Tutorial with Linden

I had a great tutorial with Linden yesterday.

I showed her my sketchbook developments from the Expressive Printmaking class.  She read quite a lot into the different shoulder positions of my mono print self portraits. We discussed the impact of the blue colour of the cyanotype, particularly on the plywood piece, and concluded the blue/pornography interpretation was not one that I wanted to follow up.  I said I saw the imagery transferring to the sampler format with a line drawing of my naked form, quite small, possibly pushing the honesty border around the hemmed edge of the work. I am not sure how many self portrait forms there will be on the sampler. There will be words on it, but not as speech bubbles (Linden's query).  Also, Linden's view was that as it is a self portrait, the human forms(s) should be singletons, but I am not sure whether I want to put people 'shoulder to shoulder' as this is how I see myself when supporting or defending their position.  I need to get cracking with this sampler - my tennis elbow has improved to the extent I think I can manage an hour a day.

We discussed my reading of  Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1975, Screen 16.3 Autumn 1975 pp6-18 http://www.jahsonic.com/VPNC.html   I summed it up as describing how cinema (mostly created by a male director) trained women to view other women through the male gaze.  Linden said the ability to sum up a whole article in one sentence and then apply it to everyday life, was a theoretical innovation.  Oh good!  I just thought it was patently obvious!

We discussed Barbara Kruger 'Your gaze hits the side of my face' and 'I am your reservoir of images'.  Her use of words uses the pronoun, the noun and often a copulative verb to put a gendered interpretation on a short sentence.  When used as an instrument of power, language becomes less than innocent!  How do I want to use language on my sampler?  

We discussed my agenda for my artwork.  A-gender ?  Possibly a title for one of my sketchbook pages.  Linden particularly liked the page 'Labelled'.  I like 'The Gaze'.  Linden felt my work was definitely political - by its use of the outline of a real woman - not photoshopped or airbrushed.  She agreed that I should ignore my sense that Danielle was uncomfortable with my naked images, and carry on working with them.  Linden suggested I add Jenny Savage and Margaret Dumas to my artist research.   Linden said my concertina sketchbook was exploring righting wrongs (which the most recent work is doing) and reflected on how the body position in the silhouettes indicated this.   I use a lot of words in my artwork so structure and reasoned argument are important to me.  The body posture of the silhouettes can be used to partly make this argument. We discussed order and structure of argument (which Linden thinks I do well) and my feeling that what I do, is more like a herbaceous border - all free-form and flopping about everywhere.

I was advised to consider how to make the physicality of textiles intrinsic to my work.  Don't have the answer to this one yet.

Linden thinks working with values is tricky.  The human interacting with the world is the basis of value.  Consider how we understand differences - big/small, wet/dry, fast/slow, famine/feast, open/closed, honesty/lies.  Lakoff & Johnson in Metaphors We Live By  (chapter 13) consider conceptual value in the experience of the world.  Simple things can be difficult to find.  (Like how I summed up Laura Mulvey's article).  Everything in my sampler will be metaphorical (Lakoff & Johnson terminology) or symbolic (my term).

Linden recommended The meaning of the body in Coyne, Metaphors in the Design Studio - ' you are only in control of all of it, when you can explain the rationale for all of it.'

I said that feedback in my Personal Values table indicated people associated me with an Oak Tree and Wood.  Linden's interpretation of this was around growth and strength.