Art Class at the Granary.

I love my art classes.  I've done a couple of days now at the Granary where I've been working with objects from public toilets - toilet brushes, bottles of cleaning fluids, rubber gloves etc.  So although the class has been about mark making, I've ended up free styling and working with print and colour, and collage and shape.   I still find I stumble when we do a group review to question and analyse our work - Vanda threw a 'simple' question at me and it threw me completely - 'why do you use a concertina sketchbook?'.  I botched the answer - and this worries me for when I come to my Progress Review Panel in September.  So Vanda and I have decided to note down all the questions that might be posed about the sketchbook, and write the answers down on the back of the pages.

Why do I use a concertina sketchbook?  Because the format lends itself to narrative and I'm thinking about the narrative of what cleaners do and how we value them.  Because the format lends itself to repetition and the work cleaners do is repetitive.

Given Liverpool Street toilets are clean and brightly lit, why is your sketchbook quite dark and untidy?  Because if I was working in a public toilet, my mood would be quite low, and I would expect  to be cleaning all sort of horrible dark mess.

Why are you using these colours?  Red, gold green and black are the colours of the Ghanaian flag, which is the country of origin of the cleaners.  Turquoise and yellow is the colour of the ... flag.  Purple and yellow are the colours of the cleaning fluids and are opposing colours on the colour wheel.

Last night I worked up lots of my prints and drawings into my concertina sketchbook: