving, I took on the biggest piece of work I have produced so far – a 12’ by 12’ rubbing of the studio floor.
It involved a lot of ironing and getting down on my knees to do the rubbing over a couple of days. The knee pads were a blessing.
When I was a kid, I discovered the magic of rubbing when I took a piece of paper, put it on top of some coins and rubbed a pencil over it and hey presto, the head of the Queen appeared.
This memory stayed with me all my life and emerged again when I became an art student. Since then, I have used rubbing to bring to life the cracks on rock surfaces and the jigsaw patterns of bark on trees – Scots Pine are great for this. I have rubbed fossils, stones and beach combed bits of plastic and glass. When I was travelling in the USA, I kept a record of the places I visited with rubbings.
I have got a collection in my sketch book from California and the East Coast, some of them bearing the name of the Boston or New York City. My most treasured rubbing is from the memorial to John Lennon in Central Park. I have been collecting wooden, plastic and metal objects with interesting textured surfaces. The marks I make from them on paper are the equivalent of brush strokes in painting. I have been combining natural and manufactured rubbed textures to create compositions on paper and fabric. As I have explored this way of working, I have discovered greater possibilities for creating art and I feel as though this is just the beginning.